From Becky to my friends: I know most of y'all have always thought I was weird, but what the heck! Now I'm going to prove it. Before I go any farther, let me tell you this...I DON'T CARE WHO GETS MAD OVER WHAT I'M WRITING HERE! I grew up on a farm. I LOVE gardening. I LOVE eating!!! And so do most of you. However, if you really want to keep eating MEAT you will read this email and follow my advice. It may sound horrible to start with, but if you read it all the way through, you will change your mind. I am asking every one of you to STOP CONTRIBUTING MONEY TO THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES or HSUS!!!!!! Now wait...I'm not a horrible person...I love my kitties and Mendy's horses and we would have many more animals if we take care of them. I am sure you are wondering why someone who is in drag racing is writing about farming and HSUS...after all, they are two completely different worlds...rght? WRONG! And I will tie all this together for you.
The HSUS uses ONLY 4%...FOUR percent...of YOUR contributions to help animals!!! WOW! Didn't know that, did ya? Want to know what the other 96% is used for? Putting farmers...namely beef, pork, chicken, turkey and all other meat proucers out of business!!! YES! That's right! If you had previously known that, would you have contributed to them? NO!!! Can you imaqine Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter without a turkey, chicken or ham? No? Can you imagine Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day weekends without grilling steaks, burgers, dogs, chicken breast, etc? NO! Can you imagine NOT having a warm beef stew or chicken pie in the winter when it's cold and snowy? NO? Can you imagine having a big salad in the summertime or a stir without saute'd chicken pieces? No? Well, you'd better wake up. HSUS has ALREADY introduced legislation in California to stop the production of animal products in that state. IF that passes, Washington, D.C. is next on their agenda. THAT, my friends, is what YOUR contributions to the Humane Society has gotten you. And if you keep sending them money they will only get bigger and bigger. And they will use ANY MEANS they can, INCLUDING money laundering, bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice and HIRING crooked lawyers to reach their goals! They are no't honest in ANY of their dealings.
What does that have to do with drag racing? Follow this from the National Cattlemans Business Association: "The non-profit center for Consumer Freedom is reporting a lawsuit which is now pending against HSUS filed by FELD ENTERTAINMENT (sound familiar?) who owns Ringling Brothers Circus. Allegations named in the lawsuit against HSUS iinclude: bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice and money laundering. A federal court JUDGE found HSUS and two of its corporate lawyers and others named in the lawsuit PAID FOR 'now impeached testimoney!' That means the testimoney they gave in the lawsuit again Feld Entertainment was all lies and has now been thrown out of the lawsuit! Now you're REALLY asking how is this involved with drag racing? Feld Entertainment owns IHRA and most of you have either raced or are still racing some, either with IHRA or at an IHRA sanctioned track. Do you think Feld Entertainment is worried about a lowly second-rate drag racing sanctioning body when they have all this other bigger stuff going on to worry about? I don't think so. And that may bite you in the butt in the long run!
So even if you CAN'T support IHRA all the time, you CAN STOP contributing money to an association who is literally screwing with the entire nation's economy. Can you imagine what would happen to the US economy if all the farmers who grow and sell MEAT as their entire business or even part of it get put out of business? And don't think it stops there...DAIRY products are next! Can you imagine a life without ICE CREAM? I can't! It's my all-time FAVORITE food! Not to mention, cheese and yogurt and butter and all the things I make with those wonderful HEALTHY foods! Eggs will be next! Can you imagine NOT having EGGS to eat? You can't even make a cake without eggs!!!!!!!! We HAVE TO STOP these zealots in their tracks! We CANNOT let this continue. IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE contributing to the welfare of animals, DON'T give any more money to the Humane Society...buy a bag of dog or cat food and take it to your local animal shelter. EVERY COUNTY in the US has an animal shelter. Call them and ask them what they need...cat liter, bedding, etc. You can also donate money to them and SPECIFY what you want that money to be used for...food, veterinary services, spaying and neutering, medicines, etc. PLEASE, PLEASE do NOT contribute any more money to the Humane Society of the United States. When they send you crap in the mail, throw it in the trash. Don't even use the 'free' address labels they send you, that's just more 'free' advertising for them. Every time you put one of their address labels on something, you're actually advertising for them! If you want to use the labels, cut off the part that says where it came from!!! And DON'T pay for them...they will have to stop mailing them out if no one pays for them. Remember...animals are NOT receiving the money you donate to HSUS!
WE ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN STOPS GROUPS LIKE THIS. THEY ARE FANATICS. THEY DON'T HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN SO THEY THINK THEY NEED TO MEDDLE IN EVERYONE ELSES. THEY ALL NEED TO BE INSANE ASYLUMS...NOT OUT HERE TRYING TO MAKE LEGISLATION WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY CONTROL OUR LIVES IF THEY ARE ALLOWED TO KEEP DOING THIS CRAZY STUFF! All of you know me and you know I would NEVER advise you to do something like this unless I KNEW it was wrong. I hope you will send this to EVERYONE you have an email address for. We need to get this message out as quickly as possible.
I would recommend you watch RFDTV. SUPPORT OUR FARMERS! Go to their website and just look at all the wonderful programing they have. www.RFDTV.org They have a list on the website that tells you what channel RFDTV is on with all the different TV programming we have now! I am going to put this on my blog so if you want to tell someone else about it, it is: http://quicktimesracingnews.blogspot.com.
Thanks, as always your friend, Becky White
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
In Memory of Norman Drouillard Sr...Owner/Operator Farmington Dragway for Many Years
Norman Drouillard Sr. passed away on December 8, 2009 at 6:10 pm. If you raced at Farmington Dragway in the past 30-something years, you probably knew who he was. If you didn't race there, you may never have heard his name. Norman was the kind of person you loved to hate. He could make you so mad so fast you didn't know what to think. I know this because I worked for him and I want to tell you what that meant to me. This is MY story, but it is too intertwined to separate, so this IS my personal memorial to Norman.
In April, 1979, after several years of barely coping with life with at least one year of that being in severe deep depression, I decided to go to the drag strip one day. Farmington Dragway was my home track…it opened in 1963…the same year my first daughter was born. I have pictures of all three of my girls at that track before they were six months old! Talk about the glory days! Anyway, I'm getting off track. At that time, I was living seven miles from the track…if the wind was blowing in the right direction, I could hear the cars. I thought…just maybe…going to the track might help get me out of the funk I had been in for so long because I had ALWAYS loved cars and racing!
I did not intend to work a deal with the owners, but when I got to the track, the first person I saw…the guy who was working the gate…was good friend Larry Allen and that brought a smile to my face. We talked a few minutes and I asked him who the owner or operator was and he told me Jerry Joyce and Norman Drouillard and it just so happened they were close enough for Larry to point them out to me. I went over and introduced myself and I don't know what in the world made me do it and I don't remember the whole conversation, but basically I said, "Hey, if you'll let me in free every week, I will write a story and put it in the local paper for you. Five bucks I can use to pay on rent or groceries for my kids!"
Talk about balls! I didn't know if I could even write a story, much less get it printed anywhere!!! I just figured I could get all that straightened out later!!! But they didn't know that. They said something like, "Sure, we'll give it a try!" Norman was all for getting something for nothing and he got a LOT of something that year for 'almost' nothing. I got in free, kids were all under 16 so they got in free and I got a hot dog once a week! And I worked my heart out! I was, at that time, in school at Rowan Technical College (now Rowan-Cabarrus Community College) in Auto Mechanics. After being at the track a couple weeks, I KNEW I had just about bit off more than I could chew.
A woman. Writing about drag racing? What a hoot! At least that was the general attitude. But I kept on plugging and plugging and, finally, some of the folks realized I really wasn't there looking for a boyfriend or husband and slowly, people started accepting me. I'm telling you all this for a reason. I met an awful of people real fast! But there were also people racing in '79 I knew from the early 60s! I worked my heart out all year and graduated in the top of my class at school. I would go home from the track and type up my stories on my old Royal typewriter my dad bought me about 1957 or '58. I would do five or six different stories…each with a different headline and each going to a different small town newspaper. I mailed them out on Sunday and took one to the Davie County Enterprise on Monday…deadline day.
