HOW IT ALL BEGAN by Davie Looman
Joyce and I began competing in autocrossing in the late 1960’s. When our children were old enough, we attended events nearly every weekend.
During the next forty years we made numerous friends through the SCCA solo program. I was fortunate to have taken a championship in 1978. Joyce won several in the years to follow.
Competing was fun, winning is more fun. However, the greatest thing about the sport was, and still is, the people. We made hundreds of friends from coast to coast until our retirement from the sport in the late nineties.
In the eighties, I created a few cartoons just for fun. They were all about the cars and people in the club. I called my cartoon character Monty Pylon.
During that time, I began sending them to the “North American Pylon”, published by the Kelly’s in California.
When we retired from the sport, I found other interests in our new home in Alden, Michigan. I continued on and off doing the cartoons and sending one per month to Kelly’s newspaper. I spoke to Pat Kelly several years ago. She told me that she always enjoyed the cartoons and commented that “No two cartoons were duplicates!”
When our racing days neared an end, one of our final events was in Converse, Indiana. I had just bound two cartoon books of “Monty Pylon” cartoons.
I recall sitting with John Neighbors and George Bowland as they slowly turned the hundred or more pages of cartoons. When they had finished reading them, they, and others that had been peaking over our shoulders, had tears of laughter running down their faces.
George paid me a complement that I will never forget. He was aware that we were selling our Formula Ford and ending more than four decades of competing.
“You can’t quit!” he said. “It is things like this that keep us coming back!”
Oh, how we DO miss you George. We miss a lot of people and think of you often.
Thankfully, I kept the cartoons buried in our closet. Several months ago, I contacted Rick Walford, who still does cartoons for the North American Pylon. We decided to form a partnership and publish a Coffee Table Book of our cartoons.
The project alone has been rewarding. We believe that anybody that has ever attended an autocross will find humor in our cartoons.
We hope that you find the cartoons funny and maybe even thought provoking.
Many of you remember me from the talent shows. The “Old timers” will recall those early days of the sport. Newcomers will have no problem associating with our characters and off-the-wall humor. After all is said and done, it is the people that made our years so enjoyable.
It is our hope that you can share the cartoons with your competitors as you create your own friendships

HOW IT ALL BEGAN by Rick Walford
Basically, how I started coming up with the cone "conetoon" idea was early in my autocrossing experience...walking with some of the local greats like Kevin Bailey, John Ames, Peter Raymond and Kay Bailey.They would narrate their walk to us rookies, "Now this cone tells me that I want to go wider on the entrance to get closer to that 'apex' cone...."
"The cones ‘talk’ to you?" I thought. "Who is this Apex Cone?"(that is often the name of the cone character talking or being talked about).
All regions have human "characters", usually arriving in Corvettes, Mustangs, Camaros or some other beast of a car. Add a little drama, over enthusiasm..."WHAM!" the cone pays for it. Our region has characters. Originally, in the early 1990’s I would draw up a “conetoon” and tape it to the morning registration trailer/table and watch people chuckle and give their input as I was staying anonymous so I could see pure reaction. I enjoyed the humor, and attempted to add humor to the tension of navigating the course with these 2-second-a-piece necessities. Each cone had a personality…often with their body parts blackened, tore off and sometimes just shattered. How does one tell their story?
Well, if the cones are the usual victims...What do they think? What is going on in a family of polymers instead of having DNA? Do they have a secret? Do they have an alternative life they return to when they are not marking a course on the weekend? How do they persevere in the tragedy of the sport, being carried under the front fender of a Miata, to be ruthlessly pulled out smoking and covered in hot oil?
Not only do the cones have to learn the behavior of the humans, but they come from other backgrounds such as a city street repair. I believe they too have personal agendas on the weekends. I wonder if the cones enjoy the various brands of cars the drivers may experience. Is this possibly just an extension of the ego of the human driving the cars? How does one tell the story of the humans? The conetoons, just maybe, express it from the cone's perspective.
Well, Dave and Rick tell it in their own, somewhat similar, outlook. These “conetoons”, Cone Conference and Monty Pylon, exist because of the humans’ attraction to the cones demarcating a different course each week. The cones exist…well…still trying to figure that one out one conetoon at a time.