The one-day wonder

The 1965 Winternationals was an amazing race. All class and eliminator racing was completed in one day before a standing-room-only crowd.

This was Saturday's story at the 1965 opener, a nearly complete washout.

Other than this brief moment for the national anthem, Sunday at the 1965 Winternationals was 10 straight hours of racing.

Fans began entering the facility at midnight Saturday and filled the grandstands by dawn. It was a packed house for a packed day.

The Winternationals is always ripe with drama, whether it's because of new teams, new technology, or new plotlines, and few people walk away from the annual season opener disappointed. The race is that good.

Sometimes, though, fans can walk away shaking their heads in disbelief for more than just the accomplishment of the racers, and never was that more true than at the 1965 event. I mentioned in my column last week that the win by Roland Leong and driver Don Prudhomme at the 1965 race was especially memorable for more than just the fact that it marked "the Snake's" first win and kicked off an amazing two years for the Hawaiian dragster. Anyone who attended that race surely also will remember it as one of the most Herculean efforts ever expended by NHRA to complete an event.

Originally scheduled for three days, the event was reduced to just a single day by heavy fog and persistent rain Friday and Saturday. Some runs had been made between raindrops Friday, with Prudhomme's 7.80, 204.54 leading the way, just ahead of "Big Daddy" Don Garlits' 1964 Nationals-winning Wynn's Jammer, which chalked up a 7.81 at a blistering event-record 206.88 mph. But, save for a few Street-class runs, Saturday was a complete washout.

As NHRA officials glowered at the cloudy skies Saturday afternoon, they wondered if somehow they not only could allow all 612 participants to get their fair shot at Pomona glory in the seven traditional eliminators Sunday but also complete the hotly contested class runoffs – 70 classes in all – on the same day. Early estimates of the total number of runs needed to finish the race were in excess of 3,000. Can you imagine? It seemed to be a ludicrous proposition.

They ultimately envisioned – then flawlessly executed – a bold plan that will long be remembered and probably never repeated.

To alleviate expected traffic jams for an anticipated crowd of more than 60,000 fans eager to witness what would probably be the most action-packed single day of racing in history, ticket sales began at 10 p.m. Saturday, and the spectator gates were opened at midnight. Fans who had parked on the side streets adjacent to the L.A. County Fairgrounds streamed in, and by 4 a.m., most of the prime spots in the bleachers had been grabbed. Yet eager fans, primed by the Friday headlines, continued to roll in as the sun rose to reveal a standing-room-only crowd.

Event director Jack Hart lit the first engines at 7 a.m., and Chief Starter Buster Couch got 'em busy on Parker Avenue. Save for a one-minute, 45-second break as Couch and Pomona Valley Timing Association honcho John Moxley ran the Stars and Stripes up the flagpole and the national anthem played and a short downtime when an errant fueler took out the top-end lights, the Pomona quarter-mile was in use for the next 10 hours.

Among the class winners were names that would resound for years in the sport, with the likes of Cecil Yother, Dave Kempton, Bill Hoefer, Dave Strickler, Judy Lilly, Fred Crow, K.S. Pittman, "Bones" Balough, Charlie Smith, Willis Ragsdale, Kay Sissell, and Chico Breschini earning coveted class crowns.

Writer Al Caldwell noted that pairs of Top Gas dragsters were leaving the line every 67 seconds and the fuelers at a rate of two every 72 seconds. The Top Gas field was set by 11 a.m. and the fuel field by noon, and eliminations began in earnest.

By the count of National DRAGSTER Associate Editor Dan Roulston, an average of 5.2 cars went down the track each minute of the 10 hours, and the combined mileage traveled by the entries down the track was about 790 miles under full power (DRAGSTER reporters jokingly called the event the "Pomona 800"). Adding in shutdown area and travel up the return road, Roulston estimated that the combined distance traveled would have carried someone east from Pomona and well into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Jr. Stock Eliminator final, which Kempton won, was the final pair down the track at just after 5 p.m. and 3,167 previous pairings. The racers and NHRA crew were so efficient that a half-hour of daylight still remained.

The Winternationals didn’t finish until well after that as NHRA's Farmer Dismuke and his tech crew worked well into Sunday night in teardown for the 28 cars that had their innards inspected, detected, and, in two cases, rejected.

"Drag racing is a highly emotional sport, and the heat of competition builds to a fever pitch," wrote Roulston, "but the cooperation extended to officials of the National Hot Rod Association by the racers at the 1965 Winternationals will probably never again be duplicated." Amen.

Speaking of Leong, Steve Justice was there when the Hawaiian made his first (and only) fuel-dragster pass behind the wheel, which led to Prudhomme taking over the reins. He remembers it well.

"Roland first showed off his new Fuller car Oct. 4, 1964," he wrote. "I worked the [eighth-mile] concession stand and witnessed Roland's initial pass in the car. C.J. [Hart, strip operator] had told him to make a half pass in the car and/or keep it under 150 mph. I just think things happened faster than he was used to, and by the time he passed me, the car was still hauling ass. He was in the left lane, and at about 1,000 feet, the car got into the dirt, kissed the fence, and went airborne.

"One could not really see anything after that, but word got back that Roland had come down right side up near the railroad tracks (quite a distance to the east of the strip). Roland was okay, but C.J. was livid and told Roland he would never drive a car at Lions while he was in charge. I also recollect that this incident was the reason C.J. initiated his driver's licensing program. Leong-Black was rebuilt and returned to the strip in January 1965 as the Hawaiian with Don Prudhomme at the wheel. It just took them a week or so to set a new speed record at Lions of 204 mph (hard to do on a Saturday night when the track was cold and dewy)."

I also got a lot of other comments from people who had never seen any color photos of the Hawaiian dragster and were surprised at what a pretty car it was. That's the downside to doing all of these historical articles; there aren’t always a lot of color photos. Most of the guys who were shooting for the weeklies shot black and white film for two reasons: 1) It was cheaper because they could process the film themselves, and 2) The publications themselves had not really advanced to color photography due to its cost.

Today, although we have to manage the use of color in National DRAGSTER to create an effecient press run, its use is much more widespread, and, of course, on the Internet, color is free. Can you imagine how cool it would have been to have had the Internet in 1965? Where would drag racing be today?

Okay, that's it for the week. In a few days, it's going to be Winternationals Week and the launch of a shiny new season. I can hardly wait.

Lessons learned in Phoenix

Lucky guy that I am, I got to bask in the glory of Arizona sunshine and shower in the nitro mists of testing fuel cars last weekend at the NAPA Auto Parts National Time Trials in Phoenix, where I filled my notebook and tape recorder with way more information than I could fit into the limited space of my National DRAGSTER coverage.

As you can probably imagine, a lot was going on there with all of the new driver/tuner/car combos, and with the shoes and wrenches not always wearing their national event best on a casual weekend, I had to stop more than once to remind myself who was working for whom before I dragged out the interview notepad. I heard that at least one crew chief pulled into the wrong pit after a run this weekend out of force of habit.

In all my years here, I cannot remember a time when virtually all of the top powers in one class would be entering the year with at least one major new cog in the machine. Four of last year's top-five Top Fuel drivers – Tony Schumacher, Larry Dixon, Cory McClenathan, and Antron Brown – are working with new crew chiefs, and, of course, the fourth member of the that top five, Hillary Will, is on the sidelines (I did exchange e-mails with Hillary this weekend, and she tells me she will be in Pomona to network or whatever it is drivers do to try to find a ride; both Tommy Johnson Jr. and Melanie Troxel were in Phoenix last weekend, probably doing the same).

It was definitely a shock to see Rob Flynn consulting with Brandon Bernstein (and equally shocking not to see Tim and Kim Richards) or to see Larry Dixon huddled with Jason McCulloch instead of Donnie Bender or Antron Brown talking things over with Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald instead of Lee Beard.

For some reason, our staff likes to take pictures of me talking to the drivers, and Marc Gewertz, who did an amazing job for us in Phoenix, was no exception. I think John Force and I were talking about grandbabies.

The event is always kind of a weird deal for a reporter to cover because, unlike at a national event, where you know that the teams are trying to make full passes and run the best e.t., you never know in testing unless you ask whether a team planned to only run it to 330 or 660 or if there was a problem. And sometimes the team that had the most successful outing isn’t the one with low e.t. but the one that tested the wheels off a new part and only needed to run a few hundred feet to get it right.

This year's Phoenix event made that doubly tough because the track surface was, to put it kindly, tricky. Or to put it as John Force said, "Coyote Ugly."

Although the Firebird staff toiled hard Sunday to bring the track around and have it yield the nice numbers that it did, the track was a real crapshoot Friday and Saturday. In fairness, it wasn't all about the track prep; the problem was exacerbated – or perhaps even caused by – a number of factors, not the least of which was the lack of rubber. In addition to a scarcity of Sportsman cars that normally would lay down traction-enhancing rubber, the nitro cars weren't much able to help themselves because the new, stiffer 2550 Goodyears don't leave behind as much rubber on the burnout or the run as their predecessors. I wasn't camped on the starting line, but I never saw the track scraped once during the three days, which you would never see at a national event. (After the workout it got during weekend and in the days following, the track should be at "just right" for the national event there in a few weeks.)

As a consequence, drivers never made it past 100 feet let alone 60 feet on plenty of runs, and those that made it past there often didn’t make it through the "shake zone." If you could get that far and your crew chief gave you the green light, good runs were possible, as evidenced by Del Worsham's stout 4.04 Saturday and Schumacher's and Dixon's nearly matching 3.83s.

"The Sarge" and Dixon were definitely two people whose brains I wanted to pick as they enter a new season with some interesting future matchups. You just have to know that any win that Schumacher gets against former tuner Alan Johnson will be just that much sweeter and every loss just a bit tougher than any other whether those guys admit it or not. Which they wouldn't, by the way.

