OTHO, Iowa (AP) - Racing isn’t just a hobby for Marty Pringle. It’s not just a sport. It’s a lifestyle. It’s in his blood.
Pringle, who lives in Otho and runs the Iowa Hall of Fame and Racing Museum, has been around racing his entire life.
His father, Jim Pringle, raced cars at the Webster City race track for decades. Marty Pringle and his brothers all raced in Webster City, too. Both Jim and Marty have been inducted into the Hamilton County Speedway Hall of Fame.
“My Dad raced, so it was just natural for me,” Pringle told the Fort Dodge Messenger. “If I’m not racing, I’m flagging or running the race track or doing something to do with racing.”
It was that love and passion for the sport he grew up around, for the family he collected along the way, that motivated Pringle to start a reunion of all the old drivers the senior Pringle raced with over the years. The first reunion was 14 years ago.
Since then, Pringle has created the racing museum, located at 603 Hayes St. in Otho - a place to showcase and commemorate the thousands of racing memorabilia he’s collected over the years. In 2018, the racing museum also inducted its first class of racers into the Iowa Hall of Fame.
At the museum in Otho, Pringle has thousands of items on display, and even more in storage for lack of space. Racers and racing families donate or gift the items to the museum in hopes of preserving the racing legacy in central Iowa.
“The racing community is a whole different group,” he said.
Unlike sports like basketball or baseball, where athletes head into the locker rooms at the end of the game, Pringle said race car drivers often spend time with their fans, getting to know them and forming relationships.
And it’s not just stock car racing that the museum honors. Pringle also collects items from drag racing, figure 8 racing and motorcycle racing.
Signed motocross jerseys from Fort Dodge’s Gavin Faith and Justin Brayton are also displayed in the museum.
There’s so much stuff that’s been collected for the museum, that Pringle and the museum’s board of directors have been looking for a new permanent location for a larger building for the items.
Pringle can usually be found in his garage next to the museum, tinkering on the next race car he’s working on restoring. The racing aficionado is always eager to show visitors his collection of helmets and fire suits, the tens of thousands of photos for which he’s working on identifying the subjects, and the dozens of trophies. He’s even got an original pay out sheet from 1957 from the Fort Dodge Sports Park track.
One of Pringle’s most prized possessions is the 1934 Ford Coupe his father used to race. Pringle has the old car restored and running. In 2014, he was featured in an episode of the History Channel’s “American Pickers,” where he raced one of the hosts in that old car.
“Racing is just a natural high,” Pringle said. “I’ve always said racing is worse than any drug you could take because once it’s there, it don’t go away and it costs more than drugs.”
While visiting with the “Pickers,” Pringle stumbled upon an old “Otho’s” sign, which now hangs proudly from a pole in front of Pringle’s home.
“It’s from Louisiana in the 1940s,” he said.
They’ve never figured out what the sign was originally made for, but it fits in just fine in this small Webster County town.
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