As I write this, it is my birthday, August 25, 1999; I am 53 years old today. I have been going to drag races for over 38 years. The memories that I have of my first drag race are probably a compilation of several races that I went to with my brother in that summer almost 40 years ago at Amarillo Dragway.

Whether or not the events I am going to relate actually happened that first day or not matters little. They do make up for me what was my first experience with drag racing.

You see, drag racing is something you experience, not just something you see. It is the sport where not only the drivers and the mechanics participate, but every fan has a physical, emotional, and mental experience that stays with him forever.

It is early in the summer of 1961 and my brother and I are driving out Hollywood Road toward the new Amarillo Dragway. "Unbelievable! Amarillo, Texas has an actual drag strip!" We are guys in our middle teens whose drag racing experience has been limited to Hot Rod magazine and models by Revell. Drag racing — up until this day — has been an imaginary experience. Drag races were something that took place in California or in our minds. This day it is going to be real.

We are on our way in my brother’s first car, a 1952 Rambler. It is not the chariot of our dreams, but it is the chariot which carries our dreams. You see, back in 1961 just having a car was cool. Even a four-door dad-mobile with an in-line flathead six. The day is hot and the roads are dusty; we have a cooler full of Cokes and bologna sandwiches. Because I am the younger brother I have to sit in the back seat with the cooler; my brother and his buddies (already in high school) are in the front seat.

We get to the drag strip and we have to wait in line. It is unbelievable to me that we talked our ol’ man out of enough money — you know, these tickets cost five bucks apiece. How can they expect people to pay those kinds of prices?! Ernie Walker should stick to running the Shamrock station; he’ll never make anything out of this drag racing business.

Well, we finally get in. It’s about 8 o’clock in the morning and I am vibrating with anticipation. We drive that ’52 Rambler down past the stands and pull it as close to the fence as they would allow. One of the really cool things about going to the drags is that you get to watch them from the fender of your own car where you can imagine what it’s going to be like some day when you don’t have a ’52 Rambler.

Back in the early ’60s the Amarillo Dragway hosted some races called the Texas vs California Challenge Drags. As I said, I am not sure the Texas-California Challenge was the very first drag race I went to (these memories all run together after almost 40 years) but I sure remember the first car I thought was cool. It was a Model A Ford roadster called the "Triple Nickel." Number 555 was fast and that car was gorgeous! It made me tingle all over the first time I saw it run. This car was from right here in Amarillo.

Later that day I saw a car that made a sound I had never heard before. It sounded like a "twist of lemmings" of Monty Python fame. It was the Chadwick and Hardy ‘55 Chevy B/G. They were running a destroked 327 (probably around 300 cubic inches) and the driver would shift somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 rpm. Later that summer, I saw that car explode the flywheel, a piece of which hit my brother in the head (which explains a lot). The guys who raced that car, Kelly Chadwick and Don Hardy, went on to fame and fortune in the world of big-time drag racing.

I also saw my first A/GS Willys, the "Rowdy Willy." I loved that car. I always wanted to see the "Rowdy Willy" run the Stone-Woods-Cook A/GS that I had seen in Hot Rod so many times. I saw a car called the "Tennessee Bo’ Weevil" A/MR that was the most beautiful roadster I had ever seen — and the fastest. I was amazed that the racer was a guy in a wheelchair. In drag racing you don’t have to be behind the wheel to be a racer; Darrell Gwynn now upholds this tradition.

I remember seeing Gene O’Tanger in his Buick-powered competition coupe, another cool-looking car. And of course, our local hero was there that day: Jack Moss in his twin-engined Chevy dragster. He had previously run a Dodge-powered dragster and had actually made it to the final four at the first Nationals (as in "The Nationals"). Back then you didn’t have a national race every week.You had the Winternationals in Pomona and the Nationals that was run in Indianapolis. Our guy actually had been there!

Some of the cars from California that I remember seeing were the Moon Eyes dragster with the blower mounted in front of the motor. How cool was that!? The drag master guys were there with Danny Ongais (or as he was known, Danny On-the-gas). I remember seeing Bobby Langley’s dragster with a nose cone that was painted like the mouth of a snake. Langley had such a big beard that he had to have an extension sewn onto his face mask.

Now I know today’s Top Fuel dragsters are a whole lot faster, more powerful, and the most incredible experience on the planet, but there was something special about dragsters that smoked the tires all the way down the track. It was incredible. The stuff dreams are made of, right there in front of us!

Every time one of these cars would make a pass we would scream and yell at the top of our lungs. Back in the car for a Coke and a mashed bologna sandwich, we would try to recreate the race car sounds and tell each other what kind of cars we were going to build and how fast we were going to go someday.

Then I saw something that changed my life. It changed who I was and created a feeling in me that has kept me a drag racing fan for close to 40 years.It also affected who I am as a person.

A car was pushed out of the pits (cars had to be pushed to start them back then) that was the most incredible looking machine I had ever seen. It was purple and chrome and polished aluminum. It had two Pontiac engines, supercharged and fuel injected — mounted side by side, not vertical, but sort of at an angle where they came together at the bottom. It had headers coming out of the side and four drag slicks! I heard a sound I had never heard in my life. After this monster fired up and they backed it up for the first pass, the starter raised his flag (this was before the time of Christmas trees) and then all hell broke loose!! The thunder rolled, the ground shook, the smoke billowed into the sky, and this projectile went down the track so fast that the purple drag chutes were open before I even had time to know what had happened to me. It was the most incredible experience ever to be witnessed by a prepubesent boy. That was really my first drag race. That car was the "Double Dragon" built and driven by Eddie Hill from Wichita Falls, Texas.

And here is how it shaped my life. A drag race is not always against the guy in the next lane. A drag race is really a race against yourself. You measure the time and you measure the speed because you want to know how good you are, how much guts you have. How much better you can do it next time is why you keep doing it.

Now in every undertaking in life there are people who talk and challenge you to go all out, but unless you’ve been drag racing, you don’t know what it means to go all out. Only in drag racing does the cost of the machinery, the safety of the driver, and every other normal consideration that might go into any endeavor take a back seat to the performance.

When you drag race, you want to push the machine to the very limit. If it breaks, it breaks. In a drag race the driver’s skill isn’t in his deftness at negotiating a curve; it is his courage to keep his foot all the way to the floor and keep the car under control until he goes through the lights. Drag racers have no lift!

If you’re a drag racer, everything else you do in life you do so you can keep drag racing. If you don’t think this is true, just look at Eddie Hill, Connie Kalitta, Don Prudhomme, and Kenny Bernstein.

When you experience your first drag race it touches something deep inside of you. It lets you know what it is really like to go all out, to lay it all on the line, put your foot all the way to the floor and simply not give a damn if it blows up or blows over!