starting as a 13-year-old. He also spent a lot of time at the Rudolph Blacksmith shop that his father was a partner in. While his father was ill, his uncle Leonard ran the shop. "I worked part time at the shop to earn a nickel or dime," Trickle said. "At that age, it was mostly sweeping the shop, but I started to play with the welder and soon I could make an arc and then weld. I started junking machinery. I save some things getting a head start for when I would go racing at 16. I didn't have any money, but I had this pile of stuff to build a race car with. It was a hope chest." "When I turned 16, I let the farmer I was working for keep most the money I earned until fall. That fall I collected my money and went down Main Street wheeling and dealing. I finally bought a 1950 Ford in good condition for $100. It was going to be my street car, but the urge to race got too strong and I cut up and made a stock car out of it." "I did run the car a little bit before I cut it up and I ended up drag racing a classmate, Melvin Hunsinger, who had a 1949 Ford. He beat me. It seems kind of dumb when I already knew there was a car that could beat me. Eventually, I bought Hunsinger's 1949 Ford for $32.50 and put the motor in my car". Trickle started out as the slowest car in a 100-car field at a Stratford, Wisconsin short track race. He raced that car at the end of the 1958 season and throughout the 1959 season, after which time he built a 1956 Ford into a race car using all of the knowledge that he had acquired. In his first time out with the new car, he finished second in the feature event at Griffith Park at Wisconsin Rapids. His competitors checked the rules and found out that Trickle was too young to race, even though he had already raced there for two years. He had to race at other tracks for a year until he was old enough to race at his hometown track. He raced for several years before deciding to race full-time. After working at several jobs after high school, he had worked for