Schumacher was the most candid of the two, but only because Dixon is way more modest. He always has been, and you gotta like that in a guy. Schumacher just exudes confidence, and rightly so with his accomplishments.

Tony Schumacher is always an interesting interview and great with a sound bite. We both play hockey, so we have that common interest, and it's always fun to talk to him. All eyes will be on him this year after 2008.

"It's going to be the ultimate battle between us and Alan," he told me. "The fans are in for a real treat. They’re going to see a battle. I think we’re both going to have extremely strong cars, and we're both going to have a lot of fun going at each other. Alan and I have talked about this before, when he was here; we don’t race for the trophy, we race for the battle itself. And now we've got a kick-ass adversary.

"A.J. did a helluva job of picking Dixon, and he's got a fantastic car and a fantastic crew, but so do we. As long as we stay focused, we'll be okay; but you know us, we're a machine over here."

I asked him specifically about racing Dixon, who with Doug Kalitta and him are generally regarded as the three best pilots in the class.

"It's going to make us both dig so deep," he predicted. "Dixon and I will both be so jacked up we'll probably both red-light. Dixon and I don't mess around. We both respect each other. We'll just pull up there and do battle and win or lose shake the other guy's hand at the other end."

Although nearly every member of the crew followed Johnson to his new deal, Schumacher says he harbors no animosity, and I believe him.

"Those guys are like family," he said. "Those guys are my brothers, and they had an awesome opportunity with Alan. I don't hold anything against them."

Dixon, as is his wont, refused to be pulled into any such comparisons – though he did bristle a bit when I told him Schumacher said they both always shallow stage against one another, and Dixon quickly cited several examples where "Shoe" didn't last year – and refused to give the other guys any inspirational "bulletin-board material."

"I don't get up more for any one driver than another," he said. "I'm pretty much an up guy already for everyone, so it's not really like I can possibly get up any more than I usually am. If you can get up for any particular driver, you can get up for everyone, and that's what we're supposed to do as drivers."

I asked how the fit has been for him, learning A.J.'s driver routine and working with all-new teammates.

No pressure, Mike.

"It's going great; it's different, but I don't think it's any different than what I've been accustomed to in the past with crew-chief changes. I've had quite a few crew chiefs over at Prudhomme's over the years, and I'm just trying to fit in with the team. The guys here are pretty loose; you'd think they'd be all 100 percent serious, but they're loose."

It will be interesting to see how Mike Green fills A.J.'s boots over in the Army camp; no pressure or anything, Mike. You just inherited the most successful Top Fuel team in history. I always liked Mike, and I've known him since his days working on Kirk Lawrence's Top Alcohol Dragster in the early 1980s and then with Gary Ormsby, where he worked under Beard. Green and his then cohort, Chuck Schifsky, always went out of their way to help me with info on their car, and Schifsky, son of former Funny Car racer Bill Schifsky, obviously understood the journalism world well enough to become executive editor at Motor Trend, the world's most prestigious car magazine. He worked there with my best friend, C. Van Tune, but both have moved on. Chuck's now handling PR work for Honda, overseeing all of the PR offices and activities outside of the Torrance, Calif., headquarters for the Honda and Acura brands, along with Honda Power Equipment and Honda Marine, including offices in New York City, Atlanta, and Detroit. He has obviously taken a different career path than Green, and it's cool to see them both succeed.

Donnie Bender, center, and Todd Smith, right, both told me that they couldn't be happier with their new pilot, Spencer Massey.

Just how real the Bud car's 323-mph run was will be seen in Pomona, but needless to say, expectant papa BB and Flynn got 'em all talking.

There were lots of smiles in Camp Snake, where new driver Spencer Massey has made a fine impression, and no one is more pleased with him than crew chiefs Donnie Bender and Todd Smith.

" 'Snake' couldn’t have picked a better guy," said Bender, whose U.S. Smokeless car was impressive with seven strong 60-foot times between .847 and .832. "I'd take him over any of the unemployed drivers out there. We knew the kid was good, but we didn’t know how he would adapt to us. We'll tell him how to do something, and the first time he might not be perfect, but by the second time, he's right where we want him to be. He picks things up real good.

"He's pumping up the team, and he's about the same age as the crew, so they really have a lot more in common with him than they did with Larry. We're very happy; I'd say we accomplished 90 percent of what we set out to do. Our main goal was to get the driver comfortable with us and us with him."

Massey, who will be packing his truck Thursday and moving from Fort Worth, Texas, to Brownsburg, Ind., put it succinctly: "I wish Pomona was tomorrow," he said.

Bernstein also was learning some new tricks for crew chief Flynn, whose driver starting-line routine relies a lot more on the driver than did the Richardses, who had tuned "Double-B" in all of his six previous seasons.

"B-Squared" – who told me that he and wife Tracey are expecting the newest heir to the Bud King throne in early August – had a bit of a rough go as Flynn tried to meld his combination with some existing parts on the Bud combination. Flynn's famed "Canadian horsepower" wasn't getting much of a display as the clutch wasn't functioning correctly and the car kept dropping cylinders.

Flynn didn't seem much worried about it – "You can't just take your combination from one car to another because the cars themselves are different anyway. You have to figure it out; this whole job is about solving problems." – and planned to stay early into this week to get things sorted out, but I was surprised to receive a text message from Brad Littlefield when I got off the plane Monday afternoon in Ontario telling me that Bernstein had run 323 mph.

I was very skeptical of that speed because the best 1,000-foot speed ever is just 318, set last year by Schumacher. The Bud car ran 280 mph to the eighth-mile, and it seemed a bit implausible to me that it could pick up 43 mph in the final 340 feet. I asked Brad to run the numbers, and the best final 340-foot increase he could find in Top Fuel was just 38 mph. "Little Brad" tracked down "Little B" this morning, and he swears that the numbers all line up and that the run was legit. We'll only have to wait about a week to see what they can do in Pomona.

Morgan Lucas showed "rookie" Shawn Langdon the ropes.

I spent a good bit of time with Top Fuel license hopefuls Steve Faria and Shawn Langdon, whose success stories you can see on NHRA.com in a little feature I wrote on Faria and the presser from the Lucas camp.

It was interesting to watch Langdon interact with Morgan Lucas and see Morgan give his new teammate advice. Seems it wasn't all that long ago that Lucas was the one getting the advice.

Although Langdon only made it down the track once when I was there through Sunday, he was pleased for other reasons, which seems to be the case for a lot of guys who are glass-half-full when the fans and others are looking at it as half empty. There's a lot of optimism early in the season.

"I have no frustration because the car hasn't gone down," he said. "At this point, anything that happens is good because it gets me familiar with those situations. I'm learning a lot with tire smoke and tire shake; I want to get as much info in me as I can before we get to Pomona so they’re not held back by a rookie driver."

Ron Capps was another guy whose glass was half full, especially after good runs the weekend before in Florida. Although they banged the blower pretty hard on one run Saturday – Christine Robertson got this great shot of it, tracked me down in the pits, and asked about submitting it for use in our ND coverage — and Capps and crew chief Ed McCulloch could only run a best of 4.85, making me a little uneasy after going on record in the last issue of ND picking them to win the championship this year (!), the team was another of those "there's more than meets the eyes" deals. Capps is one of those acutely aware guys who knows that the stars of Phoenix testing end up on the cover of the ND that's handed out in Pomona – he even publicly admitted that a few years ago – so it probably killed him that he wasn't making full runs.

"We were in the same boat with a lot of other teams where the numbers you see are not indicative of true performance," he said reassuringly. "For us, it was just going to 330 feet, maybe 400 feet and trying different things to make ourselves better. So, we're happy." Me too. Don’t let me down, Ron!

That's it for now; have another meeting about the new NHRA.com – coming your way shortly! – to get to. I've always said that part of the success of this column lies in the contributions of its readers, and I'd like to thank those of you in Phoenix who were kind enough to share your love of this column with me in person and those who have e-mailed me their similar thoughts. As you can imagine, with ND and NHRA.com there's a lot to clear off my plate to make the time to work on this column, but your kind words provide the inspiration and the encouragement to get 'er done.

See ya later this week.

The Hawaiian's Winters wonderland

It didn't take long for the new partnership of 23-year-old driver Don Prudhomme and 20-year-old car owner Roland Leong to bear fruit as they won the 1965 Winternationals in their national event debut together. Leong's mother, Teddy, third from left, was among those celebrating.

Forty-four years ago this Winternationals, a 20-year-old car owner brought his beautiful new Top Fuel dragster and his new driver to the fabled Pomona racetrack and with a stunning victory launched them both into the limelight of the NHRA landscape, where they have remained for five decades.

"Consistency, power and performance were the key words for the Top Fuel eliminator contestants at the fifth annual Winternationals Championship Drag Races," read the opening lines of National DRAGSTER's coverage of the 1965 Winternationals, "and the entry that was on 200 plus percent in all three brackets was Don Prudhomme and the crew of the ultra-beautiful Hawaiian, owned by Roland Leong, from Honolulu."

The Pomona win began an incredible two-year spree for Leong as after he and Prudhomme won the season opener, they also won the other big national event on the NHRA calendar – a little race we call the U.S. Nationals – and then, unbelievably, Leong accomplished the same two-race bonanza the following year with a different driver, Mike Snively. Winning both Pomona and Indy back-to-back helped make Leong's Hawaiian a household name to drag race fans from coast to coast and certainly didn't hurt the careers of Prudhomme and Snively.

In 1965, Prudhomme certainly was no stranger to West Coast fans. He had carved a gunslinger's reputation with a surprising win at the 1962 March Meet with chassis builder Kent Fuller and engine maestro Dave Zeuschel, and in 1963-64 at the wheel of the Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster with money man Tommy Greer and engine wizard Keith Black, he had run up an impressive streak of match race wins, but he hadn't won a national event to establish a nationwide rep.