I know I'm writing a lot about me, but it is so you will understand. My first BIG story was on Jack McClamrock…a man who had been my hero since I first saw him race…probably in 1963. Norman was the publisher of the King Times-News so naturally a lot of my stuff got printed there. I can't remember the dates or even the years of the stories I did, but I did stories on a lot of racers and they were printed in a lot of papers. I even had newspaper folks do a couple stories on me…what I was doing was VERY unusual…women weren't supposed to be doing stuff like that… I don't know if it was because we were supposed to be pregnant and barefoot all the time or just too dumb to know 'stuff' about cars and racing…probably a little of both. After all…this WAS 1979! I met all the folks from IHRA and had lots of stories printed in Drag Review. And for that, I ended up with an invitation to the IHRA banquet in November that year.
Man, there was NO way I could EVER afford to do anything like that. I told Norman how disappointed I was that we couldn't go and he actually gave me a check for $100!!! (A lot of money back then.) But not enough. My girls took their allowance money, Teresa made me a velvet dress as her Home Ec project in school as well as a dress for her to wear. My mother bought dresses for Candace and Mendy and, somehow or another, we ended up at the Graystone Lodge in Gatlingburg, TN. I had done a story that year on Margie and Eldee Hutchins and they offered us a free ride to and from. We had never been anywhere like that, but I would never gone without those girls. I thought I was, as the saying goes, pooping in high cotton. I can't even begin to tell you how I felt. Even my girls had a wonderful time. It was the beginning of a new life for us all.
1980 was an even better, busier year. I got SO involved in drag racing and I wrote more and more and more. I feel this may have actually saved my life. I had been so deep in depression before I didn't know how I could ever pull myself up out of that hole and I'm so thankful this happened. We had a blast. The neighbors of Farmington Dragway tried to close the track that year and I went to all the meetings and spoke and wrote newspaper articles about all the things that went on in the meetings and the way we 'racing folks' were being treated. I think, through the stuff in the newspaper, they kind of got shamed into dropping the whole deal. There would probably never have even been anything in the local paper if it had not been for me because the newspaper folks surely would not have sent anyone to cover that. In 1980, I got paid $15 a week and a hot dog!!! Jerry and Mark would publish a special paper every few months for the track, especially when something extra was going on and I wrote a lot of stories for it.
Before the end of that year, I met a guy named Barry Jenkins who talked about publishing a drag racing magazine. Some of the racers pointed him in my direction and we talked but I never even considered the fact he was serious. However, in early 1981, he called me and said he'd sold enough ads to print one issue! WOW! Could I come to Pageland, SC and help him put it together. That's how Quick Times Racing News got started and he chose the name for it. So now I was writing stuff for the Quick Times as well as the drag strip. I was getting stretched out pretty thin because Candace was in art class, Mendy was in gymnastics, Teresa was graduating that year and I was teaching Auto Mechanics for Davidson County Community College…only an extension class one night a week, but there was just too much do.
However, I was in seventh heaven…life seemed to be agreeing with me and my girls for the first time in a long time. One weekend in July, when I got to the track, Norman said I would have to pay to get in…I was still working there! I can't even tell you how bad that hurt. Now maybe guys don't get their feelings hurt that way but I can't tell you how much that hurt. I left the kids there…they were all still under 16…and I went to Shuffletown. For the first 30 miles, I cried. Then I got mad. DON'T MAKE ME CRY! It makes me mad when I feel weak!!! So the rest of the way down there AND back to get the girls, all this stuff was going through my mind about the past three years and how hard I had worked and how much it had all meant to me. So the first 'nasty' editorial I ever wrote about a track operator, I wrote about Norman Drouillard Sr! (And that wasn't the only time!)
Needless to say, that went over like a lead balloon with him and I was pretty much banished from Farmington. Well, not actually, but I still had to pay to get in and I didn't write for them any more after that. I struggled with that damned paper I was trying to do…by myself now!!!
I had told Barry I needed to find a printer closer to home because leaving the girls and going to Pageland and putting the paper together, getting it printed, then bringing it home and getting it ready to mail (I always did all the mailing) was just too much. He said for me to go ahead and find someone and he would do the traveling. So I made a deal with the newspaper in Kernersville to typeset and print the paper and I would just go down and do the layout, bring it home and mail it. That was in August and as the deadline for the September got closer, I kept calling Barry and he kept saying he'd be here, yada, yada, yada. He never showed up and his name was not on the September issue or any issues after that.
Norman did not speak to me again until about 1984. K&K Insurance was killing the small tracks and I got on their ass and after I harassed them in Quick Times for months, things started to change. A new insurance company started insuring drag racing and prices finally came down. I was walking through the pits at Rockingham that spring and who did I meet? Norman and Norman and Mark. I thought, "Oh shit." Norman looked straight at me and said, "I want to thank you for all the stuff you've been writing about our insurance problems, it has really helped all the small track operators!" I was dumb-struck…he could do that to you! I didn't know what to say and by the time my brain got back to functioning, they had already walked off. I just turned around and watched them…my mouth was probably still hanging open!
We kind of became 'okay' again. I always took a few minutes to go talk to Norman when I was at Farmington. I could tell Norman things I didn't think I could tell anyone about stuff that was going on in drag racing and he confided in me many times. I got a lot of ideas from the things we talked about and I gave him some good ideas, too. The point in writing this is to let everyone know I DO REALIZE if it had NOT been for Norman (and Jerry Joyce), I wouldn't have even known I could do the things I ended up doing. I NEVER had any idea I COULD do the things I ended up doing! Hell, the only things I had ever written were papers in school and letters to far away friends. Norman gave me a chance to live a life most people only dream about. Thanks, Norman.
In April, 1979, after several years of barely coping with life with at least one year of that being in severe deep depression, I decided to go to the drag strip one day. Farmington Dragway was my home track…it opened in 1963…the same year my first daughter was born. I have pictures of all three of my girls at that track before they were six months old! Talk about the glory days! Anyway, I'm getting off track. At that time, I was living seven miles from the track…if the wind was blowing in the right direction, I could hear the cars. I thought…just maybe…going to the track might help get me out of the funk I had been in for so long because I had ALWAYS loved cars and racing!
I did not intend to work a deal with the owners, but when I got to the track, the first person I saw…the guy who was working the gate…was good friend Larry Allen and that brought a smile to my face. We talked a few minutes and I asked him who the owner or operator was and he told me Jerry Joyce and Norman Drouillard and it just so happened they were close enough for Larry to point them out to me. I went over and introduced myself and I don't know what in the world made me do it and I don't remember the whole conversation, but basically I said, "Hey, if you'll let me in free every week, I will write a story and put it in the local paper for you. Five bucks I can use to pay on rent or groceries for my kids!"
Talk about balls! I didn't know if I could even write a story, much less get it printed anywhere!!! I just figured I could get all that straightened out later!!! But they didn't know that. They said something like, "Sure, we'll give it a try!" Norman was all for getting something for nothing and he got a LOT of something that year for 'almost' nothing. I got in free, kids were all under 16 so they got in free and I got a hot dog once a week! And I worked my heart out! I was, at that time, in school at Rowan Technical College (now Rowan-Cabarrus Community College) in Auto Mechanics. After being at the track a couple weeks, I KNEW I had just about bit off more than I could chew.
A woman. Writing about drag racing? What a hoot! At least that was the general attitude. But I kept on plugging and plugging and, finally, some of the folks realized I really wasn't there looking for a boyfriend or husband and slowly, people started accepting me. I'm telling you all this for a reason. I met an awful of people real fast! But there were also people racing in '79 I knew from the early 60s! I worked my heart out all year and graduated in the top of my class at school. I would go home from the track and type up my stories on my old Royal typewriter my dad bought me about 1957 or '58. I would do five or six different stories…each with a different headline and each going to a different small town newspaper. I mailed them out on Sunday and took one to the Davie County Enterprise on Monday…deadline day.
