Drag Racing Online - My First Time Vol. III No. 8 August 2001

AAAH, I REMEMBER IT WELL. My brother Jerry and I had just finished the Hamam Perf. Eng. Dragster with a 392, Schooler cam, 8- 97s on Golden Esso gasoline and direct drive. Well, not quite finished, as the only things painted were the valve covers. The rest of the car was still in unfinished metal or aluminum and would eventually be dark blue and white.

The year was 1958 late summer and we were told "BIG" was going to be at Dunkirk, NY dragstrip that weekend and we should go and show him how "bad" the local boys could be. YEAH RIGHT!

This is Jerry in the car. We did not even have a trailer yet so we got one of the guys who hung at the shop to borrow his dad's big Ford stake bed truck and we drove four hours with our Killer on the back to Dunkirk.

Some of the cars there that weekend were Don Garlits, Seto Postoian, Otie Smith, Chris Karamesines, Arlen Vanke, and some locals from Canada, The Satans car club gas-powered Olds dragster. Bottom line was we went 166 that day and the rest of the guys were going in the 180's and 190's.

In the bench racing session after the races were over Seto and "Big" gave the snotty nose kids from Niagara Falls some pointers. One was the rock shield we mounted over the 8 carbs was being sucked down and shutting off the air flow which caused the "92" to go rich and slow way down, which was obvious by the huge amount of black smoke from 700 or 800 ft down the track. The other tip was to buy a blower and get alky or nitro in that thing, which we did the following year.

Wady at age 13, with his bare back to the camera,
sits on the front of brother Jerry's car.

The fun part was after your car made a run the push cars got to race down to pick up their cars to tow back. I was "Top Eliminator" as I was driving my brother's 1957 Dodge D500 which at that time was one of the early factory "Hot Rods." I think it would run in the 16-second range while most of the other tow vehicles were running 18 or 19 seconds. Too bad they did not give trophies to the push vehicles as I would have won a bunch of them.

At the end of 1958 I bought a new fuel Injected Corvette so I could get serious about drag racing as the "push car eliminator" had gotten BORING!

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