DE PALMA QUITS CLIPPING HAIR TO CLIP SPEED RECORD

Who ever heard of speed coming out of a barber shop? Does sound a little bit like a story of John D. Rockefeller mouching car fare home, but nevertheless it is a fact that Ralph DePalma, speed king and twice winner of the Vanderbilt cup and Elgin road races, as well as the 1915 Indianapolis race, was once a barber.

Not only was DePalma a barber but he started in at the job so young and small that it was necessary for him to stand on a box in order to soap the faces of his patrons. Ralph was born in Troia, Italy, but is known as an American driver, as he was removed with or without his consent, to America when only 8 years old. His life story is one full of humor when it is considered that he today stands as one of the greatest racing drivers in the country and the leading favorite for the prize money offered by the Des Moines Speedway to the winner of the second annual auto derby to be run on Saturday.

Worked in Grocery.

DePalma's early history leads one to a grocery store where he worked as a delivery boy at $6 a week, $5 of which went to satisfy his craving for speed - a bicycle. Before the bicycle was fully paid for he was discharged for paying too much attention to the speed he could get out of it rather than the matter of deliveries of butter, eggs and sugar. He went to the bicycle dealer and offered to turn the wheel back, as would be unable to pay the remaining installments. There fate stepped in and the dealer gave him a job.

Later on, when automobiles took the place of bicycles, the Brooklyn dealer changed his business to meet the new demand, and Ralph obtained an early knowledge of motor speed. Not a very thorough one, however, because the dealer would never let Ralph take the single car out of the shops. He would let him prop up the back wheels in the shop and turn on the juice. That was the extent of DePalma's experience so far as speeding and that shop were concerned.

It was shortly after that Ralph's father bought a barber shop for Ralph and his six brothers. Ralph was so small that he hardly stood as high as the chair, but that worried him but little. He worked at his trade and went on clipping away, all the time yearning for the chance to apply his knowledge of clipping records.

His First Race.

It finally came in 1908, when he drove his first race in the Briar Cliff road meeting in an Allan-Kingston car. He drove four of the eight laps when his desire to clip time caused his machine to turn over and he went out.

He was the victim of one of the greatest disappointments that have ever been written in the history of auto racing when, at Indianapolis, he led the field in the 1912 grind of 500 miles, and with only one lap to go he broke down.

At Elgin that year he finally copped the first place and followed it up by winning the Vanderbilt cup at Milwaukee a month later. In 1914 he repeated both of these performances and was awarded the American road race championship in 1912 and 1914. Last year he won the 1915 Indianapolis race and threw off the jinx there that had followed him all his career on that track.

He was not able to get his car tuned up for the Chicago speedway race last year, much to the disappointment of those who wanted to see DePalma and Resta having pushed him strong at Indianapolis.

At the Chicago speedway this year DePalma and Resta were neck and neck until the last two laps of the race when DePalma blew a spark plug and the delay gave the race to Resta.

DePalma has been tuning up his car for several days in a local garage and at the speedway and is one of the favorites in the guessing on first place.

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