I know I'm writing a lot about me, but it is so you will understand. My first BIG story was on Jack McClamrock…a man who had been my hero since I first saw him race…probably in 1963. Norman was the publisher of the King Times-News so naturally a lot of my stuff got printed there. I can't remember the dates or even the years of the stories I did, but I did stories on a lot of racers and they were printed in a lot of papers. I even had newspaper folks do a couple stories on me…what I was doing was VERY unusual…women weren't supposed to be doing stuff like that… I don't know if it was because we were supposed to be pregnant and barefoot all the time or just too dumb to know 'stuff' about cars and racing…probably a little of both. After all…this WAS 1979! I met all the folks from IHRA and had lots of stories printed in Drag Review. And for that, I ended up with an invitation to the IHRA banquet in November that year.
Man, there was NO way I could EVER afford to do anything like that. I told Norman how disappointed I was that we couldn't go and he actually gave me a check for $100!!! (A lot of money back then.) But not enough. My girls took their allowance money, Teresa made me a velvet dress as her Home Ec project in school as well as a dress for her to wear. My mother bought dresses for Candace and Mendy and, somehow or another, we ended up at the Graystone Lodge in Gatlingburg, TN. I had done a story that year on Margie and Eldee Hutchins and they offered us a free ride to and from. We had never been anywhere like that, but I would never gone without those girls. I thought I was, as the saying goes, pooping in high cotton. I can't even begin to tell you how I felt. Even my girls had a wonderful time. It was the beginning of a new life for us all.
1980 was an even better, busier year. I got SO involved in drag racing and I wrote more and more and more. I feel this may have actually saved my life. I had been so deep in depression before I didn't know how I could ever pull myself up out of that hole and I'm so thankful this happened. We had a blast. The neighbors of Farmington Dragway tried to close the track that year and I went to all the meetings and spoke and wrote newspaper articles about all the things that went on in the meetings and the way we 'racing folks' were being treated. I think, through the stuff in the newspaper, they kind of got shamed into dropping the whole deal. There would probably never have even been anything in the local paper if it had not been for me because the newspaper folks surely would not have sent anyone to cover that. In 1980, I got paid $15 a week and a hot dog!!! Jerry and Mark would publish a special paper every few months for the track, especially when something extra was going on and I wrote a lot of stories for it.
Before the end of that year, I met a guy named Barry Jenkins who talked about publishing a drag racing magazine. Some of the racers pointed him in my direction and we talked but I never even considered the fact he was serious. However, in early 1981, he called me and said he'd sold enough ads to print one issue! WOW! Could I come to Pageland, SC and help him put it together. That's how Quick Times Racing News got started and he chose the name for it. So now I was writing stuff for the Quick Times as well as the drag strip. I was getting stretched out pretty thin because Candace was in art class, Mendy was in gymnastics, Teresa was graduating that year and I was teaching Auto Mechanics for Davidson County Community College…only an extension class one night a week, but there was just too much do.
However, I was in seventh heaven…life seemed to be agreeing with me and my girls for the first time in a long time. One weekend in July, when I got to the track, Norman said I would have to pay to get in…I was still working there! I can't even tell you how bad that hurt. Now maybe guys don't get their feelings hurt that way but I can't tell you how much that hurt. I left the kids there…they were all still under 16…and I went to Shuffletown. For the first 30 miles, I cried. Then I got mad. DON'T MAKE ME CRY! It makes me mad when I feel weak!!! So the rest of the way down there AND back to get the girls, all this stuff was going through my mind about the past three years and how hard I had worked and how much it had all meant to me. So the first 'nasty' editorial I ever wrote about a track operator, I wrote about Norman Drouillard Sr! (And that wasn't the only time!)
Needless to say, that went over like a lead balloon with him and I was pretty much banished from Farmington. Well, not actually, but I still had to pay to get in and I didn't write for them any more after that. I struggled with that damned paper I was trying to do…by myself now!!!
I had told Barry I needed to find a printer closer to home because leaving the girls and going to Pageland and putting the paper together, getting it printed, then bringing it home and getting it ready to mail (I always did all the mailing) was just too much. He said for me to go ahead and find someone and he would do the traveling. So I made a deal with the newspaper in Kernersville to typeset and print the paper and I would just go down and do the layout, bring it home and mail it. That was in August and as the deadline for the September got closer, I kept calling Barry and he kept saying he'd be here, yada, yada, yada. He never showed up and his name was not on the September issue or any issues after that.
Norman did not speak to me again until about 1984. K&K Insurance was killing the small tracks and I got on their ass and after I harassed them in Quick Times for months, things started to change. A new insurance company started insuring drag racing and prices finally came down. I was walking through the pits at Rockingham that spring and who did I meet? Norman and Norman and Mark. I thought, "Oh shit." Norman looked straight at me and said, "I want to thank you for all the stuff you've been writing about our insurance problems, it has really helped all the small track operators!" I was dumb-struck…he could do that to you! I didn't know what to say and by the time my brain got back to functioning, they had already walked off. I just turned around and watched them…my mouth was probably still hanging open!
We kind of became 'okay' again. I always took a few minutes to go talk to Norman when I was at Farmington. I could tell Norman things I didn't think I could tell anyone about stuff that was going on in drag racing and he confided in me many times. I got a lot of ideas from the things we talked about and I gave him some good ideas, too. The point in writing this is to let everyone know I DO REALIZE if it had NOT been for Norman (and Jerry Joyce), I wouldn't have even known I could do the things I ended up doing. I NEVER had any idea I COULD do the things I ended up doing! Hell, the only things I had ever written were papers in school and letters to far away friends. Norman gave me a chance to live a life most people only dream about. Thanks, Norman.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Don't Let History Get in the Way of a Good Story
I don't know why Bobby Bennett and Bret Kepner want to change history or even where they got the ego to think they can, but I printed the history of Pro Mod in Quick Times Racing News AS it happened and there isn't much in the beginning of their story you can compare to what REALLY happened. If you don't know the real 'history,' please don't be fooled into believing lies. I want you to KNOW how Pro Modified came about, the players and the people who made it what it is. In Bobby's Part I of his 'so-called' history of Pro Mod, THE VERY FIRST LINE IN WAS A LIE! Anyone who was there or who remembers how it REALLY happened knows the very first OFFICIAL Pro Mod race was at Atco Raceway in Atco, NJ on October 27 and 28, 1989. So fans, if you think your independence day is March 10, guess what? You already missed it! It was October 27 and 28! How could ANYONE NOT remember when Walter Henry was killed? That is a slap on his memory I would NOT want attributed to something I wrote as 'history.' I'm not dead guys, how could you think you could get away with this travesty?
Jim Ruth was the owner of IHRA in 1989 and he is the man who 'created' the class! He told the racers they would go Pro in 1990 but they could run their FIRST OFFICIAL Pro Mod race at the last points race of 1989 and CLAIM their first PRO MOD points and those points would carry over to the 1990 season! It was one of the largest fields in Pro Mod history in IHRA because everyone wanted to be at that first race. It is a shame something happened to dampen the spirit of that race, but knowing Walter, if he'd had a choice???????? Jim who, by the way, owned the 'World's Fastest Pontiac Mountain Motor Pro Stocker' was pretty sick by then and already in dealings with the people who would eventually become the new owners of IHRA, but he is STILL the man who made that decision and made it all possible. Since Jim died the next year, Ted Jones has always taken credit for the class. But since Ted never had an idea of his own, we know that isn't true…he couldn't even come up with a name for it and had to have a contest to name it!
However, the TRUE HISTORY of Pro Mod started a long time before that first race at Atco. It took many years for this to come about. Many of the racers who have been slighted by Bobby's 'un-history' have called me and asked me to straighten this out. I cannot believe Charles Carpenter has been slighted by this crap the way he has. What in the heck does a blown Corvette driven by a funny car driver years earlier have to do with the history of Pro Mod? Bret…where are your brains? Where they've always been? If you want to start with a Corvette, start with the right one (keep reading!). This all started with nitrous assisted gas engines, there WEREN'T any blowers in the original Quick 8s. Blowers WERE allowed in Top Sportsman, but ONLY after a near-holy war in the class because most of the nitrous doorslammer drivers didn't want blowers allowed. Alcohol and blowers gave those drivers an edge because of the added power. They also eventually changed the class to ALL doorslammers…splitting it and having a Top Sportsman open body class and taking dragsters and roadsters out of the doorslammer class.
