Every once in a while, someone starts a thread on a message board which is just really stupid. If you didn't have somewhere to go to find all this stuff, I might be able to understand it, but there's always somewhere you can go to learn the history of most anything in our sport. Many times these stupid discussions have something to do with Pro Modified and I think that's because there are SO MANY people in drag racing today who have absolutely NO knowledge of WHAT it is, WHERE it came from and HOW it came to be…the most recent one of those threads was on promodzone.com and you can really tell most of the people who commented don't really know much about the not-so-humble beginnings of Pro Modified.
I say 'not-so-humble' because the people who REALLY meant and STILL MEAN the MOST to Pro Modified are the people who started it. And one of them recently was inducted into the North Carolina Drag Racing Hall of Fame…Charles Carpenter. Believe you me, Pro Modified was a hard fought battle…made easy for today's P/M racers by the people who MEAN THE MOST to the entire class and will always have the MOST influence because without them, it just would not be! I have already put the HISTORY of Pro Modified on this blog…I just wanted to write this to refresh the memories of those who forget so easily and to teach those who have NO clue! I guess I'll have to do this every couple years because people forget so quickly or just don't pay attention to start with. Of course, there are always those who would like to make everyone think things really aren't the way they really are!
If you REALLY want to know who the MOST influential people in the world are to Pro Modified as a whole…besides BECKY WHITE and Don Garrick, then pay attention for a change. One comment was by one particular person who said she could 'write a book,' well, if so, why didn't she? Because it was too hard a job! But I DID write a book…it was called Quick Times Racing News. And I wrote it a long time before the person who made that comment ever came on the scene So, NO, that person could not have written a book about what I'm writing about tonight. She was a late-comer to the scene anyway…years after the 'beginnings' of the class.
But if 'Yours Truly' (that's ME in case you don't know) hadn't given ALL those racers the acknowledgement and recognition of their accomplishments and believed in them even more than some of them believed in themselves, there may never have been the FIRST heads up, pro tree, no breakout doorslammer race. I called those guys and asked them if they wanted to race that way. They ALL did. I called them and got them to come to the first few of those races at Orangeburg Dragstrip. Don Garrick provided the FIRST venue for the fastest of the fast DOORSLAMMERS in the southeast to run a Pro-style race…and he did it a full year and a half before anyone else. THIS, my friends, is where Pro Mod came from and these were AND STILL ARE the people who are MOST important to and influential in Pro Mod…forever.
Why? Because without these 'charter' members, there would not have been the class as it is today. These same racers are the racers who ran Top Sportsman and formed the Top Sportsman Racers Association…from whence came Pro Modified after this group put so much pressure on IHRA to do MORE for the racers who were providing the show that brought the spectators to the IHRA races. This happened at a time when IHRA was losing was more racers and more spectators than they were gaining…a dangerous time for IHRA. Pro Modified was the biggest saving grace in the history of that organization! I not only helped Don Garrick hold the first race as well as subsequent races, the actual Pro Modified designation for the class happened in 1989…I won the 1989 IHRA Media Award for promoting this class and these racers as well as all the others.
I don't know WHERE Bret Kepner gets the idea he knows anything about how Pro Mod came about…he wasn't even around when and where it first got started. He may have done a little announcing up in the Midwest some of those years…but he was never in the south during that time. He doesn't know anything about what was going on here. But for some reason or another, he thinks he has to put his two cents worth in every time the subject comes up even though he doesn't know what he's talking about. Bret…let me remind you AGAIN…I am NOT dead YET! First let me say NO ONE has CHANGED PRO MOD…it has evolved. I may not like the way it has evolved, but some things just cannot be held back. If ANYONE wants to KNOW the TRUTH about PRO MOD…its history…where it came from…WHO it came from, all they have to do is go to quicktimesracingnews.blogspot.com and right there you will find the entire history of how Pro Mod came to be…all the way from the 1960s! You HAVE to have the history…without it, there would be no Pro Modified! You will NEVER STEAL MY THUNDER…no matter how often you try or how many lies you tell…because you can NOT change history! How many times does someone have to tell you something before you GET it? You have to remember…this started with ALL carbureted cars…NO blowers! Nitrous, yes, but there were NO blowers.
Pro Mod is MY class…it was from the beginning and it will always be and no matter how many other people try to change that fact, it IS still FACT. The only thing Bret Kepner ever had to do with Pro Mod was talking about it…in his job as an announcer. Otherwise, no matter how much Bret WANTS Pro Mod to be 'his' class, it never will be. As I said, he was not even around when this class got started…in the south…first at Orangeburg Dragstrip…and it spread like wildfire because it was SO EXCITING…the most exciting thing to come out of drag racing since the advent of funny cars in the '60s…it was first called Quick 8 Doorslammers. But even before then, racers vied for speed and low ET, not just for the money it brought them, but the glory as well.
And yes, R.C. Sherman WAS one of those 'fast' guys early on, just like all the others I've named. There were factions all over the country…United Drag Racers Association had racers going that way…I guess that's who R.C. raced with. But this had NOTHING to do with 'altereds.' There were the Dixie Pro Stockers and several other groups of guys who either could not afford to run with Pro Stock…be it 500 inch or unlimited or they were just barely out-paced by the top few guys who were always the top few guys. They wanted to go fast…they couldn't do it with IHRA or NHRA and they sure as hell couldn't bracket race so they formed little groups all over the place and ran as exhibitionists. The racers who started Pro Modified didn't do that…they kept fighting for a place to run actual races, where they could get paid to qualify…not just do exhibition runs. They also ran the match race circuit with all their local southeastern tracks and became so well known to the fans just the mention of having any of them at any certain track would guarantee a track operator a good payday.
When they started running eight of those very popular cars per event, that guaranteed an even bigger payday and the southeastern tracks…especially the Carolina tracks…the most success they had EVER seen. The more popular they became in the southeast, the more little groups popped up in other places…Midwest Pro Stock was one very popular group, not to mention the Wild Bunch (although they were mostly blower cars). Yes, they were ALL important and I do NOT discount the importance of any of them.
But when you get right down to brass tacks, Pro Mod BELONGS to Becky White and Quick Times Racing News, Don Garrick and Orangeburg Dragstrip, Charles Carpenter and Rob Vandergriff, Jim Bryant, Blake Wiggins, Scotty Cannon, Michael Martin, Ken Regenthal, Gordy Foust, Ronnie Hood & Bruce Walker, Tommy Mauney, Frankie Flanagan, Terry Housley & the Thurmer brothers, Ed Hoover, Wally Bell (I cannot believe Wally Bell could mention other publications in his comments but not mention Quick Times Racing News…I guess that is the thanks a person gets for working their heart out…Wally, how would you like for me to leave your name out here?), Jim Honeycutt, Thomas Jackson, Jeff Higgins & Don Plemmons, Grady Moore, Sonny & Deb Tindal, Wayne Davis, Gene Fryer, Frankie Foster, Frank Roberts, Roger Huffman, Karl & Butch Bridgeman, Smitty & Memphis Smith, Paul Smith, Woody Elders, Frank Teague, Lee Huffman, Sam Stevenson, Tommy Warren, George Gaffney, Dennis Newton, Larry Adams and Mike Petree, Sam Snyder and every other little guy racer who wanted to go fast and heads up…every little guy who grubbed and dug and scratched their way to a new way of life in our sport…guys whose names you've never even heard before and never will hear them or read them anywhere but here…in Quick Times Racing News. Because I STILL care that the true history of this class remain unadulterated by egomaniacs. Not to mention companies like NOS, RAM, TM Race Cars, how many more were instrumental in building the equipment these cars needed?
As all GOOD things come to an end, when it became a 'Pro' class, it caught the attention of lots of those aforementioned egomaniacs who didn't have to grub out a spot…they just bought one…everyone wanted to be a part of this new part of drag racing. There are people who race Pro Mod now who have not the slightest idea of how we all fought and the struggles the racers and I went through to get from Low ETs and Top Speed to Quick 8 Mountain Motor Outlaw Doorslammers to Top Sportsman shootouts to get this class a legal IHRA class. You have NO idea what I went through to get NHRA to recognize this class, the begging and pleading I did to get NHRA tracks to run just ONE Quick 8 race…just so they could see how crazy the fans were over it. Ask Steve Earwood, see if he will tell you the truth…if he won't, I have a letter you can read! Ask anyone who was involved with the first NHRA sanctioned tracks who ran Quick 8s…Southeastern Dragway, Lassiter Mountain Dragway and others and finally Atlanta Dragway, ask Gary Brown. If there are people's names on here the Pro Mod racers of today don't know, today's group needs to thank them. Without them, you'd all just still be 'little guy' drag racers. And Bret Kepner wouldn't have anything to brag about. Just because he was an announcer…later…doesn't mean he knows anything about who is REALLY important to Pro Modified as it is today.
Bret…get an original idea for a change and stop trying to recycle mine! I offered you the chance to write an original story in 1986, you couldn't do it then and 25 years later, you STILL can't! You just keep trying to write the same old stuff in different places. When the people on one website get tired of reading your crap, you just go to another one. I have now figured out why you've never wised up…you can't! You remain as impotent on this subject as you were when you got your Corvette tires slashed at the motel in Bristol, TN!
I read all the posts on promodzone.com and most of you are way off base…I tell you this again…I DID WRITE A BOOK…it was called QUICK TIMES RACING NEWS! If you want to know the people who were…and always will be…the MOST important and influential people in Pro Modified, all you have to do is go to http://quicktimesracingnews.blogspot.com and read the TRUE history of Pro Mod. Wally Bell is correct about one thing…no one from 2000 on would be there without the guys who started it…actually I will go one step farther and say most of those from 1995 and on would not be here today without those original guys and I know I've left some names out…for that I'm sorry. You DON'T have to remain ignorant on this subject…just read the facts…written and printed as it was happening! Ronnie Davis was close…Tommy Mauney was as influential in the formation of Pro Mod as any other single individual with the exceptions of Charles Carpenter, Becky White and Don Garrick at Orangeburg Dragstrip.
Some of the guys y'all mentioned on that message board had absolutely NOTHING to do with the beginning of Pro Modified and they are inconsequential as far as the class is concerned. For the REAL answer to the question, just come HERE to learn the REAL TRUTH. Read the November, 2009 article along with this one. Coming soon: The TRUTH about the S.C.R.A!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
My Junkers and Clunkers
This story has already been written once…I have just re-done it and added a few things. When I wrote it the first time, it was read 1785 times (www.draglist.com)…at last count…if you didn't read it when it was on draglist.com, you might get a kick out of it! I know a lot of you thought I made a lot of money doing Quick Times Racing News but that wasn't the case. I made a living, took care of my family and worried about selling enough subscriptions and advertisements to make the next month's payments!
Before I started Quick Times, I just barely made enough money to feed us, you can't make money in a sewing factory, even if you were on production and were the second fastest worker, you still barely scraped by. I was a single parent, most of the women at the time were married and helping their husbands make the house payments or car payments so they could have a little extra. We didn't have any extra. So if you know a little about the junkers and clunkers I've had to drive over the years…not by choice, by necessity…it will help you know a little more about me…if you want to know about me. If you don't, read the story anyway…you probably won't even believe it. But I assure you…every single word is true because I lived it!
When I started working at Farmington Dragway in 1979, I had a 1965 Plymouth Fury III everyone called the 'War Wagon,' for good reason! It LOOKED like a war wagon…no grill, no front bumper and I think every piece of metal on the whole body was bent or broke! When I had my garage on Depot Street in Mocksville behind P&G Auto Parts, I sold an engine to an old man and a couple friends helped me take his engine, put in the one I sold him and got it running…like a Singer sewing machine. I told him if he EVER sold that car, I wanted first chance to buy it…I had done him a really good job at a really good price. He LOVED it and was really happy with it. But it was an older car and his wife absolutely hated it because it was a Fury III two-door hardtop and they had a bunch of grandkids they had to haul around. So she made him go out and buy one of those big old Plymouths like the cops drove…four doors, big trunk, big seats…you know the drill! He came to the shop one day and asked me if I still wanted it and we made a deal. I wanted him to keep it while I paid for it and he was agreeable. When I made the last payment, I drove it home. I was so proud of that car…it was a beauty before I got hold of it…not a dent on it anywhere! It was a one-owner and he had taken very good care of it.
Anyway, it served us well. I hauled all the kids in the neighborhood around for years in that car…I've had as many as 17 in it at one time, going to the pool, the lake, the skating rink, the park, the pasture, the river, whatever! It got bumped and beat and knocked around until it looked like hell. But I had to drive it, I couldn't afford anything else. That 318 Y-block (precursor to the Hemi) still ran like a Singer sewing machine. I was driving it when I was going to school at Rowan Tech. One morning, the roads were solid ice but I wasn't about to miss a day of school…it was too important. I trucked on down Hwy 601, slowly of course, past all the guys with the 4-wheel drive trucks off in the ditches. I didn't dare stop for any of them…I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get started again! Of course, when I got there, no one else was there, so I had to turn around and come back up that old crooked, hilly road in the sleet and freezing rain…past all those guys in the ditches in their 4-wheel drive trucks. I had to stop at 'Greasy Corner' (the intersection of Hwys 601 and 801) at a service station to get the ice off my windshield wipers because they wouldn't move any more. Of course, when the ice came off, the frozen rubber came off, too…I just came on home with the metal scraping the windshield. I know y'all think I'm telling lies, but could I make this stuff up it hadn't really happened??? HA!
Anyway, by the time I went to work at the Farmington Dragway, that wonderful old car was NOT in good shape. But the engine still purred and ran like a charm. Have you ever been in a '65 Plymouth when the power steering went out? I won't even go into that, but yes, it happened. As y'all already know, it really doesn't take me long to make a mess out of any car…I always drove like a maniac and anything that got in my way was VERY unlucky!!! When it really got too unsafe to drive, I called the junk man and when he came to get it, I cranked it for him so he could hear it run to get the extra $50! I had just filled the gas tank so he siphoned out the gas for me and took my new tires and chrome wheels off and drug that thing up on a flatbed. I cried like a baby! It had been one of the best cars I'd ever had. (I have one sitting in my yard right now, too!) I guess everyone who ever read the paper knew I was a Mopar fan, mainly because they were easy to work on. Since I couldn't afford to pay someone to work on them and I had to fix them myself, that was a good thing. One thing about an old Mopar…you can ONLY get the timing 180 degrees off! With a Chevy, you could get the damn thing off anywhere from 10 degrees to 350 degrees! I HATED working on Chevys!!!
The only Chevy I ever had was a '65 'Antelope' (Impala…we just called it an antelope). That car had a 327/300 with a Carter AFB 4-bbl and even though it didn't look it, it would absolutely FLY! My friend and I were coming home from Love Valley (yes, that's correct) one Sunday morning about 4 or 5 and I had that baby all up in the wind. (Back then you could still drive on country roads at night and never see another car.) She said, "Man, I didn't know this car would run like this, it's SO SMOOOOOOTH!" She didn't realize we were just hitting the high spots!
The thing was rusted all over, the paint was that leaded blue they put on Chevys back in the '60s which faded as soon as the sun hit it and even in the winter, we had to keep the windows rolled down to keep from being gassed to death. I've already told you about the snow coming up through the floor on the way to granny's for Christmas! The rear main seal got to leaking so bad, the oil would basically change itself as long as you kept adding a quart quite often! A friend who had a wrecker and a junkyard had wanted the engine out of that one for a long time so I called him and sold it to him for $200. He junked the car, put a rear main seal in the engine and put the engine in his wrecker. I guess he was still using that same engine 15 or 20 years later when he finally had to retire due to physical problems. He sold the transmission for about $100 so he got a good deal when he got that car!!!
I don't want to bore you, but I have to tell you one more thing about that Chevy. I left Mocksville in January, 1982 in that car in the snow and sleet and freezing rain going to Atlanta, GA to the NHRA Division 2 banquet. Thank GOD for CB radios, I don't think I could have gotten there without it! As soon as I hit I-40 at Mocksville, I found a couple truckers going to Atlanta. They told me to stay between them the whole way and they would make sure I was okay (can't do that anymore). I don't know who they were, but I sure do appreciate their help. I had NEVER been to Atlanta (I had never been anywhere!) but they made sure I got off the right exit and told me which way to turn to get to the motel and how far it was. Of course, by the time we hit the S.C. line, it was just raining, but it rained like hell all the way. This was one of the most memorable weekends of my entire life. I spent most of it at 5928 Buford Hwy.
If you were around drag racing then, you will remember that address being on Warren Johnson's race cars and I was privileged to stay at his and Jerome Bradford's shop all day on Saturday. I felt as if I really was SOMEONE!!! Several of the old Pro Stock racers came around that day, at least one of them brought a little 'shine in and there was some sipping going on. Except for Warren. He didn't do anything but work. I couldn't even get him to quit long enough to answer a question. Finally, when I got ready to leave that afternoon, I said, "Warren, I didn't want to interrupt you today so if I come back tomorrow morning, will you sit down and talk to me?" He said, "Sure." So I went back the next morning (after the banquet that night) and Jerome and Warren and Buford and I and some others went to breakfast. When I got him started, I couldn't shut him up!!! HA! I'm SO glad I took a tape recorder! If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten a tenth of what he said! I had met him in '79 and already figured out that 'tunnel vision' of his and that's why I didn't want to interrupt him on Saturday. But it paid off for me and I think he really respected me for letting him work. I did get to watch him that day and I learned a LOT more about what makes him tick. Enuff of that.
