PHRASEOLOGY

9/8/03

e listen and we learn. I don't care if the listener is stump-post stupid or indifferent, there are certain phrases or words that we hear and consciously or unconsciously ease into our vocabulary. You can't help yourself. A flashy vocabulary usually aids and abets the building of personality as you go from childhood through adulthood.

Example? When you were a kid (And I'm talking to the 40-plus crowd), when did you stop saying, "gee whiz" or "golly" and replace it with, "man."

"Golly that beer makes me feel a little dizzy" became "Man, I am royally f*cked up." You get the idea.

Drag racing worked on me that way, but in a retro fashion, and oddly enough, when I was what would be loosely described as an adult.

At age 26, I attended my first NHRA (not then U.S.) Nationals in 1973. My friend Niles Smith and I hit town after a straight-through from L.A. on Thursday evening and headed for the track. As we worked our way down Crawfordsville Rd., to IRP, we noticed the leash on the campers near the street loosened with every rotation of the tires. In the distance, we saw that a number of creative campsites fueled, no doubt, by all kinds of personal poison, had strung out large white sheets on the chain-length fencing with crazy messages.

One stood out in particular: "SHOW US YOUR TITS."

Hmmmm.

A reasonable suggestion, at least, for some of us. Still, I could see a first-time spectator wife or girlfriend spot a sign like that and left hook the laughing old man into a power slide through a cornfield.

The above request was repeated a dozen times before we made it to the track. "Show us your tits, eh?" I thought to myself - wishful thinking, guys. But I was wrong because they did show us their tits, a lot of points of light under that midnight sun. Damn.

(Redneck humor at its most brash.) From behind the campground fences, in front of the fences, the jiggle kept rhythm to one of drag racing's great outdoor parties, the campsites on Crawfordsville Road and its environs at the U.S. Nationals. Silhouettes clad in cut-offs and t-shirts gyrated jungle-style in front of the trailers and campfires.

That signage worked its way into the track for that event and every event after that. The only "Show Us" poster that didn't was some farmers', anxious to get in on the fun, wrote "Show

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Us Your Teats." Trouble is the cow with him would not be able to negotiate an aluminum seat in the grandstands, the buffet table at the Top Eliminator Club, and definitely would not be able to solve the riddle of the restroom.

No big deal, you say. That's probably true, certainly if you're a woman, or a guy with a picture of the Bowflex man above his bed. But one of the things that is missing from current day drag racing is that reckless and wild sense of fun that characterized so many of the drag races from the 1950s through roughly the late 1980s. I know, I know, "Show us your tits" doesn't reflect the highest state of consciousness, but golly (there you go) nothing prevented the gals from putting up signs that said, "Show us your cranks." (Ah, slowly sliding down the gutter of life. How did I get off on this jag?) I'll tell you how. I refuse to write another word about the 1955 Nationals, the 1967 shaving incident, et, al.

The experience of the wild 1973 Labor Day weekend affected me profoundly, though. A few weeks later at a Rams football game, I implored the distaffers to show the tits, right in front of a dozen members of the "Dykes on Bikes" motorcycle club, who were strong enough to have me on soft foods for two months.

Leaving my disaster aside, the Indy imperative spread like wildfire. I went to the '73 Orange County Manufacturers Funny Car race and spotted a few more of those signs inside the track. When I went to my first NHRA race as a reporter, the 1975 NHRA Summer Nationals, the signs were out there en masse and frankly every race after that. You couldn't escape the influence. Every guy was a lady doctor, majoring in mammograms. Even today, I'll bet that if you tour the roads that frame Indianapolis Raceway Park, you'll see at least one of those signs.

1973? The NHRA Nationals? Crawfordsville Road? To quote Bob Hope, "Thanks for the Mammaries.".