As far as the movement to Pro Mod, yes, you can say Charles Carpenter was the first…in a way. Charles had a car that drew attention no matter where he raced and when Jim Bryant of ThunderCraft boats heard about the 'World's Fastest '55 Chevy,' he just decided to build a car to compete with Charles…the 'World's Fastest '57 Chevy' came out in 1987. But wait…I'm getting ahead of myself. What REALLY started Pro Mod was the desire to GO FAST!!! Every person who has ever gone down a drag strip (or down the highway, for that matter) has wanted to GO FAST(ER)! Pro Mod was literally built on the same principles as funny car…go fast! Until bracket racing came along, regular guys couldn't just GO FAST! They were bound by pounds per cubic inch and stock parts…there was only just so much they could do. The only guys who could GO FAST were racers who were NOT bound by rules…Garlits, Prudhomme, Karamesines, Snow, Kalitta, Muldowney, Schumacher, Grove, Broome, McEwen, Ivo, Arfons, Breedlove, etc., too many to mention here, including the racers who ran those crazy, unpredictable Midwestern altereds.
When bracket racing came along, there was finally another group unbound by 'can't go fast' rules. They could go as fast as they could afford or shade tree engineer. I will give you one example…a man I knew in person and still idolize to this day even though he has been gone over 20 years. His name was Jack McClamrock and you could find him any weekend at Farmington and Mooresville Dragways beating the pants off ALL his opponents. If there ever WAS a Corvette that was the pre-curser to Pro Mod, it was his…ceegar ash tray on the dash, gas engine and all. Remember, Jack class raced for MANY years, but when bracket racing came about, he was in his glory. He was banned from Mooresville Dragway for winning something like 52 races in a row or some such nonsense! But he made that Corvette fly. He made a lot of other race cars fly, too. And that was in the late '60s and '70s! Thanks to racers like Jack, Farmington Dragway started the first ever 5-Second Club (1980 with only three members) and if you've never heard of that one, you've been living underground. They just completed their VERY successful 26th Annual Big 5-Second Shootout with Tim West of Asheville, NC pulling off his first win of that most prestigious race.
Racers just worked their buns off to be the FASTEST at their track and all other local tracks! Jack ran the first 6.15 ever at Farmington in 1979…and, man, that was flying! Sure it was eighth mile but he was on pure gas and the only other guys who'd done that were those Pros mentioned above. The battle was on. Fast didn't always win, but it was ALWAYS fun and the fans loved the fast cars even though they were breakout racing. Pro Stockers who had been rooted out of their game because of the expense of running pounds per cubic inch were right along in there with them only they were match racing all across the country. I attended many but the one that sticks in my mind was the last match race between Lee Edwards and Don Carlton, May 2, 1975 at Farmington (Don won two out of three by the way and bought our breakfast!) It sticks because just a short time later, Don was gone forever. I also have a picture that says, "To Becky, Don Carlton." Those go-fast guys were also instigators in the history of Pro Mod.
Altereds were dying all across the country because they had gotten so out of hand, no one could pay them enough to race. In the south, we didn't have many altereds, so they got hired in for match races and exhibitions from time to time, but by the '80s, most of them were just setting somewhere. IHRA created Mountain Motor Pro Stock and it was one of the most popular classes IHRA ever had…until a few misguided people wanted to change it back to the 500 cubic inch rule and ruined it, too.
Since everyone wanted to go fast, manufacturers were trying various ways to make sure the trend continued and eventually, along came nitrous oxide. Track operators started paying Low ET money, most paid first, some even paid second and third Low ETs. That just made everyone want to go even faster. I went to work at Farmington in 1979 and was working there in '80 when they started the 5-Second Club. Farmington's 5-Second Club was the only one for several years, then when nitrous came along, EVERYONE had a 5-Second Club. Cars kept getting faster, but that's not all. They got these beautiful paint jobs on them. Custom paint became the rage in the '70s...of course some had fancy paint earlier than that, but in the '70s, that aspect just exploded. Cars LOOKED good, cars ran FAST, they weren't bound by rules, the only rules were 'don't break out and don't red light.' Run wha cha brung and hope you brung enough!
In 1981, I started Quick Times Racing News because these racers had NO place to get their names printed, no place to get the glory they deserved…IHRA, NHRA and any others RAs were still stuck in RULES racing and in their publications, little guys were practically non-existent. Bracket racing was just what those racers did at their home tracks. But there were SO MANY of them, the sanctioning bodies decided they wanted some of that money so they allowed classes like Pro Street and Super Street. When they decided to make '.90' brackets like Quick Rod and Hot Rod and Super Rod, that limited SPEED again. So other brackets were formed where racers could again go fast in IHRA, NHRA, etc. like they were doing at home at their local track. From 1981 on, I highlighted those racers and wrote about them and their trials and troubles and wins and ETs and MPHs and accomplishments…births, deaths, marriages, divorces, warts and all! By the way, Jack McClamrock, along with Charles Carpenter and Michael Martin were on the cover of the FIRST EVER QTRN! That wasn't the only time Charles and Michael were on the cover, I did stories on them later. Charles ALWAYS said the attention and the coverage I gave the racers gave many of them the boost and encouragement they needed to do bigger and better things.
In September, 1986, I started featuring 12 cars in the center fold of QTRN…they were some of the fastest cars in the southeast. Many of those racers are no longer in the sport and some are no longer with us, but they all had a direct bearing on Pro Mod. I saw Charles Carpenter in 2002 or 2003 when he was making a 'comeback' (as he is now!) and he just shook his head when he said, "I can't believe there are so many of these guys running Quick 8s and Pro Mod and they don't even know where the class came from. Some of them look at me like they're wondering who I am and what I'm doing here!" It didn't take him long to show them something. But I know how Charles felt because when there got to be so many Pro Mod racers who got 'too big for their britches,' I just kind of faded away myself and many of them didn't know me either even though I was one of the originators of Pro Mod racing as Charles was. And if you ask him, he will tell you the same thing!
In each of those five issues, I featured ten doorslammers, one roadster and one dragster. My aim was to really highlight the quick and fast doorslammers but didn't want to make the doorless drivers mad!!! That was FIFTY fast doorslammers, I could have done that many more! There was also a story in each issue to go along with the centerfold of fast cars. The stories were written by David McGee, Dave Bishop, Woody Hatten, Phil Elliott and me. I do think you should know this…I asked Bret Kepner to write one of those stories and he said he would be glad to. I told him for which issue I needed his story and I told him the deadline date and he said he would get it to me in plenty of time. As the time got closer and closer, I called Bret several times and each time he promised he would get the story to me ASAP. I told him I needed to know if he wasn't going to do it so I could go ahead and do it myself, but he kept saying, "I'm working on it. I'll get it to you in time." He never did, he lied to me for over two months. I don't believe he ever intended to write it and lied to me intentionally! Sometime in the next year, he tried to apologize, but I just turned and walked off and never had any dealings with him ever again.
Also, in 1986, Dave Bishop had written about Charles Carpenter in Drag Review and called Charles' car the 'World's Fastest Shoebox' coining that term for all of time. Jim Bryant heard about Charles and his car and built his '57 Chevy to match race Charles, hiring Rob Vandergriff to drive…those two match raced everywhere. Among all these goings on in the southeast, AHRA Pro Stock, then UDRA Outlaw Pro Stock was the thing to do in the Midwest and Dixie Pro Stock was going strong in the deep south. All these guys basically did not want rules constricting their performance and most of them couldn't afford to build the big engines it took to run Pro Stock so they were just out doing their own thing. This movement was happening in many areas of the country all at the same time even though there was seldom any mixing outside their general areas. That soon changed. Quick Times Racing News was being read by racers all over the eastern U.S. by this time and when I started putting these 12 cars in each of my issues, it got a LOT of attention everywhere.