Prudhomme and Leong met when the Greer-Black-Prudhomme team traveled to Hawaii for an exhibition event in 1964; when the G-B-P team disbanded later that year, Leong hired Prudhomme.

In Pomona, the Hawaiian made a dazzling series of runs between 7.75 and 7.87 to earn Prudhomme his first of 49 wins.

Seven months later at the Nationals, NHRA President Wally Parks was congratulating Prudhomme and Leong in the Indy winner's circle as Teddy beamed on approvingly.

Leong can't remember the name of the actor's son posing with him and Prudhomme in Bakersfield, in 1965, but he did point out how dirty his pants were. "You can tell who did all the work on this car," he smirked. (Update: The Insider reader experts come through again: It's Timothy Rooney, son of Mickey; thanks Paul Cuff and Cliff Morgan!)

Leong also was not truly fresh off the boat -- he had owned and driven a gas dragster both on the islands and at some SoCal tracks, and he was the owner of the winning Top Gas car driven by fellow Hawaiian Danny Ongais at the 1964 Winternationals – but it was his first foray into the nitro ranks. Leong had met Black and Prudhomme in Hawaii – where his parents ran a successful insurance business and a speed shop – when the G-B-P made exhibition runs for a track opening, though Leong (contrary to previous reports) says he already had commissioned Fuller to build him a car similar to the G-B-P entry before its arrival.

Leong's initial lap in his beautiful new blue fueler, tuned by Black himself, did not go well – much in the kind of way that the Titanic's voyage was fine other than the part about running into that iceberg. Leong, who had cut his teeth driving Dragmaster-chassised gas dragsters, got loose twice but still ran 191 mph; however, unfamiliar with the cockpit layout of a Fuller car, he couldn't find the parachute release, accidentally bumped the steering wheel with his elbow, hit a sign, and ended up off the end of the Lions track.

All these years later, Prudhomme, who buckled in Leong for his maiden voyage, still finds the incident humorous, as he told me last week. "Roland didn't have a clue as to where he was going. It was the funniest damn thing ever, and we still laugh about it; he ended up down there on the railroad tracks, and asked me, ' "Vipe," what happened?' He didn’t even know."

That incident – and a stern admonishment from Black – was all it took for Leong to acknowledge that he didn’t belong in the saddle of a car that fast.

Recalled Leong, "On Monday morning, I went to Black's, and he called me into his office. 'I can’t go to the races with you anymore,' he told me. 'You scared the [crap] outta me. If you got hurt or killed, what would I tell your parents?' But he told me he was going to give up running the Greer-Black-Prudhomme car and that I should get Prudhomme to drive my car for me and he would still tune it."

The G-B-P team was in its death throes anyway as Greer's industrial machine business had taken a downturn, and he sold the car to Black for what he owed him in winnings and wages. But Black's own engine-building business had begun to take off, and he had no time to be a team owner and a tuner, so all of the pieces fit conveniently for Leong.

"The Greer-Black-Prudhomme car was a great car, but NHRA was really starting to take off then, and the Winternationals was definitely a race that everyone wanted to win," recalled Prudhomme. "I never dreamed that things would turn out like they did, but winning those two races was probably the biggest thing that ever happened to me and to Roland and even to Keith Black."

The team first formed in late 1964 and was ready for the Winternationals, where Prudhomme had the quick time of the opening day, 7.80 at a slowing 204.54 mph, just ahead of Don Garlits' marginally slower yet much faster 7.81, 206.88. Fog and rain conspired to force a one-day, all-day finish Sunday (which I will recount in an upcoming column).

Before a packed house and the Wide World of Sports cameras, the Hawaiian dished up a series of seven-second blasts to collect the green, getting past Willie Redford and the broken Carroll Bros. & Oxman machine with a 7.87, then burying James Warren with a 7.77 in round two. (Interestingly, Warren was driving the Chrysler-powered Warren & Crowe entry that he had qualified after the Chevy-motivated Warren & Coburn entry had been bumped from the field.)

Black continued to work his magic for the Hawaiian in the semifinals, where a quicker-still 7.75 at 204.08 dispatched current NHRA Chief Starter Rick Stewart. The Hawaiian remained rock steady in the final round against "Wild Bill" Alexander with a 7.76, 201.34 to Alexander's 7.92, 198.22.

Leong convinced Prudhomme, who still was painting cars at the time, that they could take advantage of this newfound fame on the match race trail, and after agreeing to drive for a percentage of the winnings, they the road, hard and often.

"We just wanted to race; we'd race on a dirt road if you told us how to get there," recalled Leong. "I remember one night, we got rained out at Long Beach, and I was living in an apartment in the [San Fernando] Valley because that was where Prudhomme lived. When we woke up Sunday, it was sunny, so we decided to run San Fernando [Raceway] because they didn't open until noon. It was the only time I ever raced there, and I think we even won the race. Like I said, if there was dragstrip, we'd race it.

"The only thing was that if we had a race Saturday, Black would tune for us, but he couldn’t ever go on Sundays, so Prudhomme and I would be on our own, but we didn’t care. Prudhomme wasn't really an engine man, and all of my experience was with gas engines, and we were both really young. I can remember me and Prudhomme pulling out of Black's shop one time and him saying, 'There goes the blind leading the blind.' He just shook his head and said, 'I'm only a phone call away.'

"We went back East and won a lot of match races, and, of course, we won Indy, too [beating former Prudhomme mentor Tommy Ivo on the final run], but Black flew back there to help us. We won the race on Monday, and there was a race in Detroit the next night, but Black had to fly home. So Prudhomme and I ran down there – we didn’t even have time to check the bearings – and ran quicker and faster than we did at Indy and won that race, too!"

The successful partnership ended at year's end after B&M and Milodon, which were partners in the new Torkmaster transmission, built a car, had Zeuschel build the engines, and gave it to Prudhomme to run.

"It was hard to leave and quite a setback from not driving the Hawaiian because it was such a great car, but the B&M Torkmaster car ended up running pretty good," said Prudhomme, "and I was able from there to go into business and own my own team. Of course, Roland went on and did good, too. He's made a helluva lot better owner and tuner than he did a driver."

"I was a bit surprised, but life goes on," admitted Leong of Prudhomme's departure, "but it wasn't that a big a deal; we were young and wanted to race, and obviously back then, there were no driver contracts. [No one would know that better than Leong, who has had more drivers than any other team owner -- 22, by most counts.]

"I had just turned 21, and all we wanted to do was race, and to be able to go around the country and be paid to run, that was unheard of to us, so we didn’t really focus on all that other stuff. "

After Prudhomme left the team at the end of the successful 1965 season, Leong tapped Mike Snively to drive the beautiful blue car.

Snively repeated Prudhomme's 1965 performance by winning the 1966 Winternationals, then went on to also win the U.S. Nationals.

Leong won the Winternationals two more times as a car owner, including back to back in Funny Car in 1970 and 1971 with Larry Reyes and Butch Maas (pictured) at the wheel of his Dodge Charger.

Leong hired Snively, whom he knew through his contact at Dragmaster (and who six years later would run the sport's first five-second pass in Jim Annin's dragster in Ontario, Calif.), and the two partnered for the 1966 campaign. Before they headed to Pomona, Leong was on the phone to tracks back East, sure that they were eager to book the famed Hawaiian, but got a rude surprise.

"I told them that I owned the Hawaiian, and they told me, 'Oh, we've already got Prudhomme booked,' " recalled Leong. "Prudhomme had booked the car the year before because he and [Tom] McEwen were always kidding me about my accent and my pidgin English and that they should do the talking. But once we won Pomona again, the track operators started calling me again, and off we went."

Like Prudhomme the year before, Snively put the Hawaiian at the head of the pack in qualifying at Pomona with a strong run, a 7.66 at 205 mph, then had to defeat 31 other cars after Mother Nature stepped in. Heavy fog Saturday had forced the cancellation of AA/FD class racing, so NHRA decided that instead of the usual format – in which Saturday's winner would race the winner of Sunday's 16-car field – that it would simply expand the field to 32 cars and run the first round Saturday and the remaining four Sunday.

Snively got past Saturday's challenge with a 7.57 at 208.80 against Roy Thode, then opened Sunday with a better-yet 7.55 to defeat Paul "the Kid" Sutherland. A semifinal 7.63 defeated "Sneaky Pete" Robinson's SOHC-powered fueler to push Snively into the semi's against Warren, who a round earlier had set low e.t. with a 7.51. Showcasing his skills, Snively slapped a gatejob on the "Bakersfield Flash" and the Ridge Route Terrors and emerged with a 7.59 to 7.58 holeshot ticket to the final round.

Leong, Snively, and Black saved the best for last, powering to a 7.54 at 209.78 mph to defeat "Big Jim" Dunn's gallant 7.59, 207.84 to again claim the Winternationals trophy. They, too, hit the match race trail, and again come Labor Day weekend, the young Hawaiian kid was standing in the winner's circle in Indy with his feared blue dragster. To add to the duality of the accomplishment, as Prudhomme had defeated Ivo, who gave him his start in racing in 1960, Snively and Leong beat Leong's old island pal, Ongais, for the 1966 Indy win.

Those must have been some pretty heady times for a 21-year-old, but when pressed to brag about himself, Leong, now 64 and still spry and active, will only admit, "When we'd pull into the track, guys back East were pretty much saying, 'Man, we might as well just go home,' because everyone expected us to win, and, well, we always did well."

Leong and Snively didn't win any national events in 1967, but they did win in Bakersfield and at the Hot Rod Championships in Riverside, Calif., and a lot of other big match races.

"After Bakersfield, I got a new Don Long car; Snively and I spent three days and two nights working and sleeping at Don Long's shop to get it done before the Riverside race, then went out there and won the race and set low e.t. and top speed," recalled Leong.