I paid for that weekend the rest of that day! It was SO cold that morning I could not get that car cranked…it was 20 degrees! I knew enough about engines I knew I couldn't just sit there and wind on it. I would crank for a minute and go back in my room to warm up. Go back out and do the same thing all over again. I did that several times, just hoping I could build up enough heat in the engine to get it going. My very last time, I had already decided to call a wrecker or something, so I just kept the key turned and that old engine was really working. And when it FINALLY caught and fired up, I couldn't believe it. You cannot imagine how thankful I was. Then of course, you can't go from Atlanta, GA to Mocksville, NC without getting gas and after I left Warren and Jerome and crew, I headed north. Of course, the farther north I came, the colder it got. I was almost afraid to cut the engine off. But I pulled into a truck stop and got gas. I REALLY got gas. Got it all over me! Have you ever had to ride 100 miles with one leg of your jeans soaked with gas! My leg was so burned from that gas, it took it a week to get it back to normal. Painful!
The only Ford I ever had (thank God) was a '67 Mercury Cougar and why anyone would ever pay good money for one of those things, I'll never know. The front end came loose coming up I-40 one day and by the time I got to Heintz Brothers Automotive in Statesville, every muscle I had felt like I'd been run over by a freight train…it took me a week to get over that ride! I was still shaking three days later! I just left the damn thing there and told them to sell it to the junk man. They sold it for pennies to some guys who had two or three of them and wanted it for parts. I guess people who have those things need lots of parts!!!
After that, I got another '65 Plymouth Fury. I had also worked it on it when I still lived in Mocksville. It belonged to a friend's father-in-law who couldn't drive any more so they sold it to me. (I HAD to be a good mechanic…I ended up buying too many of the cars I worked on!) It's the car I had when we moved to Lincoln County. After Teresa died, I gave it to Candace to drive to school in Charlotte every week and I got my first EVER souped up street car! I got it from the man I was working for at the time and it was built by some local racers. They talked a good game and I trusted them, but talk about getting scrued, blued and tattooed…it happened on that one!!! It was nothing but a money PIT! Even so, I had a blast with it. You know you got to be pretty immature if you're nearly 40 to enjoy something like that, what can I say? (I STILL love fast cars!) A refrigerator white 'sleeper,' it sounded like it had a stock 318. It would only run about a 9.80 in an eighth mile, but out on the open road, the 4-bbl would kick in right about 90 and set you back in the seat so hard, you couldn't move! Beautiful!
It had a built 340 and a torqueflite with a Cheetah valve body and would bark the tires in every gear! When Thunder Valley Dragway in Red Springs, NC was getting ready to open, Art Johnson called and wanted me to come down and be a part of the opening weekend. I did! What a great weekend! Test 'n' Tune on Saturday…I think every racer within 200 miles was there! Race on Sunday. For the opening ceremony, 'Yours Truly' and her Duster was the first car down the track! Only I had a passenger! Brady Locklear who built the track but who had NEVER raced, got a trip down the track in a '71 Duster with a wild woman under the wheel. ME! He thought I was just driving a plain old Duster, so when I squealed the tires going into second gear, his eyes got real big! Now remember…the track was REALLY green, so when I shifted into third, the rear end of the car slipped a little sideways, he lost his breath and his fingernails turned white where he was holding on to the seat! I bet his fingers weren't the ONLY thing holding on!
They built that track backwards and there wasn't a whole lot of shutdown room and I didn't put on my brakes to slow down (4.11:1 rear), so just before we got to the turn-off, I thought he was going to have a heart attack because the highway was coming up fast. I nearly died laughing! It took him a whole ten minutes to regain his composure and he said if he'd known I drove like that, he would never have gotten in the car with me! That was fun! Any of you who REALLY know me can just see me doing what I've just described to you and laughing like a fool over it!
Whoever put the tach in that car cut a hole in the firewall right above the gas pedal with about a one and a half inch circle saw to run the cable through. It ain't no fun driving a car in hundred degree weather with 1200 degrees coming through a huge hole in the firewall right up into your face! You guys know that! But at least you only have to stay in yours for five or six second or less, I drove that thing for MILES and MILES! We would leave home going to a race and my girls would say, "Roll the windows up, my hair is blowing!" (I can hear that in my mind right now!) And I would say, "If you think I'm going to roll my window up, you're CRAZY. The meat is rolling up on the top of my foot now like bacon frying." It always sounded like you were still in second gear because of the gear and between gas and repairs, I HAD to get that thing off the road.
I was finally to the place where I 'thought' I could make car payments if I could get one cheap enough. I called my local Mopar dealer and he sold me a new 'demo' car at a good price and I FINALLY had a 'new' car for the first time in my life! A Plymouth Horizon! RED! Got a speeding ticket in the damned thing, too! It was the first car I ever had you had to put back in third gear to get up a SMALL hill! After I had paid on it for about a year and built up a little credit, I saw a 1986 black Dodge Omni GLH at the dealership. It was SO shiny and had gray cloth seats and I absolutely fell in love with it! I thought I had to have it. I figured I could afford it if Candace took over the payments on the Horizon. She was out of college and working now, so we worked out a deal. I got my first 'Go Like Hell' Carroll Shelby turbo Omni with a 5-speed. Now you might not think a turbo on an Omni is an awesome thing, if so, that's because you never drove one!
One time that summer, we had washed and waxed that little black jewel until it hurt your eyes to look at it. We were going to Knoxville Dragway to a big bracket race…one of those Chuck Varner $10,000-a-day marathons. Tammi was working for me then so the four of us girls piled up in the car along with all the clothes and their make-up and Quick Times paraphernalia and hit the road. We made a pit stop near Asheville at one of the big truck stops and we kept noticing all the truckers looking at us. I thought one of them was just flirting with Tammi until, when were going past him on the way out and he kept pointing to the car. I stopped and we got out and looked all over and didn't see anything until I looked on top. Half the top of the car was still under wax. I couldn't believe it. I was so embarrassed I could have died and I really felt like making SOMEONE walk back home for NOT doing their job. I pulled over and we got the wax off the car and hit the road again.
That car would run a 10.31 in an eighth EVERY time you wanted to run it, no matter what track, no matter what conditions! One night at Hudson Drag Strip, I talked Frank Teague into taking it down the track to see what he could get out of it. He ran a 10.30! I told him he must have been pedaling 'cause he knew if he didn't run faster than I had, he would never live it down! Candace had a Daytona at that time and we would make runs together at Hudson once in a while on Thursday night (Redneck Weekend Warm-Up). Greg would see us coming up through the lanes and he would really play up that mother-daughter grudge race thing. Those Thursday night crowds would go nuts and we had a blast!
I used to go to the D.R.A.F. meetings when I got a chance…that was the Drag Racing Association of Florence (SC)…the second Tuesday night each month. I was coming home from there late one night and some idiot ran a stop sign and I T-boned him. It must have knocked me out for a few minutes because when I came to, he had grabbed his paper dealer tag and hit the bushes, never to be seen again. (Have you ever noticed I always get screwed when it comes to car wrecks?) The law in S.C. always protects the car dealers so I lost my little car! I got another one, but it just wasn't the same. It would only run 11.80s and it wasn't black. But almost anyone whose ever seen me at races saw me in my silver GLH with the 'IRUNU2' license tag. I drove that car until I nearly drove the wheels off it! Nearly everything on it quit working, it had over 186,000 miles on that thing!
There were many six and seven week periods during racing season I could watch my odometer roll up another thousand miles each of those weekends! Mendy had wrecked it and I had gotten it fixed. Then I was on my way to Preston, MS and didn't even get past Shelby, NC when a guy ran into me in a parking lot in a car with a stolen tag on it!!! I never was able to get the car fixed after that because I didn't get any insurance money. So, I just drove it! Maybe I'm supposed to just ride a horse! A bunch of racers from eastern N.C. begged me to let them fix it, they even came and picked it up with a wrecker. I guess it's still sitting there, I haven't had the money to bring it home and they didn't do what they promised, so I got scrued AGAIN!
I had already made up my mind I couldn't make any more 5-year long car payments and I just happened to find an '84 Daytona in a garage in Charleston, WV with a foot of dust on it, but it was like a new car with only 42,000 (?) miles. I managed to get it and when I first wrote this, I said it was the only true lemon I'd ever had. Then I remembered that Dodge Charger I'd had, but that's another story, so this one was the second true lemon I've had! Never, EVER buy a car that's been sitting for a while! Everything on it was either rotten or dried up…gas lines, brake lines, radiator hoses, vacuum hoses and this one had a turbo so it had even more hoses! Not long after I got it, I was at Princeton Dragway one weekend and Phyllis Kelley and I were on the line taking pictures and here came a little blond gal in a ramp truck hauling…of all things…a Conquest! Why would you haul a car to the race track when you could just drive it for about 1/10 the amount of gas? It was just a regular old car, nothing special about it!
Anyway, she unloaded that thing and came up to the line and staged almost on the white line with her rear tires in the lights. I looked at Phyllis and she looked at me and we noticed everyone else looking at each other, so I laid my camera down and went out on the line and backed her up almost to the water box and talked to her for a minute and gave her some instructions…she had never even been to a drag strip! Then I pulled her up to stage and got her tires where they needed to be and got her staged and she took off. He car ran almost the same ET mine did. I met her in the staging lanes the next time she came up to run and put her in the other lane and she made another run, slower this time. I don't remember who did the instigating or why, but someone talked me into challenging her to a grudge race. I went to the tower and had the announcer make the challenge and say I'd meet her in the staging lanes and that's what we did!!! I think everyone there came to the fence to watch that run…I don't know whether they were pulling for her or for me! Hey folks! I WON!!! Made a new friend that day, too, even if only for a day!!!
That car was dubbed the 'Damned Daytona' because the damned thing left me sitting on the side of the road so many times, I stopped counting. I spent more money on towing than I did on gas!! I pretty much paid the car dealer to take it off my hands when I finally did get rid of it! I had just had $700 worth of work done on it and he gave me a whopping $500 for it in trade for the nearly deadly Nissan! I really think if I'd been driving another car when I had my accident in 2003, I would not have been hurt so badly! I thought y'all might enjoy reading some of this crazy stuff. Even though I worked with all of you for many years, most of you didn't know me or know much about me, especially all the hell I went through to do what I loved to do most in this world besides being a mom. I hid my problems from everyone, even my children, because I really didn't want you…or them…to know how hard I struggled. But, hey, it was a lot of fun along with all the hard work and struggles to stay afloat. I accomplished more in 25 years in drag racing FOR RACERS single-handedly than anyone ever has or ever will. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I lived a life most people only dream about and no one else has ever lived. AND…I kept my self-respect and my reputation as one of the most honest people you have ever known. There are a lot of people in this sport who cannot say that!
Before I started Quick Times, I just barely made enough money to feed us, you can't make money in a sewing factory, even if you were on production and were the second fastest worker, you still barely scraped by. I was a single parent, most of the women at the time were married and helping their husbands make the house payments or car payments so they could have a little extra. We didn't have any extra. So if you know a little about the junkers and clunkers I've had to drive over the years…not by choice, by necessity…it will help you know a little more about me…if you want to know about me. If you don't, read the story anyway…you probably won't even believe it. But I assure you…every single word is true because I lived it!
When I started working at Farmington Dragway in 1979, I had a 1965 Plymouth Fury III everyone called the 'War Wagon,' for good reason! It LOOKED like a war wagon…no grill, no front bumper and I think every piece of metal on the whole body was bent or broke! When I had my garage on Depot Street in Mocksville behind P&G Auto Parts, I sold an engine to an old man and a couple friends helped me take his engine, put in the one I sold him and got it running…like a Singer sewing machine. I told him if he EVER sold that car, I wanted first chance to buy it…I had done him a really good job at a really good price. He LOVED it and was really happy with it. But it was an older car and his wife absolutely hated it because it was a Fury III two-door hardtop and they had a bunch of grandkids they had to haul around. So she made him go out and buy one of those big old Plymouths like the cops drove…four doors, big trunk, big seats…you know the drill! He came to the shop one day and asked me if I still wanted it and we made a deal. I wanted him to keep it while I paid for it and he was agreeable. When I made the last payment, I drove it home. I was so proud of that car…it was a beauty before I got hold of it…not a dent on it anywhere! It was a one-owner and he had taken very good care of it.
Anyway, it served us well. I hauled all the kids in the neighborhood around for years in that car…I've had as many as 17 in it at one time, going to the pool, the lake, the skating rink, the park, the pasture, the river, whatever! It got bumped and beat and knocked around until it looked like hell. But I had to drive it, I couldn't afford anything else. That 318 Y-block (precursor to the Hemi) still ran like a Singer sewing machine. I was driving it when I was going to school at Rowan Tech. One morning, the roads were solid ice but I wasn't about to miss a day of school…it was too important. I trucked on down Hwy 601, slowly of course, past all the guys with the 4-wheel drive trucks off in the ditches. I didn't dare stop for any of them…I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get started again! Of course, when I got there, no one else was there, so I had to turn around and come back up that old crooked, hilly road in the sleet and freezing rain…past all those guys in the ditches in their 4-wheel drive trucks. I had to stop at 'Greasy Corner' (the intersection of Hwys 601 and 801) at a service station to get the ice off my windshield wipers because they wouldn't move any more. Of course, when the ice came off, the frozen rubber came off, too…I just came on home with the metal scraping the windshield. I know y'all think I'm telling lies, but could I make this stuff up it hadn't really happened??? HA!
Anyway, by the time I went to work at the Farmington Dragway, that wonderful old car was NOT in good shape. But the engine still purred and ran like a charm. Have you ever been in a '65 Plymouth when the power steering went out? I won't even go into that, but yes, it happened. As y'all already know, it really doesn't take me long to make a mess out of any car…I always drove like a maniac and anything that got in my way was VERY unlucky!!! When it really got too unsafe to drive, I called the junk man and when he came to get it, I cranked it for him so he could hear it run to get the extra $50! I had just filled the gas tank so he siphoned out the gas for me and took my new tires and chrome wheels off and drug that thing up on a flatbed. I cried like a baby! It had been one of the best cars I'd ever had. (I have one sitting in my yard right now, too!) I guess everyone who ever read the paper knew I was a Mopar fan, mainly because they were easy to work on. Since I couldn't afford to pay someone to work on them and I had to fix them myself, that was a good thing. One thing about an old Mopar…you can ONLY get the timing 180 degrees off! With a Chevy, you could get the damn thing off anywhere from 10 degrees to 350 degrees! I HATED working on Chevys!!!
The only Chevy I ever had was a '65 'Antelope' (Impala…we just called it an antelope). That car had a 327/300 with a Carter AFB 4-bbl and even though it didn't look it, it would absolutely FLY! My friend and I were coming home from Love Valley (yes, that's correct) one Sunday morning about 4 or 5 and I had that baby all up in the wind. (Back then you could still drive on country roads at night and never see another car.) She said, "Man, I didn't know this car would run like this, it's SO SMOOOOOOTH!" She didn't realize we were just hitting the high spots!
The thing was rusted all over, the paint was that leaded blue they put on Chevys back in the '60s which faded as soon as the sun hit it and even in the winter, we had to keep the windows rolled down to keep from being gassed to death. I've already told you about the snow coming up through the floor on the way to granny's for Christmas! The rear main seal got to leaking so bad, the oil would basically change itself as long as you kept adding a quart quite often! A friend who had a wrecker and a junkyard had wanted the engine out of that one for a long time so I called him and sold it to him for $200. He junked the car, put a rear main seal in the engine and put the engine in his wrecker. I guess he was still using that same engine 15 or 20 years later when he finally had to retire due to physical problems. He sold the transmission for about $100 so he got a good deal when he got that car!!!
I don't want to bore you, but I have to tell you one more thing about that Chevy. I left Mocksville in January, 1982 in that car in the snow and sleet and freezing rain going to Atlanta, GA to the NHRA Division 2 banquet. Thank GOD for CB radios, I don't think I could have gotten there without it! As soon as I hit I-40 at Mocksville, I found a couple truckers going to Atlanta. They told me to stay between them the whole way and they would make sure I was okay (can't do that anymore). I don't know who they were, but I sure do appreciate their help. I had NEVER been to Atlanta (I had never been anywhere!) but they made sure I got off the right exit and told me which way to turn to get to the motel and how far it was. Of course, by the time we hit the S.C. line, it was just raining, but it rained like hell all the way. This was one of the most memorable weekends of my entire life. I spent most of it at 5928 Buford Hwy.
If you were around drag racing then, you will remember that address being on Warren Johnson's race cars and I was privileged to stay at his and Jerome Bradford's shop all day on Saturday. I felt as if I really was SOMEONE!!! Several of the old Pro Stock racers came around that day, at least one of them brought a little 'shine in and there was some sipping going on. Except for Warren. He didn't do anything but work. I couldn't even get him to quit long enough to answer a question. Finally, when I got ready to leave that afternoon, I said, "Warren, I didn't want to interrupt you today so if I come back tomorrow morning, will you sit down and talk to me?" He said, "Sure." So I went back the next morning (after the banquet that night) and Jerome and Warren and Buford and I and some others went to breakfast. When I got him started, I couldn't shut him up!!! HA! I'm SO glad I took a tape recorder! If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten a tenth of what he said! I had met him in '79 and already figured out that 'tunnel vision' of his and that's why I didn't want to interrupt him on Saturday. But it paid off for me and I think he really respected me for letting him work. I did get to watch him that day and I learned a LOT more about what makes him tick. Enuff of that.
