Al Weiland, area dirt-track racing icon, is celebrating his 100th birthday today. He will be honored at a public reception from 1 to 4 p.m. at the American Legion, 712 W. Patterson Ave.
Weiland wondered this week if anyone would come to “the shindig,” allowing that “I’m just an old shade-tree mechanic.”
He tends to self-deprecation, but anyone who knows Weiland knows there was a span of about 45 years when he was one of the best mechanics around, and had a knack of building race cars that consistently crossed the finish line first.
A CONVERSATION in the modest home he occupies alone in south Iola started with typical Weiland humor.
“You can ask me what you want to,” Al said with a grin, “but I didn’t do it.”
“I got a Model T when I was 16 years old,” which started his love affair with automobiles. He dropped out of high school after his sophomore year — a decision he regrets even today — and moved to Iola, taking the first of several jobs at filling stations. Then, they were full-service stops with attendants who not only filled fuel tanks, but also washed windshields, checked air pressure and oil and did repairs.
The shop foreman at Bud White Motors, the local Chevrolet dealer, noticed Weiland and a year or two before World War II broke out asked if he’d come to work as a mechanic.
“I didn’t think I was good enough, but I tried it,” Al said.
He stayed until the Army called and returned after the war, working there until 1950 when he switched to the Ford agency on South Jefferson.
When he returned from vacation in 1960, changes had occurred that prompted Weiland to pick up his tools and open a shop of his own at 519 E. Lincoln, where he worked until computers became an integral part of automobile engines in the mid-1980s.
“I guess I was just too old to learn when computers came out,” Al said, but he was a whiz with carburetors and continued to repair them until his eyesight started to wane.
“I could rebuild one today if I could see well enough,” he said.
BY 1950, dirt-track racing was emerging as popular entertainment for folks who enjoyed watching friends and neighbors tear around a quarter-mile oval, with their jalopies unrecognizable by night’s end.
