A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. For a smallish-style city like Redlands around 1920, its connection with USA’s diligent Indianapolis is amazing. No one ever heard of an I-10 in those days. – Obrey Brown
IT WAS ALL ABOUT BUTTERMILK, or even a well-known nickname that almost everyone’s heard by now, the original “Lucky Louie.”
Louis Meyer, it seems, never even went to Redlands High. I’d searched high and low through all its Makio, yearbooks on that campus, of that day and age. Once I’d discovered he launched a brilliant Indianapolis 500 connection, I kept searching. Nothing. I later found out why. Meyer told me. It was simple.
“I never went to school there.”
Turns out, Louis was a summer visitor. Just before 1920. There was an auto shop just off Redlands’ downtown sector. Just opened. Nowadays, it’s Old Redlands. Real old Redlands.
Edwin “Bud” Meyer, an Austrian-born eventual racer, was Louis’ older brother. He owned and operated that Model T garage. Louis, a younger brother, learned to drive – not a race car, but a regular automobile.
Their dad, Edward Meyer, born in France, began racing a motorcycle in 1896. Learning to drive a race car wouldn’t take much longer, Louis told me.
An interesting moment came in 1933. It’s when “Lucky Louie,” who won that year’s Indianapolis 500, asked for a cold drink, buttermilk, after winning that race. Who knew, at least that day, such a celebration would develop into one of the sport’s most identifiable moments?
Years later, there was a smile, a chuckle, definitely a feel good moment for that year’s champion. “It’s milk, not buttermilk,” says Lucky Louie, “so I guess there was a little change.”
By 1926, Louis wanted to be an Indy driver.
Louis was, said a nephew, Terry Francis, several decades later, was “the original Lucky Louie.” He walked away, unhurt, from crashes and various other scrapes. That family name is Meyer, and if there wasn’t a wrench, steering wheel, huge auto businesses, or some kind of speed duel going on somewhere among them, you probably had the wrong people.
Louis, an Indianapolis 500 champ in 1928, 1933 and 1936, died in Searchlight, Nev. in 1995. He got his start, learning to drive race cars from his brother, Edwin T. “Bud” Meyer around 1920.
“There was a hill in Redlands,” recalls Francis, of El Monte, Calif., “where (Edwin) learned to race.”
By 1927. Meyer’s family Indy racing odyssey really hit the highest level.
“Wilbur Shaw got tired,” says Sonny Meyer, 69 in 1998, a few years after Louis died — his son from Crawfordsville, Ind. “Wil was looking for someone to get in the car and drive.”
Louis confirmed that. Shaw was an Indy pioneer champion. It was Shaw and Meyer, Wilbur and Louis.
This was the heavyweight of Louis Meyer’s race beginning at Indy. He never drove a single lap on a speedway, telling me speeds reaching a never-before-recorded 100 mph.
Sure, he laughed a bit. Quiet. “A lot changed at Indy,” he told me. “Licensing.”
These days? Racers must be licensed before they’re even given a chance to make a practice run on that Brickyard track.
One year after first racing at Indy, 1928, Meyer won his first Indy 500.
“Dad had that car in second place,” said Sonny, referring to Louis’ 1927 race. “Wilbur called him in and wanted to finish the race.”
By 1927, drivers had changed from “leather-helmeted, mustachioed daredevils handling huge, ungainly machines to young jousters in low-slung bombs,” Sonny told me.
Louis, said Sonny, was a young “jouster. He had never won a pole, but lined up in the front row twice.”
Ready to notch a few triumphs was coming.
MEYER STARTED INDY TRADITION
It’s no myth that Meyer was the one who started a milky tradition at Indy. Winning drivers who drink milk in Victory Lane in modern days can look back at Meyer for that one — 1933.
“It was,” said Sonny, “actually buttermilk. He had a real palate for buttermilk. He told someone, ‘If I win this thing, I want you to have a cold drink of buttermilk for me after the race.’ ”
Said Francis: “The dairy council saw that and said, ‘We’ve got to jump on that.’ Louis’ buttermilk made it a tradition at Indy.”
That three-time champ, in 1928 Meyer led in only 19 of those 200 laps, including that all-important final one at the checkered flag, notching his first 500 triumph.
Sonny said his mom, June, Louis’ wife, had no hint her husband would be racing at Indy.
“She was somewhere back (in Pennsylvania),” he said. “She towed a wrecked car back to the shop. My uncle (Eddie) was racing at a track in Reading. She was there to watch that race.”
Louis chuckled over that memory. June, he said, found out he’d won that year’s Indy 500, “when the (Reading) track announcer asked the crowd to give out a cheer to Eddie Meyer … the brother of the Indianapolis 500 winner.”
In 1933, Meyer recorded a three-lap victory over Shaw.
In 1936, Meyer won from the 28th starting position, tying Ray Marroun’s record, winning from the farthest back on that starting grid.
In 1939, Meyer crashed on Indy’s 198th lap, got up and walked away – literally. “Lucky Louie” exited racing. Memories that famed carmaker, Henry Ford, made Louis a proposition, one that would bring him back to Southern California in charge of building Ford engines, including the Offenhauser.