Don Garrick was running Orangeburg Dragstrip in Orangeburg, SC when the October, 1986 issue came out and he called me and said, "If I have a race just for these fast cars, do you think they will come and race for me here?" We talked about having a heads up, pro tree, no breakout race and I told him they had been trying to get someone to have this kind of race for a while but he needed to come up with a good purse because that was a LONG drive for most. I also told him there was only one way to find out…call them and see. He asked if I had their phones numbers, I told him I did, he asked if I would help him call, I said I would and the first EVER Quick 8 Doorslammer Race was held at Orangeburg Dragstrip in October, 1986. Since that issue was already in people's hands, we didn't even have time to advertise it, but after all the phone calls, there were lots of racers there. They WANTED to do this! I think Blake Wiggins won that first race. Orangeburg Dragstrip was now the 'Home of the ORIGINAL Doorslammer Race.' This was the single biggest catalyst to the formation of Pro Mod of anything that happened in this sport.
Don continued having these Quick 8 races into 1987, about once a month with more and more continued success. Sometimes, it would take an hour just to get into the track even though he had several people working the gate. The place was ALWAYS packed! And Don was smiling all the way to the bank…so much so he ended up selling the track in October, 1988. But the Quick 8s continued with new owners Johnny and Charles Dowey. Finally, other track operators started taking notice of the success of those early races, but NO other tracks held this type of race until a full year and a half later….at Shuffletown Dragway in Charlotte, NC in April, 1988! This was the single biggest spectator draw any of these track had ever had because spectators understand the winner being the guy who crossed the finish line first! And who doesn't love all that other excitement…the action and suspense of these racers and their ultra fast cars they can identify with…full body cars, old cars, new cars, cars that do eighth mile burnouts and weird stuff on the track like cross the finish line tail first or bounce back and forth from guardrail to guardrail!
I do have to mention one other track here and that is Hudson Drag Strip in Hudson, NC. They had been having what they called '5.85' races on Thursday nights and it was one of the most popular things they ever did…, not just for the fans, but for the racers, too. It was not a heads up, no breakout race, but it was a lot different than anyone had ever done. The four cars who qualified the closest to a 5.85 ET above and the four who qualified below a 5.85 made up first round and they were paired according to their ETs. Everyone loved it…it was just different and the racers had a chance at a purse separate from regular race dates and they all got a lot of notoriety from this. Hudson Drag Strip was the ONLY track who EVER did this type of race!
In the meantime, the IHRA Top Sportsman racers of '86 were beefing up their old cars and engines or getting new ones for '87 and I don't think there was any one single person anywhere who had any idea what was going to happen that year. But at Darlington, everyone found out, starting off the with the first EVER 200 mph pass in a sportsman doorslammer. Bill Kuhlmann, whom no one in the south had ever heard of (he was one of those Midwestern outlaw Pro Stockers) ran a 202.24 on that horrible, cold, slick Darlington Dragway at nearly midnight at the Winter Nationals.
There were other things going on in the background as well. Seems a lot of folks wanted a 'shoebox' race car because they got more attention than ANY of the others. Before the end of 1987, Norm Wizner had debuted his '57 Mega Ford, Gordy Foust was working on a new '66 Chevelle and Richard Earle was cutting up a '58 Plymouth to make a 'Christine' shoebox! Ed Hoover had totaled his crazy Camaro with nothing more than bruises and building a new car and the craze was on! In 1988, Lamar Walden debuted his '62 Chevy, Tommy Howe's Datsun became the first sportsman doorslammer to run in the 6's. Then Gordy Hmiel ran a 6.99 and Rob ran over 200 in his shoebox Chevy and the first ever all 7-second Field in Top Sportsman happened.
IHRA Top Sportsman was still JUST a bracket and the racers were tired of running a bracket race at national events when they could run outlaw heads up everywhere else. They had a meeting and decided to ask IHRA to help them get something extra. What that extra was was the Top Sportsman Quick 8 Saturday Night Shootouts, one of the most popular shows IHRA ever had. The fans went wild! I have actually seen fans rush to their seats to watch this shootout and Mountain Motor Pro Stock and go get hot dogs when the alcohol and fuel cars were running! Sometimes the spectators were cheering and screaming and yelling so loud, it was hard to hear the cars…I was on the starting line and it was still sometimes hard to hear them. No one could have predicted how popular this was going to be! When Animal Jim defeated Rob Vandergriff at the Winter Nationals in 1988 in the new Quick 8 Shootout, it sealed the popularity of this new addition to IHRA.
I will have to say this…the smartest person in ALL this craziness was Duane Nichols. In 1989, Duane put together the United States Super Circuit and without a doubt, the seven years he ran this circuit, it was the most popular racing circuit that has ever been in the history of drag racing. People were really disappointed when, in 1995, Duane pulled the plug on the whole deal. When asked why, he simply told people, he could see the beginning of the end and he wanted to be remembered as quitting while he was ahead. He certainly was ahead!
When Steve Earwood was working for Gary Brown at Atlanta Dragway, I begged him for two years to have a Quick 8 Doorslammer race and he wouldn't even discuss it. I did everything I could think of to do, I told him how crazy people were over it, not just the racers, but spectators as well. I even tried to get him to come to one of our Carolina tracks on a Sunday when Atlanta wasn't running, but he never made the effort. He just laughed at me and kept on doing the same old thing. After Steve left Atlanta Dragway, he had a chance to come to an IHRA race at Bristol and after witnessing the astonishing success of Top Sportsman, especially the Saturday Night Quick 8 Shootout, he told me he wished he had listened to me…that this was, by far, the best show he had seen in years! He even sent me a letter after that…I will print it for you some time!!! One of the things he wrote was, "I must admit I haven't been so impressed since I saw my first funny cars back in the late '60s. The Top Sportsman cars really do have that kind of impact."
NHRA was just like Steve…they would not run Pro Mod for many years, mainly because of Pro Stock. They knew the Pro Mod would be faster and quicker than their limited 500 cubic inch Pro Stockers and didn't want to upset the apple cart. One of the reasons IHRA would not switch their Mountain Motor Pro Stock over to the standard NHRA 500 cubic inch limit was because they wanted their Pro Stock to be as fan-attended as Pro Mod. No factory sponsorships for Pro Mod…never would be. However, Pro Stock would always have some type of factory sponsorships…all this going on at a time when NHRA knew they were getting ready to lose Winston Drag Racing and they were hoping the auto makers would take up the slack when the Winston money was lost.
After Steve Earwood left Atlanta and Gary Brown took over the operations, Gary's wife Patti called me and asked if I would help them get the Pro Mod racers to come to Atlanta Dragway for the first time ever. They called this race the Mountain Motor Nitrous Nationals and it was held July 4 weekend in 1990. They had NO idea how to get in touch with any of these racers (and of course IHRA would never help an NHRA track!) and that's why they called me. I helped them call all these racers and for the FIRST time, Pro Mod got introduced to fans of Atlanta Dragway and I helped introduce Pro Mod to them and to NHRA. They went as nuts over Pro Mod as anyone ever had been. Patti and Gary held this race every year until NHRA 'bought' their track. And of course, NHRA wasn't about to run Pro Mod at one of their facilities.
MANY years later, NHRA finally recognized Pro Mod and allowed them to run at their races, at first it was only at certain races in the most out-of-the-way places. And the Pro Stockers hated them. And I don't blame them. They had no rules. They had no limits. But…progress is progress and the old saying, "You can't stop progress," was very true in the case of Pro Mod. When the powers at NHRA realized how much the Pro Mod racers were bringing to their little out-of-the-way facilities, they also realized how much this class could add to the whole line-up and NHRA finally does allow Pro Mod national events. But you don't see them on TV! Oh, no! Never, never, never. They are TOO popular. They are TOO fast. They are TOO quick! Fans love them TOO much. But this is one of the things IHRA still has going for it, no matter what anyone thinks.