Beyond the then-unprecedented Top Fuel back-to-back wins, the Winternationals has been kind to Leong. His Pomona successes continued into his Funny Car career, which, like his Top Fuel career, got off to a rough start when Larry Reyes kited the Hawaiian Charger in the lights at the 1969 race. Reyes came back to win the race the next year for Leong, who also was in the Pomona winner's circle the following year with new driver Butch Maas.

At the 1985 Winternationals, Leong and driver Rick Johnson set the Funny Car world on its ear in the second round with a barrier-breaking 5.58 – breaking Prudhomme's longstanding 5.63 mark – at 262.62 mph, also the fastest pass in history, supplanting Mark Oswald's 261.62 from the previous year's World Finals. Credit went largely to a Hawaiian Punch Daytona body that had spent eight hours in the Lockheed wind tunnel in Georgia and the addition of a 14-71 blower in place of the 12-71 that Leong traditionally had run.

Leong returned to the Pomona winner's circle in 1998 as a crew chief with car owner Prudhomme and driver Ron Capps; Prudhomme, too, has not done too shabby since that 1965 win, banking four straight victories behind the wheel at the season opener (1975-'78). Capps' 1998 win was accompanied by a victory by Prudhomme Top Fuel pilot Larry Dixon, making it a doubly sweet moment. Dixon also won the race in 2002 and 2003 for Prudhomme en route to their world championships.

Both will be in action again this year in Pomona, with Prudhomme unveiling new driver Spencer Massey and Leong tuning on Mike McCain's Bomb Squad Plymouth Duster nostalgia Funny Car, which will make exhibition runs with driver Mendy Fry. If their past history on Parker Avenue is any indication, it should be another memorable weekend for both the fabled "Hawaiian" and the legendary "Snake."

The return of Five Fabulous Favorite Fotos: Norman Blake

(Charles Denson photo)

One of last summer's popular Insider features was Five Fabulous Favorite Fotos, wherein I contacted some of the sport's greatest lensmen and asked for their best shots. I'm proud to bring it back and equally proud to reintroduce it with Norman Blake as its subject.

"Stormin' Norman" has long been considered one of the East Coast's finest racing photographers (this despite the fact that he only got his driver's license seven years ago and to this day has never even owned a car) and a longtime friend of mine, so I was proud to have him accept my offer to showcase his skills. Here's his story, in his own words, followed by his faves, which, as you will see, he found impossible to limit to five.

"I always had an interest in cars and cameras from an early age. I started making photos when I was about 8 years old with a Kodak Brownie Super 27 (which I still own). I would go to car shows and read the magazines that were out at the time: Hot Rod, Car Craft, Drag Racing USA, and any others I could get my hands on. I always liked seeing what cool and spectacular pics that were being made by people like Steve Reyes, Jim Kelly, Bob McClurg, Leslie Lovett, and others that were helping produce the images (which were plastered all over my walls) for these publications. Especially Reyes. I was always amazed at the moments he would catch on film! This would kinda stick with me down the road.

"In 1971, some older friends asked me if I would like to go to an eight-car Funny Car match race with them, and I jumped at the chance. This was at New York National Speedway out on Long Island. I was hooked at this point. So when they asked if I wanted to go to Raceway Park a few weeks later to another Funny Car show, I did not hesitate at saying yes. Once I found out I could get to Raceway Park by bus, I went as often as I could afford to. Along the way, I got a better camera and a longer lens and started to notice I could make photos like the ones I saw in the magazines and the track newspaper, Raceway News.

"I learned in school how to develop and print my own black and white film and prints and then struck up a bit of a through-the-mail Q&A friendship with Larry 'Max' Maxwell of L&M Photos fame. He was very helpful steering me in the right direction on what I was trying to do. I also started to sell some B&W prints to the gentleman who ran the souvenir stand on the spectator side of the track. Long story short, this got my foot in the door at Raceway Park. I was given a photo pass by Richard Napp, and from that moment on, I’ve been a contributor to their newspaper.

"When I finished high school, I hit the ground running. I shot the ’73 Summernationals with credentials and got to meet 'Max' and my other photo heroes. I had my first photo published in National DRAGSTER from that event. For the next 30 or so years, I basically ate, slept, and drank drag racing. I was Division 1 photographer for a year in 1980. I freelanced for all the publications that ran drag racing. I worked mostly for Super Stock & Drag Illustrated as one of their main contributors. I also contributed to Home Mechanics and Popular Mechanics. I was associate editor for a short-lived newspaper, Dragstar Racing News, and for Drag Racing Illustrated (which only lasted for one issue; the second never got to the newsstand). I also photo-edited publications for Fass/Harris and Engledrum Publishing Cos. early on. In the latter part of the '80s, I started doing freelance assisting for other photographers, doing lighting and whatever else it took to make a photo -- mostly on-location work. I also worked as a photographer (with 'Stat Guy,' Lewis Bloom, an accomplished photographer in his own right) for the N.Y. Roadrunners Club (the people who put on the New York Marathon in the late ‘80s early ‘90s) for their in-house magazine, New York Running News and also shot rock 'n' roll shows for fun. Some of that work has been published in books and magazines. Today I only go to a race on occasion as mostly I have been following and photographing the neo-burlesque and sideshow entertainment that is going on here in New York and around the country.

"I would like to thank Vinnie, Richard, and Uncle Lou Napp and their families, along with Vince Mele, for allowing me the freedom to do some of the crazy things I have done at Raceway Park to make some really cool pics. I would also like to thank Mike Civelli, Art Leong, Ray Cook, Dave Bergfeldt, Bill D'Ottavio, and the many others that allowed me to tag along for a ride on this roller coaster of a career. And thanks to my friends and colleagues for keeping me on my toes, too! Thanks everybody that has helped and supported my career to this day. Godspeed to those above that are no longer with us. You are sorely missed."

If ever there was someone on the staff who simultaneously got Bill's humor and paid for it, it's Associate Editor John Jodauga, who worked with Crites here back in the 1970s before leaving us to open his own ad agency (which meant he still had to deal with Bill) and later returned. Here are his thoughts and remembrances.

"Over the years, I had often compared the antics of Bill Crites to those of Stan Laurel of the famed Laurel & Hardy comedy team. No matter where you were, Crites always seemed to manage to create a scenario in which anyone who was with him would eventually be forced to say in typical Oliver Hardy fashion, 'Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.'

"One such example took place in the early 1970s when we were returning from the World Finals, which then was held in Dallas. Shortly after reaching cruising altitude, Crites began lobbing ice cubes from his soft drink at me, and in self-defense, I of course had to strike back. An irate flight attendant ordered us both out of our seats into the aisle and then reprimanded the both of us in a tone for the rest of the coach passengers to hear, 'If I see another ice cube fly through the air, I’m kicking both of you off the plane -- at 30,000 feet -- and with no parachutes.'

"Sometimes I have to admit that I shared in the enjoyment of Crites’ pranks, such as the one that took place in 1969, the year that both of us joined the ND staff, when we had to drive a rent-a-truck with the souvenir issues of National DRAGSTER to that year’s NHRA Nationals in Indianapolis. We were told to take turns driving without stopping off at a motel, and initially that didn’t bother us because there were lots of wide-open spaces on the old Route 66 in which we could make up for lost time. But to our disappointment, we discovered that the truck was equipped with an engine governor that restricted the speeds to 55 mph, which meant that the trip would take about 40 hours. Crites came up with the idea of attempting to dismantle the governor by intentionally backfiring the engine, and although the ploy failed at its original goal, we both got pretty good at producing a big bang.

"As dusk was approaching at the end of the second day, we spotted a band of genuine Woodstock-era hippies thumbing for a ride while standing beneath the overpass. I shut off the engine to prepare for the backfire, and as we slowly pulled over, the hippies, who were thinking we were stopping to provide them a ride, smiled and flashed us the peace sign as they eagerly approached the truck. But when the ignition was turned back on, a huge ball of fire, enhanced by the growing darkness and the reverberating roar from being beneath the overpass, emerged from beneath the truck, and the kindly expressions on their faces were quickly replaced by eye-bulging, mouth-gaping sheer terror as they truly felt that they were facing Armageddon.

"But Crites wasn’t satisfied. Early the next morning, when we began driving through the quiet suburban areas of Indianapolis at about 7, the only other moving object on the street was a 9-year-old boy riding his bicycle on a newspaper route. I pleaded with Crites not to backfire the engine, but he replied, 'Don’t ever tell me don’t!' After the ensuing explosion caused the startled boy to fall off his bike with newspapers flying everywhere, I admonished Crites in a Hardy-like manner by saying that this well-behaved youth who was just beginning to appreciate the virtues of a strong work ethic would now most likely turn to a life of crime. But Crites was laughing so hard I don’t think he heard a word I said.

Crites sometimes found himself on the receiving end of pranks, such as when he was assigned to shoot out-of-state license plates in the parking lot at a national event for a "demographic study." Jodauga memorialized the succesful prank with this holiday gift to Crites.

"Crites was a master at spontaneous humor, but he also excelled well with carefully planned hoaxes, especially when he collaborated with his longtime former classmate, NHRA’s Steve Gibbs. I came to work one day in the 1970s and saw a memo from NHRA founder and then-President Wally Parks on my desk. The memo, which was not sealed in an envelope, essentially stated that a number of major representatives from Detroit were going to be visiting NHRA the next week for future sponsorship discussions, and since I was the office’s worst offender in having an untidy desk, long hair, and all-too-casual wearing apparel, Wally essentially wanted me to clean up my act.

"The message itself did not bother me because at the time I took pride in being National DRAGSTER’s resident rebel. But I was upset that the memo was not presented confidentially, and in a brief lapse of good judgment, I planned to express my displeasure over what I perceived to be a grievous breach of office etiquette. When Wally came in later that morning, I happened to see him as he walked up the stairs to the office lobby. After he asked me how I was doing in his typical father-like manner, I told him, 'Not so good because of these memos I’ve been getting. A quizzical look appeared on Wally’s face as he asked me, 'Memos? You’ve been getting ... memos?'

