Raceway curiosity led to authoring a book

It seems anyone who lived in the Cedar Valley in the 1950s, 60s and 70s has a story to tell about Sunday evening races at Tunis Speedway. The privately owned dirt track hosted midget cars and then full-sized cars from 1948 until 1983, attracting 3,000 to 5,000 fans every week. 

Villa resident Jim Volgarino was among them. “I was into car stuff as a kid,” he says. “I remember riding my bike to the track and sitting on the hill near the grandstand to watch the races and thinking, ‘Wow. This is so cool.’”

Little did Jim know he would later write a book about the speedway, located between University and Greenhill in Waterloo, just east of Progress Avenue; you can still make out the track outline on a Google Map aerial view.  

Several years ago, as Jim had conversations with friends, he found people had memories of Tunis Speedway, but museums and libraries didn’t have any information. Jim jumped in with both feet and began looking for drivers, families of drivers and fans to learn more. 

Soon Jim went from having nothing to a cascade of stories, photos and scrapbooks. In 2011, Judd Tunis’ family shared enough totes of memorabilia to fill Jim’s spare bedroom. 

“I picked out and scanned 1,200 photos. These were snapshots, not professional photos, from this community of fans and drivers,” Jim says. That’s when he began a three-year journey of writing “Dirt Track Dreams: The Tunis Speedway Chronicles,” published in 2015.  

In 2013, there was a reunion of 700 drivers and families; in 2018, Tunis Speedway was one of the venues featured in a Grout Museum exhibit. A Facebook group allows more than 2,600 members to share photos and memories. 

Recently, Jim worked with The Market on a display window at Jorgensen Plaza and The Market is carrying the book. Jim encourages everyone to visit the display and scan the display’s QR codes for more information on this piece of Cedar Valley history.