Now folks, you have the TRUE, REAL history of Pro Modified. It doesn't have anything to do with the people who have used it as their claim to fame. It has to do with all the 'little guys' involved in the real history you've read here. Charles Carpenter, Becky White, Don Garrick and Orangeburg Dragstrip and more than just the names you've read here ARE the 'history' of Pro Mod. There has never been and, I predict, never will be a more exciting time in the sport of drag racing, the time for this kind of growth is well past. Pro Mod spread from the southeast…mainly the Carolinas…all across the country…not necessarily like a wildfire, but it was complete. No one escaped the thrill and excitement of Quick 8 Doorslammer racing, thank God!
This one bunch of racers has brought more spectators to the sport of drag racing than any other class ever and brought it more good notoriety as well (along with some bad). It is a shame so many Quick 8 or Pro Mod racers don't know their history and have gotten so far away from their roots that evidently they don't even care. But I guess that happens after time, I just want EVERYONE to know the TRUE history of Pro Mod before it's lost in a sea of 'story-telling.' And remember…I printed the true history of Pro Mod AS IT HAPPENED and have never felt the need to change a thing! Imagine what would have happened if there had not been instigators and believers and people like Charles Carpenter, Becky White and Don Garrick at Orangeburg?
Becky White, Editor and Publisher, Quick Times Racing News for 25 years!
(I will, later, print a list of names here…if you know of someone who helped to make Pro Mod possible, send them to me and I will add them to the list I already have. In the meantime, I think you SHOULD read Bobby's history…it will at least give you some insight into the racers themselves…I know he has been contacting them, which I did not.)
Jim Ruth was the owner of IHRA in 1989 and he is the man who 'created' the class! He told the racers they would go Pro in 1990 but they could run their FIRST OFFICIAL Pro Mod race at the last points race of 1989 and CLAIM their first PRO MOD points and those points would carry over to the 1990 season! It was one of the largest fields in Pro Mod history in IHRA because everyone wanted to be at that first race. It is a shame something happened to dampen the spirit of that race, but knowing Walter, if he'd had a choice???????? Jim who, by the way, owned the 'World's Fastest Pontiac Mountain Motor Pro Stocker' was pretty sick by then and already in dealings with the people who would eventually become the new owners of IHRA, but he is STILL the man who made that decision and made it all possible. Since Jim died the next year, Ted Jones has always taken credit for the class. But since Ted never had an idea of his own, we know that isn't true…he couldn't even come up with a name for it and had to have a contest to name it!
However, the TRUE HISTORY of Pro Mod started a long time before that first race at Atco. It took many years for this to come about. Many of the racers who have been slighted by Bobby's 'un-history' have called me and asked me to straighten this out. I cannot believe Charles Carpenter has been slighted by this crap the way he has. What in the heck does a blown Corvette driven by a funny car driver years earlier have to do with the history of Pro Mod? Bret…where are your brains? Where they've always been? If you want to start with a Corvette, start with the right one (keep reading!). This all started with nitrous assisted gas engines, there WEREN'T any blowers in the original Quick 8s. Blowers WERE allowed in Top Sportsman, but ONLY after a near-holy war in the class because most of the nitrous doorslammer drivers didn't want blowers allowed. Alcohol and blowers gave those drivers an edge because of the added power. They also eventually changed the class to ALL doorslammers…splitting it and having a Top Sportsman open body class and taking dragsters and roadsters out of the doorslammer class.
As far as the movement to Pro Mod, yes, you can say Charles Carpenter was the first…in a way. Charles had a car that drew attention no matter where he raced and when Jim Bryant of ThunderCraft boats heard about the 'World's Fastest '55 Chevy,' he just decided to build a car to compete with Charles…the 'World's Fastest '57 Chevy' came out in 1987. But wait…I'm getting ahead of myself. What REALLY started Pro Mod was the desire to GO FAST!!! Every person who has ever gone down a drag strip (or down the highway, for that matter) has wanted to GO FAST(ER)! Pro Mod was literally built on the same principles as funny car…go fast! Until bracket racing came along, regular guys couldn't just GO FAST! They were bound by pounds per cubic inch and stock parts…there was only just so much they could do. The only guys who could GO FAST were racers who were NOT bound by rules…Garlits, Prudhomme, Karamesines, Snow, Kalitta, Muldowney, Schumacher, Grove, Broome, McEwen, Ivo, Arfons, Breedlove, etc., too many to mention here, including the racers who ran those crazy, unpredictable Midwestern altereds.
When bracket racing came along, there was finally another group unbound by 'can't go fast' rules. They could go as fast as they could afford or shade tree engineer. I will give you one example…a man I knew in person and still idolize to this day even though he has been gone over 20 years. His name was Jack McClamrock and you could find him any weekend at Farmington and Mooresville Dragways beating the pants off ALL his opponents. If there ever WAS a Corvette that was the pre-curser to Pro Mod, it was his…ceegar ash tray on the dash, gas engine and all. Remember, Jack class raced for MANY years, but when bracket racing came about, he was in his glory. He was banned from Mooresville Dragway for winning something like 52 races in a row or some such nonsense! But he made that Corvette fly. He made a lot of other race cars fly, too. And that was in the late '60s and '70s! Thanks to racers like Jack, Farmington Dragway started the first ever 5-Second Club (1980 with only three members) and if you've never heard of that one, you've been living underground. They just completed their VERY successful 26th Annual Big 5-Second Shootout with Tim West of Asheville, NC pulling off his first win of that most prestigious race.
Racers just worked their buns off to be the FASTEST at their track and all other local tracks! Jack ran the first 6.15 ever at Farmington in 1979…and, man, that was flying! Sure it was eighth mile but he was on pure gas and the only other guys who'd done that were those Pros mentioned above. The battle was on. Fast didn't always win, but it was ALWAYS fun and the fans loved the fast cars even though they were breakout racing. Pro Stockers who had been rooted out of their game because of the expense of running pounds per cubic inch were right along in there with them only they were match racing all across the country. I attended many but the one that sticks in my mind was the last match race between Lee Edwards and Don Carlton, May 2, 1975 at Farmington (Don won two out of three by the way and bought our breakfast!) It sticks because just a short time later, Don was gone forever. I also have a picture that says, "To Becky, Don Carlton." Those go-fast guys were also instigators in the history of Pro Mod.
Altereds were dying all across the country because they had gotten so out of hand, no one could pay them enough to race. In the south, we didn't have many altereds, so they got hired in for match races and exhibitions from time to time, but by the '80s, most of them were just setting somewhere. IHRA created Mountain Motor Pro Stock and it was one of the most popular classes IHRA ever had…until a few misguided people wanted to change it back to the 500 cubic inch rule and ruined it, too.
Since everyone wanted to go fast, manufacturers were trying various ways to make sure the trend continued and eventually, along came nitrous oxide. Track operators started paying Low ET money, most paid first, some even paid second and third Low ETs. That just made everyone want to go even faster. I went to work at Farmington in 1979 and was working there in '80 when they started the 5-Second Club. Farmington's 5-Second Club was the only one for several years, then when nitrous came along, EVERYONE had a 5-Second Club. Cars kept getting faster, but that's not all. They got these beautiful paint jobs on them. Custom paint became the rage in the '70s...of course some had fancy paint earlier than that, but in the '70s, that aspect just exploded. Cars LOOKED good, cars ran FAST, they weren't bound by rules, the only rules were 'don't break out and don't red light.' Run wha cha brung and hope you brung enough!
In 1981, I started Quick Times Racing News because these racers had NO place to get their names printed, no place to get the glory they deserved…IHRA, NHRA and any others RAs were still stuck in RULES racing and in their publications, little guys were practically non-existent. Bracket racing was just what those racers did at their home tracks. But there were SO MANY of them, the sanctioning bodies decided they wanted some of that money so they allowed classes like Pro Street and Super Street. When they decided to make '.90' brackets like Quick Rod and Hot Rod and Super Rod, that limited SPEED again. So other brackets were formed where racers could again go fast in IHRA, NHRA, etc. like they were doing at home at their local track. From 1981 on, I highlighted those racers and wrote about them and their trials and troubles and wins and ETs and MPHs and accomplishments…births, deaths, marriages, divorces, warts and all! By the way, Jack McClamrock, along with Charles Carpenter and Michael Martin were on the cover of the FIRST EVER QTRN! That wasn't the only time Charles and Michael were on the cover, I did stories on them later. Charles ALWAYS said the attention and the coverage I gave the racers gave many of them the boost and encouragement they needed to do bigger and better things.
