But for Jack and his children, the go-carts weren't just a matter of
business - they were also a lot of fun.
"We ran them on the parking lots until they ran us all off,
and then we built the track out at the airport."
The track, now run by Heart of Texas Kart Club, is the weekend
site for third generation Pecks.
"I've got two grandkids racing now," Jack said.
Go-cart racing was "good family sport"
and involved the whole family.
"It kept us very busy," he said.
"It made all the kids fantastic drivers." Richard
was one of the top five go-cart drivers in the country at one time.
They raced at Riverside, Daytona and Kent, Washington.
And Jack himself loved the thrill of racing the cars.
"I've always been impressed by speed," he smiles.
In 1957, Jack and a friend, Marion Rutledge, started Waco Aircraft Sales
as a Mooney dealership. "We
were making parts for the airplanes, and I was starting to fly.
My brother had an airplane.
I liked it, so Marion (of Precise Products) and I got together
and said we'd buy one wholesale. He put all the instruments in it."
From 1957 to 1963, when heart problems caused
Marion to stop, the pair bought and sold three or four planes.
"We enjoyed it," Jack said.
"We'd buy one and fly it for awhile, sell it and buy another
one." By 1961, business was picking up at Mercury Tool.
A SBA loan had helped through the worst times and the company
was "progressing real good," Jack said. "We lacked
a partial payment on the SBA loan, and on January 16, 1965, we Burned
to the ground in 20 minutes," he recalls.
"So I went from a $350,000 company to having an $80,000
deficit."
The fire started about 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday
morning. Mercury was machining
magnesium go-cart wheels. The
workers cleaned the machine after each part was machined, putting the
shavings into an open-top barrel.
A machine caught on fire, and someone grabbed a bucket of wastewater
at a nearby water fountain and threw it on the fire.
Instead of stopping the fire, it washed the flame out into the
barrel of shavings, and in seconds, the fire was uncontrollable.
"Nobody was hurt, but it destroyed everything," said Jack,
who was at the business when the fire started.
"We had 24-foot ceilings, and the flame went all the way
to the ceiling.
The building had been reroofed several
times, and the flames ran down those beams just like a fuse.
We had somebody in the restroom, and he had to go out the window.
He was probably 80 or 90 feet away. "We were making
sidewalk skateboards at that time, and we had all the rubber cushions
in there, and they caught fire, and that was a very toxic smoke."
A 35 mph north wind blew the flames into the wires that went to the
two wells that were on the field, so the only water available was from
a 500-gallon pumper truck. The
fire was so hot it melted a pile of nickels, which Jack still has, from
the soda machine. The business
was only insured for $35,000. Jack said it never occurred to him
not to rebuild. "I
had no options, really," he said.
By 9 a.m. Sunday morning, the day after the
fire, Jack was on his way to Dallas to meet with some people he knew
who rebuilt machines. "I
drove up there early that morning, and he had a truck down here that
afternoon." Jack got
a speeding ticket on the way to Dallas.
