PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

 Hold Tight, Kids: School Bus Races Rock County Fairs

CROTON, Ohio—Ethan Robertson was tearing across a dirt track in a yellow school bus here last weekend when his radiator blew, blinding him with steam. He hit the brakes too late to avoid plowing into the side of another bus, which wobbled off one way as Mr. Robertson's bus lurched on.
Seconds later, he saw another bus in front of him and instead of braking, he stepped on the gas. "I was mad," says Mr. Robertson, knowing his chances of winning the Hartford Fair's first-ever school bus race were shot. "If I wasn't going to stop, I was going to hit him really hard." He broadsided the bus, flipping it over. (More after the break.)

The crowd went crazy. The county fair circuit has given the world tractor pulls, guys who blow themselves up with firecrackers and demolition derbies in harvesting machines. Now comes the latest twist on heavy metal meets road rage: Figure 8 school bus racing. Fifty-foot-long buses weighing up to eight tons muscle their way around a dirt track about the size of a football field. They face the constant threat that leaders and laggards will collide at the intersection or slam into a concrete wall. County fairs are increasingly touting bus races as headliners, while speedways across the country are cashing in on bus-race nights with names like Crash-A-Rama. "I told my mom it's like putting a bunch of fat people in a little room and telling them to run around as fast as they can," says Mr. Robertson, a 26-year-old with a close-cropped beard who works at his family's used-truck dealership. "You can't really get hurt." Never mind monster trucks and motocross. At the Hartford Fair in Croton, Ohio, big yellow school buses go head to head on a figure-eight race course. WSJ's Joe Barrett reports. There have been injuries and at least one death in the sport in recent years, but fans still "want to see a crash," says Dick Fisher, president of the board of the Hartford Fair outside the town of Croton, about 30 miles northeast of Columbus. On Sunday night, the bus race drew 6,000 people who sat in bleachers, eating giant barbecued turkey legs and sipping fresh lemonade. Racers buy old buses and remove windows and passenger seats. They bolster engine protection with steel cages. Some soup up the motors while others focus on paint jobs. Mr. Robertson had mechanics from his dealership work overtime on his bus, though he told them they needn't be as meticulous as usual: "Just hillbilly it up." They sliced off the muffler and used cheap piping secured by coat-hangers to create a rumbling dual-exhaust system. They moved the radiator inside the bus to protect it, but the jerry-rigged design didn't hold up. "That's why it blew up on me," he says. Rules vary from place to place. At the Hartford Fair, drivers were prohibited from slamming into the driver's area of another bus or backing into other buses, demolition-derby style. The buses competed in three heats, with the top two finishers from each moving on to the finals. While the races paused to clear out crashes, drivers didn't quit unless their buses stopped working. Few people grow up yearning to be a school-bus racer, but some jump at the chance when provided with a bus. "I'm 58 years old and life's been kind of boring the last couple of years," says Ron "Vegas Ron" Schlaegel, who wore a gold-flake motorcycle helmet while driving a second bus Mr. Robertson brought. He took second place despite blowing out a tire in the fourth lap. "You sure aren't in it for the money. It's the fun," says Ed Workman, a 42-year-old scrap metal dealer who brought five buses to the race. He drove one himself, while his girlfriend and a few of his employees drove the others. As the sun fell, the aromas of burgers grilling and funnel cakes frying mixed with the sulfurous reek of diesel exhaust. Fans screamed as the opening heats eliminated four buses. Then six banged-up survivors lined up for the 25-lap championship, with $1,000 in prize money at stake. One was the notorious "Smokin' Bus" owned by Lew Canter of Mount Vernon, Ohio.
Mr. Canter, 38, bought the bus for $1,000 from the grade school he attended. He and some buddies tinkered with its diesel engine so it would spew huge plumes of black smoke from the sides—right into the compartments of rival buses. He says his bus has won three races and placed second in another. "We put out so much smoke at the starting line that the other buses can't see the green flag and we get the lead," says Mr. Canter, owner of a truck and equipment repair business. "We are not EPA-compliant." Hartford race officials, who had seen the bus at another fair, weren't impressed. "That's pretty rude," said Mr. Fisher, the fair board's president. They added a rule that exhaust must be pumped over or under buses, but later agreed to let the Smokin' Bus compete so long as the driver didn't smoke rivals out by revving the engine before the start. Mr. Robertson drew pole position and held the lead until his radiator blew in the eighth lap. In lap 13, another bus ran halfway up the concrete wall and couldn't continue. After that bus was carted off, Anthony Shaffer, driver of the Smokin' Bus, lined up next to the leader, Mr. Workman, who was driving a short red, white and blue bus. Mr. Workman, a large man in blue overalls, was racing for the first time. But he recalled how the Smokin' Bus had helped tip over another bus he owns in a race last year, knocking it out of first place. So when Mr. Shaffer leapt off the line and grabbed the lead going around a corner, Mr. Workman took an inside angle and drove his front end into Mr. Shaffer's side, flipping his bus. Mr. Shaffer, a 32-year-old farmer, walked out the back of the bus, waved to the crowd and jokingly set up an orange safety triangle.After the race resumed, Mr. Workman cruised to the win. But Mr. Canter, the Smokin' Bus owner, vowed to take revenge on Mr. Workman at an upcoming Labor Day weekend race in nearby Morrow County: "He won't be finishing that race."