In September, 1986, I started featuring 12 cars in the center fold of QTRN…they were some of the fastest cars in the southeast. Many of those racers are no longer in the sport and some are no longer with us, but they all had a direct bearing on Pro Mod. I saw Charles Carpenter in 2002 or 2003 when he was making a 'comeback' (as he is now!) and he just shook his head when he said, "I can't believe there are so many of these guys running Quick 8s and Pro Mod and they don't even know where the class came from. Some of them look at me like they're wondering who I am and what I'm doing here!" It didn't take him long to show them something. But I know how Charles felt because when there got to be so many Pro Mod racers who got 'too big for their britches,' I just kind of faded away myself and many of them didn't know me either even though I was one of the originators of Pro Mod racing as Charles was. And if you ask him, he will tell you the same thing!
In each of those five issues, I featured ten doorslammers, one roadster and one dragster. My aim was to really highlight the quick and fast doorslammers but didn't want to make the doorless drivers mad!!! That was FIFTY fast doorslammers, I could have done that many more! There was also a story in each issue to go along with the centerfold of fast cars. The stories were written by David McGee, Dave Bishop, Woody Hatten, Phil Elliott and me. I do think you should know this…I asked Bret Kepner to write one of those stories and he said he would be glad to. I told him for which issue I needed his story and I told him the deadline date and he said he would get it to me in plenty of time. As the time got closer and closer, I called Bret several times and each time he promised he would get the story to me ASAP. I told him I needed to know if he wasn't going to do it so I could go ahead and do it myself, but he kept saying, "I'm working on it. I'll get it to you in time." He never did, he lied to me for over two months. I don't believe he ever intended to write it and lied to me intentionally! Sometime in the next year, he tried to apologize, but I just turned and walked off and never had any dealings with him ever again.
Also, in 1986, Dave Bishop had written about Charles Carpenter in Drag Review and called Charles' car the 'World's Fastest Shoebox' coining that term for all of time. Jim Bryant heard about Charles and his car and built his '57 Chevy to match race Charles, hiring Rob Vandergriff to drive…those two match raced everywhere. Among all these goings on in the southeast, AHRA Pro Stock, then UDRA Outlaw Pro Stock was the thing to do in the Midwest and Dixie Pro Stock was going strong in the deep south. All these guys basically did not want rules constricting their performance and most of them couldn't afford to build the big engines it took to run Pro Stock so they were just out doing their own thing. This movement was happening in many areas of the country all at the same time even though there was seldom any mixing outside their general areas. That soon changed. Quick Times Racing News was being read by racers all over the eastern U.S. by this time and when I started putting these 12 cars in each of my issues, it got a LOT of attention everywhere.
Don Garrick was running Orangeburg Dragstrip in Orangeburg, SC when the October, 1986 issue came out and he called me and said, "If I have a race just for these fast cars, do you think they will come and race for me here?" We talked about having a heads up, pro tree, no breakout race and I told him they had been trying to get someone to have this kind of race for a while but he needed to come up with a good purse because that was a LONG drive for most. I also told him there was only one way to find out…call them and see. He asked if I had their phones numbers, I told him I did, he asked if I would help him call, I said I would and the first EVER Quick 8 Doorslammer Race was held at Orangeburg Dragstrip in October, 1986. Since that issue was already in people's hands, we didn't even have time to advertise it, but after all the phone calls, there were lots of racers there. They WANTED to do this! I think Blake Wiggins won that first race. Orangeburg Dragstrip was now the 'Home of the ORIGINAL Doorslammer Race.' This was the single biggest catalyst to the formation of Pro Mod of anything that happened in this sport.
Don continued having these Quick 8 races into 1987, about once a month with more and more continued success. Sometimes, it would take an hour just to get into the track even though he had several people working the gate. The place was ALWAYS packed! And Don was smiling all the way to the bank…so much so he ended up selling the track in October, 1988. But the Quick 8s continued with new owners Johnny and Charles Dowey. Finally, other track operators started taking notice of the success of those early races, but NO other tracks held this type of race until a full year and a half later….at Shuffletown Dragway in Charlotte, NC in April, 1988! This was the single biggest spectator draw any of these track had ever had because spectators understand the winner being the guy who crossed the finish line first! And who doesn't love all that other excitement…the action and suspense of these racers and their ultra fast cars they can identify with…full body cars, old cars, new cars, cars that do eighth mile burnouts and weird stuff on the track like cross the finish line tail first or bounce back and forth from guardrail to guardrail!
I do have to mention one other track here and that is Hudson Drag Strip in Hudson, NC. They had been having what they called '5.85' races on Thursday nights and it was one of the most popular things they ever did…, not just for the fans, but for the racers, too. It was not a heads up, no breakout race, but it was a lot different than anyone had ever done. The four cars who qualified the closest to a 5.85 ET above and the four who qualified below a 5.85 made up first round and they were paired according to their ETs. Everyone loved it…it was just different and the racers had a chance at a purse separate from regular race dates and they all got a lot of notoriety from this. Hudson Drag Strip was the ONLY track who EVER did this type of race!
In the meantime, the IHRA Top Sportsman racers of '86 were beefing up their old cars and engines or getting new ones for '87 and I don't think there was any one single person anywhere who had any idea what was going to happen that year. But at Darlington, everyone found out, starting off the with the first EVER 200 mph pass in a sportsman doorslammer. Bill Kuhlmann, whom no one in the south had ever heard of (he was one of those Midwestern outlaw Pro Stockers) ran a 202.24 on that horrible, cold, slick Darlington Dragway at nearly midnight at the Winter Nationals.
There were other things going on in the background as well. Seems a lot of folks wanted a 'shoebox' race car because they got more attention than ANY of the others. Before the end of 1987, Norm Wizner had debuted his '57 Mega Ford, Gordy Foust was working on a new '66 Chevelle and Richard Earle was cutting up a '58 Plymouth to make a 'Christine' shoebox! Ed Hoover had totaled his crazy Camaro with nothing more than bruises and building a new car and the craze was on! In 1988, Lamar Walden debuted his '62 Chevy, Tommy Howe's Datsun became the first sportsman doorslammer to run in the 6's. Then Gordy Hmiel ran a 6.99 and Rob ran over 200 in his shoebox Chevy and the first ever all 7-second Field in Top Sportsman happened.
IHRA Top Sportsman was still JUST a bracket and the racers were tired of running a bracket race at national events when they could run outlaw heads up everywhere else. They had a meeting and decided to ask IHRA to help them get something extra. What that extra was was the Top Sportsman Quick 8 Saturday Night Shootouts, one of the most popular shows IHRA ever had. The fans went wild! I have actually seen fans rush to their seats to watch this shootout and Mountain Motor Pro Stock and go get hot dogs when the alcohol and fuel cars were running! Sometimes the spectators were cheering and screaming and yelling so loud, it was hard to hear the cars…I was on the starting line and it was still sometimes hard to hear them. No one could have predicted how popular this was going to be! When Animal Jim defeated Rob Vandergriff at the Winter Nationals in 1988 in the new Quick 8 Shootout, it sealed the popularity of this new addition to IHRA.
I will have to say this…the smartest person in ALL this craziness was Duane Nichols. In 1989, Duane put together the United States Super Circuit and without a doubt, the seven years he ran this circuit, it was the most popular racing circuit that has ever been in the history of drag racing. People were really disappointed when, in 1995, Duane pulled the plug on the whole deal. When asked why, he simply told people, he could see the beginning of the end and he wanted to be remembered as quitting while he was ahead. He certainly was ahead!