"It became instantly clear to me that Wally didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, and a vision quickly appeared in my mind of Crites, the master forger on the NHRA staff, whose specialty was duplicating Wally’s signature, signing off on a memo that was written by Gibbs on Wally’s personal typewriter after hours. Too embarrassed to admit that I had been had, all I could do was blurt out an Emily Litella-like 'Never mind,' and Wally walked off shaking his head in bemused wonderment.

"I hadn’t seen much of Crites recently, but I did manage to have lunch with him behind the VIP tower at last November’s Finals, where we had the occasion to reminisce over these and many other adventures in the past, along with our traditional exchange of well-intentioned insults. When I was informed of Bill’s passing by Phil Burgess on Dec. 30, one of the first things that went through my mind was how grateful I was to have spent some good quality time with him before he left us. Working at ND in the early days with a much smaller staff and longer hours was much more strenuous than it is today, and we needed all the levity we could get just to keep our sanity.

"Thank you, Mr. Crites, for providing all of that and so much more."

As a wonderful final honor to Crites, he's been enshrined alongside some of drag racing's greats on the "In Memoriam" page on Don Ewald's We Did It For Love Web site.

A little bench racing anyone?

I had a whole 'nother column scheduled for today but had to move it back for a variety of reasons, but I didn't want to go too long without a new entry lest y'all forget about me. Each column generally takes two to three days to put together, though some take considerably longer depending on the length and depth I choose, the amount of research I have to do, images I have to chase down, people I can't track down to interview, etc.

Fortunately for all of us -- but mostly for me -- I keep files just for this occasion, and in this case, it's a file full of random tales that I've accumulated, either in interviews or as part of certain newsgroups, for which I'd not yet found a home. There are some great storytellers out there, and although each of these probably could have starred in its own column if fleshed out, they are nonetheless emblematic of the great bench racing stories that are told throughout the pits during the years.

And away we go …

Getting 'the Greek': Tom Jobe, a third of the legendary Surfers Top Fuel team with driver Mike Sorokin and Robert Skinner, recently regaled the Standard 1320 e-mail newsgroup with the tale of how the Surfers took a big 7.97 to 7.81 holeshot win – and the cool $500 prize money – in the final round against the legendary "Greek," Chris Karamesines, at Riverside Raceway on Dec. 6, 1964.

"The rounds go on, and it comes down to 'the Greek' and the Surfers for the money," he wrote. "We have a small problem in that we do not have enough 98 percent [nitro] to make a full pass in the final round. In those days, there was no one to borrow 98 percent from, as no one else ran anything close to 'the can' in their dragster. We talked about our dilemma amongst ourselves and decided that our only chance was to make 'the Greek' think we were so nervous that he had the race won and hope Mike could leave on him and coast to the finish line ahead of 'the Greek.' At this time, 'the Greek' was 'the Mole's' [engine builder Ed Donovan] main man, and they had all of the best stuff on that car. It was a Fuller chassis, Donovan parts everywhere, just the very best stuff you could possibly have no matter how much money you had.

"We made sure we were near 'the Greek' and 'the Mole' as we lined up for the last round and went into this whole act of being very nervous. They went for the act and must have figured they had the race won if they just did not do something stupid. Mike Sorokin put a big holeshot on 'the Greek' and coasted to the victory (just barely!). We were very lucky the blower did not come off when it ran out of fuel. We were racing for $500, and a blower explosion at that time would cost us $1,000 or more. We realized the risk, but hey, we were racing the legendary 'Greek' and figured why get worried about going broke now?"

In great bench-racing one-upmanship style, Jobe's tale inspired Roy Steffey, of the equally famous Loghhe-Steffey-Rupp team, to share an encounter with the fabled "Greek."

"It was the 1965 Springnationals at Bristol and the final round on Saturday," he wrote. "The round before that, we had burned a piston, and with the tight timeframe, we knew we didn't have time to change it. This was before having air compressors and impact guns in the pits.

"So we kept it a secret and pulled the two pushrods from that cylinder, grounded the plug out, and wrapped the breathers with rags. (The reason for the rags was with the burned hole in the piston, it created a lot of blowby in the pan, and Maynard [Rupp, the driver] really didn't care for an oil bath, but even with the rags, he still got one. If I remember correctly, he taped a piece of rag to his glove so he could wipe his face shield.)

"Maynard got a big holeshot on [Karamesines], and as 'the Greek' came out of the smoke and saw how far out Maynard was, he jammed his foot down and relit the tires. He only went 100 feet or so and his motor broke. Maynard shut it off before the 1,000-foot mark and coasted through."

'

The Terrible Towel': Everyone remember the big brouhaha over "the Terrible Towel" on Kenny Bernstein's Budweiser King in the mid-1980s? The rest of the Funny Car crowd was so convinced that Dale Armstrong had some gee-whiz top-secret device on the car because the crew would go to such great lengths to cover it with a towel whenever the body was raised that they even had the Tech Department investigate. Turns out that there wasn't anything really sexy about it and that it actually had its roots in Bernstein's habit of short-shifting that car that almost drove "Double A Dale" crazy.

"When I first went to work with him, I pulled my hair out for the first three-quarters of that year," he told me once. "I’d stand on the starting line and the car would be on all eight cylinders, but the car wouldn’t e.t. I kept asking him where he was shifting, and he’d tell me '400 feet.' Well, turns out he had crashed a couple of cars trying to drive through tire shake, so he learned if he shifted early, it wouldn’t shake. He even had a foot shifter installed so he didn’t even have to take a hand off the wheel to pull the shifter – this was before air shifters – but sometimes, he’d shift almost right after he left the line.

"I went to a junkyard and got a kickdown switch off an old GTO and hooked it to the foot shifter and put a light on the back of the car so I could see where he shifted. The first time he ran it, the light was on at 100 feet. Once we knew that was the problem, Kenny would force himself to drive the car farther without shifting, but sometimes he just couldn’t, which is when we put the shifter on an air timer. Then it started to haul ass.

"So I began looking for a way to put an automatic shifter in the car, but before we made it into a shifter, I tried it out as a high-speed [leanout] that would kick in at 3.6 or 3.8 seconds that would open up a jet. It was unique, so we covered it up, but it wasn’t that big a deal, really. But when everyone made such a big deal about the towel, we made an even bigger production out of it to mess with everyone’s head."

I remember Lee Beard pulling a similar trick a few years later, placing a towel over the throttle pedal in the Castrol GTX Top Fueler after driver Gary Ormsby connected on a series of telepathic lights. Again, nothing to it but shenanigans and getting in the other guy's head.

Practical joker: World-famous "T.V. Tommy" Ivo originally planned to share with me the sordid details of his first season on tour in 1960 with young novice crewmember Don Prudhomme in tow, but we never quite got around to it. Ivo, a renowned practical joker, did regale me with some tales of how he tortured the not-yet "Snake" during their journeys.

Ivo was 24 ("going on 17," he joked) and Prudhomme just 18. "He was just a good kid," recalled Ivo. " He used to have the damndest laugh – kind of a horse laugh – and if something struck him funny, the whole room would be laughing before he was done. But what a grand adventure!

"I had been back East before when we would do barnstorming appearances for my films, so I somewhat was used to the travel, but here it was, just the two of us, off barnstorming the country in my old Cadillac. We had lots of good times, but he paid his dues going with me on tour. I was a practical joker to a fault.

"One time, Ron Pellegrini took us out rat hunting in the city dump in Cicero [Ill.]. He knew the police department and told them we were going out there. They had machine guns and sawed-off shotguns with lights mounted on them. You'd catch a rat in the lights and let 'im have it. The rats all went and hid, so Prudhomme – 'the Great Hunter' – goes walking out onto the pile, so I threw a can by his foot, and he wheeled around and almost shot his foot off with a shotgun.

"Another time, we went waterskiing up in Minnesota, and I put Prudhomme out on the hook, and try as I might, I couldn't shake him. So I just shut the boat off, and he hand-over-handed it up the rope and made it to the back of the boat without sinking. He was pretty coordinated.

"The best laugh probably was at some hotel one day when I dumped out his shampoo and put 10-weight oil in there. He got in the shower, and the more he put on his head with the water, the more it turned to axle grease. He had to use bar soap and washed it about nine times because you didn't want anyone to know you’d been got. He came out, and I asked him if he noticed anything strange -- 'Nope, didn't notice anything' -- but his hair looked like he'd stuck his finger in a light socket."

Flying high, crashing low: After reading my homage to the famed Kite Cycle of Bob Correll, Glenn Menard, who just recently returned to Texas Motorplex to serve as its new president, shared a tale from his first stint with the Texas supertrack.

"In the early '90s, a photo of a 'kite cycle' in full flight came across my desk at the Texas Motorplex with a solicitation for booking the attraction. We had always programmed our July 4 event -- the Budweiser Night of Fire [not original but a great title nonetheless] -- with exotic features, and a great fireworks show. So the 'kite cycle' was booked. The pilot was one Jimmy Lynn Davis, a stuntman from L.A.

"Steve Earwood, our esteemed PR impresario, was very skeptical. He knew of Correll, and 'Jimmy Lynn was no Bob Correll.' Well, as the date approached and Earwood did more investigating, it seemed that our 'kite cycle' had recently crashed at a track in the Northeast, and although Jimmy had spent some time in a hospital, he assured us he would appear.

"On July 3, we got the whole story; he had, indeed, crashed but claimed he suffered no injuries. He said that the promoter demanded he get into the ambulance to make the show better, but when he went to the hospital and was X-rayed, the doctors were shocked at the amount of broken bones that appeared on the film. Jimmy Lynn assured the docs that, as a stuntman, the breaks were old and had to ship his old X-rays to the hospital so he could show that they were all old and he could be released. This meant that he had the X-rays with him, which came in handy later, as you will see.