I paid for that weekend the rest of that day! It was SO cold that morning I could not get that car cranked…it was 20 degrees! I knew enough about engines I knew I couldn't just sit there and wind on it. I would crank for a minute and go back in my room to warm up. Go back out and do the same thing all over again. I did that several times, just hoping I could build up enough heat in the engine to get it going. My very last time, I had already decided to call a wrecker or something, so I just kept the key turned and that old engine was really working. And when it FINALLY caught and fired up, I couldn't believe it. You cannot imagine how thankful I was. Then of course, you can't go from Atlanta, GA to Mocksville, NC without getting gas and after I left Warren and Jerome and crew, I headed north. Of course, the farther north I came, the colder it got. I was almost afraid to cut the engine off. But I pulled into a truck stop and got gas. I REALLY got gas. Got it all over me! Have you ever had to ride 100 miles with one leg of your jeans soaked with gas! My leg was so burned from that gas, it took it a week to get it back to normal. Painful!
The only Ford I ever had (thank God) was a '67 Mercury Cougar and why anyone would ever pay good money for one of those things, I'll never know. The front end came loose coming up I-40 one day and by the time I got to Heintz Brothers Automotive in Statesville, every muscle I had felt like I'd been run over by a freight train…it took me a week to get over that ride! I was still shaking three days later! I just left the damn thing there and told them to sell it to the junk man. They sold it for pennies to some guys who had two or three of them and wanted it for parts. I guess people who have those things need lots of parts!!!
After that, I got another '65 Plymouth Fury. I had also worked it on it when I still lived in Mocksville. It belonged to a friend's father-in-law who couldn't drive any more so they sold it to me. (I HAD to be a good mechanic…I ended up buying too many of the cars I worked on!) It's the car I had when we moved to Lincoln County. After Teresa died, I gave it to Candace to drive to school in Charlotte every week and I got my first EVER souped up street car! I got it from the man I was working for at the time and it was built by some local racers. They talked a good game and I trusted them, but talk about getting scrued, blued and tattooed…it happened on that one!!! It was nothing but a money PIT! Even so, I had a blast with it. You know you got to be pretty immature if you're nearly 40 to enjoy something like that, what can I say? (I STILL love fast cars!) A refrigerator white 'sleeper,' it sounded like it had a stock 318. It would only run about a 9.80 in an eighth mile, but out on the open road, the 4-bbl would kick in right about 90 and set you back in the seat so hard, you couldn't move! Beautiful!
It had a built 340 and a torqueflite with a Cheetah valve body and would bark the tires in every gear! When Thunder Valley Dragway in Red Springs, NC was getting ready to open, Art Johnson called and wanted me to come down and be a part of the opening weekend. I did! What a great weekend! Test 'n' Tune on Saturday…I think every racer within 200 miles was there! Race on Sunday. For the opening ceremony, 'Yours Truly' and her Duster was the first car down the track! Only I had a passenger! Brady Locklear who built the track but who had NEVER raced, got a trip down the track in a '71 Duster with a wild woman under the wheel. ME! He thought I was just driving a plain old Duster, so when I squealed the tires going into second gear, his eyes got real big! Now remember…the track was REALLY green, so when I shifted into third, the rear end of the car slipped a little sideways, he lost his breath and his fingernails turned white where he was holding on to the seat! I bet his fingers weren't the ONLY thing holding on!
They built that track backwards and there wasn't a whole lot of shutdown room and I didn't put on my brakes to slow down (4.11:1 rear), so just before we got to the turn-off, I thought he was going to have a heart attack because the highway was coming up fast. I nearly died laughing! It took him a whole ten minutes to regain his composure and he said if he'd known I drove like that, he would never have gotten in the car with me! That was fun! Any of you who REALLY know me can just see me doing what I've just described to you and laughing like a fool over it!
Whoever put the tach in that car cut a hole in the firewall right above the gas pedal with about a one and a half inch circle saw to run the cable through. It ain't no fun driving a car in hundred degree weather with 1200 degrees coming through a huge hole in the firewall right up into your face! You guys know that! But at least you only have to stay in yours for five or six second or less, I drove that thing for MILES and MILES! We would leave home going to a race and my girls would say, "Roll the windows up, my hair is blowing!" (I can hear that in my mind right now!) And I would say, "If you think I'm going to roll my window up, you're CRAZY. The meat is rolling up on the top of my foot now like bacon frying." It always sounded like you were still in second gear because of the gear and between gas and repairs, I HAD to get that thing off the road.
I was finally to the place where I 'thought' I could make car payments if I could get one cheap enough. I called my local Mopar dealer and he sold me a new 'demo' car at a good price and I FINALLY had a 'new' car for the first time in my life! A Plymouth Horizon! RED! Got a speeding ticket in the damned thing, too! It was the first car I ever had you had to put back in third gear to get up a SMALL hill! After I had paid on it for about a year and built up a little credit, I saw a 1986 black Dodge Omni GLH at the dealership. It was SO shiny and had gray cloth seats and I absolutely fell in love with it! I thought I had to have it. I figured I could afford it if Candace took over the payments on the Horizon. She was out of college and working now, so we worked out a deal. I got my first 'Go Like Hell' Carroll Shelby turbo Omni with a 5-speed. Now you might not think a turbo on an Omni is an awesome thing, if so, that's because you never drove one!
One time that summer, we had washed and waxed that little black jewel until it hurt your eyes to look at it. We were going to Knoxville Dragway to a big bracket race…one of those Chuck Varner $10,000-a-day marathons. Tammi was working for me then so the four of us girls piled up in the car along with all the clothes and their make-up and Quick Times paraphernalia and hit the road. We made a pit stop near Asheville at one of the big truck stops and we kept noticing all the truckers looking at us. I thought one of them was just flirting with Tammi until, when were going past him on the way out and he kept pointing to the car. I stopped and we got out and looked all over and didn't see anything until I looked on top. Half the top of the car was still under wax. I couldn't believe it. I was so embarrassed I could have died and I really felt like making SOMEONE walk back home for NOT doing their job. I pulled over and we got the wax off the car and hit the road again.
That car would run a 10.31 in an eighth EVERY time you wanted to run it, no matter what track, no matter what conditions! One night at Hudson Drag Strip, I talked Frank Teague into taking it down the track to see what he could get out of it. He ran a 10.30! I told him he must have been pedaling 'cause he knew if he didn't run faster than I had, he would never live it down! Candace had a Daytona at that time and we would make runs together at Hudson once in a while on Thursday night (Redneck Weekend Warm-Up). Greg would see us coming up through the lanes and he would really play up that mother-daughter grudge race thing. Those Thursday night crowds would go nuts and we had a blast!
I used to go to the D.R.A.F. meetings when I got a chance…that was the Drag Racing Association of Florence (SC)…the second Tuesday night each month. I was coming home from there late one night and some idiot ran a stop sign and I T-boned him. It must have knocked me out for a few minutes because when I came to, he had grabbed his paper dealer tag and hit the bushes, never to be seen again. (Have you ever noticed I always get screwed when it comes to car wrecks?) The law in S.C. always protects the car dealers so I lost my little car! I got another one, but it just wasn't the same. It would only run 11.80s and it wasn't black. But almost anyone whose ever seen me at races saw me in my silver GLH with the 'IRUNU2' license tag. I drove that car until I nearly drove the wheels off it! Nearly everything on it quit working, it had over 186,000 miles on that thing!
There were many six and seven week periods during racing season I could watch my odometer roll up another thousand miles each of those weekends! Mendy had wrecked it and I had gotten it fixed. Then I was on my way to Preston, MS and didn't even get past Shelby, NC when a guy ran into me in a parking lot in a car with a stolen tag on it!!! I never was able to get the car fixed after that because I didn't get any insurance money. So, I just drove it! Maybe I'm supposed to just ride a horse! A bunch of racers from eastern N.C. begged me to let them fix it, they even came and picked it up with a wrecker. I guess it's still sitting there, I haven't had the money to bring it home and they didn't do what they promised, so I got scrued AGAIN!
I had already made up my mind I couldn't make any more 5-year long car payments and I just happened to find an '84 Daytona in a garage in Charleston, WV with a foot of dust on it, but it was like a new car with only 42,000 (?) miles. I managed to get it and when I first wrote this, I said it was the only true lemon I'd ever had. Then I remembered that Dodge Charger I'd had, but that's another story, so this one was the second true lemon I've had! Never, EVER buy a car that's been sitting for a while! Everything on it was either rotten or dried up…gas lines, brake lines, radiator hoses, vacuum hoses and this one had a turbo so it had even more hoses! Not long after I got it, I was at Princeton Dragway one weekend and Phyllis Kelley and I were on the line taking pictures and here came a little blond gal in a ramp truck hauling…of all things…a Conquest! Why would you haul a car to the race track when you could just drive it for about 1/10 the amount of gas? It was just a regular old car, nothing special about it!
Anyway, she unloaded that thing and came up to the line and staged almost on the white line with her rear tires in the lights. I looked at Phyllis and she looked at me and we noticed everyone else looking at each other, so I laid my camera down and went out on the line and backed her up almost to the water box and talked to her for a minute and gave her some instructions…she had never even been to a drag strip! Then I pulled her up to stage and got her tires where they needed to be and got her staged and she took off. He car ran almost the same ET mine did. I met her in the staging lanes the next time she came up to run and put her in the other lane and she made another run, slower this time. I don't remember who did the instigating or why, but someone talked me into challenging her to a grudge race. I went to the tower and had the announcer make the challenge and say I'd meet her in the staging lanes and that's what we did!!! I think everyone there came to the fence to watch that run…I don't know whether they were pulling for her or for me! Hey folks! I WON!!! Made a new friend that day, too, even if only for a day!!!
That car was dubbed the 'Damned Daytona' because the damned thing left me sitting on the side of the road so many times, I stopped counting. I spent more money on towing than I did on gas!! I pretty much paid the car dealer to take it off my hands when I finally did get rid of it! I had just had $700 worth of work done on it and he gave me a whopping $500 for it in trade for the nearly deadly Nissan! I really think if I'd been driving another car when I had my accident in 2003, I would not have been hurt so badly! I thought y'all might enjoy reading some of this crazy stuff. Even though I worked with all of you for many years, most of you didn't know me or know much about me, especially all the hell I went through to do what I loved to do most in this world besides being a mom. I hid my problems from everyone, even my children, because I really didn't want you…or them…to know how hard I struggled. But, hey, it was a lot of fun along with all the hard work and struggles to stay afloat. I accomplished more in 25 years in drag racing FOR RACERS single-handedly than anyone ever has or ever will. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I lived a life most people only dream about and no one else has ever lived. AND…I kept my self-respect and my reputation as one of the most honest people you have ever known. There are a lot of people in this sport who cannot say that!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Moonshining and Racin' in North Carolina
I have enjoyed watching Rumrunners, Moonshiners and Bootleggers and The Real Hillbillys on TV along with Ultimate Factories about moonshine and, when I did watch them, so, so many memories came flooding back to me. Things I had not thought about in years. A lot of you might know I always called Farmington Dragway my home track and there's a reason for that. I grew up just about 20 miles north of the track in Yadkin County…right next to Wilkes County. Is there anyone alive who's never heard of Wilkes County and its glory days as the 'Moonshine Capital' of the World? Junior Johnson and all those old roundy round racers have been on every show they've ever done about moonshining, NASCAR and hillbillys and that's where I grew up!
This is the place where round track racing got its start, where the North Wilkesboro Speedway was built specifically to give moonshine runners a place to compete…where Junior Johnson said you "couldn't make nearly as much money racing as you could running moonshine!" Five hundred bucks a night running 'shine five or six nights a week made a purse won at a round track seem like just a little pocket change. Racing was for fun and bragging rights…you know…that same old 'my car is better, faster, quicker than yours.' The moonshine legends became so popular there were several movies about it…parts of Thunder Road was filmed practically in our back yards and depicted all our old crooked dirt roads where I got my start. Now those guys are in the NASCAR Hall of Fame!
When my 'Mama Woodruff' (grandmother) was growing up on the Shore farm right off the Old Stage Road in Yadkinville, her father made 'legal' moonshine for the government…it was easier to get corn to market in small quantities! Roads were practically non-existent in the 1800s…simple wagon ruts only. They already had to haul their tobacco to market so shipping corn as a distilled liquid was a boon to anyone who could get those contracts! However, during the days of 'prohibition' there was no 'legal' liquor being made anywhere in our country. That kept illegal moonshiners very much in demand.
I honestly do not know if my dad was ever involved in 'making' moonshine, but it would not surprise me if he had. He was a dare devil in many ways (at least now you know I got it honest!). He didn't necessarily haul moonshine like we think of hauling moonshine…special cars with false bottom floorboards and trunk bottoms…my dad delivered moonshine in a different way. He actually delivered it to peoples' homes, much like he delivered milk from the family dairy to peoples' homes in the mornings. He bought his first ever car with the money he made from that first Saturday night job…a model A Ford! I guess since most of the people I'm writing about are gone now, I can tell this story. My dad's last delivery every Saturday night was also his last stop…to his own home!
My granddad had a standing order for a gallon of moonshine every week and when my dad would finish his 'run' and go home, he would take his own father's money from under a flower pot on the front porch and set the jug down in the shrubbery. When my granddad got up around 3 am to go milk about 70 cows, he would get his jug and put it wherever he kept it and by the end of the week, he would be ready for the next one! He NEVER knew who was delivering that jug. He made his deal with the 'maker' not the delivery man. But for a poor farm boy who worked all the time, my father was one of few young men in the country who actually had his own car. (FYI…I take after my great granddad, my granddad, my dad and probably ALL their ancestors…I still LOVE good moonshine, the taste of it, the way it feels going down. But I don't let myself drink it except on special occasions and the reason I don't let myself drink it is because I love it SO much! Hell, I could never afford it! It's a shame we're losing the knowledge of how to make really good moonshine.)
Moonshine was so prevalent where I grew up everyone pretty much knew who was making it and running it, but no one ever told the law. Some families would not have had roofs, clothes, even food for their children had it not been for moonshine. It's true…some were too sorry to work and moonshine was easy money, but some did it just to survive. One of my mother's sisters lived on the 'far end' of Woodruff Road (remember that one from the last story?), the 'far end' came back out on Hwy 67 just a few miles west of the 'near end'…the end nearest Boonville (close to Steelman Motor Company and across the highway from the house where I grew up). Don't quit reading because this gets tedious…I just want you to know how close we REALLY were to REAL moonshining…at least in one place.
If you go straight from Boonville to Elkin on Hwy 67, just a few miles past the 'near end' of Woodruff Road, you will go down a long hill…Waterwheel Hill. Part of the way down that hill was Waterwheel Road (it is still dirt) that intersected with Woodruff Road about halfway between the near end and the far end! At the bottom of the hill, there's a long straight stretch…there used to be a gas station/store…I think it was called Vestal's Service Station…on the left side of the road and on the right, there were bottoms with creeks running through and a farm road coming from that aunt and uncle's farmhouse to the highway. The creek runs along the side of the road through what used to be my uncle's corn and tobacco fields but it came down through the woods to get to that point. His land went almost from Waterwheel Road to Wagoner's property on the far side.
All along that creek, on BOTH sides of my aunt and uncle's house and fields, there were woods as well as houses where other people lived. I don't know how much land they owned (a lot) but many of the people who lived on that stretch of Woodruff Road were share cropper/tenant renters. Whenever my cousins and I would go to the creek to work on our current 'swimming hole' they would say, "Don't go……(in a certain direction)" and we knew what they meant. We knew about the stills and there were times when the 'revenuers' had been out looking for them. The moonshiners moved the stills from one place on the creek (you have to have lots of water to make moonshine) to another spot on the creek every so often to keep those guys off their trail. We didn't always know where they had most recently moved the still. Several times we would run up on a still and we would just have to get the hell out of there in a hurry.
I don't know how closely my uncle was tied to those stills…some were on his property. For all I know he was paying those guys to do the moonshining for him. One of the families who lived near my aunt and uncle was the family of one of my best friends…I cannot tell her name and you will see why. The last time I saw her at a high school reunion, she would barely speak to me. She also treated me quite weirdly when I visited her at her home once so I never went back. I know when people get older, get married and have better (or different) lives than they had when they were growing up, sometimes they are ashamed of their former lives when they were children. I think that's why she treated me that way. (I don't believe anyone should be ashamed of their 'raising,' after all, they were born into it, it wasn't a conscious choice they made…just one they had to live with until they could change it.)
The reason I can't tell you her name is because she married into a racing family…they raced on circle tracks AND (later) in drag racing. One of the members of that family and his drag car was actually featured on www.draglist.com some time back! Don't ask, I won't tell, because people in our sport don't know their history. Don't y'all think I could write a book? (If I could stay alive long enough?)
