This is how it all began (no your eyes aren't going - this print is almost 30 years old)

Before all this - there was the original Glen track to which we had gone from 1963 through 1967.  I was absent for some years defending Hawaii and Democracy from bad Marine Corps programming and finally came back one summer for the Can Am / 6 Hours GT weekend.  (Historians note  the dates and events are fuzzy, but most of the bog part isn't, for some strange reason).  I think  it was the summer of 1970.  And the track had undergone a massive series of changes.  Blue guard rails all round, a new section, and the final left-right before the S/F line had been moved.  As had a lot of dirt.  It was here that, when the rains came a deep, deep, muddy hole began to form.

The guy in the picture was one of the very first to realize the potential of the, as yet, unnamed mudhole.  He and another guy on a bike were starting at the top of the hill, going "whump, slosh" into the mud, then scrambling out.  Sometimes they made it; sometimes they had to push and crawl out.  You can see a crowd quickly gathered to enjoy the fun.  Then a guy in a jeep went for it; he almost didn't make it, but he *just* made it through.  He was challenged by a Land Rover.  To the total dismay of the Brit contingent he didn't make it and had to be ignonimously towed by the jeep.  While they were pulling the Land Rover out one adventurous and amorous couple danced, then rolled around together in the mud for everyone's entertainment.

Once the Land Rover was out, the game began to escalate again.  Now, to this date the Glen had always been sort of  sports car country.  Most folks either brought a domestic sedan or a British or Italian sports car.  But now, at the top of the hill was a Dodge Muscle Car (actually one of the smaller variants) .. it was green and had a hornet or something on the rear quarter panel.  It revved and revved and made loud muscle car noises. The crowd was absorbed and excited by this alien vehicle rumbling and shaking at the top of the hill.  He revved it a few more times just to show the power and how it would take him clear through that mud and up the other side.  Then down he came.  Flying down the hill, never letting off, he flew into the mud.  And there was a huge ker-whump-thud and he stopped dead in the middle.  The Bog's first victim.

I think it took both the Jeep and the Land Rover to get him out.  As the car slowly emerged from the mud it became apparent that the layout of the engine compartment wasn't the same as it had been minutes before.  Joining the engine was this *very* large and solid rock ( 1 to 2 feet in diameter).  The car was toast, which seemed to slow things down, so we meandered off to catch a motor race.  Later that day we went back past the spot and I believe (at this first event) there was a burning hulk of an old junker.

That fall, heading up for the USGP, we spotted a very very ancient blue Chevrolet with "Bog or Bust" painted on the side.  There was little doubt what was in store for this fine vehicle.  That year (and the next) there were many many fine parties - great fun, only slightly crazy - held in the camping area.  (I can't hear the Stones Sticky Fingers album without thinking about  camping at the Glen).   But if you drove down the access road from the village to the camping area - which went right past the Bog - you had to go through a massive gauntlet of crazies, singing, chanting, and beating the drum on the passing car.  Good thing we had the top down and simply toasted the crowd with the brew that someone in the crowd had been kind enough to wave at us.

That scene escalated over the next couple of years till it became a bit threatening.   Some of the Bog's victims were not deliberately sacrificial.  We moved away and missed a few years, still with overall good memories of the good silliness that the Bog represented.  Then, in the New York Times I read of the Greyhound bus as a victim of the Bog!  I must first say (being a responsible person and all) "that was wrong".  But, oh!  I had to laugh at the total, over the top, madness of it all.  Surreal.

You couldn't top that.  And now the Bog Had To Go.  And it did.  But remember the simple fun and silliness of that first discovery of the fun of driving through the biggest mudhole in the east. Look at the picture .. maybe it's faded too much to see the grins, but you can still feel what great fun the Bog gave us in its first year.

Bog or Bust!