Some numbers: He won $114,815, taking 1,916 total laps around that Brickyard track over a dozen races – winning three times, second in 1929 and finishing Top 10 on six occasions.
“He always told me,” said Sonny, reflecting on that 1939 incident, “that he knew he wasn’t going to climb back into a race car.”
That, said Francis, “is why they call him Lucky Louie. All those years at Indy, the offer from Henry Ford, the crash, walking away – everything.”
Sonny? Louis’s son? Don’t let it hide that he built 15 winning Indy 500 engines.
FROM DRIVER TO ENGINE BUILDER
Louis, said Searchlight, Nevada’s museum historian Jane Overy, “was the nicest man.”
Lou died, she told me, when that city’s museum was getting set to open. He was featured prominently. He’d beaten the odds just to make it that far.
“There were 11 kids,” recalled Sonny. “Only three lived.”
Eddie was oldest, then Louis, and then Harry, the last among those living in Southgate, Calif. “He rode with my dad,” said Sonny, referring to Harry, “as a riding mechanic (in the 1937 Indy 500).”
Meyer’s Indy-racing career concluded with that 1939 crash, which left him 12th.
Sonny gave me some insight.
Until 1939, Indy’s greatest racing engine was the “Miller,” developed by Harry Miller, Fred Offenhauser and Leo Goosen. Rights to its design were purchased by Offenhauser, whose engine was renamed after him. Meyer and Dale Drake purchased it, renaming it Meyer-Drake “Offie.”
That high-powered, specially-designed racing engine constantly improved over years,” said Sonny.
Until Ford came along with its million-dollar automotive budgets, challenging for supremacy in the 1960s, Meyer had a running contract with the up-and-coming Michigan-based company.
“After he crashed (at Indy),” said Sonny, “he said he knew he wasn’t going to climb back into a race car. Henry Ford made him that proposition.”
NO REAL RACING FUTURE
There wasn’t much major racing beyond that Indianapolis 500. NASCAR had yet to see its beginnings. Louis returned to California and took part in “board” racing at places like the Rose Bowl and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The “season” started around Trenton, N.J., the only real race before Indy.
“We’d go to Ascot (in L.A.),” recalled Sonny. “I remember because we’d have three or four drivers sleeping on our floor when we lived in Huntington Park (a Los Angeles suburb).”
Louis’ son still remembers being farmed out to neighbors, “while my mom (June) and dad went racing. During the season, they towed the race car with a rope. Mom was in the race car.”
Meanwhile, Ed Meyer still had his Redlands garage.
Sonny Meyer has a way of remembering his family’s Huntington Park address.
“Dad won his first Indy 500 in 1928,” he said, “in car No. 14. That was our address: 2814 … Broadway. I still remember our phone number. It was Lafayette 8325.”
That Meyer family is more than just “connected” in racing’s history books.
Retirement was just a short drive away. For years, the Meyers had traveled to Cottonwood Cove – nine miles from a non-descript, desert community of Searchlight. It’s where Louis and June Meyer settled down for their final years.
Driving through the tiny community, located somewhere between Las Vegas and Laughlin, it became a hideaway for other celebrities, notably Hollywood’s Edith Head, early Academy Award-winning actress Clara Bow, among others.
ONE FINAL CHAT WITH ‘LUCKY LOUIE’
In a very short 1994 conversation I had with Meyer, plenty of his Indy 500 memories had faded. Already, I’d spoken with some of his younger relatives. He’d recalled memories of his Pennsylvania-working wife’s discovery on winning that 1928 Indy 500.
Racing, said Louis, nearing age 90, “has been good to me and my family. My only regret is that time goes by so very fast.”
Truthfully, chatting with Louis didn’t last long. His elderly age was most likely the reason he decided to hang up.
Louis, born on July 21, 1904, dying on October 7, 1995. Born in lower Manhattan, N.Y., son of French immigrants, Meyer was raised in L.A. where he began automobile racing at various California tracks.
There was no track in Redlands, not even near Redlands. Ed Meyer’s Ford shop was there, though.
Francis chuckled.
Racing fans these days, he told me, might not believe there were board tracks in such places as Beverly Hills, which had a 1 ¼-mile oval dubbed Beverly Hills Speedway. Or the Culver City Speedway. There was Northern California-based Cotati Speedway in Santa Rosa. There was a mile-long Fresno Speedway and a one-mile Los Angeles Speedway in Playa del Rey.
“Yeah, Redlands,” said Francis. “That’s a key spot for the family. You never forget something like that.”
Meyer won the United States National Driving Championship in 1928, 1929 and 1933.
He died at 91, in that Searchlight community he had been living since 1972. In 1992, Meyer was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. He was named to the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1991. He was inducted in Daytona Beach, Fla.’s Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1993.
There was a nice little corner in Searchlight’s museum dedicated to the early racing legend.
Said that Hall of Famer, Louis Meyer: “A lot of people had me confused with the movie guy … Louis B. Mayer (of MGM). I always got a little kick out of that.”
