Midian NASCARTS

History of Midian Nascarts

  The Midian Nascarts was an idea born from a chance sighting of a small fiber- glass bodies go-kart on east Lincoln Street in Wichita, KS on October 28, 2006. Nobles Les Osterman and Randy Pierce, along with their Ladies Louise Meade and Connie Pierce were returning the legion of Honor's trailer to Midian's storage barn after the Arkalalah parade in Arkansas City when the sighting took place. The car darted out of a gas station parking lot down the street and into an alley never to be seen again. All four people saw the car and thought how neat it was.

  Not much was said at the time but a little later Les and Randy began discussing different ideas about starting a new parade unit at Midian Shrine. In November 2006 they approached Chief Rabban Delbert Fowler about starting a new unit based on a fiberglass bodies replica of a NASCAR racer. Delbert liked the idea but wanted to know when we planned to start, where we would get the cars and what kind of expenses would be involved. With Christmas coming, Les and Randy knew they would not be able to gather all of that information before the end of the year. But having the incoming Potentate's blessing, they proceeded to gather the information that the requested.

  After checking around and not having any luck on a local supplier, Les found several Internet web sites that sold go-carts and he and Randy proceeded to check them out. They found three companies that made the karts the way they envisioned them to be. At that point Randy started e-mailing the kart companies inquiring about how the cars could be built, how long it would take to build them and how much they would cost.

  Cost estimates were received in April 2007. Armed with that information they went to Illustrious Sir Delbert Fowler,

now Potentate of Midian Shrine he agreed we could have a meeting to determine if there would be enough interest among the Nobility to start a new unit.
  Our first meeting was held on May 30, 2007 with 12 Nobles in attendance. Six of those Nobles committed to buying a kart if in fact the new unit was formed. Illustrious Sir Delbert Fowler agreed that there was enough interest and directed us to start writing our by-laws.

  It took only three additional meetings to get our by-laws in order and on July 16, 2007 the newest parade unit at Midian Shrine, the Midian NASCARTS received their Charter. We started the unit with 14 charter members including Illustrious Sir Delbert Fowler. Our first officers were: President, Randy Pierce, Vice-President Bart Ogden, Secretary, Wayne Wells, Treasurer, Jon Powell, Midian Ceremonial Director, Fred Smith, Midian Parade Marshal, Les Osterman. Other Nobles included, Brent Ballard, Mack Brooks, Dahl Carmichael, Myron Frick, Dean Lauterbach, Scott Smith and Nicholas Young.

  After many debates about engine size, colors, decorations and tires, the decision was made to order our karts. Our first order was placed on September 13, 2006 and on October 1, 2007 nearly a full year since the idea was formed; the Nascarts had their cars.

  We uncrated them that evening and within an hour we threw one wheel, broke one chain and shorted out one kill switch. With that kind of a start it would seem that our crew chief is going to be one busy person. We were all anxious to begin parading and started practicing in hopes of getting our routine together for our official debut at Midian Shrine Fall Ceremonial Parade, November 2007.

  It only took one year!