Two of the great passions of Jerry McGovern's life have been the restaurant business and automobile racing, and so when his father, Al McGovern, came up with an idea half a century ago that would combine the two, he didn't have to ask twice.

The plan was to take a group from McGovern's Club and Restaurant in Sun Prairie to the famed Indianapolis 500 race, Memorial Day weekend in Indiana. The first trip was in 1959 and Jerry hasn't missed one since, meaning that this weekend will be the 50th consecutive time he has taken a group from McGovern's to the celebrated Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"I'm fairly sure we're the oldest continuous excursion from the state of Wisconsin," McGovern was saying this week.

In 50 years, McGovern has pretty much seen it all at the Indy 500. He was shocked and saddened when the popular racer Eddie Sachs fatally crashed and burned virtually in front of him in 1964. He was thrilled by Danica Patrick's astonishing run that wound up just short of the checkered flag in 2005. And he was vastly amused the year a few of his customers, before the race, convinced the Purdue University band to play "On, Wisconsin."

"The band director got pretty mad at them," McGovern recalled.

Jerry is a lively 85, having celebrated a birthday last month, and though he's retired he still gets over to the restaurant every day to chat with the staff and customers.

"Whatever we start with, we end up talking about racing," he said.

It was his father who got him started, both in restaurants and racing. Al McGovern had attended the 500, which started in 1911, on and off since the 1920s. "It rubbed off on us," Jerry said, referring to his father's love of racing and how it was passed to Jerry and his brothers, John and Wayne.

As for the restaurant, in 1935 Al McGovern bought a building that had been a speakeasy during prohibition. It was on an acre of swampy Sun Prairie farmland and McGovern convinced some New York relatives to come and run the bar. Their name was Smith so the bar became Smitty's High Life Gardens. In 1947, Jerry and his brother Wayne took it over and changed the name to McGovern's.

They added a motel five years later, and McGovern's is now a Sun Prairie landmark at 818-820 W. Main St., a place people come back to even after decades away and feel at home. The motel was Sun Prairie's first, and numerous celebrities have stayed there over the years, including Packers great Ray Nitschke and band leader Woody Herman. This week Jerry was recalling what a kick it was when the Marquette University basketball team and their colorful coach, Al McGuire, showed up while in Madison for a game.

In 1997, on the restaurant's 50th anniversary, the racing connection was made again when Jerry was made guest of honor at the midget car races at Sun Prairie's Angell Park. He rode in the pace car and handed out trophies.

Jerry points out that a number of drivers who raced at Angell Park eventually made it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. McGovern 's own first Indy 500 was in 1958, a year before he took a group from the restaurant. He went with his dad and said they slept in sleeping bags on someone's lawn in Speedway City, where the track is located.

The following year, Al McGovern suggested to his son that they take a group down.

Jerry agreed immediately, recalling, "I thought it would be good promotion for the business." They originally tried to charter a small plane but the two on hand at the airport in Dane County were booked for fishing trips to Canada. They went Greyhound instead, and they've taken a bus every year since. They took 35 people in 1959 and now aim for around 50. (Tickets are still available for this weekend's trip; for information contact the restaurant.) They leave around 10 p.m. Saturday and pretty much drive straight through, arriving at the track around 7 a.m. Pre-race, they mingle, taking in the spectacle that surrounds the country's most famous car race. After the race, they get back in the bus and come home.

Because of their longtime attendance, the McGovern's group gets great seats. Jerry said they were on one of the straightaways, not necessarily a preferred location, for the first 20 years. "Every year I would call about better seats," he said, and finally they came through.

Now the McGovern's contingent sits on the fourth turn. "For action, it's the best place to be," Jerry said. "You can really hear them roar."