Wheres Waldo?

[garyshell]

He never claimed to be a racer, actually he never claimed to be anything as I recall it was his detractors who projected on to him.

Two points of clarification. One, on numerous occasions he claimed to have been both a promoter and official of various races. Two, he insisted on being accepted as someone who knew more than anyone with the notable exception of Donald Davidson.

I admired and benefited from his knowledge. But his attitude that he was better than everyone else on this forum was boorish at best.

Gary

Well I can speak to those 2 items as well.


<snip>

I 1st heard about waldo maybe 20 years ago talking with Bob & Lou Ciccone
Johnnie Heydenrichs Champ Car owner was the next to mention "Mr. Knowit-all"....all three of these guys thought waldo might be full of it "because his mouth never stops spewing racing" until he recalled facts about the Ciccones past that they had forgot about. At some point JH's car owner was quoted "his entire USAC lifetime involvement".."you'd think people would have more important things to remember" was how he remember the conversation.
I am pretty sure if waldo said he promoted races somewhere sometime he did AND there is a certain retired sprint car driver with the initials of JC who claims to have hired waldo for various Indiana & Michigan race that HE promoted so on his word I'll assume it was the truth although I never saw him claim such here in print, then again I don't rely on a lifetime camping pass here to entertain me of supply my racing knowledge.
Finally, JC has said in the past year to me that he DD & waldo were out for beers after the race again, JC is bigger than me & has no reason to BS me after 20 yrs. so I take him at his word, besides he has a masters degree & a reputation among our peers to maintain so I tend to believe him when he takes the time to talk to me.

Your first post said that Waldo never claimed to be anything. I was merely setting the record straight. I never said Waldo ws lying with those claims. Just pointing out that you were wrong when you said "he never claimed to be anything".

Which brings me back to the central question...
IF waldo cause anyone here problems of ANY SORT, the adults here had 2 options not to pay attention to his efforts or being unable or unwilling to do that they could just have him blocked from view...
either way it would have cause both of you a lot less stress and consternation if you had taken the easy route.
I assume you made a conscious decision not to, only you can shed light on your motives.
Like I said...I don't know the guy, but because I have time in racing, I know people who DO know him, have employed him and have race in shows he is said to be the promoter of, and they make part of the living in racing.
So who would you believe, business associates you've worked with and known going back 20+ years or some anonymous screen name?
W/O the contacts in the sport you are left to do that which you accuse him of...claims w/o supporting witnesses or fact.

I've been able to ignore those who annoy me since about age 10 and I've gathered enough life experience by 30 to know who was BS-ing me and by 50 what I should and shouldn't invest my efforts in.

These are some bench marks that have saved me lots of wasted time effort and money. With prudence they will serve anyone likewise.

Yeah, I made a conscious decision. I put him on my ignore list for a while. I then saw, through others' quotes from him, that he had been given a time out. Latter when I saw he was back, I sent him a couple of private messages, trying to extend an olive branch. Why, because my first exchange with him had been about my uncle who ran in NASCAR in the 60's. Waldo knew a bit about Nelson Stacy and we had a nice exchange about him. So, I hoped after his "time out" to rekindle that sort of exchange, but no. Waldo was back to his old tricks, telling everyone who would listen and those that didn't want to the HE knew more than all of us combined and we had to take his opinion while subjugating our own.

There is a difference between ignoring a loud mouth and standing aside while someone denigrates you and others around you. There is honor in the former, but not the latter.

Gary