For three years, mostly in the summer and fall, the enterprising young dairy farmers and their driver, Larry Bostick, made exhibition runs about the country. The car was sold mid-decade and in 1989, the pair had enough money to build a Funny Car.

"That rocket car really wasn't that big a learning experience," Brent recalled. "Hell, if it did anything, it made me lazy. You didn't have to tune it because there were no moving parts, and because we just ran exhibition runs, I could have three or four beers in the staging lanes waiting to run the darn thing. It did run, though. Larry could squeeze 5.20s and 275-mph speeds out of it pretty regular."

The Fannings bought an '89 Chevy Cavalier Funny Car and the pickings were slim that first season. They ran the car at Firebird in Arizona, San Antonio, and Great Lakes in Union Grove, Wisc., and that was it.

Ever inventive, the Fannings moved right along. The Cavalier was gone by 1991, and the pair came up with a Pontiac Trans Am. Not just any Trans Am, but an Udder Nonsense Trans Am, one painted to look like what the punk rock band, Iowa Beef Experience, called "a nitro burning funny cow." The paint was the splotchy black and white of a Holstein cow and it captured the imagination of the fans. In the next few seasons, the Fannings would pull into the staging lanes, broadcasting a tape with a cow mooing sterophonically.

Their act reached its zenith (or nadir depending on taste) at the U.S. Nationals in 1993. The car pulled to the line and when it launched a bunch of cow turds were spotted in the car's wake. And the not-amused judge panel's decision? A six-month suspension from NHRA competition.

The 1993 season was their biggest and most productive. They made 17 dates that year, 12 of them at NHRA national events, winning the Firebird Ignitor in Boise and the 32 Funny Car show at Firebird in Arizona.

People thought the Fannings might have really gone around the bend, though, in 1995. Brent announced in a National Dragster "Bit From the Pit" that wife Vicky was going to get her Top Fuel license and race.

"I obviously had never driven one before," she said, "so the Top Fuel experience was new to both of us. I really wanted to do it, and it took a little time. I had to make 13 passes before I got in a full one. I had driven the Funny Car before, but the dragster was a different animal.

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Photos by Tim Marshall

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