How was it meeting Force for the first time?

Hight: I was very nervous, not stressing so much, but just wanting to come off good, say and do the right things. I finally decided, just be sincere. Tell the truth.

And ….

Hight: After the introductory things, he told me that Austin and Bernie said I was all right mechanically. I, up to that point, seemed to be passing the test. He asked me a lot of things and you really come away impressed with the guy. He is very much to the point, driven, sincere, honest, and it rubs off. He is very big into family and we hit it off their and then he had one more final point. He told me, he tells this to every guy who makes the cut, “One of the rules is stay away from my daughter [Adria]." Kind of a hands off policy. That was fine with me, short of the money, I didn’t care. I just wanted to work with the team.

Given what’s developed on that front, how did it work out that you two would wind up married. If nothing else, I know John’s “No’s” don’t mean “yes.”

Hight: When I first got the job, I was content to live at the Yorba Linda shop. He’s got sleeping quarters there, shower, there’s restaurants nearby, so it wasn’t all that bad a deal. When the guys would go home, I’d, with Austin and Bernie’s okay, work on the car,

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maintenance it and all, and in doing that, hopefully learn some things and I did.
Well, Adria lived a few blocks from the shop, and I guess she kinda felt sorry for me. And it was really cool of her. She and some of her girlfriends would come by and we’d talk, but I remembered what John said, and when they asked if I wanted to go out with them, get something to eat, whatever, I didn’t go. I was happy that they’d ask, but I really was happy working in the shop. I loved doing it.

As we became better friends, I guess she went to her dad and said something like, ‘You know dad, he’s stuck in that shop and I know how you feel about the crews and all, but he won’t even go out with me and my friends.' Well, he said it was okay and one thing led to another. That was 1995, 1996, and later in 1997, we bought a house together.

On to things a little less domestic, how did the driving thing materialize? I take it you always had an itch to drive a race car.

Hight: Oh yeah. They hired me for the crew … perfect, couldn’t be happier, but I did say to the guys, Austin, John, that some day I’d like to drive. In March of last year, I got some money and went to Frank Hawley’s School in Gainesville just before the Gatornationals, and it went well, ran a 6.28 best. A week or so later at Las Vegas, John told me that he’d put me in the car.

I remember that day really well. I was so nervous that when it came time to fill out the waivers for the insurance forms at the track, I could barely write my name my hands were shaking so bad. You know, you want to do it right, and I was just trying to calm down and focus. Austin said to take it out 330 feet and shut it off. When I hit the throttle after the burnout and staged, I launched and it was all blurs … just a tremendous burst of power. I lifted and as soon as I did the car took off for the wall. Gary Densham told me that I missed it by about a foot. What I didn’t know was that when you get off the throttle right now, the front end of the car gets so heavy that you really have to take over at the wheel, really muscle the car into shape. Well, that’s how you learn.