Ken Fowler was from Dayton but he’d moved to the East Coast.  He raced the board tracks and dirt tracks and there were plenty of them in the east. 

On that weekend in June 1934, Ken had gone to Milwaukee to race on Saturday.  After the race he made the 400 mile trip back to Dayton.  He wanted to see the Dayton race but had no interest in entering the event.  He pulled into Dayton around midnight and stopped at "a restaurant where fans and drivers hung out". 

Everyone was surprised when he announced he was not going to race.  Ken told them he didn’t have any tires.  "You're just afraid to race against the top names" was the teaser the crowd decided to use to get him to race.  But he really hadn’t any tires.  He had raced in Milwaukee and then towed the car 400 miles to Dayton. (Imagine towing a race car 400 miles in those days.)

One of the track investors stepped up and said he would find him some tires. Fowler still wasn’t interested.  The investor then offered Fowler a $1000 bonus if he could win the race. The investor wanted another experienced "Dayton Boy" in the race and figured it was a safe bet since Fowler would surely be exhausted the following morning.

Fowler was no idiot and took the offer.  A thousand dollars in 1934 was a lot of money.  You know the rest. 

After that first race little is heard about Fowler at Dayton Speedway.  He chose to go back east and race those tracks.  It was one of those areas where you could race midgets 6 or 7 times a week.  He had a really bad crash at the Bicycle Velodrome turned Midget Race Track at Nutley, N.J. In the first race there, in 1938, when his midget landed in the stands and injured 13 people and he broke his arm.