A couple years after North Wilkesboro Speedway was built, the forward-looking Bill France formed NASCAR and the rest is history. But there are so many tales lived by so many people other than the Junior Johnsons and the Benny Parsons and those other 'famous' guys during those years. People like my dad was one of them. The people I've written about who hung around Steelman Motor Company…there were zillions of us…fans, anyone who supported any aspect of racing right down to the lowly fender lizards like me and, yes, even those folks who bought the moonshine.
By the time I became a teenager and got my drivers' license, Benny, Junior and others were already legends but they were still ACCESSIBLE. We could go to their shops and see their cars and ask stupid questions and go to the races and see them. They were even accessible in the pits back then. It was all much different than it is now. I've already written about loading up in an uncle's truck to go to Bowman Gray on Saturday nights in the summer. We didn't get to go to other tracks because regular folks, especially farmers, didn't go far afield for their entertainment…we had cows to milk (two times a day, seven days a week) and tobacco to get out of the barn or put in the barn or put in the packhouse or load on the truck or take off the truck! Not to mention chopping out that corn in the river bottoms!
Moonshining led to some drag racing as well and when they started building 'new' 421 between Yadkinville and Wilkesboro, there was an awful lot of 'straight' racing happening on that flat Carolina red clay and I was right in the thick of it! The great thing about racing at that particular spot was the construction crews came in and smoothed it all back out for us during the week! My dad had a 1959 Oldsmobile that would absolutely fly, after all, this WAS 1960! J It was red and white and I LOVED out-running some of those guys. Of course, there were still plenty of young men who ran moonshine then and they would bring some of their cars and no one outran them. You know, this story is just one of thousands. I was no different than all the other racing wannabes. If we could get other people to put their thoughts and actions down on paper, we would all be amazed at the things we could learn about them and from them…the history that is being lost every time we lose one of those people.
(Note: Some of the hometown boys from Yadkin and Wilkes counties have done a moonshine video (filmed partially at North Wilkesboro Speedway) and it is on YouTube…some time when you're looking for something to do, go there and find the 'Carolina Moonshine' video…from there, you can find several other moonshine and racing videos. Neat! AND very well done! By the way, have you heard? North Wilkesboro Speedway has RE-OPENED!!! FINALLY. And I hear it is VERY successful!!! Hallelujah and good for them…I hope they have MUCH continued success!)
I don't think it was any great surprise when Farmington Dragway opened its doors. And it was no surprise how successful it was. There was lots of drag racing all over the country by then…Old Dominion Dragway in Manassas, VA opened in 1953 and there were dirt drag strips popping up everywhere by then and people were racing on air strips and red clay long before the first paved drag strips came along. There were still even dirt drag strips in the '60s, the second track I ever went to was dirt…at Little River, SC, just south of the North Carolina state line near the coast. But all those same folks who did all that moonshining and outlaw racing now had places to race legally. This is just a little bit of my history…I didn't tell you about finding the hidden car keys and racing on dirt roads when I was 14 in a '56 Ford and some of the other crazy crap I did. I've loved cars all my life. For someone who always just wanted a souped-up street car, I'm probably doing pretty good to be driving anything, especially after that wreck on October 8, 2003!
The internet is a great place to put YOUR history. At least, when we're gone, all this stuff won't be lost forever. Every time we lose someone in our sport who hasn't had their story done somewhere, we lose a part of our history. And even if you don't have a million people who read it, at least it's there for those who care. I love reading the stories about how other people got into drag racing, their trials and tribulations and victories. I don't necessarily mean races won, but all their victories…personal and otherwise. Although I never actually won a race, I have had many victories.
Just being the ONLY person who EVER published a 'long time' successful drag racing magazine for the 'little guys' was a victory for me no one else in the world can EVER claim! I was able to be successful because I cared so much about the sport and the people and no one was willing to work that hard for that little amount of money! I started this story some time in 2009 and have finished it and posted it in October, 2010. I always was…I still am…I always will be…DRAG RACING'S MOST DEDICATED FAN! Becky White, Editor/Publisher…Quick Times Racing News, 1981-2005.
This is the place where round track racing got its start, where the North Wilkesboro Speedway was built specifically to give moonshine runners a place to compete…where Junior Johnson said you "couldn't make nearly as much money racing as you could running moonshine!" Five hundred bucks a night running 'shine five or six nights a week made a purse won at a round track seem like just a little pocket change. Racing was for fun and bragging rights…you know…that same old 'my car is better, faster, quicker than yours.' The moonshine legends became so popular there were several movies about it…parts of Thunder Road was filmed practically in our back yards and depicted all our old crooked dirt roads where I got my start. Now those guys are in the NASCAR Hall of Fame!
When my 'Mama Woodruff' (grandmother) was growing up on the Shore farm right off the Old Stage Road in Yadkinville, her father made 'legal' moonshine for the government…it was easier to get corn to market in small quantities! Roads were practically non-existent in the 1800s…simple wagon ruts only. They already had to haul their tobacco to market so shipping corn as a distilled liquid was a boon to anyone who could get those contracts! However, during the days of 'prohibition' there was no 'legal' liquor being made anywhere in our country. That kept illegal moonshiners very much in demand.
I honestly do not know if my dad was ever involved in 'making' moonshine, but it would not surprise me if he had. He was a dare devil in many ways (at least now you know I got it honest!). He didn't necessarily haul moonshine like we think of hauling moonshine…special cars with false bottom floorboards and trunk bottoms…my dad delivered moonshine in a different way. He actually delivered it to peoples' homes, much like he delivered milk from the family dairy to peoples' homes in the mornings. He bought his first ever car with the money he made from that first Saturday night job…a model A Ford! I guess since most of the people I'm writing about are gone now, I can tell this story. My dad's last delivery every Saturday night was also his last stop…to his own home!
My granddad had a standing order for a gallon of moonshine every week and when my dad would finish his 'run' and go home, he would take his own father's money from under a flower pot on the front porch and set the jug down in the shrubbery. When my granddad got up around 3 am to go milk about 70 cows, he would get his jug and put it wherever he kept it and by the end of the week, he would be ready for the next one! He NEVER knew who was delivering that jug. He made his deal with the 'maker' not the delivery man. But for a poor farm boy who worked all the time, my father was one of few young men in the country who actually had his own car. (FYI…I take after my great granddad, my granddad, my dad and probably ALL their ancestors…I still LOVE good moonshine, the taste of it, the way it feels going down. But I don't let myself drink it except on special occasions and the reason I don't let myself drink it is because I love it SO much! Hell, I could never afford it! It's a shame we're losing the knowledge of how to make really good moonshine.)
Moonshine was so prevalent where I grew up everyone pretty much knew who was making it and running it, but no one ever told the law. Some families would not have had roofs, clothes, even food for their children had it not been for moonshine. It's true…some were too sorry to work and moonshine was easy money, but some did it just to survive. One of my mother's sisters lived on the 'far end' of Woodruff Road (remember that one from the last story?), the 'far end' came back out on Hwy 67 just a few miles west of the 'near end'…the end nearest Boonville (close to Steelman Motor Company and across the highway from the house where I grew up). Don't quit reading because this gets tedious…I just want you to know how close we REALLY were to REAL moonshining…at least in one place.
If you go straight from Boonville to Elkin on Hwy 67, just a few miles past the 'near end' of Woodruff Road, you will go down a long hill…Waterwheel Hill. Part of the way down that hill was Waterwheel Road (it is still dirt) that intersected with Woodruff Road about halfway between the near end and the far end! At the bottom of the hill, there's a long straight stretch…there used to be a gas station/store…I think it was called Vestal's Service Station…on the left side of the road and on the right, there were bottoms with creeks running through and a farm road coming from that aunt and uncle's farmhouse to the highway. The creek runs along the side of the road through what used to be my uncle's corn and tobacco fields but it came down through the woods to get to that point. His land went almost from Waterwheel Road to Wagoner's property on the far side.
All along that creek, on BOTH sides of my aunt and uncle's house and fields, there were woods as well as houses where other people lived. I don't know how much land they owned (a lot) but many of the people who lived on that stretch of Woodruff Road were share cropper/tenant renters. Whenever my cousins and I would go to the creek to work on our current 'swimming hole' they would say, "Don't go……(in a certain direction)" and we knew what they meant. We knew about the stills and there were times when the 'revenuers' had been out looking for them. The moonshiners moved the stills from one place on the creek (you have to have lots of water to make moonshine) to another spot on the creek every so often to keep those guys off their trail. We didn't always know where they had most recently moved the still. Several times we would run up on a still and we would just have to get the hell out of there in a hurry.
I don't know how closely my uncle was tied to those stills…some were on his property. For all I know he was paying those guys to do the moonshining for him. One of the families who lived near my aunt and uncle was the family of one of my best friends…I cannot tell her name and you will see why. The last time I saw her at a high school reunion, she would barely speak to me. She also treated me quite weirdly when I visited her at her home once so I never went back. I know when people get older, get married and have better (or different) lives than they had when they were growing up, sometimes they are ashamed of their former lives when they were children. I think that's why she treated me that way. (I don't believe anyone should be ashamed of their 'raising,' after all, they were born into it, it wasn't a conscious choice they made…just one they had to live with until they could change it.)
The reason I can't tell you her name is because she married into a racing family…they raced on circle tracks AND (later) in drag racing. One of the members of that family and his drag car was actually featured on www.draglist.com some time back! Don't ask, I won't tell, because people in our sport don't know their history. Don't y'all think I could write a book? (If I could stay alive long enough?)
A couple years after North Wilkesboro Speedway was built, the forward-looking Bill France formed NASCAR and the rest is history. But there are so many tales lived by so many people other than the Junior Johnsons and the Benny Parsons and those other 'famous' guys during those years. People like my dad was one of them. The people I've written about who hung around Steelman Motor Company…there were zillions of us…fans, anyone who supported any aspect of racing right down to the lowly fender lizards like me and, yes, even those folks who bought the moonshine.
By the time I became a teenager and got my drivers' license, Benny, Junior and others were already legends but they were still ACCESSIBLE. We could go to their shops and see their cars and ask stupid questions and go to the races and see them. They were even accessible in the pits back then. It was all much different than it is now. I've already written about loading up in an uncle's truck to go to Bowman Gray on Saturday nights in the summer. We didn't get to go to other tracks because regular folks, especially farmers, didn't go far afield for their entertainment…we had cows to milk (two times a day, seven days a week) and tobacco to get out of the barn or put in the barn or put in the packhouse or load on the truck or take off the truck! Not to mention chopping out that corn in the river bottoms!
Moonshining led to some drag racing as well and when they started building 'new' 421 between Yadkinville and Wilkesboro, there was an awful lot of 'straight' racing happening on that flat Carolina red clay and I was right in the thick of it! The great thing about racing at that particular spot was the construction crews came in and smoothed it all back out for us during the week! My dad had a 1959 Oldsmobile that would absolutely fly, after all, this WAS 1960! J It was red and white and I LOVED out-running some of those guys. Of course, there were still plenty of young men who ran moonshine then and they would bring some of their cars and no one outran them. You know, this story is just one of thousands. I was no different than all the other racing wannabes. If we could get other people to put their thoughts and actions down on paper, we would all be amazed at the things we could learn about them and from them…the history that is being lost every time we lose one of those people.
(Note: Some of the hometown boys from Yadkin and Wilkes counties have done a moonshine video (filmed partially at North Wilkesboro Speedway) and it is on YouTube…some time when you're looking for something to do, go there and find the 'Carolina Moonshine' video…from there, you can find several other moonshine and racing videos. Neat! AND very well done! By the way, have you heard? North Wilkesboro Speedway has RE-OPENED!!! FINALLY. And I hear it is VERY successful!!! Hallelujah and good for them…I hope they have MUCH continued success!)
I don't think it was any great surprise when Farmington Dragway opened its doors. And it was no surprise how successful it was. There was lots of drag racing all over the country by then…Old Dominion Dragway in Manassas, VA opened in 1953 and there were dirt drag strips popping up everywhere by then and people were racing on air strips and red clay long before the first paved drag strips came along. There were still even dirt drag strips in the '60s, the second track I ever went to was dirt…at Little River, SC, just south of the North Carolina state line near the coast. But all those same folks who did all that moonshining and outlaw racing now had places to race legally. This is just a little bit of my history…I didn't tell you about finding the hidden car keys and racing on dirt roads when I was 14 in a '56 Ford and some of the other crazy crap I did. I've loved cars all my life. For someone who always just wanted a souped-up street car, I'm probably doing pretty good to be driving anything, especially after that wreck on October 8, 2003!
The internet is a great place to put YOUR history. At least, when we're gone, all this stuff won't be lost forever. Every time we lose someone in our sport who hasn't had their story done somewhere, we lose a part of our history. And even if you don't have a million people who read it, at least it's there for those who care. I love reading the stories about how other people got into drag racing, their trials and tribulations and victories. I don't necessarily mean races won, but all their victories…personal and otherwise. Although I never actually won a race, I have had many victories.
Just being the ONLY person who EVER published a 'long time' successful drag racing magazine for the 'little guys' was a victory for me no one else in the world can EVER claim! I was able to be successful because I cared so much about the sport and the people and no one was willing to work that hard for that little amount of money! I started this story some time in 2009 and have finished it and posted it in October, 2010. I always was…I still am…I always will be…DRAG RACING'S MOST DEDICATED FAN! Becky White, Editor/Publisher…Quick Times Racing News, 1981-2005.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Way Things Were--In The Good Old Days!
I have a story for you (I actually wrote this in 2008) and it doesn't really have much to do with drag racing, per se, but it tells a little about me and a lot about racing history, especially where I come from…which is really where almost all round track racing came from. No one in drag racing ever bothered to ask me where I came from, what my credentials were, where did I get my knowledge (just where the hell did I get off thinking I knew something about racing! HA! Read on…) Don't get discouraged and stop reading because if you read the whole thing, you'll be going, "Gee whiz!" when you finish.
I grew up in a little one horse, one stoplight town…Boonville, NC… my father's family, the Woodruffs, came there in the 1800s. For the first five years of my life, I lived in a dinky little two-family house on Woodruff Road (remember the name of this road as you read). Many, many family members lived near by and we were farmers (I am still a farmer at heart) and our lives were pretty much ruled by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and one of the major milk processors, I don't remember which.
When I was five, we moved about a quarter mile off the dirt to just across the highway where Woodruff Road ended (one end of it anyway). We were only a mile out of town, but it wasn't much of a town and even our school days were governed by the need for kids to work on the farm, especially in tobacco. Only five houses away from our house was a garage, a fairly large garage by the standards of those days. No, I ain't telling you the years, at least not exactly! The name of this garage was Steelman Motor Company. The garage was started by Frank Steelman Sr and they fixed everyone's cars around who didn't fix their own, they fixed all kinds of farm tractors and other farm equipment AND…when the JUNIOR Frank Steelman got to be the age of legal driving…they built race cars. So if y'all have ever wondered why I've always LOVED race cars, the fact that I lived so close to this particular garage was probably the major reason.
One of our coaches and physical education teachers when I was in school was Mr. Bob Crissman, who was pretty much a local 'boy.' When he decided to quit teaching, he went to work for The Enterprise, a local newspaper. He also worked for the Elkin Tribune for a time. While I was going through some old stuff a few nights ago, I came across the 1984 3rd Annual Summer Racing Preview from The Enterprise. It was written by Bob Crissman. On the cover of this publication was a photo of Shorty York, N.C. # 9 from Boonville, NC with Steelman Motor Company on the quarter panel of their dirt track 1939 Ford with a flathead engine built by Frank Steelman, Jr (everyone just called him Frank Junior! He built the car and the engine).
On page 2, where the information is given about the photo, it also says this: "Another of his (Steelman's) cars, a 1937 Ford with a 292 engine, was driven by Ken Rush to a season championship at Bowman Gray Stadium (Winston-Salem, NC). Steelman's other drivers included Grand National greats Curtis Turner, Ned Jarrett, Bobby Isaacs and Ralph Earnhardt, father of Dale Earnhardt.
Also on page 2 was a column actually written by Junior Johnson titled Bonnett, Waltrip compete against each other. That is not the article I am going to reprint here, but I will reprint the first paragraph…"I am writing this racing column for Bob and The Enterprise right before the qualifying for the Atlanta race. So, I don't know at this point in time what the future holds in store for the Johnson-Hodgdon Racing Team in the Coca-Cola 500. (How many of you drag racers remember Warner Hodgdon's involvement in drag racing?)
Okay, on to the subject of this story. On page 10 of this special addition to The Enterprise, there was a story entitled: Steelman recalls dirt track battles by Bob Crissman and I am reprinting it here….
"It was a time of racing like we will never see again. A time when everybody drove dirt tracks, even the big name drivers. A time of rip-roaring, fender-bumping, smashups and chain-reaction wrecks."
"Speaking was Boonville's Frank Junior Steelman who still operates his shop on Hwy. 67 where his dad ran it before he did. And a shop where some thirty to forty race cars were built over a 14-year span. They were built, primarily, to run on dirt tracks of the Forties and Fifties, before the days of the asphalt speedway. And where cars were built for racing and driven by some of the biggest names in racing of yesteryear in the early days of a sport which is being currently revived. But one which, from 1940 until 1948, flourished throughout the Carolinas like the proverbial green bay tree.