When Steve Earwood was working for Gary Brown at Atlanta Dragway, I begged him for two years to have a Quick 8 Doorslammer race and he wouldn't even discuss it. I did everything I could think of to do, I told him how crazy people were over it, not just the racers, but spectators as well. I even tried to get him to come to one of our Carolina tracks on a Sunday when Atlanta wasn't running, but he never made the effort. He just laughed at me and kept on doing the same old thing. After Steve left Atlanta Dragway, he had a chance to come to an IHRA race at Bristol and after witnessing the astonishing success of Top Sportsman, especially the Saturday Night Quick 8 Shootout, he told me he wished he had listened to me…that this was, by far, the best show he had seen in years! He even sent me a letter after that…I will print it for you some time!!! One of the things he wrote was, "I must admit I haven't been so impressed since I saw my first funny cars back in the late '60s. The Top Sportsman cars really do have that kind of impact."
NHRA was just like Steve…they would not run Pro Mod for many years, mainly because of Pro Stock. They knew the Pro Mod would be faster and quicker than their limited 500 cubic inch Pro Stockers and didn't want to upset the apple cart. One of the reasons IHRA would not switch their Mountain Motor Pro Stock over to the standard NHRA 500 cubic inch limit was because they wanted their Pro Stock to be as fan-attended as Pro Mod. No factory sponsorships for Pro Mod…never would be. However, Pro Stock would always have some type of factory sponsorships…all this going on at a time when NHRA knew they were getting ready to lose Winston Drag Racing and they were hoping the auto makers would take up the slack when the Winston money was lost.
After Steve Earwood left Atlanta and Gary Brown took over the operations, Gary's wife Patti called me and asked if I would help them get the Pro Mod racers to come to Atlanta Dragway for the first time ever. They called this race the Mountain Motor Nitrous Nationals and it was held July 4 weekend in 1990. They had NO idea how to get in touch with any of these racers (and of course IHRA would never help an NHRA track!) and that's why they called me. I helped them call all these racers and for the FIRST time, Pro Mod got introduced to fans of Atlanta Dragway and I helped introduce Pro Mod to them and to NHRA. They went as nuts over Pro Mod as anyone ever had been. Patti and Gary held this race every year until NHRA 'bought' their track. And of course, NHRA wasn't about to run Pro Mod at one of their facilities.
MANY years later, NHRA finally recognized Pro Mod and allowed them to run at their races, at first it was only at certain races in the most out-of-the-way places. And the Pro Stockers hated them. And I don't blame them. They had no rules. They had no limits. But…progress is progress and the old saying, "You can't stop progress," was very true in the case of Pro Mod. When the powers at NHRA realized how much the Pro Mod racers were bringing to their little out-of-the-way facilities, they also realized how much this class could add to the whole line-up and NHRA finally does allow Pro Mod national events. But you don't see them on TV! Oh, no! Never, never, never. They are TOO popular. They are TOO fast. They are TOO quick! Fans love them TOO much. But this is one of the things IHRA still has going for it, no matter what anyone thinks.
Now folks, you have the TRUE, REAL history of Pro Modified. It doesn't have anything to do with the people who have used it as their claim to fame. It has to do with all the 'little guys' involved in the real history you've read here. Charles Carpenter, Becky White, Don Garrick and Orangeburg Dragstrip and more than just the names you've read here ARE the 'history' of Pro Mod. There has never been and, I predict, never will be a more exciting time in the sport of drag racing, the time for this kind of growth is well past. Pro Mod spread from the southeast…mainly the Carolinas…all across the country…not necessarily like a wildfire, but it was complete. No one escaped the thrill and excitement of Quick 8 Doorslammer racing, thank God!
This one bunch of racers has brought more spectators to the sport of drag racing than any other class ever and brought it more good notoriety as well (along with some bad). It is a shame so many Quick 8 or Pro Mod racers don't know their history and have gotten so far away from their roots that evidently they don't even care. But I guess that happens after time, I just want EVERYONE to know the TRUE history of Pro Mod before it's lost in a sea of 'story-telling.' And remember…I printed the true history of Pro Mod AS IT HAPPENED and have never felt the need to change a thing! Imagine what would have happened if there had not been instigators and believers and people like Charles Carpenter, Becky White and Don Garrick at Orangeburg?
Becky White, Editor and Publisher, Quick Times Racing News for 25 years!
(I will, later, print a list of names here…if you know of someone who helped to make Pro Mod possible, send them to me and I will add them to the list I already have. In the meantime, I think you SHOULD read Bobby's history…it will at least give you some insight into the racers themselves…I know he has been contacting them, which I did not.)
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Becky's Back!
Okay guys and gals...aren't y'all tired of NOT hearing from me? This is the time of year when I always started getting stir crazy even if I did attend the KDS WinterFest. Are they still having that race? I haven't heard anything from them in a couple of years. Looks to me like, since that race was my idea and I helped get it started and never missed but one of them before I got hurt, someone would AT LEAST let me know if it's still going on and who wins. I don't have time to go to everyone's web sites. Maybe they should change the name of it to the Becky White Annual KDS WinterFest! Been going through OLD stuff and enjoying seeing where I've been and the things I've done. I guess I never really thought about the kind of life I led, I had a job to do and I was always ready, willing and able to do it, no matter WHO tried to stand in my way. 
I don't miss going to the races, but I sure do miss some of the people. I was just thinking the other night, as I was looking through old photo albums and scrapbooks, that I had a helluva life in drag racing. I have known nearly every racer who was instrumental in this sport from the 60s on. Wow! And every person I have ever come into contact with in my life has had some kind of lasting impression on my life, be it good or bad! Now, each one who reads this can wonder which effect YOU had on me!! HA! I've been trying to write a couple of things and have been getting to talk to some folks I haven't talked to in a while and I'm enjoying that. I'll let you know when I get all that finished.
I am also getting ready to sell every single piece of drag racing 'junque' I have collected over the years! I need to get the rest of these doctor bills paid off, pay my car insurance, home owners' insurance, taxes, etc. Y'all know all that routine. I would like to get my antique store finished and get it opened, too. I can't get on with the next chapter in my life until I get rid of some of the stuff that's in my way. I would like to get the website finished so I can start getting stuff on it, but I can't even get Rufus to send me disks back or call me or email me. So I'm up in the air about that.
I am still having to use either a cane or crutches, depending on whether it's a good day or a bad day. I think I'm doing awfully good to get as much done as I do. Sorting and filing, emptying boxes and refilling boxes. You're all invited to come by, mapquest will help you out in that respect. Also, my phone number is 704-732-1160 and I will try to get on here more often. Maybe Rufus will read this and finish my website or send my stuff back, one or the other! Happy New Year to EVERYONE, I hope you all have a WONDERFUL, winning, healthy, happy, successful, peaceful and wealthy NEW YEAR! Hope to hear from everyone soon!
I don't miss going to the races, but I sure do miss some of the people. I was just thinking the other night, as I was looking through old photo albums and scrapbooks, that I had a helluva life in drag racing. I have known nearly every racer who was instrumental in this sport from the 60s on. Wow! And every person I have ever come into contact with in my life has had some kind of lasting impression on my life, be it good or bad! Now, each one who reads this can wonder which effect YOU had on me!! HA! I've been trying to write a couple of things and have been getting to talk to some folks I haven't talked to in a while and I'm enjoying that. I'll let you know when I get all that finished.
I am also getting ready to sell every single piece of drag racing 'junque' I have collected over the years! I need to get the rest of these doctor bills paid off, pay my car insurance, home owners' insurance, taxes, etc. Y'all know all that routine. I would like to get my antique store finished and get it opened, too. I can't get on with the next chapter in my life until I get rid of some of the stuff that's in my way. I would like to get the website finished so I can start getting stuff on it, but I can't even get Rufus to send me disks back or call me or email me. So I'm up in the air about that.
I am still having to use either a cane or crutches, depending on whether it's a good day or a bad day. I think I'm doing awfully good to get as much done as I do. Sorting and filing, emptying boxes and refilling boxes. You're all invited to come by, mapquest will help you out in that respect. Also, my phone number is 704-732-1160 and I will try to get on here more often. Maybe Rufus will read this and finish my website or send my stuff back, one or the other! Happy New Year to EVERYONE, I hope you all have a WONDERFUL, winning, healthy, happy, successful, peaceful and wealthy NEW YEAR! Hope to hear from everyone soon!
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