"Well, on July 4, you guessed it. Earwood insisted that he would not jump, and a wager between him and I (never collected) was made. During his warm-ups for the crowd, the wind was gusting, and the wagers (and the Buds) were flowing that he would use the weather as an excuse not to perform. I went to half-track to interview Jimmy Lynn (and to be there should he decide not to jump). I knew that the crowd, who had waited all day until 10 p.m., would not take too kindly to such an announcement, so I wanted to be the one to deliver the bad news. However, as he sat on his bike/kite and the wind gusts continued, he looked up and said he thought he could time his jump in between the wind gusts.

Glenn Menard

"He made his run up to the ramp at full throttle, hit the ramp, lit the flares on the wing tips, and was airborne. It was the crosswind that did him in. He drifted over the guardwall, the return road, and was headed into the grandstands when he turned back toward the track and stalled the kite. He impacted right on the centerline, split the fuel tank, and the flares lit the spreading gasoline. There I was, watching a flaming kite cycle, at fully stuck throttle, in the center of the Motorplex all-concrete quarter-mile.

"Well, Jimmy Lynn picked up some new lines on his X-ray that night and even promised me from his hospital bed that he wanted to return the following year to complete the task.

"All together a most memorable night and one that was not duplicated, as I never heard from him again."

Simon Menzies

Supercharged sharks: Racers aren’t all business, and they like to get away for a little R&R, and, as all well know, drag racers love to fish. This fish tale got a little out of hand, however.

Former Funny Car racer Simon Menzies, no stranger to Insider readers, remembers a fateful sea trip he took out of King Harbor in Redondo Beach, Calif., with former U.S. Nationals Top Fuel champ Johnny Abbott and a few friends.

"After a few cocktails at the Sea Bucket [restaurant], we agreed that the intelligent think to do was cross the channel to Catalina for dinner. We were visiting after the World Finals in ’79 or ’80. It was October, and on a good day, you might see a whale migrating south, so we borrowed Bill Simpson's 38-foot Uniflite Coastal Cruiser and headed out to sea. Capt. Simon, girlfriend Jan (the first mate), Abbott (the engineer), and (I think) Chris Karamesines' daughter and a few others went along that fateful day.

"We were under way, about five miles out, when I heard the uproar. John came up to the bridge with a wild look in his eye, demanding I stop the boat and see a whale. Well, as I came down the steps, my whole contingent was leaning over the port side goo-gooing and petting the biggest shark I had ever seen! 'That ain’t no whale, it’s a [expletive] shark, a BIG [expletive] shark! Get your hands back in the boat!'

"The shark submerged and came back up and brushed against the boat. We were just drifting at the time, but the shark physically moved the boat as if he was playing with his new little toy. Oh yeah, the shark was longer than the boat ... a lot longer.

Johnny Abbott

"We got back under way, and the shark started to mirror our moves and was playing in the bow wash, sort of surfing over it like a kid on a boogie board. It was kind of cool watching him until I realized that we were at 15 knots and he was right with us, not showing any signs of tiring. Soon after that, we were joined by two other sharks, one about the same size and the other less than half the size. For a few moments, we were flanked by these behemoths at speed and still close enough to reach out and touch them from the boat. The smaller of the three had a nasty habit of falling back into the prop wash and opening his mouth -- a really big mouth -- and ingesting water from the wash until he slowed down, only to rejoin the party a few minutes later. Sort of an open invitation to dinner, if you get my drift.

"We opted to return to King Harbor for dinner instead of finishing the trip to Catalina. The next day, I went to work at Simpson, and John went to the library. John’s whales turned out to be basking sharks, the largest sharks on the planet, growing to 60 feet in length and quite harmless. As it turns out, they feed by opening their mouths at speed, ingesting small fish and plankton and the occasional coastal cruiser. We were in a sense, as true drag racers, supercharging their evening meal with the bow and prop wash. One more episode for the book."

Mom's hot rod: After reading last year's story about San Fernando Raceway, "Hemi Dan" Sallia regaled me with a great story to which I think every would-be drag racer who ever borrowed the family car can relate.

"In 1966, when I was 14 years old, my mom wanted to go to the track to see a co-worker race," he wrote. "She asked me and my little brother if we wanted to go because we had been going to the track for a couple of years with friends. We agreed, and then put a plan in place for me to finally get to race down the track. Brother Bill's job was to keep Mom away from the stands when I was racing because I would be racing her car. My job was to try and pass myself off as older than I was so that I could test my driving skills on the track.

"Luckily for me and Bill, we had taken the time to ask Dad to bring home some plugs, points, and condenser for the wagon. He was running Auto Parts Emporium on Van Nuys Boulevard at the time. The Lark was running good, low 15s at just under 90. Dad had a feeling about our flimsy excuse for tuning up the Lark but figured if I was willing to take the chance, it was my butt on the line. He had driven enough with me to know I was fully capable of handling the car. But handling Mom's wrath? Well, I was on my own there.

"Things went well until the final in N/Stock Auto class. The co-worker had lost his race, so Mom decided she would leave him to sulk and watch the rest of the races. Bill tried every stall tactic he could think of, but they sat down just as I was staging Mom's '59 Studebaker Lark wagon. Mom took one look and told Bill, 'Look, there is a wagon just like mine.' As I went by, she realized that it was her car, and she wasn't happy about it.

"I took the win light, and when I got to the time-slip booth, a guy handed me a trophy and a check for $25 and muttered something about 'Congratulations, you won your class.' As I approached the pits, I spotted Mom coming at me with fire in her eyes. Thinking on my feet, I jumped out of the car waving the trophy and check and told Mom, 'Look what your car won!' She paused for a moment and then grabbed the trophy and check and rushed off to brag it up to her co-workers. Saved by the bell." 

Great stories, great times. I'll be back later this week with some other great tales, these about another wild card, our ol' pal Bill Crites. A bunch of us will be getting together Saturday to say goodbye to "our" kid, and I'm sure the stories will be flowing there, too.

Bill Crites: Gone but never forgotten

This photo, of me and Bill at Griffith Park's Travel Town, tells you all you need to know about the big kid we all loved.

Me and Crites, Montreal 1986. As I recall, he handed his camera to some stranger standing nearby and asked him to snap this shot.

You could say that Bill Crites left a lasting impression on me.

Bill Crites was the only 68-year-old teenager I knew, and now he's gone. We lost National DRAGSTER's original court jester today of a suspected heart attack, and somehow the world won’t be the same place without him.

Most of you didn't know him and probably don’t have much reason to even blink about his passing, but those whose lives William A. Crites touched won’t soon forget him.

Bill Crites never met a person he couldn't make laugh or at least grimace. His inventiveness in getting a rise out of people knew no bounds, and his legendary antics while a member of the ND staff have been resounding through the hallways as long as I have worked here.

Tales abound of the road trips he used to make with Associate Editor John Jodauga and others, driving the souvenir issues of ND cross-country to the national events from our printer here in California. It didn't take more than five miles down any road with Crites to leave you with a tale worth telling the following day – if you survived.

Crites – I can't remember many people who just called him Bill – was here when I got here, in 1982, and worked alongside another of my late, great departed friends, Leslie Lovett, to skillfully chronicle, through the lenses of their cameras, the cars and stars of the NHRA. Crites also served as art director and production manager at various times in those early days, and you could always count on Crites to keep the pressure from getting to us on those long nights working on the paper.

In my formative years on the staff, traveling to a national event with Leslie and with Crites were two completely different experiences. Leslie would mentor me, teaching me his photographic tricks and introducing me to the thousands of racers who admired and respected him so that I might be able to do my job better. Crites mostly was interested in how good a time he could show you or how much he could make you laugh.

Crites and Lovett were like oil and water, or more like gasoline and fire sometimes. Crites had a special knack of getting under Lovett's skin like no one else could. I well remember sitting around a table at a local restaurant – the entire editorial and photo staff routinely would lunch together back in those days – and Crites was salting up his food. Lovett made the mistake of telling him that he ought to use salt in moderation, whereupon Crites immediately twisted off the top of the salt shaker and poured its entire contents into his mouth. I've seen him do the same thing with ketchup and hot sauce. The man had a stomach of cast iron.

Lovett, an avid fisherman, also made the fateful mistake on one trip to point out the large number of bass-fishing boats in driveways on a trip to Gainesville. For the next 30 miles, Crites pointed out every single boat they passed. "Bass boat ... bass boat ... bass boat" for miles and miles. I couldn't hear that story enough times.

And who could forget the red-eye flight to Indy out of LAX one Wednesday night in the mid-1980s? As the flight attendants dimmed the cabin lights so that some of us might catch some much-needed shut-eye, Crites let out a blood-curdling scream. Lights on, red faces for the ND staff, and a perma-grin plastered on Crites' face.

As I'm overcome with the loss of my good friend, I can’t even begin to think of all the stories about him that have been told and retold to new DRAGSTER staffers who joined the team after Bill left here in 1998. He was a semi-frequent visitor over the years; I saw him just a few weeks ago. We shared some laughs, talking about the good old days at the 7-Eleven by the North Hollywood headquarters where we poured endless quarters into the Burgertime video game (here's irony for you; I played Burgertime for the first time in decades just two days ago after finding an online version of it and thought about Crites the whole time and how he loved to mimic the game's soundtrack). He told me that he still was playing softball – the guy could hit the ball a mile and still get around the base paths and the field despite being Social Security-eligible – and that was the last time I'll see him. The guy photographed my wedding for next to nothing, and now all I have left are memories and photos.

Cindy Gibbs-Arias, whose famous father, Steve, knew Crites from way back in eighth grade and probably could tell better Crites stories than I can, wrote me to say that they had spent the day with him yesterday. "He left here at 8, grouchy as ever, but lovable as always," she wrote.

I spoke to Bill's younger brother, Ken, with whom Bill had lived the last six years, to share my private thoughts with him about what Bill had meant to me.