"In the 14 years I was in racing, we had some of the roughest, but the best drivers in the land," recalled Steelman at his Boonville garage and shop. "Our pit crew and mechanics were tops, too. They were Ralph Garner of Winston-Salem and my brother David Steelman. "Bobby Isaacs was my main driver," said Steelman. He came from over near Hickory, the Newton-Conover section.
"But I had a lot of other good drivers and we would race almost anywhere on the eastern seaboard: Richmond, VA Fairgrounds, back when it was dirt; Atlanta-The Lakewood Speedway; Knoxville, TN; Spartanburg, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Charlotte Fairgrounds; Hickory Speedway; North Wilkesboro Speedway; Bowman Gray in Winston-Salem; Concord, NC; South Boston, VA; Greensboro Fairgrounds; Asheville-Weaverville; Hillsboro; you name it. Bowman Gray was the only paved track. (Ed. Note: There was NO Charlotte Motor Speedway then.)
"We even went up to New York and raced," recalled Frank Junior. He smiled. "Our drivers were nearly all country boys from the south. They showed those Yankees how it was done!" He continued, "My dad built a 1939 Ford Coupe for Curtis Turner to drive at South Boston, VA. "You have heard of most all of our drivers. We had Pee Wee Jones, Ned Jarrett, Ken Rush, Ralph Earnhardt (Dale's dad), Curtis Turner, Bobby Isaacs, Shorty York: a lot of them won. Our main driver, I'd say, was Bobby Isaacs.
"About the only asphalt we ever raced on then was Bowman Gray. Ken Rush of High Point drove our car there at the stadium. It was a 1936 Chevy with a 427 Ford engine. Ken won the championship at Bowman Gray that year. There were no sponsors back then," recalled Steelman. "Of course, tires, paint, parts and equipment weren't nearly as high as nowadays and it didn't cost much to keep a car running.
Frank Junior recalled his first race. He had built the car, a '37 Ford. "Shorty York drove it for me at the old High Point dirt track. I don't think we won, but Shorty finished well up front. He was always in the thick of it." One of Steelman's racing career highlights came with the last race held on dirt at Hickory Speedway. "Bobby Isaacs drove my car and won," said Frank Junior grinning. Junior Johnson was driving for Ralph Earnhardt. He came in second. And that didn't happen very often." (There's a photo of Curtis Turner and Frank Junior beside the car Curtis drove for Frank in the early fifties.) (Note by Becky: They still run the Bobby Isaacs Memorial Race every year on Labor Day weekend at Hickory Motor Speedway.)
In this same publication, there is a photo of Buck and Buddy Baker with their car, Jonesville's Barney Hall, who was the MRN anchor man at the time, Richard and Lee Petty, Linda Hurst, Tim and Fonty Flock (remember them from the fifties?) and, of course, Junior Johnson. There is also a really neat Budweiser ad on the back of the publication. There was an article about Farmington Dragway's 22nd year with a photo of Wayne Dollyhigh's Corvette and an ad for Farmington Dragway.
Want to know where I got my interest in racing? Well, here it is folks. But that isn't all. Woodruff Road was a dirt road less than a quarter mile from Frank Junior's shop. What a perfect place to test dirt track race cars, the only difference being they weren't making left turns on a quarter mile track so they could really let 'em out! One of my mother's biggest complaints was about the red dirt on her white house! And where did I sneak off to every chance I got? You got it. Got any idea how many times I got switched with a keen little hickory branch all the way back to my house? My legs pretty much looked like I'd been in the briar patch with Br'er Rabbit most of the time. But it was worth it!
How many of you can say you KNEW ALL THESE GUYS? I met every one of them. From the time I was about eight, I was a fender lizard. Sometimes, they would even hand me a wrench or a screwdriver! I loved it. Before then, I was driving tractors and trucks on the farm. I loved to see those cars go flying up that dirt road. Of course, you could only see them when they first hit the dirt, then they were obscured in that cloud of red clay dust. But just to hear the sound of those engines was the most thrilling thing about living in the country working on the farm and slipping off to get closer and closer and learn more and more.
The pay us kids got for working in tobacco (in place of slaves), other than room and board and food and clothes and all that stuff, was to load up in my uncle Sam's Ford farm truck on Saturday night for our weekly trip to Bowman Gray Stadium and since my uncles and the Steelmans grew up together and worked on the farm equipment together and were friends, they were always welcome in the pits at the races. Things were definitely different then.
By the time I started dating, I knew how to change spark plugs and that was about all they would ever really let me do, but during my teen years. While the other girls sat about in the house with the old ladies, guess who was out under the shade tree with her head stuck up under a hood? For those of you who don't know, I do have a diploma in auto mechanics from Rowan Tech in Salisbury, NC (which is now Rowan-Cabarrus Community College) and I taught several extension classes in Auto Mechanics for Davidson Community College in the mid '70s.
When I found that old paper and read that stuff, a flood of memories came back to me so strong, it put tears in my eyes. Many of those guys are gone now. But the impression they all left on me will be with me until I'm gone. The town of Boonville was in Yadkin County. Yadkin County shared their borders with Wilkes County; at that time, Wilkes County was the 'Moonshine Capital of the World' and basically, the place where round track racing got its start. Round track racing came from the moonshine runners and a track was built for them to compete against each other…North Wilkesboro Speedway, the first round track anywhere around the area. The movie Thunder Road was filmed practically in our back yards. Guys like those already written about here as well as Benny Parsons and many others were already legends (some simply because they were so good at eluding the law!) by the time I was a teenager but they were always accessible to any of us. We could go to their shops (as long as we didn't go too often or stay too long). I may write more about that moonshine later…that is part of my history, too.
It is odd that I never cared anything about round track racing, I still don't. I always thought it was boring (I still do)…just to sit and watch cars go around and around and around was to me, well, I won't say. I think that's why I always enjoyed drag racing so much. There's SO MUCH going on, all the time. I have photos of all three of my girls before they were six months old at Farmington Dragway! Teresa was born the year Farmington (Sportsman Park Dragstrip) opened…1963.
But whether it's drag racing or roundy round, it's the people that make it, not the cars or the direction in which they're going. And I had some of the BEST people in the whole world to look up to when I was a kid…they are all my heroes, if for no other reason than that they let me hang around and ask questions and get in their way. They always were good to me and answered my questions even though I bugged the hell out of them. They even let me stand right beside their cars when they cranked them up. It's miracle I'm not even more deaf than I am! I just wanted to let y'all know why I've loved you all so much all my life! STILL Drag Racing's MOST Dedicated Fan! Becky
I grew up in a little one horse, one stoplight town…Boonville, NC… my father's family, the Woodruffs, came there in the 1800s. For the first five years of my life, I lived in a dinky little two-family house on Woodruff Road (remember the name of this road as you read). Many, many family members lived near by and we were farmers (I am still a farmer at heart) and our lives were pretty much ruled by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and one of the major milk processors, I don't remember which.
When I was five, we moved about a quarter mile off the dirt to just across the highway where Woodruff Road ended (one end of it anyway). We were only a mile out of town, but it wasn't much of a town and even our school days were governed by the need for kids to work on the farm, especially in tobacco. Only five houses away from our house was a garage, a fairly large garage by the standards of those days. No, I ain't telling you the years, at least not exactly! The name of this garage was Steelman Motor Company. The garage was started by Frank Steelman Sr and they fixed everyone's cars around who didn't fix their own, they fixed all kinds of farm tractors and other farm equipment AND…when the JUNIOR Frank Steelman got to be the age of legal driving…they built race cars. So if y'all have ever wondered why I've always LOVED race cars, the fact that I lived so close to this particular garage was probably the major reason.
One of our coaches and physical education teachers when I was in school was Mr. Bob Crissman, who was pretty much a local 'boy.' When he decided to quit teaching, he went to work for The Enterprise, a local newspaper. He also worked for the Elkin Tribune for a time. While I was going through some old stuff a few nights ago, I came across the 1984 3rd Annual Summer Racing Preview from The Enterprise. It was written by Bob Crissman. On the cover of this publication was a photo of Shorty York, N.C. # 9 from Boonville, NC with Steelman Motor Company on the quarter panel of their dirt track 1939 Ford with a flathead engine built by Frank Steelman, Jr (everyone just called him Frank Junior! He built the car and the engine).
On page 2, where the information is given about the photo, it also says this: "Another of his (Steelman's) cars, a 1937 Ford with a 292 engine, was driven by Ken Rush to a season championship at Bowman Gray Stadium (Winston-Salem, NC). Steelman's other drivers included Grand National greats Curtis Turner, Ned Jarrett, Bobby Isaacs and Ralph Earnhardt, father of Dale Earnhardt.
Also on page 2 was a column actually written by Junior Johnson titled Bonnett, Waltrip compete against each other. That is not the article I am going to reprint here, but I will reprint the first paragraph…"I am writing this racing column for Bob and The Enterprise right before the qualifying for the Atlanta race. So, I don't know at this point in time what the future holds in store for the Johnson-Hodgdon Racing Team in the Coca-Cola 500. (How many of you drag racers remember Warner Hodgdon's involvement in drag racing?)
Okay, on to the subject of this story. On page 10 of this special addition to The Enterprise, there was a story entitled: Steelman recalls dirt track battles by Bob Crissman and I am reprinting it here….
"It was a time of racing like we will never see again. A time when everybody drove dirt tracks, even the big name drivers. A time of rip-roaring, fender-bumping, smashups and chain-reaction wrecks."
"Speaking was Boonville's Frank Junior Steelman who still operates his shop on Hwy. 67 where his dad ran it before he did. And a shop where some thirty to forty race cars were built over a 14-year span. They were built, primarily, to run on dirt tracks of the Forties and Fifties, before the days of the asphalt speedway. And where cars were built for racing and driven by some of the biggest names in racing of yesteryear in the early days of a sport which is being currently revived. But one which, from 1940 until 1948, flourished throughout the Carolinas like the proverbial green bay tree.
"In the 14 years I was in racing, we had some of the roughest, but the best drivers in the land," recalled Steelman at his Boonville garage and shop. "Our pit crew and mechanics were tops, too. They were Ralph Garner of Winston-Salem and my brother David Steelman. "Bobby Isaacs was my main driver," said Steelman. He came from over near Hickory, the Newton-Conover section.
"But I had a lot of other good drivers and we would race almost anywhere on the eastern seaboard: Richmond, VA Fairgrounds, back when it was dirt; Atlanta-The Lakewood Speedway; Knoxville, TN; Spartanburg, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Charlotte Fairgrounds; Hickory Speedway; North Wilkesboro Speedway; Bowman Gray in Winston-Salem; Concord, NC; South Boston, VA; Greensboro Fairgrounds; Asheville-Weaverville; Hillsboro; you name it. Bowman Gray was the only paved track. (Ed. Note: There was NO Charlotte Motor Speedway then.)
"We even went up to New York and raced," recalled Frank Junior. He smiled. "Our drivers were nearly all country boys from the south. They showed those Yankees how it was done!" He continued, "My dad built a 1939 Ford Coupe for Curtis Turner to drive at South Boston, VA. "You have heard of most all of our drivers. We had Pee Wee Jones, Ned Jarrett, Ken Rush, Ralph Earnhardt (Dale's dad), Curtis Turner, Bobby Isaacs, Shorty York: a lot of them won. Our main driver, I'd say, was Bobby Isaacs.
"About the only asphalt we ever raced on then was Bowman Gray. Ken Rush of High Point drove our car there at the stadium. It was a 1936 Chevy with a 427 Ford engine. Ken won the championship at Bowman Gray that year. There were no sponsors back then," recalled Steelman. "Of course, tires, paint, parts and equipment weren't nearly as high as nowadays and it didn't cost much to keep a car running.
Frank Junior recalled his first race. He had built the car, a '37 Ford. "Shorty York drove it for me at the old High Point dirt track. I don't think we won, but Shorty finished well up front. He was always in the thick of it." One of Steelman's racing career highlights came with the last race held on dirt at Hickory Speedway. "Bobby Isaacs drove my car and won," said Frank Junior grinning. Junior Johnson was driving for Ralph Earnhardt. He came in second. And that didn't happen very often." (There's a photo of Curtis Turner and Frank Junior beside the car Curtis drove for Frank in the early fifties.) (Note by Becky: They still run the Bobby Isaacs Memorial Race every year on Labor Day weekend at Hickory Motor Speedway.)
In this same publication, there is a photo of Buck and Buddy Baker with their car, Jonesville's Barney Hall, who was the MRN anchor man at the time, Richard and Lee Petty, Linda Hurst, Tim and Fonty Flock (remember them from the fifties?) and, of course, Junior Johnson. There is also a really neat Budweiser ad on the back of the publication. There was an article about Farmington Dragway's 22nd year with a photo of Wayne Dollyhigh's Corvette and an ad for Farmington Dragway.
Want to know where I got my interest in racing? Well, here it is folks. But that isn't all. Woodruff Road was a dirt road less than a quarter mile from Frank Junior's shop. What a perfect place to test dirt track race cars, the only difference being they weren't making left turns on a quarter mile track so they could really let 'em out! One of my mother's biggest complaints was about the red dirt on her white house! And where did I sneak off to every chance I got? You got it. Got any idea how many times I got switched with a keen little hickory branch all the way back to my house? My legs pretty much looked like I'd been in the briar patch with Br'er Rabbit most of the time. But it was worth it!
How many of you can say you KNEW ALL THESE GUYS? I met every one of them. From the time I was about eight, I was a fender lizard. Sometimes, they would even hand me a wrench or a screwdriver! I loved it. Before then, I was driving tractors and trucks on the farm. I loved to see those cars go flying up that dirt road. Of course, you could only see them when they first hit the dirt, then they were obscured in that cloud of red clay dust. But just to hear the sound of those engines was the most thrilling thing about living in the country working on the farm and slipping off to get closer and closer and learn more and more.
The pay us kids got for working in tobacco (in place of slaves), other than room and board and food and clothes and all that stuff, was to load up in my uncle Sam's Ford farm truck on Saturday night for our weekly trip to Bowman Gray Stadium and since my uncles and the Steelmans grew up together and worked on the farm equipment together and were friends, they were always welcome in the pits at the races. Things were definitely different then.
By the time I started dating, I knew how to change spark plugs and that was about all they would ever really let me do, but during my teen years. While the other girls sat about in the house with the old ladies, guess who was out under the shade tree with her head stuck up under a hood? For those of you who don't know, I do have a diploma in auto mechanics from Rowan Tech in Salisbury, NC (which is now Rowan-Cabarrus Community College) and I taught several extension classes in Auto Mechanics for Davidson Community College in the mid '70s.
When I found that old paper and read that stuff, a flood of memories came back to me so strong, it put tears in my eyes. Many of those guys are gone now. But the impression they all left on me will be with me until I'm gone. The town of Boonville was in Yadkin County. Yadkin County shared their borders with Wilkes County; at that time, Wilkes County was the 'Moonshine Capital of the World' and basically, the place where round track racing got its start. Round track racing came from the moonshine runners and a track was built for them to compete against each other…North Wilkesboro Speedway, the first round track anywhere around the area. The movie Thunder Road was filmed practically in our back yards. Guys like those already written about here as well as Benny Parsons and many others were already legends (some simply because they were so good at eluding the law!) by the time I was a teenager but they were always accessible to any of us. We could go to their shops (as long as we didn't go too often or stay too long). I may write more about that moonshine later…that is part of my history, too.
It is odd that I never cared anything about round track racing, I still don't. I always thought it was boring (I still do)…just to sit and watch cars go around and around and around was to me, well, I won't say. I think that's why I always enjoyed drag racing so much. There's SO MUCH going on, all the time. I have photos of all three of my girls before they were six months old at Farmington Dragway! Teresa was born the year Farmington (Sportsman Park Dragstrip) opened…1963.
But whether it's drag racing or roundy round, it's the people that make it, not the cars or the direction in which they're going. And I had some of the BEST people in the whole world to look up to when I was a kid…they are all my heroes, if for no other reason than that they let me hang around and ask questions and get in their way. They always were good to me and answered my questions even though I bugged the hell out of them. They even let me stand right beside their cars when they cranked them up. It's miracle I'm not even more deaf than I am! I just wanted to let y'all know why I've loved you all so much all my life! STILL Drag Racing's MOST Dedicated Fan! Becky
Sunday, May 16, 2010
My First Trip to 'Thunder Valley'
For years I had heard all the stories about THUNDER VALLEY DRAGWAY, the dragway between the mountains where the sound of power echoed and reverberated around and around until it was deafening. For someone like me, someone who was always crazy about cars and, especially drag racing, that sounded like a place I would love to be! But for years I was either pregnant and barefoot or struggling so hard to feed my girls, there was no money to do such things. My first ever trip to a national event was to Rockingham Dragway but that was like going nowhere compared to that first trip to Bristol Dragway. I managed to take my girls to Rockingham in1973, of course we had to take our own food and sleep in the car but, we got to go.
