That's batting .500 at "the Beach." They call it that because there's a homemade beach and swimming pool and picnicking area just to the south of the burnout box. It's open in summer. "The Beach" offers the fast racer a great ride -- just past the eighth-mile finish line, the track goes uphill at a considerable angle, then downhill for the shutoff. A friend who races there told me that the West family made some improvements over the 2002-'03 winter, and the return road, which made an "S" curve past the downhill shutoff, is now straighter.

Pit improvements and safety stuff were also performed on Holiday Beach's grounds, but one thing that I always ask my friend is this: "Do they still keep the Christmas tree in the back of that old '60 Chevy wagon?" "Nope. The car is sitting about eight miles away, in the woods," he answers. The Wests were offered a lot for that wagon, and they finally sold. They now keep the tree downstairs in the tower basement.

Shades of Jr. Stock Eliminator. Now wouldn't that wagon make a neat Crate Motor drag car?

Pro at "the Beach" pays $1,100 for a $35 car-and-driver entry, with $500 for Footbrake for a $25 tech card, every Saturday night, football season notwithstanding. There are no scoreboards, and when I raced there in 1986, you had to go up into the tower to see what you ran. The E.T. slips were written out by hand.

Here's a good Holiday Beach story I heard recently. A certain Pro Modified racer who runs a blown '53 Studebaker wanted to enter the Pro Mod show at a classy NHRA track in Alabama, but first, said the owners, you have to make a license run. So Mr. Studebaker did, and it was one of those wild, barely-keep-it-in-the-lane passes. He came back and the track operator said to him, "Boy, that was wild. You sure you can race this race?" "Heck," Studebaker answered. "That was nothing. You ought to see me at 'the Beach.' I have PLENTY of room at this place."

PHENIX CITY

One Sunday morning about 10 years ago, a friend of ours called up and said, "Let's go to Phenix City." So we loaded up Fran's "Lady In Red" '71 Nova and headed out from Atlanta to southwestern Alabama for an afternoon of racing, Dickey in his Camaro, Chris in his Camaro, David in his Firebird, and Fran and me. We got there just in time for tech. Fran's

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Nova being a project car for my magazine, Bracket Racing USA, a few of the locals knew it. "Hey, welcome to Phenix City. We've seen this car before," they said.

Phenix City Dragway was at one time THE place to race class. It used to be site of an annual NHRA Division 2 points race. Now it holds Sunday afternoon bracket races and occasional Pro Modified shows. And the spelling is correct -- Phenix City was, in the 1950s, a crime town that conveniently sat on the Alabama-Georgia state line, near Columbus, Georgia. It was so bad that someone killed the Alabama attorney general, Albert Patterson, when he tried to clean it up. They made a movie about it titled "The Phenix City Story."

I once sent in a story about a guy who raced at Phenix Dragway, and the young editor at the magazine took it upon herself to change it to read "Phoenix." She just KNEW that I'd misspelled the name. I didn't. I caught a lot of flak over that one, and me being an Alabamian, too.

Anyway, the four of us go up for first round. Dickey makes it and so does David, but Chris has to run a motorcycle -- yes, cycles were classed with Super Pros -- and he's the slower vehicle. He gets down to the top end and all of a sudden, the guy on the bike leans back and wheelstands it across the finish line, taking the win light and waving his left hand in the air. What few spectators are watching from the left-hand bank -- no guard rail needed -- went wild.

Fran gets to run this clown in the second round, but she's ready for his trick and takes the light. He still wheelstands his bike at 100 mph, barely 10 feet from the Nova's left door handle.