"He was a pain in the ass," he managed to say through tears. "It's like [Steve] Gibbs said, 'Sometimes you wanted to slap him, and other times you wanted to hug him.' He was unique. He was Bill. God, I'm gonna miss him."

After Teresa Long called to tell me the sad news this afternoon, I made some calls and dropped some e-mails to people I knew would want to know – his good pal Tom McEwen, former ND Editor Bill Holland, Dawn Mazi-Hovsepian, fellow photogs Dave Kommel and Tom Schiltz (who earlier this year had sent me the great pic of Crites and the "Mickeymatic" camera on the starting line at Indy in 1986).

"I used to joke that Bill was my fourth child," Kommel said via e-mail. "When my kids were much younger, Bill would come over and sit on the couch and watch cartoons with them for hours, every bit as engrossed as they were."

Crites found the humor in everyday life. I remember well his penchant for honking at strangers just to wave to them. He and I always buddied up to cover the Montreal race back in the 1980s, and, in the long drive through countryside from the hotel to the racetrack, he'd honk at farmers, at cows, at vacant houses. And heaven forbid you accidentally said the word "wheel" because Crites delighted in the game he called "Get a Wheel," which was to put two tires into the median or side of the road. My knuckles are still white.

It was also on one of those Canadian trips that Crites, an avid player of sports, accidentally crowned me on the left eyebrow with a racquetball racket to the tune of three stitches. I still have the scar, and I know that every time I look at it in the mirror from here on, I'll think of him. Like the impression he left on me in so many other ways, it's part of me.

Godspeed, pal.

The Re-gifter and the Ghost of Columns Past

It's Christmas day and I just unwrapped all my presents, and even though you guys didn’t get me anything (again), I'm still in the giving mood. Okay, so maybe this is more like the ultimate regifting – giving you a present I've already given you -- but at least I made it by hand for you.

Below is a list of some or my favorite or otherwise noteworthy DRAGSTER Insider columns among the more than 200 I've written since July 2007. Passages in italics are from the original column; the rest are my current eggnog-induced comments.

The idea to rewrap these babies is two-fold: First, well. It's the holiday season and even the Insider needs a break now and then (besides, I'm pulling this together Christmas Eve and I guess it's time to start my shopping, wouldn’t you say?) Second, the column has gained A LOT of new readers over the last six months or so, and I realize that, at five entries per page, people would have to do a lot of "Next Page"-clicking to find some of the buried treasure that goes back more than a year.

Think of it as part Greatest Hits, part timesaver. And don't say I never gave you anything.

(Special holiday gift if you act now!!!! Here's my stocking stuffer to you, a little Windows trick I picked up. If you are using an Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, or Google Chrome browsers instead of opening each link below, reading the story, then hitting your Back button, didja know that you can open multiple stories from the same Web page by clicking on the link with your middle mouse button (as opposed to the left button)? Try it out. That way you can first scroll through all of the offerings below, middle-clicking on the ones that interest you as you go along, then go back and read them on the newly-opened tabs. Cool, eh?)

Welcome to the National DRAGSTER blog, er, I mean column (July 23, 2007)

What, another blog? No, not exactly. Even though all of the cool kids are doing it and it’s the trend that’s sweeping the nation, I’m going to resist calling this new column a blog.

The words and the column that started it all launched, with this swell group photo of the ND staff -- with yours truly front and center flanked on my left (your right) by the BossLady, Adriane Ridder, and Director of Advertising Jeff Morton and on my right by Photo Editor Teresa Long and Production Manager Matt Hurd – and my manifesto of where I would be driving this column, which originally (and rather unimaginatively) was called Inside National DRAGSTER.

Although the outline for this column is still a little sketchy in my mind, I hope to deliver here, on a fairly regular basis, a lot of different things. You might read about the stories the staff is working on for the next and future issues or background on how the whole issue comes together, and you might become privy to cool insider information or “listen in” on some of the phone calls we make and receive each day as we hunt down the news.

Considering what this column has become, oh, man, that's a riot, ain't it?

It's not like I got into the editorial driver's seat without a destination in mind but more like I decided I would take a drive to work and came across a signpost to the beach and went there instead.

Anyway, this column gives you a bit of background info on the schedule for how National DRAGSTER is produced each week, which I think is pretty cool.

Tools of the trade (August 08, 2007)

They say that a mechanic is only as good as his tools -- and by “they” I probably mean the tool companies, because I reckon Alan Johnson could get a fuel dragster to run 4.50s with a Swiss Army knife and some baling wire -- and by the same line of reasoning, the right tools in the right hands mean everything when you’re a drag racing reporter.

Another "Insider National DRAGSTER"-themed article but one that was really well  received. In it I detailed some of the research tools we use and some of the reference sources the reporters at ND use to write our stories every week.

There's also a cool – and I believe the first – photo of the ND "morgue," as we call it in the newspaper biz (which most of the rest of you would call a library), showing Marc Gewertz and the wall to wall shelves the house pretty much every issue of ND ever printed.

It's the little things I miss ... (Sept. 3, 2007 )

Over the years, this job has caused me to miss a lot of dinners, some birthdays, a few family gatherings, and a couple of vacations, but this one really hurt. I love the U.S. Nationals; what serious drag racing fan doesn't? But yesterday, when my phone rang at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, in the midst of the Pro session, for an instant I hated that I was here.

A quick little blog, written at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals while we were waiting for final eliminations to begin on Monday morning. The previous day – and three weeks ahead of schedule – my grandson, Trevor (T-Rev to his pals) was born to my daughter, Amanda. And I missed it. I remember it like it was yesterday, the call from home and the frustration of not being there to help coach her through it and tell her how proud I was of her. I think I cried more than Trevor that night.

This issue is not the bomb (Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007)

There we were, minding our business on a quiet Thursday afternoon after the U.S. Nationals when the cops came busting through the door. Well, actually mi compadre, current Managing Editor Juan Torres, walked them in. I was sure they were there to ask me to bail my speed-crazed son out of jail or something, but, no, apparently someone had called in a bomb threat to the building that we share with several other tenants, among them an insurance company and a dentist, so one could surely understand the thought process at work there.

Anyway, it was an interesting diversion and emblematic of the kind of stuff you just can't make up to put in a column.

The 5 Ws: The where, what, when, and why of Who (Sept.13, 2007)

"Hi, my name is Marvin Graham. You might not remember me, but I used to race in Top Fuel."

It took every ounce of willpower I could muster not to respond with "Who?"

Of course, he would have said "Exactly," and we would have launched into the drag racing version of Abbott & Costello's famed "Who's on first?" routine.

This is the veritable "signpost in the road" that carried this column in a new direction. Response to this column, about former U.S. Nationals Top Fuel champ Marvin Graham, was immediate and plentiful. I told the tale of his U.S. Nationals win in detail and offered up some historic photos, and kind of got into the mood to tell some of the sport's great stories and introduce some of its great characters in a fashion that I hadn’t seen before, which is kind of where the "stories behind the stories" motto came from.

Readers enjoyed the history lesson told in a conversational tone, and I wasn't about to be the kind of writer who strikes gold then goes off looking for more in a different location. I had tapped into a rich vein of nostalgia among the readers, a longing, if you will, from those who remember those days and those people now resigned to the history pages, and it was my desire to mine it, to unearth the golden nuggets, shine them up, and show them off to everyone, from the grizzled racers and fans who witnessed it firsthand to those newcomers eager to know how it used to be.

It also set the course for what has become another column trademark, the follow-up articles that feature remembrances and additional information and comments from the readers that have become as crucial to this column's success as my own meanderings.

Hurry back, Superman (Sept. 23, 2007)

If the Marvin Graham article was the launch in a new direction, then this article surely was when the first stage of the clutch hit hard. I wrote this article on my home computer late in the night after John Force was injured in Dallas. It just kind of poured out of, everything I thought and admired about the man, and it hit the right note with the readers. More than 30,000 people read it the next day and the hits just kept growing as it was cross-linked from other sites.

It's one of the articles in this column of which I am most proud, and also the one that received the most attention, from other media and from Force. Suddenly, everyone was calling Force "Superman," and eventually it kind of got to him, because he was feeling very, very human at the time. I heard they read it to Force in the hospital and he was very pleased, but I think he actually began to wish I'd never written it. Being Superman means filling some big shoes … but, it my opinion, he did and forever will have a giant S on his chest.

Feedback and an outpouring of love from his fans filled many, many columns over the next couple of months, and I was more than happy to give them the place to do it. See also, The Force is strong with this one ... (Oct. 11, 2007)

'Now he belongs to the ages' (Oct. 3, 2007)

Not to overstate the drama, but Wally's passing is going to be one of the memories where I say, "I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news." Not to equate it one way or the other with 9/11 or Elvis dying, but I will remember it with those kind of things.

I know I will never forget the day that Wally Parks died. The man meant a lot to a lot of people, and I was certainly among them. This is the story of that day, and of the work we poured into a special tribute issue for Wally.

Hail to the champs! (Nov. 16, 2007)

The big news on this wasn't so much that the National DRAGSTER staff again won the team championship at the twice-yearly NHRA Staff Drags as much as it was about the special guest we had.

"Phil, it's Force."

"Hey John, what's up?"

"I'm driving, man!"

"Next year?"

"No, right now. I'm on the freeway in my truck."

Force, out of his mind with rehab boredom, had snuck out of the shop, hopped into his Ford truck, and took off, and, well, since he was out and about, I invited him to stop by a place he loves, Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, to come watch us race. I also knew that we could make a little history if we could convince him to make the first pass of his comeback with us, which is exactly what happened.

He turned his ever-present Castrol cap backward and yelled out the window, "Tell Pedregon I'm coming for him," and off he went. It was a very, very special moment. "That was bitchin', really cool," he said.

More than he could ever know …

See you in the glue, friend (Nov. 30, 2007)

My heartfelt farewell to arms to my little buddy and longtime ND writer Todd Veney, who resigned his position at ND to pursue his nitro-racing dreams.