That trip just made my love affair with drag racing, fast cars and mega motors even worse! I have a photo of Mendy standing at the fence on the 'spectator' side watching the dragsters get pushed down the track to crank them and get pushed back to the starting line! I never had to sit on the spectator side but one other time, it was boring to me…just sitting and watching! I wanted to be where the real action was…in the pits. We drove the same car to Rockingham I drag raced at my home track…Farmington Dragway…a 1967 Dodge Coronet 440 convertible, which by the way, I recently, FINALLY sold! (Farmington opened in 1963, the year my daughter Teresa was born and I have photos of all three of my girls there before they were six months old!)
Boy, things changed so fast in drag racing over the next few years, it was impossible to keep up. I couldn't afford to go to the drag races, but I DID manage to see Don Carlton and Lee Edwards' last match race…May 2, 1975 at Farmington. I met the man who had been my hero for many years. Don was an anomaly in our sport. There had never been anyone like him before and never has been since. I thank God I was able to spend several hours with him then because he was a busy man and I never got to talk to him again (he may have been glad of that since I asked him a least a million questions). But, in 1979, I went to work for Farmington Dragway, doing their P.R. and writing race reports for the local weekly wipe…the Davie County Enterprise. They were an IHRA track so I also got lots of stuff printed in the Drag Review, which as we all know was/is IHRA's house organ.
One of the stories I wrote for the IHRA paper was about Danny and John Shortridge and the TCI team. For those of you who don't remember, TCI stood for Torque Converters, Inc. in Ashland, MS…thanks Bill…the premier torque converter company at that time. That was in 1980 (before QTRN). Well, Bill Taylor, TCI owner and Danny and his bunch were so happy with the story, they sent us four FREE passes to the IHRA SummerNationals at Thunder Valley Dragway. Hell, I didn't have any money, I didn't know how I would ever get up enough money for gas, etc. The girls wanted to go, too, because they had become friends with all the young folks in the sport…Dean Sox, Kurt Johnson and the Denton twins to name just a few.
We busted our butts rounding up money. We still had to take our own food, but I wasn't about to sleep in the car up there. I didn't have a credit card so I couldn't even make a reservation anywhere and I wasn't sure we were going to get to go anyway since IHRA owner Larry Carrier said I couldn't get in on a TCI pass. I don't know why, but that man got the red @$$ at me from the gitgo! I think he thought a woman didn't have any business doing what I was doing…he didn't have enough sense to realize how good I was for the sport. (I guess I was in good company…he also hated Shirley Muldowny!) I not only had a story printed in the Enterprise EVERY week, I sent stories to every paper within 300 miles of Farmington, most were small papers, but large papers, too…like the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel. I did individual stories on all winners and runners up and sent them to their hometown papers, like the Bull City Bugle in Stuart, VA and so many others. Sometimes even when Farmington didn't even get to race, I still wrote a story for the paper! (I have scrapbooks full of that stuff!) I did learn, as the years passed, Larry Carrier was intimidated by anyone who was his intellectual superior, especially women.
This was in the great days of drag racing when we had WINSTON DRAG RACING. I always said R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company ruled my life one way or another from birth until I was in my 40s…I was born and raised on a tobacco farm not far from the company and when I got off the farm, I dealt with them in drag racing. I worked with Jeff Byrd and the folks at Reynolds for the three years I worked at Farmington (yes, the same Jeff Byrd who is the President of Bristol Motor Speedway even now). So, I called Jeff and told him what was going on and he sent me four Winston Drag Racing passes. When I got to Bristol, no one said a word and I went right on in…for three glorious, wonderful days! I'm probably the only person in the history of drag racing who had to have TWO sets of tickets to get in one race!!! My beginnings were NOT easy!
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We still had to get money to go (It's a damn good thing gas was a lot cheaper then than it is now!!!) Norman wasn't paying me anything to work for the track, it was just a deal we made so I didn't have to pay to get into the races, so…no money there. I ran a garage and we really struggled, if I had enough work, the girls would help after school. We did just about anything…mainly car detailing, but I did a lot of mechanic work and body work and painting…anything to keep us fed and clothed. I even cleaned saddles and leatherwork for the local horsey folks! It just so happened I had a whole car to paint with very little bodywork so that was good money, I also had a Hemi charger I was helping a guy with and I managed to round up several complete detailing jobs. The girls even borrowed on their $5 a week allowance from their grandma!!! Anyway, we scraped up enough money to go to Thunder Valley. We were SO excited!
We only had two things to worry about…a place to stay when we got there and getting there. I had a '65 Impala (we called it an 'antelope') with a 327/300 with a Carter AFB 4-bbl that was just starting to cruise at 120. It wasn't the engine I was worried about…it was everything else. That car was absolutely falling apart! You could NOT ride very far in it with the windows rolled up…you'd simply pass out from the fumes. There were so many holes in the floorboard, your feet would get wet in a hard rain! We even scooped snow up in the floor one time going to granny's for Christmas! But, what the hell…we were going to Bristol! We had not heard top fuel cars since 1974! Alcohol, yes, T/F no.
Hwy 421 to Hwy 321…if you haven't done that ride, you missed a lot of driving. Those roads were so crooked, the racers would go I-77 to I-81 just to stay off those roads. Dee Greer told me when she and Shirl used to come to Farmington from Kingsport, TN in the '60s to race, there were no interstates…there weren't even any four lane roads! So basically, 421 through Shady Valley was about the only way to go. There was no such thing as an enclosed trailer then, you either flat towed with a tow bar or pulled your car on flat open trailers. She said on the way to the track, they could lean out the truck windows and wax the race car going around those curves!!! HA! I don't doubt it, I never went through Shady Valley but once and it's the only place I EVER had to stop a car in the middle of the road and put it in first gear because the hill was so steep and the curve was so tight! I don't know how they ever got back and forth all those trips. It was almost as bad as going up the mountain to get to Cedar Hill Dragway (Richlands, VA)! Lordy, it's easy to get off the subject!
We drove on past the track to the Sunset motel…have you ever noticed there was a Sunset Motel in every little podunk town with a drag strip? Anyway, it was a DUMP, it was always a DUMP, I think it was built as a DUMP. Worse part was, we not only stayed there once, we actually stayed there twice! But it was only a mile or so from the track and it was a CHEAP dump! Cheap was good back then (no such thing now!). We got booked in and took off back to the track so we wouldn't miss any more action!!! Well, no one told me I needed a pit parking pass to get my car in. It was really hard to get a pit pass back in those days. Bristol has changed a LOT over the years and I'm not going to tell you about the layout, but there was this HILL! It was a horrible HILL. We had to park out front (where the offices were then) and walk up that hill and down the other side. Bristol had a reputation for making blisters on your feet and by the time we got over the hill, we already had blisters!!!
Mendy recently told me the blisters are about the only thing she can remember about that first time and we still had two more days to go! AND we still had no idea exactly WHERE the track actually was! We just followed the noise and found it. I didn't have a photo pass so I had to run Jeff down and beg. He was such a pushover. He also gave me a pit parking pass so we wouldn't have to walk over that hill on Saturday. Of course, I don't think any of us COULD have walked that hill again, especially since we had to walk it to get back out to the car that night. I really did not think we were going to make it…if you never did Bristol 30 years ago, you have no idea what you missed. You would not believe the shape our feet were in. With what I paid for antibiotic cream and bandaids, we could have slept in a MUCH nicer dump!
As I said, we'd never been in the pits at a national event before so we only had close-up experience with alcohol engines. I don't care who you are, what you've done or where you've been in your lifetime, if you have never stood near a top fuel car when they fire it up or when they hit the fuel, you have never lived! Or maybe I should say you've never experienced LIFE. There is nothing that can compare to that 'feeling.' Except maybe blasting off in a space ship! But I doubt it. I will NEVER forget the expressions on my kids faces the first time they experienced that. Indescribable! The force. The power. It's unblieveable. Of course, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I got on that starting line…I FELT important, whether I was or not. Of course all the other photographers just laughed at me because of my 'el cheapo' camera…being a woman didn't help much. I think I threatened their manhood! I had stepped into 'their' domain and they didn't want me there. Boy…were they in for a surprise! No matter how hard Carrier…and others…tried, they just couldn't get rid of me.
I grew up where it's flat…close to the river…and those Tennessee hills absolutely wore me (and everyone else) out. The only flat places on the whole property were the pits (some of them) and the track (and some racers weren't too sure of that). But I loved it. Even though I got to drive over 'the hill' the next day instead of walking it and got in okay, we had a time getting back out that night. Behind the tower across the creek, there was this parking area. Some of it was pits but just before you started up that 'hill,' part of it was fenced off into a spectator parking area. For my first trip to Bristol, the spectators who parked there that year were motorcycle riders. Now, don't get me wrong, I've known lots of motorcycle riders over the years…many of them quite nice, I've even been one myself, at times.
But after a full HOT day of beer and drag racing, those guys were NOT nice, especially when they saw four good looking women in a beat up old Chevy! It didn't matter that three of them might be WAY under age! My girls were GOOD spectators… the type of spectators who would not leave until THE END. I used to tell people my three had to stay and watch the last thing that went down the track on Saturday night even it was a cockroach carrying a candle! Now you need to remember…things were different then…IHRA's big show night was Saturday night! The ONLY thing that has remained the same about drag racing now and drag racing then is that two cars race each other down the drag strip. Back then, there was very little association between most of the people on the 'spectator' side and the people on the pit side.
I HATED to be on the spectator side…it was scary! One of our illustrious folks who worked in P.R. in drag racing told me his son was conceived under the trees on the pit side at Bristol (His initials were D.D.)! He was probably in the MAJORITY! J On Saturday nights, you could sit on the spectator side high up on the 'concrete' seats and get high by just BREATHING! Things are just different now! I always let the kids watch the 'last thing,' but I made them hang on to my belt loops until we got to the car. There was such a crush of people all trying to get out the gate all at the same time and I was terrified someone would grab one of them. On this particular evening (remember…first national event we'd been to in six years, never on the pit side), I had to drive right past that motorcycle parking area.
And they WEREN'T just parking there…hell, they were there for the duration…lock, stock, leathers and party supplies. By the time we left the press parking area, those guys (and gals) were just beginning to fly. When they saw those four good looking gals in the beat up Chevy, they thought their motorcycle Gods had sent them presents! Hey, I was just as scared as my good lookin' girls! Traffic was moving so slow, it felt we were moving backward. It was hotter'n Hades and the heat at Bristol is ALWAYS sticky. There was absolutely NO breeze and the Hells Angels were trying to get to the four good lookin' girls! They were climbing on the hood and the trunk and trying to get the doors open. (Hey, I used to go to the fiddler's convention at Union Grove and was never that scared!) I made Teresa, Mendy and Candace roll up their windows. They were so scared, they didn't even argue.
I thought we would never get out of there…we were dying in that car! Besides the heat and no AC (they didn't put AC on souped up antelopes in the mid 60s!), we were being gassed to death! We may as well have been taking part in a government experiment to figure out just how much carbon monoxide, etc. four good lookin' girls could handle and still have one able to drive!! But the alternative was having the Hells Angels climbing into the car or dragging us out of it. They were knocking on the windows (glad they weren't wearing their knucks) and the roof, it sounded like we were under a bowling alley. We were barely creeping along but just about the time the two wheeler guys were becoming very irate because we wouldn't stop and play with them, we finally got over the hill. Thank you, God! The next day, I found another way out of that place! And used it, too!
On Friday, Jeff gave me a white jacket and we were so excited to be there, the four of us went through the Pro pits and got many, many autographs on that jacket. I still have it; after Jeff took over the operations there, I took the jacket for him to see. I think he enjoyed looking at all those signatures…many of those guys were his friends and many were gone even then. Those are the people who helped make this sport and all of us who we are today. Even though they may be gone and some people have forgotten how important they were (and are) to us, they left their imprint on our minds and souls forever.
What a weekend! We met so many people and had such a good time. Our good friends, Warren Johnson and Jerome Bradford won Pro Stock that weekend and when Jerome came out of the tower with the check, Teresa, Candace and Mendy were standing there waiting for him. He hugged all three of them with this big goofy grin on his face…after all, this WAS the race that clinched his and Warren Johnson's SECOND IHRA Pro Stock championship in a row! One of the photographers (I think it was Johnny Beech) yelled, "Hey Jerome, are those your girls?" And he said, "Yeah, can't you tell?" I was scared to death that photo was going to show up in Drag Review, but it never did! And I would give my eye teeth to have a copy of it!
I have forgotten a lot of drag races, drag racing weekends and even some people I met (and actually tried to forget some others!), but this one race will always be in the forefront of my mind…Mendy and Candace's, too, even if only for the blisters. But they do remember other things, one of the friends they made that weekend was Scott Kalitta. Now he's gone, but they will always remember his friendship and his love of drag racing. I love drag racing and I always will; when a story was published about me in the mid-90s (Bracket Racing U.S.A.), it was titled DRAG RACING'S MOST DEDICATED FAN. I was then…I am now…I always will be…drag racing's most dedicated fan. Becky White, Editor/Publisher, Quick Times Racing News - 1981-2005. I have written this in May, 2009.
That trip just made my love affair with drag racing, fast cars and mega motors even worse! I have a photo of Mendy standing at the fence on the 'spectator' side watching the dragsters get pushed down the track to crank them and get pushed back to the starting line! I never had to sit on the spectator side but one other time, it was boring to me…just sitting and watching! I wanted to be where the real action was…in the pits. We drove the same car to Rockingham I drag raced at my home track…Farmington Dragway…a 1967 Dodge Coronet 440 convertible, which by the way, I recently, FINALLY sold! (Farmington opened in 1963, the year my daughter Teresa was born and I have photos of all three of my girls there before they were six months old!)
Boy, things changed so fast in drag racing over the next few years, it was impossible to keep up. I couldn't afford to go to the drag races, but I DID manage to see Don Carlton and Lee Edwards' last match race…May 2, 1975 at Farmington. I met the man who had been my hero for many years. Don was an anomaly in our sport. There had never been anyone like him before and never has been since. I thank God I was able to spend several hours with him then because he was a busy man and I never got to talk to him again (he may have been glad of that since I asked him a least a million questions). But, in 1979, I went to work for Farmington Dragway, doing their P.R. and writing race reports for the local weekly wipe…the Davie County Enterprise. They were an IHRA track so I also got lots of stuff printed in the Drag Review, which as we all know was/is IHRA's house organ.
One of the stories I wrote for the IHRA paper was about Danny and John Shortridge and the TCI team. For those of you who don't remember, TCI stood for Torque Converters, Inc. in Ashland, MS…thanks Bill…the premier torque converter company at that time. That was in 1980 (before QTRN). Well, Bill Taylor, TCI owner and Danny and his bunch were so happy with the story, they sent us four FREE passes to the IHRA SummerNationals at Thunder Valley Dragway. Hell, I didn't have any money, I didn't know how I would ever get up enough money for gas, etc. The girls wanted to go, too, because they had become friends with all the young folks in the sport…Dean Sox, Kurt Johnson and the Denton twins to name just a few.
We busted our butts rounding up money. We still had to take our own food, but I wasn't about to sleep in the car up there. I didn't have a credit card so I couldn't even make a reservation anywhere and I wasn't sure we were going to get to go anyway since IHRA owner Larry Carrier said I couldn't get in on a TCI pass. I don't know why, but that man got the red @$$ at me from the gitgo! I think he thought a woman didn't have any business doing what I was doing…he didn't have enough sense to realize how good I was for the sport. (I guess I was in good company…he also hated Shirley Muldowny!) I not only had a story printed in the Enterprise EVERY week, I sent stories to every paper within 300 miles of Farmington, most were small papers, but large papers, too…like the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel. I did individual stories on all winners and runners up and sent them to their hometown papers, like the Bull City Bugle in Stuart, VA and so many others. Sometimes even when Farmington didn't even get to race, I still wrote a story for the paper! (I have scrapbooks full of that stuff!) I did learn, as the years passed, Larry Carrier was intimidated by anyone who was his intellectual superior, especially women.
This was in the great days of drag racing when we had WINSTON DRAG RACING. I always said R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company ruled my life one way or another from birth until I was in my 40s…I was born and raised on a tobacco farm not far from the company and when I got off the farm, I dealt with them in drag racing. I worked with Jeff Byrd and the folks at Reynolds for the three years I worked at Farmington (yes, the same Jeff Byrd who is the President of Bristol Motor Speedway even now). So, I called Jeff and told him what was going on and he sent me four Winston Drag Racing passes. When I got to Bristol, no one said a word and I went right on in…for three glorious, wonderful days! I'm probably the only person in the history of drag racing who had to have TWO sets of tickets to get in one race!!! My beginnings were NOT easy!
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We still had to get money to go (It's a damn good thing gas was a lot cheaper then than it is now!!!) Norman wasn't paying me anything to work for the track, it was just a deal we made so I didn't have to pay to get into the races, so…no money there. I ran a garage and we really struggled, if I had enough work, the girls would help after school. We did just about anything…mainly car detailing, but I did a lot of mechanic work and body work and painting…anything to keep us fed and clothed. I even cleaned saddles and leatherwork for the local horsey folks! It just so happened I had a whole car to paint with very little bodywork so that was good money, I also had a Hemi charger I was helping a guy with and I managed to round up several complete detailing jobs. The girls even borrowed on their $5 a week allowance from their grandma!!! Anyway, we scraped up enough money to go to Thunder Valley. We were SO excited!
