Anyway, as the first round wore on, one could notice that fans leaning on the chain-length fence on the spectator-side of the track were slowly crunching down said fencing with their mere mass. By the time the first round ended, the infield grass was taller than the majority of the fencing, a fact hammered flat down by the fans who were now sitting in the infield watching the races. When the second-round started, at least a thousand fans on both sides of the track had crunched the fences and had actually positioned themselves along the Armco guard railing to watch what were then dozens of 220-mph Funny Cars.

I'm sure the thinking was, "Hey, I spent $10 or $15 to get in here. I couldn't see from behind the Andy Gump, so I guess I'll just have to improvise" ... which they did.

All hell broke loose on that particular night when it came time for McNameny to make his jump. Despite the cajoling and threats by track management, they realized that if they made a move on the errant fans, they might have to deal with more than anger from stumbling, swearing drunks and a cancelled Funny Car show. Small stuff. . .like a timing tower burnt to the ground or the lynching of either Doner or Evans.

Looking back, I think they brought out McNameny to defuse the situation somewhat. The howlers all wanted to see the jump and knew they couldn't go on the track because it would mess up the show, so they politely stood back a few feet from the guard rail to let McNameny hammer himself into powder.

I remember it as if it were yesterday, pardon the cliche. Evans was on the mike and said something along the lines of, "Well, it looks like he's going to make that jump. He's made a couple of passes down the track to make sure the kart has the same guts as the driver, and that's gotta be the guts of 20 men. And here he comes, he's headed straight for the jump ramp..."

And then for what seemed like five seconds, the place went stone silent as heads bent upwards and watched McNameny and his kart go about 25 to 30 feet in the air and do a

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slow, but grotesquely magnificent gainer back flip, a move punctuated by a straight down plummet to the asphalt. As this was unfolding in mental slo-mo, I remember Evans' voice echoing off the San Gabriel Mountains behind the track on the East, "OOOOHHH NOOOOO!"

The fans? They were like a blanket of army ants. They immediately engulfed McNameny and his kart. They crawled over the cars to be jumped over (McNameny was badly off target), the guard walls, and around the stricken star, well-wishing him with a gaggle of "Far out, dudes." The meat wagon had its sirens blaring, but it took a good amount of time to get to McNameny, who, short of a few broken bones, was not injured badly.

The show was barely gotten into the books. For most of the infield fans, the jump was a fitting climax for an evening of lightweight felonies. And when the two finalists (I can't remember who, although I think one of the cars was the Pisano & Matsubara/Revell Vega) raced, the house was about half full with Evans and Doner in the tower under oxygen masks, interrupted only by an occasional hit of Jack Daniels or some other spirit lifter.

They didn't learn their lesson, though. Throughout 1975 and most of 1976, it was not at all unusual to see the oversold stadiums mentioned above leak fans onto the infield. Looking back on it, I was glad to be doing my leaking somewhere else during those mayhem-shrouded exercises.

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