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MAY BE BABYPhoto by Jeff Burk I have always had a soft spot in my head for the fifth month of the year. I was born then (Whoopee!) and a lot of people you guys like, such as 11-time Winston Funny Car king John Force, claim May as their birth month as well.
May is also the month of the best race I never ever went to, the annual Olympics of Drag Racing at Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin. I had to have my fun vicariously, drool at the pictures of two Funny Cars or whatever on the line with the wall of billboards blocking the farmland on the right side. "Broadway Bob" Metzler's emporium in the bottom right hand corner of the Badger State ruled the month of May for me. I cared about what happened at the Olympics. At that race, it was four days (Friday through Monday) of the best nitro racing in the Midwest. In most years from when the Olympics really took off, 1965 through the late 1970s, I would rather have been there than Indy. Not only was every major touring Top Fuel dragster and Funny Car there, but every jet, rocket car, wheelstander, and oddball exhibition car would put in an appearance during the four days. In some years, the event was really plagued by rain. I'm reasonably sure that the 1970 event was a total washout, but even then Metzler came up with winners for the race based on elapsed time up to the moment the towel was thrown in. I was looking through one of my stats books and came upon the 1972 Olympics. Three days of the scheduled four were completed and I marveled at the people who took part. In Top Fuel, Don Garlits, "T.V. Tommy" Ivo, Chris Karamesines, Gary Cochran, John Wiebe, Marvin Schwartz, Ronnie Martin in Robert Anderson's dragster, Jeb Allen's "Praying Mantis," and local guys like the Carnett & Rowe, Monty Mize and maybe a dozen and a half others made it to Union Grove. Funny Car was every bit as good. Ed McCulloch's "Revellution" Dodge, Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen's Revell cars, Kenny Safford in the Mr. Norm Charger, Gene Snow's Charger, Dale Creasy's "Tyrant" with Al Marshall driving, Dale Emery in the "Hemi Under Glass" Firebird, the Ramchargers and Clare Sanders, and the proverbial "other stars." Union Grove's annual May event was like this for the better part of 15 years. Great eliminations, style-racing with great cars. While a case has been made for it being one of the oldest match-race events, it wasn't as old as the promoters claimed. The event was first called the "Olympics" in 1966 after a great 1965 race. There were so many great cars that something as mundane as the Memorial Day Championships or whatever they called it, didn't get the job done. The point of all this? The Olympics were part of drag racing's so-called Golden Years. Every weekend, there was a superior quality match event. In 1972, a week earlier from the Olympics, the Super Stock Magazine Nationals was hosted at York, Pa. A week later, the IHRA Nationals at the old Dallas Int'l Motor Speedway. The three hot rod associations didn't hold a big event every week, but it hardly mattered. In the weeks in between, events like the Olympics were the glue that held together a sport that was up and coming and as exciting as hell. The sport still does have its excitement level, but not as consistently and as crazily as back then. I know that when I was a kid, like in 1972, I used to have to press my "Patience" button hard, when an experienced old timer expounded on how things were better in the good old days. In general, that's not true. I wouldn't walk across the street to see the Rolling Stones, but I'd
crawl nude across Wilshire Blvd. in downtown L.A. to see the Texas band,
And You Will Know Us By the Trail of the Dead. However, if your standards
are quality and quantity, then I'd have to say that drag racing, at
least to this point, lags behind its past somewhat. Hopefully, as in
Wish-Upon-A-Star, that will change. |
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