We only had two things to worry about…a place to stay when we got there and getting there. I had a '65 Impala (we called it an 'antelope') with a 327/300 with a Carter AFB 4-bbl that was just starting to cruise at 120. It wasn't the engine I was worried about…it was everything else. That car was absolutely falling apart! You could NOT ride very far in it with the windows rolled up…you'd simply pass out from the fumes. There were so many holes in the floorboard, your feet would get wet in a hard rain! We even scooped snow up in the floor one time going to granny's for Christmas! But, what the hell…we were going to Bristol! We had not heard top fuel cars since 1974! Alcohol, yes, T/F no.
Hwy 421 to Hwy 321…if you haven't done that ride, you missed a lot of driving. Those roads were so crooked, the racers would go I-77 to I-81 just to stay off those roads. Dee Greer told me when she and Shirl used to come to Farmington from Kingsport, TN in the '60s to race, there were no interstates…there weren't even any four lane roads! So basically, 421 through Shady Valley was about the only way to go. There was no such thing as an enclosed trailer then, you either flat towed with a tow bar or pulled your car on flat open trailers. She said on the way to the track, they could lean out the truck windows and wax the race car going around those curves!!! HA! I don't doubt it, I never went through Shady Valley but once and it's the only place I EVER had to stop a car in the middle of the road and put it in first gear because the hill was so steep and the curve was so tight! I don't know how they ever got back and forth all those trips. It was almost as bad as going up the mountain to get to Cedar Hill Dragway (Richlands, VA)! Lordy, it's easy to get off the subject!
We drove on past the track to the Sunset motel…have you ever noticed there was a Sunset Motel in every little podunk town with a drag strip? Anyway, it was a DUMP, it was always a DUMP, I think it was built as a DUMP. Worse part was, we not only stayed there once, we actually stayed there twice! But it was only a mile or so from the track and it was a CHEAP dump! Cheap was good back then (no such thing now!). We got booked in and took off back to the track so we wouldn't miss any more action!!! Well, no one told me I needed a pit parking pass to get my car in. It was really hard to get a pit pass back in those days. Bristol has changed a LOT over the years and I'm not going to tell you about the layout, but there was this HILL! It was a horrible HILL. We had to park out front (where the offices were then) and walk up that hill and down the other side. Bristol had a reputation for making blisters on your feet and by the time we got over the hill, we already had blisters!!!
Mendy recently told me the blisters are about the only thing she can remember about that first time and we still had two more days to go! AND we still had no idea exactly WHERE the track actually was! We just followed the noise and found it. I didn't have a photo pass so I had to run Jeff down and beg. He was such a pushover. He also gave me a pit parking pass so we wouldn't have to walk over that hill on Saturday. Of course, I don't think any of us COULD have walked that hill again, especially since we had to walk it to get back out to the car that night. I really did not think we were going to make it…if you never did Bristol 30 years ago, you have no idea what you missed. You would not believe the shape our feet were in. With what I paid for antibiotic cream and bandaids, we could have slept in a MUCH nicer dump!
As I said, we'd never been in the pits at a national event before so we only had close-up experience with alcohol engines. I don't care who you are, what you've done or where you've been in your lifetime, if you have never stood near a top fuel car when they fire it up or when they hit the fuel, you have never lived! Or maybe I should say you've never experienced LIFE. There is nothing that can compare to that 'feeling.' Except maybe blasting off in a space ship! But I doubt it. I will NEVER forget the expressions on my kids faces the first time they experienced that. Indescribable! The force. The power. It's unblieveable. Of course, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I got on that starting line…I FELT important, whether I was or not. Of course all the other photographers just laughed at me because of my 'el cheapo' camera…being a woman didn't help much. I think I threatened their manhood! I had stepped into 'their' domain and they didn't want me there. Boy…were they in for a surprise! No matter how hard Carrier…and others…tried, they just couldn't get rid of me.
I grew up where it's flat…close to the river…and those Tennessee hills absolutely wore me (and everyone else) out. The only flat places on the whole property were the pits (some of them) and the track (and some racers weren't too sure of that). But I loved it. Even though I got to drive over 'the hill' the next day instead of walking it and got in okay, we had a time getting back out that night. Behind the tower across the creek, there was this parking area. Some of it was pits but just before you started up that 'hill,' part of it was fenced off into a spectator parking area. For my first trip to Bristol, the spectators who parked there that year were motorcycle riders. Now, don't get me wrong, I've known lots of motorcycle riders over the years…many of them quite nice, I've even been one myself, at times.
But after a full HOT day of beer and drag racing, those guys were NOT nice, especially when they saw four good looking women in a beat up old Chevy! It didn't matter that three of them might be WAY under age! My girls were GOOD spectators… the type of spectators who would not leave until THE END. I used to tell people my three had to stay and watch the last thing that went down the track on Saturday night even it was a cockroach carrying a candle! Now you need to remember…things were different then…IHRA's big show night was Saturday night! The ONLY thing that has remained the same about drag racing now and drag racing then is that two cars race each other down the drag strip. Back then, there was very little association between most of the people on the 'spectator' side and the people on the pit side.
I HATED to be on the spectator side…it was scary! One of our illustrious folks who worked in P.R. in drag racing told me his son was conceived under the trees on the pit side at Bristol (His initials were D.D.)! He was probably in the MAJORITY! J On Saturday nights, you could sit on the spectator side high up on the 'concrete' seats and get high by just BREATHING! Things are just different now! I always let the kids watch the 'last thing,' but I made them hang on to my belt loops until we got to the car. There was such a crush of people all trying to get out the gate all at the same time and I was terrified someone would grab one of them. On this particular evening (remember…first national event we'd been to in six years, never on the pit side), I had to drive right past that motorcycle parking area.
And they WEREN'T just parking there…hell, they were there for the duration…lock, stock, leathers and party supplies. By the time we left the press parking area, those guys (and gals) were just beginning to fly. When they saw those four good looking gals in the beat up Chevy, they thought their motorcycle Gods had sent them presents! Hey, I was just as scared as my good lookin' girls! Traffic was moving so slow, it felt we were moving backward. It was hotter'n Hades and the heat at Bristol is ALWAYS sticky. There was absolutely NO breeze and the Hells Angels were trying to get to the four good lookin' girls! They were climbing on the hood and the trunk and trying to get the doors open. (Hey, I used to go to the fiddler's convention at Union Grove and was never that scared!) I made Teresa, Mendy and Candace roll up their windows. They were so scared, they didn't even argue.
I thought we would never get out of there…we were dying in that car! Besides the heat and no AC (they didn't put AC on souped up antelopes in the mid 60s!), we were being gassed to death! We may as well have been taking part in a government experiment to figure out just how much carbon monoxide, etc. four good lookin' girls could handle and still have one able to drive!! But the alternative was having the Hells Angels climbing into the car or dragging us out of it. They were knocking on the windows (glad they weren't wearing their knucks) and the roof, it sounded like we were under a bowling alley. We were barely creeping along but just about the time the two wheeler guys were becoming very irate because we wouldn't stop and play with them, we finally got over the hill. Thank you, God! The next day, I found another way out of that place! And used it, too!
On Friday, Jeff gave me a white jacket and we were so excited to be there, the four of us went through the Pro pits and got many, many autographs on that jacket. I still have it; after Jeff took over the operations there, I took the jacket for him to see. I think he enjoyed looking at all those signatures…many of those guys were his friends and many were gone even then. Those are the people who helped make this sport and all of us who we are today. Even though they may be gone and some people have forgotten how important they were (and are) to us, they left their imprint on our minds and souls forever.
What a weekend! We met so many people and had such a good time. Our good friends, Warren Johnson and Jerome Bradford won Pro Stock that weekend and when Jerome came out of the tower with the check, Teresa, Candace and Mendy were standing there waiting for him. He hugged all three of them with this big goofy grin on his face…after all, this WAS the race that clinched his and Warren Johnson's SECOND IHRA Pro Stock championship in a row! One of the photographers (I think it was Johnny Beech) yelled, "Hey Jerome, are those your girls?" And he said, "Yeah, can't you tell?" I was scared to death that photo was going to show up in Drag Review, but it never did! And I would give my eye teeth to have a copy of it!
I have forgotten a lot of drag races, drag racing weekends and even some people I met (and actually tried to forget some others!), but this one race will always be in the forefront of my mind…Mendy and Candace's, too, even if only for the blisters. But they do remember other things, one of the friends they made that weekend was Scott Kalitta. Now he's gone, but they will always remember his friendship and his love of drag racing. I love drag racing and I always will; when a story was published about me in the mid-90s (Bracket Racing U.S.A.), it was titled DRAG RACING'S MOST DEDICATED FAN. I was then…I am now…I always will be…drag racing's most dedicated fan. Becky White, Editor/Publisher, Quick Times Racing News - 1981-2005. I have written this in May, 2009.
More Four Wide!
I wrote this before the St. Louis race and had almost decided to NOT post it here but as long as there is another 'four wide' race in the future, there are STILL things which need to be worked on and worked out. Thank you Arlene Johnson! Arlene sent me a link to the www.nitromater.com message board where I made headlines with my 'Four Wide? Why? (Why not?).' I never understood why some people who don't know anything about drag racing want to get on a message board and let the world know how little they know. You can keep your mouth shut and people won't know how stupid and ignorant you are, but you can open your mouth and let the whole world know! Posting on internet message boards is the WORST place in the world for talking about things you know nothing about! Most of the comments on nitromater.com were good. ALL the emails I have received agreed with me. But I kind of get a kick out of being talked about on TV, especially when the people doing the talking are AFRAID to say who they're talking about! At least they did pay me a few compliments and said some really not-so-nice things about some other writers.
Anyone who has ever read anything of mine KNOWS I believe there isn't a lot of difference between a racer who runs 4 seconds and a racer who runs 40 seconds. Some people may think that is off the wall, but just think about and you'll see just how true it really is. Even sponsors know this…if they were just advertising for the big guys, they'd be out in a heartbeat…there aren't enough 'big' guys to keep them in business, the sponsors are just using the 'big' guys to get to the little guy racers AND the spectators! The biggest difference between the 4 and the 40 is money. Top Fuel is not necessarily more dangerous than Street…they just have more and better rules and more and better safety equipment. Money is the name of the game…the Pros just push the envelope harder.
IF I WERE A RACER AND SOMEONE TOLD ME I WOULD HAVE TO RUN 4 WIDE FOR WINNER, RUNNER UP AND THIRD AND FOURTH PLACE, I WOULD TELL THEM TO KISS MY YOU-KNOW-WHAT! The following is a quote from someone on nitromater.com, "Let me make it as simple as possible. Why should the guy in lane 1 worry about what is going on in lanes 3 and 4 if lane 2 is beating him to where he needs to lift? He can't see them in lanes 3 and 4. HE HAS NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE!!!! There is a wall there. He is going to drive it thinking he has a chance for second place when he has no chance at all. KABOOM!!!! WRECK!!!! If points are on the line they (racers) will do things to (maybe) be second when they should not have done it in the first place. If points aren't on the line they lift, knowing they just load up and get ready for the next race that means something…POINTS!!" What kind of an idiot race is that? If you want to run for third and fourth, just bring them back and run for third and fourth. I think any racer who had to run this way got scrued…except maybe the winner. MY opinion. How would YOU like to do it that way?
Were the Sportsman racers running at ZMax's 4-Wide happy with it? Were they more upset with track conditions and the way eliminations were run than anything else? Were they more upset because Super Stock, Stock and Comp were parked on the one side of the track and Super Gas, Super Comp and Super Street were parked on the other side? Were they more upset because Super Stock, Stock and Comp had to run the two left lanes? Were they more upset because Super Gas, Super Comp and Street had to run the right two lanes? Were they more upset because track conditions were poor to start with and sometimes, there was more than an hour of NO run time on two lanes at a time? Were they upset because there was little, if any, track clean up or prep between rounds and they let the track get cold, etc. If running four cars at the same time is so safe, why couldn't officials take some of that down time and clean and prep the track???
Were the Sportsmen racers upset enough for a whole group to go to the tower and complain? Yes. Did they get the standard, "Don't like it? So what? Run anyway!" Of course! Were there many who said they would not go back? Yes. We know they will, but who always gets the shaft at a race like this? Yes, I know they keep racing, no matter what they have to put up with, but it is the love of the sport that keeps racers coming back…certainly NOT the way they get treated (OR the money)! It's a proven fact racers will put up with just about anything to get to race. Was NHRA advised they could not run 4-Wide in Sportsman because it is important to take your opponent through by as little as possible at the finish line just as in bracket racing and that's impossible to do with 4-Wide and 3 competitors to watch at one time? It can't be done safely OR sanely!
It doesn't matter the Pros voted 61 to 2 to NOT run a 4-Wide again. It doesn't matter they've even said they will boycott the next 4-Wide for points. They will run it, even though most are very much against it…for ALL the reasons I outlined in my FIRST 4-Wide. But one of the MOST important things I left out are the sponsors (a whole paragraph didn't get put on the blog…still learning). Maybe that's because they got left out of this race…at least by NHRA. AND to top it off…racers did not get the chance to mention their sponsors as much as they usually do because they just didn't get the air time. When four cars are going down the track at the same time, how are the announcers going to mention sponsors with all the other information they have to talk about? It IS a consideration and it is a VERY important consideration…what would we do without them? Announcers only have a few seconds, it's hard enough for them to say what they need to about TWO cars! I think ALL the sponsors got scrued more than anyone. Did someone say, "We're going to have this track locked down by 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon!?" Duh! Y'all heard that on TV, right? I thought the whole point was to keep everyone there spending money as long as possible…NOT have them out on the road on the way home three or four hours earlier than you need to! Right? Well, maybe not.
Every racer knows the difference from lane to lane...track condtions, rollout, something moves a photocell, not to mention the fact that in one lane you're looking right at the tree and in the other lane, you're having to look at it over your hood scoop..how in the world would you ever be able to figure FOUR lanes when you can't even depend on two? Especially Pro Stockers? I can't even imagine what they were going through at that race. You start out a race on Sunday and the right lane is the best lane and all the faster racers are lining up to run it. Then something changes...weather, sun, clouds, a tiny bit of water, a car gets sideways and messes up the sticky and the groove. Then they're all trying to get the left lane. What about four lanes? Would you feel confident racing that way? I wouldn't! And I know you guys and gals well enough to know you wouldn't have any confidence left either! It was all a good advertisement for ZMAX and NHRA but for no one else!
It has taken NHRA YEARS to get the TV coverage and the fan base they have now. They have, of course, ALWAYS catered to the top 2% of their racers and, YES, that 2% brings the spectators. But you have to make (and keep) those fans happy. And, "NO," I didn't see any spectators leaving after seeing 4-Wide! I wouldn't have left either. It was a history-making race, no doubt about it…if only for the controversy. But I would not go back, I would feel cheated. It was just too confusing. I know a lot of spectators only go to see wrecks and drink beer, but there are serious fans who actually go because they love drag racing…not to mention all the TV viewers. They DID vote 70% to NOT come back! If THEY don't come back, we are in deep doodoo. Why take the chance? You can have all the exhibition and show races you want in a year's time. In the process, IF you have good announcers who really know the sport, they can train your fans all the ins and outs of drag racing so they can eventually understand it better. But to try to do it at an NHRA race where championships are on the line…that AIN'T the time and place to do it.
Yes, I watched the qualifying and the race on TV. I did not enjoy it. It was confusing, even for me and I've been involved with and watching drag racing for over 50 years!!! Most of it in person. When it's confusing on TV and you have a kazillion cameras hanging over every part of the action bringing it all to you right in front of your eyes, announcers trying to keep you up on what's going on in every shot and it's hard to understand, think about the spectators! Of the fans who took the time to vote on whether they liked it or not…a whopping 70% said they did not! Any way you look at it and no matter how much you discuss it, IT HAS NOT RECEIVED GOOD REVIEWS. A new movie or a Broadway play receiving reviews as bad as this race did would shut down in a heart beat! Got comments? Post them here. And please give your name…don't be afraid. I'm not! IF you would like to email me a letter you want me to comment on, send that to my email address quicktimesracingnews@gmail.com and I will answer your letter, THEN put it on the blog with my answer. Make sure you put in your letter you want it and my answer to be on the blog…I won't put it on here otherwise.
I had trouble believing the stuff I heard from people at the Las Vegas race! I understand most of it though. Racers have always had to back down. I like what Morgan Lucas said more than anything else I heard and I wish I could quote it but I didn't record it! These Pro racers keep talking about what Bruton has done for drag racing??? Would someone PLEASE tell me what Bruton Smith HAS done for drag racing? Yes, Bruton HAS 'spent' a LOT of 'money' IN drag racing but I can tell you right now, if it had not been for Jeff Byrd, none of that would have ever happened. I will NOT go into details because of Jeff's illness and my respect for him and his family, but NHRA and you racers have Jeff to thank for all this! One day, I will explain all that to you, but not right now. I respect Jeff Byrd and Bill Bader Sr. more than I respect any other people in drag racing so I will just keep my mouth shut for now.