A Munstrously Good Time

Here's a fun little extended follow up to the Fun with Fotos article that revolves around the '60s TV show The Munsters. Brendan Tobin was among those who chastised me for not remembering that it wasn’t Herman that Grandpa raced at Lions Dragstrip (er, I mean, Mockingbird Heights Drag Strip) in that famous episode, "Hot Rod Herman," that originally aired May 27, 1965.

According to Tobin, Grandpa had to build the coffin-based "Dragula" dragster to win back the infamous Munster Koach that Herman had lost racing "Leadfoot" Baylor, the father of Sandy, one of Eddie's classmates and a local drag racing legend on the show (played by character actor Henry Beckman).

Eddie had bragged that Herman could beat "Leadfoot," and Herman Herman's wife, Lily, begged him not to race, but Herman, dressed for  all the world like Marlon Brando and affecting a New York accent, famously replied,  "I just can't, uh, fight it chick. I, uh, gotta get out there and drag it with the gassers. Otherwise, I might blow my cool."

Grandpa, driving the Dragula, beats Leadfooot, in the Koach, to win the race, but the fun doesn’t end there.

"Leadfoot stole Grandpa's chute and Dragula went up and down the track repeatedly until Herman grabbed the rear bumper and skidded the car to a halt using his giant shoes," recalls Tobin. "It's one of the funniest racing shows ever filmed."

I spent some time to try to find out more about the episode and the cars and, naturally, there are entire Web pages dissociated to these well-remembered vehicles – both built by custom-rodding maven George Barris -- including one that offers specs.

The Munster Koach (two of which were made) was first built in 1964 and cost $18,000 to produce; the second was built in 1985, led by Dick Dean of Barris' original build team. The high cost of the first Koach was probably attributable to the fact that a) the studio only gave Barris 21 days to build it and b) much of the work was very custom and done by hand. The brass radiator and fenders were hand formed and it took 500 hours alone to make the ornate rolled-steel scrollwork.

The Koach, designed by Tom Daniel, was built by Barris' gang from three '27 Model T bodies and was 18 feet long. The 133-inch frame was made by hand and the front end had a dropped axle, split radius rods, and T springs. The paint was Black Spyder Pearl with gold leaf trim (40 hand-rubbed coats!) and the interior was, naturally, "blood red" velvet "coffin liner." Interior goodies included a Muntz stereo tape deck, an electric shoe polisher, a Sony TV, and two antique French telephones. A special Autolite electrical system was needed to make these extras operative.

Power came from a 289 Cobra engine bored to 425 cid and fitted with Jahns high-compression pistons, an Isky cam. Ten -- count 'em, 10! – chrome-plated Stromberg carburetors sat atop a Mickey Thompson "ram thrust log" manifold (though Dean later revealed that "the carbs were phony. There was a 4 barrel carb under the box.") Bobby Barr Racing headers exited the spent gasses. Power was channeled through a four-speed manual transmission. TV Guide actually did some performance tests on the Koach in Jan. 1964 andreported a 0-60 time of 10-flat. Not too scary; no wonder Herman lost.

According to an April 1965 article in Model Car Science magazine, Barris used "an Ansen posi-shift 30-inch stick with four on the floor coupled to a 4:11 rear end for the sporty drive train. A front dago dropped axle and split radius bars held by T springs, and the Z'd frame with Model A springs and Traction Master stabilizers competently take care of any road condition. The wild new M. T. 11-inch racing slicks, mounted on wide-dumped Astro chrome spoke wheels give the Koach plenty of bite off the line."

Dragula also was designed by Daniel and built by Barris, featuring a antique gold fiberglass coffin (from Owens-Corning) trimmed inside with royal purple velvet silk atop a tube frame chassis.  According to an old interview with Dean, who died this past July, four Dragulas were built and the original car hangs from the ceiling in the Planet Hollywood in Atlantic City, N.J. "The first coffin was obtained from the prop shop and was first used in the movie Some Like It Hot," he said. "The next three I got from Mexico as you can't buy them in the States without a dead body."

The Dragula was powered by a 289-cid 350-horse V-8 Mustang with twin 4-barrel carbs feeding a 4-speed stick. Eleven-inch inch Firestone slicks on Reynolds aluminum Rader drag wheels hooked the Dragula, which was steered up front by Speedsport English buggy wire wheels on four-inch Italian tires. (Herman also raced the Dragula in the 1966 film, Munster Go Home, in which the family went to England after inheriting a mansion there.)

Sadly, no big-name dragster drivers were employed for the runs at The Beach; stunt driving was credited to Jerry Summers and Carey Loftin.

Thanks for filling in the blanks

I could have entitled this entry "DRAGSTER Insider readers to the rescue … again" because y'all came through with flying colors following my Fun with Fotos article here a week ago. I had info on some of the pics presented and asked for the DI faithful to fill in the blanks, and you responded with the avalanche below. From the e-mail I get and the all-star list of names I'm told who read my humble bit of biweekly drivel, I bet we cover a vast majority of the history of the sport, which is what makes it so much fun to read (and write).

Okay, your turn, guys …

Fred Fischbach had no problem ID-ing the owner of the blown Austin-Healey as his old friend Norm Cowdrey. "This is from the mid- to late '60s," he wrote. "Norm had the chassis built in San Fernando by a sprint car chassis builder by the name of Rip Erickson. It was powered by a blown small-block, but I don't remember the cubes. The car was an instant NHRA record setter, and as you can see by the picture, a real crowd-pleaser. It was painted at a body shop in the southwest corner of Tony Nancy's complex where Tony lived and had his upholstery shop. The car was a beautiful lime green with large gold metalflake that had been shot up in the air and allowed to settle on it, then clear coated. The whole package was totally awesome.

"Sometimes when there was no race for Norm to go to, he would unbolt the blower and put it on his Corvette – underdriven, of course -- and we'd go tooling around the Valley; no big deal today, but then -- big deal.  Too much fun."

Bill Holland added of the car, "Cowdrey normally did well in one of the eliminator categories at San Fernando Dragway, where the photo was taken. Norm went on to campaign the Blue Fox Camaro Funny Car. He later was involved in a few TAFC deals, one of which was driven to a Wally win at Las Vegas by Rod Alexander ("Wild Bill's" son). Today, Norm plays with vintage road race cars. I chatted with him a few months ago at the races on Coronado Island, where he ran well with an ex-Paul Newman McKee Can-Am car."

Being able to ID a car is one thing, but being able to figure out at which track a photo was taken always requires some skill. Bill Carrell was "99.9 percent sure" that the Shower Power photo was taken at Thompson Drag Raceway in Thompson, Ohio, because of "the trees and their proximity to the track; the signage with roads identified in that area, specifically Ridge Road and Mayfield; I worked there and can tell a shot of that track from almost any angle; and where else but Ohio?"

Dawn Mazi-Hovsepian, Ohio's secondmost famous female Ohioan (behind The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde and probably just ahead of Rona Veney) not only confirmed for me that it was taken at Thompson but also provided the year (1970) and the photographer (Charles Gilchrist). Said Dawn, "Gilchrist notes: 'The engine, a stout fuel-injected small-block Chevy, was turned around in the chassis and ran through a transfer case to the differential. The driver (Randy Davis) sat in the fiberglass tub (no water). This bathtub was quick, made full passes on the rear wheels at ease, and people loved it.' "

I got a lot of feedback on the three-wheel dragsters along with solid IDs on both. Cliff Morgan and John Pecora wrote to say that the front-engine car belonged to Kenny Ellis, and Steve Gibbs wrote that the rear-engine car was the Cook Bros., Jahns, and Hedges entry driven by Jeff Jahns.

Morgan noted that "Ellis was the most famous with an almost conventional front-motor car, which had a tendency to wheelie down the track, especially in the lights." Added Pecora, "Ken is still at it doing fabrication but is stricken with cancer and is fighting with all he has. This photo, I think, is of the third three-wheeler. I built a complete replica of this car for him and gave it to him and son. His son wants to show it off at various events."

Of the other car, Gibbs reminisced, "One of the things that made the sport so appealing in the '50s and '60s was that you never knew what would show up next. The rules were wide open. [This is ] one of the cars that was nonconforming in just about every aspect. It was a rear-engine sidewinder, three-wheeler, using air jacks (à la Pete Robinson) to launch the car ... all with a fuel-burning small Dodge Hemi. It had a body but was not used much. The car had a short life and crashed at 'the Beach.' Driver Jahns got out of it, but it rearranged his nose. I can't imagine how today's tech guys would react if this car were to show up again."

Bob Post, author of High Performance, the unofficial bible of drag racing historians everywhere, said he believes this is Bill Martin of Palatka, Fla., shown running on the beach in Jacksonville, Fla.,  in 1953. "One of three slingshots I know of that pre-dated [Mickey Thompson's]," he noted. "Martin later became quite a well-known boat designer."

In looking at this picture, Morgan added that the body was probably one of the many that came from a fuel tank from an airplane. "Lots of guys used those tanks to create cars for the dry lakes after World War II, both front- and rear-engined versions, and some found their way to the drags. This car used the front section, and I can see the bottom of the car under the engine. Interesting design, and the car looked 'high tech' for its time, probably 1953-54."

Gibbs also was handy for the ID on this great old photo. "This is the gasser of Dale (he) and Al (her) Kersh, of Modjeska Canyon, Calif. Both are now gone. They were fixtures at SoCal tracks for many years, competing in various brackets, and were truly great people. The interesting thing is that Al was never -- EVER -- dressed any differently. She always looked like she just came from an upscale social event -- classy and in heels."

Byron Stack of Gasser Madness confirmed that this is the Kersh Family A/Gasser. "Memory tells me it was powered by a Mopar wedge motor with homebuilt injection," he wrote. "It was a very cool piece and fun to watch."