It was said NHRA got bulldozed into this race by Bruton. I can understand that. Bruton Smith has already gotten so big in drag racing, NHRA is afraid of him. Soon, he will control NHRA (IF he doesn't already)…after all, he couldn't BUY NHRA, so he just set about putting himself into a position of control (think about NASCAR!). He started building the biggest and best drag strips in the country…tracks NHRA really cannot do without now because of the TV coverage. If you know ANYTHING about NASCAR, you will realize history is just repeating itself…only the name of the game has changed. The France family would not let Bruton get involved in NASCAR in any other capacity than as a track owner, so he built the biggest, the best, the most expensive tracks in the country to have control over the organization. Some smaller tracks, he bought and shut down just to get their race dates…North Wilkesboro Speedway…the HOME of circle track racing is one of them. It doesn't bother Bruton Smith to DESTROY the history of round track racing as long as he gets what he wants which is what happened with Wilkesboro. Look around guys…it's happening again…only NHRA is the target. He already has a strangle hold on them because of TV coverage…it's ONLY gonna get worse.
I will say this…there were a lot of comments about the safety aspects of 4-Wide. But when I wrote about all those people standing around on the starting line all the time, no one said a word! If you are all so worried about safety, what about that part of it? I would NOT be afraid to BET there were…at the very least, 30 people on the line during the final run of Top Fuel and it was probably more like 40 or 50! You want dangerous? That's it! The insurance companies used to have rules about how many people could be standing around starting line during a race. Any more comments? These are just my opinions. I am still… 'drag racing's most dedicated fan!'
Anyone who has ever read anything of mine KNOWS I believe there isn't a lot of difference between a racer who runs 4 seconds and a racer who runs 40 seconds. Some people may think that is off the wall, but just think about and you'll see just how true it really is. Even sponsors know this…if they were just advertising for the big guys, they'd be out in a heartbeat…there aren't enough 'big' guys to keep them in business, the sponsors are just using the 'big' guys to get to the little guy racers AND the spectators! The biggest difference between the 4 and the 40 is money. Top Fuel is not necessarily more dangerous than Street…they just have more and better rules and more and better safety equipment. Money is the name of the game…the Pros just push the envelope harder.
IF I WERE A RACER AND SOMEONE TOLD ME I WOULD HAVE TO RUN 4 WIDE FOR WINNER, RUNNER UP AND THIRD AND FOURTH PLACE, I WOULD TELL THEM TO KISS MY YOU-KNOW-WHAT! The following is a quote from someone on nitromater.com, "Let me make it as simple as possible. Why should the guy in lane 1 worry about what is going on in lanes 3 and 4 if lane 2 is beating him to where he needs to lift? He can't see them in lanes 3 and 4. HE HAS NO IDEA WHERE THEY ARE!!!! There is a wall there. He is going to drive it thinking he has a chance for second place when he has no chance at all. KABOOM!!!! WRECK!!!! If points are on the line they (racers) will do things to (maybe) be second when they should not have done it in the first place. If points aren't on the line they lift, knowing they just load up and get ready for the next race that means something…POINTS!!" What kind of an idiot race is that? If you want to run for third and fourth, just bring them back and run for third and fourth. I think any racer who had to run this way got scrued…except maybe the winner. MY opinion. How would YOU like to do it that way?
Were the Sportsman racers running at ZMax's 4-Wide happy with it? Were they more upset with track conditions and the way eliminations were run than anything else? Were they more upset because Super Stock, Stock and Comp were parked on the one side of the track and Super Gas, Super Comp and Super Street were parked on the other side? Were they more upset because Super Stock, Stock and Comp had to run the two left lanes? Were they more upset because Super Gas, Super Comp and Street had to run the right two lanes? Were they more upset because track conditions were poor to start with and sometimes, there was more than an hour of NO run time on two lanes at a time? Were they upset because there was little, if any, track clean up or prep between rounds and they let the track get cold, etc. If running four cars at the same time is so safe, why couldn't officials take some of that down time and clean and prep the track???
Were the Sportsmen racers upset enough for a whole group to go to the tower and complain? Yes. Did they get the standard, "Don't like it? So what? Run anyway!" Of course! Were there many who said they would not go back? Yes. We know they will, but who always gets the shaft at a race like this? Yes, I know they keep racing, no matter what they have to put up with, but it is the love of the sport that keeps racers coming back…certainly NOT the way they get treated (OR the money)! It's a proven fact racers will put up with just about anything to get to race. Was NHRA advised they could not run 4-Wide in Sportsman because it is important to take your opponent through by as little as possible at the finish line just as in bracket racing and that's impossible to do with 4-Wide and 3 competitors to watch at one time? It can't be done safely OR sanely!
It doesn't matter the Pros voted 61 to 2 to NOT run a 4-Wide again. It doesn't matter they've even said they will boycott the next 4-Wide for points. They will run it, even though most are very much against it…for ALL the reasons I outlined in my FIRST 4-Wide. But one of the MOST important things I left out are the sponsors (a whole paragraph didn't get put on the blog…still learning). Maybe that's because they got left out of this race…at least by NHRA. AND to top it off…racers did not get the chance to mention their sponsors as much as they usually do because they just didn't get the air time. When four cars are going down the track at the same time, how are the announcers going to mention sponsors with all the other information they have to talk about? It IS a consideration and it is a VERY important consideration…what would we do without them? Announcers only have a few seconds, it's hard enough for them to say what they need to about TWO cars! I think ALL the sponsors got scrued more than anyone. Did someone say, "We're going to have this track locked down by 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon!?" Duh! Y'all heard that on TV, right? I thought the whole point was to keep everyone there spending money as long as possible…NOT have them out on the road on the way home three or four hours earlier than you need to! Right? Well, maybe not.
Every racer knows the difference from lane to lane...track condtions, rollout, something moves a photocell, not to mention the fact that in one lane you're looking right at the tree and in the other lane, you're having to look at it over your hood scoop..how in the world would you ever be able to figure FOUR lanes when you can't even depend on two? Especially Pro Stockers? I can't even imagine what they were going through at that race. You start out a race on Sunday and the right lane is the best lane and all the faster racers are lining up to run it. Then something changes...weather, sun, clouds, a tiny bit of water, a car gets sideways and messes up the sticky and the groove. Then they're all trying to get the left lane. What about four lanes? Would you feel confident racing that way? I wouldn't! And I know you guys and gals well enough to know you wouldn't have any confidence left either! It was all a good advertisement for ZMAX and NHRA but for no one else!
It has taken NHRA YEARS to get the TV coverage and the fan base they have now. They have, of course, ALWAYS catered to the top 2% of their racers and, YES, that 2% brings the spectators. But you have to make (and keep) those fans happy. And, "NO," I didn't see any spectators leaving after seeing 4-Wide! I wouldn't have left either. It was a history-making race, no doubt about it…if only for the controversy. But I would not go back, I would feel cheated. It was just too confusing. I know a lot of spectators only go to see wrecks and drink beer, but there are serious fans who actually go because they love drag racing…not to mention all the TV viewers. They DID vote 70% to NOT come back! If THEY don't come back, we are in deep doodoo. Why take the chance? You can have all the exhibition and show races you want in a year's time. In the process, IF you have good announcers who really know the sport, they can train your fans all the ins and outs of drag racing so they can eventually understand it better. But to try to do it at an NHRA race where championships are on the line…that AIN'T the time and place to do it.
Yes, I watched the qualifying and the race on TV. I did not enjoy it. It was confusing, even for me and I've been involved with and watching drag racing for over 50 years!!! Most of it in person. When it's confusing on TV and you have a kazillion cameras hanging over every part of the action bringing it all to you right in front of your eyes, announcers trying to keep you up on what's going on in every shot and it's hard to understand, think about the spectators! Of the fans who took the time to vote on whether they liked it or not…a whopping 70% said they did not! Any way you look at it and no matter how much you discuss it, IT HAS NOT RECEIVED GOOD REVIEWS. A new movie or a Broadway play receiving reviews as bad as this race did would shut down in a heart beat! Got comments? Post them here. And please give your name…don't be afraid. I'm not! IF you would like to email me a letter you want me to comment on, send that to my email address quicktimesracingnews@gmail.com and I will answer your letter, THEN put it on the blog with my answer. Make sure you put in your letter you want it and my answer to be on the blog…I won't put it on here otherwise.
I had trouble believing the stuff I heard from people at the Las Vegas race! I understand most of it though. Racers have always had to back down. I like what Morgan Lucas said more than anything else I heard and I wish I could quote it but I didn't record it! These Pro racers keep talking about what Bruton has done for drag racing??? Would someone PLEASE tell me what Bruton Smith HAS done for drag racing? Yes, Bruton HAS 'spent' a LOT of 'money' IN drag racing but I can tell you right now, if it had not been for Jeff Byrd, none of that would have ever happened. I will NOT go into details because of Jeff's illness and my respect for him and his family, but NHRA and you racers have Jeff to thank for all this! One day, I will explain all that to you, but not right now. I respect Jeff Byrd and Bill Bader Sr. more than I respect any other people in drag racing so I will just keep my mouth shut for now.
It was said NHRA got bulldozed into this race by Bruton. I can understand that. Bruton Smith has already gotten so big in drag racing, NHRA is afraid of him. Soon, he will control NHRA (IF he doesn't already)…after all, he couldn't BUY NHRA, so he just set about putting himself into a position of control (think about NASCAR!). He started building the biggest and best drag strips in the country…tracks NHRA really cannot do without now because of the TV coverage. If you know ANYTHING about NASCAR, you will realize history is just repeating itself…only the name of the game has changed. The France family would not let Bruton get involved in NASCAR in any other capacity than as a track owner, so he built the biggest, the best, the most expensive tracks in the country to have control over the organization. Some smaller tracks, he bought and shut down just to get their race dates…North Wilkesboro Speedway…the HOME of circle track racing is one of them. It doesn't bother Bruton Smith to DESTROY the history of round track racing as long as he gets what he wants which is what happened with Wilkesboro. Look around guys…it's happening again…only NHRA is the target. He already has a strangle hold on them because of TV coverage…it's ONLY gonna get worse.
I will say this…there were a lot of comments about the safety aspects of 4-Wide. But when I wrote about all those people standing around on the starting line all the time, no one said a word! If you are all so worried about safety, what about that part of it? I would NOT be afraid to BET there were…at the very least, 30 people on the line during the final run of Top Fuel and it was probably more like 40 or 50! You want dangerous? That's it! The insurance companies used to have rules about how many people could be standing around starting line during a race. Any more comments? These are just my opinions. I am still… 'drag racing's most dedicated fan!'
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Four Wide? Why? (Why Not?)
Once again, someone has proved you cannot just come in and change the face of drag racing overnight! Even if you do think you have more money than God (and the ego to match!). The other 'worst' time someone tried to make major changes to our entire sport was 1988, when Billy Meyer bought the International Hot Rod Association. It didn't work then and it won't work now. I don't know where Bruton got the idea to build a 4-wide drag strip and I especially can't figure how or where he got the idea people would like a 4-wide race. It may be good for exhibition races, match races and shows in general, but the fans have enough trouble taking in everything that's happening when TWO cars are racing, let alone four. Bruton was so excited at his race, he told the world he was going to build two more lanes at his Las Vegas track! This from the man who (it is rumored to have) said he hated drag racing and would never have drag racing at his track again! (I guess anyone can change their mind.) He said he did this to help NHRA…where did he get the idea it WOULD help NHRA?
All my reasons for NOT having 4-wide drag racing have already been stated…by nearly every racer, every team owner and by most fans. When I went to ESPN.com and voted my 'NO,' it was 69% NO and 31% YES. I personally did NOT like it for all the same reasons as everyone else, one of which is safety. There are several priorities in drag racing…the first being to make money. After all, it IS a business. The second priority is safety…for EVERYONE…fans as well as racers and all the other folks…team crew members, NHRA employees, sponsors…ANYONE who is inside those pits or in the stands. It is bad enough when one car has problems, worse when two are involved. Four…God forbid! We don't NEED to put ourselves in any position where that could possibly happen! Third priority, keeping the sponsors happy. Can't do this stuff without them!
And fourth, but definitely NOT the least…the fans. The spectators. Can't do it without them either. A MAJOR, MAJOR part of the income. Drag racing is a HARD sport to understand, it always has been, it always will be. It has taken years and years and years to acquire the amount of spectators we have now and TV has been a HUGE part of that. But TV can do just as much harm just as it can help…sometimes more…IF and when something goes wrong. You KNOW how bad TV will hurt our sport if something goes wrong and they play it up wrong in the wrong way. Spectators STILL don't understand a lot of the stuff about drag racing and it is really hard to catch everything that happens in 3-, 4-, 5- and/or 6-seconds with TWO cars running. It is IMPOSSIBLE with four. I'm really worried they will just give up and stay away. They will have to pay the same amount (or more) to attend a 4-wide race and it will be over in half the time and they will miss half of it because it's just too much to take in! I think it will be a detriment to our sport.
I absolutely did NOT like the way they did the finals and I don't think the racers liked it and I'm SURE the spectators didn't like it. I think the racers got cheated having to settle for third and fourth place without the benefit of running it the usual way. What do you think about that? Would you like to do that at your track? Why not just flip a coin the way they used to do at Shuffletown Dragway when it got too late to finish the race because of the curfew? It would have been just as fair to flip that coin at ZMax as it was to run it the way they did! I also think the spectators felt cheated as well.
I haven't heard much about what the 'little guy' racers thought about 4-wide racing, but I can't believe they enjoyed it. It seems to me there would be four times as much confusion as usual…how could someone concentrate with all that stuff going on? That is one of the things the Pro racers have complained about. And, if you missed it, they voted to NOT run 4-wide again at a points race…I think that confusion had a lot to do with that. By the way, have you noticed HOW MANY PEOPLE there are milling around the starting line when the Pros are running? What happened to all those insurance company rules about a having a limited number of people going up with each car and having a limited number of people on the starting line at ANY time? I don't care HOW you look at it…that's just as dangerous a place to be as anywhere…the insurance companies used to know that. What happened? I bet there were as many as 30 people on the line at any given time when the Pros were running at the Spring Nationals in Houston! I couldn't believe it!
I wonder how many of the little guy racers went on ESPN and voted. I wish they'd actually done a survey with the vote so we could see how many racers or other people involved in the sport voted as opposed to how many fans voted which way. That would have been much more interesting than the way it was done. If any of you would like to make a comment here on my blog, you are welcome to do so. I would like to know what more of YOU think about all this.
All my reasons for NOT having 4-wide drag racing have already been stated…by nearly every racer, every team owner and by most fans. When I went to ESPN.com and voted my 'NO,' it was 69% NO and 31% YES. I personally did NOT like it for all the same reasons as everyone else, one of which is safety. There are several priorities in drag racing…the first being to make money. After all, it IS a business. The second priority is safety…for EVERYONE…fans as well as racers and all the other folks…team crew members, NHRA employees, sponsors…ANYONE who is inside those pits or in the stands. It is bad enough when one car has problems, worse when two are involved. Four…God forbid! We don't NEED to put ourselves in any position where that could possibly happen! Third priority, keeping the sponsors happy. Can't do this stuff without them!
And fourth, but definitely NOT the least…the fans. The spectators. Can't do it without them either. A MAJOR, MAJOR part of the income. Drag racing is a HARD sport to understand, it always has been, it always will be. It has taken years and years and years to acquire the amount of spectators we have now and TV has been a HUGE part of that. But TV can do just as much harm just as it can help…sometimes more…IF and when something goes wrong. You KNOW how bad TV will hurt our sport if something goes wrong and they play it up wrong in the wrong way. Spectators STILL don't understand a lot of the stuff about drag racing and it is really hard to catch everything that happens in 3-, 4-, 5- and/or 6-seconds with TWO cars running. It is IMPOSSIBLE with four. I'm really worried they will just give up and stay away. They will have to pay the same amount (or more) to attend a 4-wide race and it will be over in half the time and they will miss half of it because it's just too much to take in! I think it will be a detriment to our sport.
I absolutely did NOT like the way they did the finals and I don't think the racers liked it and I'm SURE the spectators didn't like it. I think the racers got cheated having to settle for third and fourth place without the benefit of running it the usual way. What do you think about that? Would you like to do that at your track? Why not just flip a coin the way they used to do at Shuffletown Dragway when it got too late to finish the race because of the curfew? It would have been just as fair to flip that coin at ZMax as it was to run it the way they did! I also think the spectators felt cheated as well.
I haven't heard much about what the 'little guy' racers thought about 4-wide racing, but I can't believe they enjoyed it. It seems to me there would be four times as much confusion as usual…how could someone concentrate with all that stuff going on? That is one of the things the Pro racers have complained about. And, if you missed it, they voted to NOT run 4-wide again at a points race…I think that confusion had a lot to do with that. By the way, have you noticed HOW MANY PEOPLE there are milling around the starting line when the Pros are running? What happened to all those insurance company rules about a having a limited number of people going up with each car and having a limited number of people on the starting line at ANY time? I don't care HOW you look at it…that's just as dangerous a place to be as anywhere…the insurance companies used to know that. What happened? I bet there were as many as 30 people on the line at any given time when the Pros were running at the Spring Nationals in Houston! I couldn't believe it!
I wonder how many of the little guy racers went on ESPN and voted. I wish they'd actually done a survey with the vote so we could see how many racers or other people involved in the sport voted as opposed to how many fans voted which way. That would have been much more interesting than the way it was done. If any of you would like to make a comment here on my blog, you are welcome to do so. I would like to know what more of YOU think about all this.
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