"Father Time, Mother Earth, a marriage on the rocks ..."

- James Merrill,
"The Broken Home" 1966

Not in nostalgia drag racing, Mr. Pulitzer Prize-winning word bender of extraordinary skill.

For the record, I'm not a nostalgic person. I do collect both old and new records, and prefer, in general, older TV shows, compared to the crap that inundates the air waves now. Except, of course, for the "X Files," "Family Guy," XXX porn sites, and "the 700 Club." However, that's it. But in drag racing, I feel a lifetime of nostalgic hostility melt away when I encounter something like the 8th annual California Hot Rod Reunion at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield.

I think that anything that primes the pump for the past had better do more than sell you a few t-shirts, lithographs, and assorted memorabilic bric-a-brac. If I want to recall it, then I want to re-live it, as close as possible. The Bakersfield show is very reasonable to that end.

For the past few years, I've headed up to Bakersfield with Terry Lee Minks, once a crew chief with former Winston Top Fuel champ Jeb Allen, and his pals. We later would get to the track and hook up with the "World's Fastest Hippie," Mike Mitchell, Johnny Brown, "Honda Doug" Woiwood, "Dudley" Rickart, and a host of other nostalgic ne'er-do-wells, who were just too damn eccentric to fit into the modern business strategies of today, and just hang out. Beer-drinking, running back and forth to the grandstands for the nitro sessions, talking at the top of our lungs in the various mobile homes; it was a fun deal all the way around.

Those facts alone were enough to carry my interest in the Hot Rod Reunion. The event stressed camaraderie and play with the racing (six eliminators including front-motor Top Fuel, Junior Fuel, A/Fuel, AA/Gas, Nostalgia Eliminator, A/FX Eliminator, and exhibition cars) serving as a backdrop.

The atmosphere at the Reunion is the biggest pull of the show, and I believe that if NHRA and IHRA could duplicate that feel at their national events, drag racing would enjoy even greater success than it currently does. Essentially, it's a party, but one that sticks its fork into the past for a large ass delicious bite.

And on that note, I want to say why this year's event made me go from an "I'll get up there if I can"-type of guy to "I will kill for tickets"-type of partaker.

Terry Lee came by my Encino pad on Friday morning with his mobile home and a trailer with his 1966 Dodge Charger, complete with a 426-cid Hemi. The car is totally original (factory numbers and all that), including the paint, interior, etc., and was the star of my show for the weekend. Over the years, I had forgotten one of the key elements of my early days of drag racing fandom, namely, if you have a big gun, like a factory Hemi Charger, the fun increases geometrically. There is indeed something very flattering about people — car people at that — eyeballing your ride and nodding their heads in approval; Terry's Charger filled the bill to a tee and, as a result, I enjoyed the Reunion better than I had before. It is way cool to be a participant, or as close to participant as possible, to really suck the maximum enjoyment out of one of these free-for-alls.

Today, the street scene has changed for cars. The best street racers sit astride motorcycles with very few four-wheel advocates able to challenge, but wheeling around in a Hemi Charger does a lot to brush aside those cheap realities. And when you have 200-300 other people (and race car people at that) hanging with you in similar modes of transportation, well ... I have an even fuller understanding of why the Bakersfield extravaganza has done so well.

Nowhere is that sense of community brought home stronger than the Friday night wingding at the Double Tree Hotel on California Avenue. Imagine the following scene. A major multi-story hotel with a big crescent-shaped drive in front packed with cars and many of the biggest stars in the sport's history hanging out informally in front, drinking beer, bullshitting, kicking around just like a lot of us did a few years back at the many drive-ins and such when the sport was taking shape. We're not painting a picture of a few dozen suited types jiggling with chuckles, but a genuine raucous retro with hundreds of participants tethered from over-the-edge behavior only by the experiences that come from having led (and survived) a fast-lane lifestyle for so many years.

A handful included Jim & Alison Lee in from Virginia, AA/Gas greats K.S. Pittman and Junior Thompson, Lions starter Larry Sutton, Top Fuel greats James Warren, Paul Sutherland, Jeep and Ronnie Hampshire, Kenny Safford, Bob Muravez, "T.V. Tommy" Ivo, John "Tarzan" Austin, Dale Emery, Jack Williams, Joe Schubeck, San Diego wrench "Red" Lathrum, modern hitters such as Sid Waterman and Funny Car great Dale Pulde, and, of course, evergreen NHRA founder Wally Parks and wife, Barbara, and even the driver of the first machine ever called a dragster, Dick Kraft. In fact, Kraft's "the Bug" could be found tooling around the Bakersfield pits on all three days of the event.

At the hotel that night or at the track during the day, a fan could bump into one of these great racers and shoot the breeze in a very informal ambiance. Just as someone would if they ran into them at a bar, or for nostalgic purposes, a Bob's Big Boy or Harvey's Broiler.

And on the subject of old drag racing drive-ins, having a Hemi Charger to cruise with was the ideal machine for someone like myself who is a slow-learning child in search of more childhood. Goddam, that thing was fun.

The drive from the track on Highway 99 to the California Ave. exit was about 10 miles and Terry took advantage of all the horsepower he had beneath his right foot. Having grown up in the era of the muscle cars, it's hard to digest all the four- and six-cylinder imports and mini-in-comparison Mustangs that dot the youth landscape of today. I hate to admit it but there is a part of me that silently thinks that our cars would have buried, as in Turkish earthquake, the things the kids wheel around now. I've never been a guy who puffs up with a my-dog's-smarter-than-your-dog-type of mentality, but Terry's Charger brought out that fiendish side of my persona.

As one example, a kid and two pals were alongside of us in a late model Pontiac Firebird and the speed at the moment was about 70-or-so mph on Saturday night coming back from the track. After both front ends of the two cars pushed in front of each other a couple of times, Terry looked over at me and laughed, "Watch this." He slammed down on the throttle and in a matter of seconds the mighty Charger roared to life putting car lengths between us and the outclassed Firebird. Terry's red menace went up to 110-mph effortlessly, and it took the kids a couple minutes to pull alongside of us. When they did, one of the passengers in the car rolled down his window and said excitedly, "Do it again, do it again." Terry gladly obliged.

Having a car like that is like having Boardwalk and Park Place with three hotels in Monopoly: You just know that whatever properties your opponent has, you still have the ultimate persuader. Mike Tyson may not win the Heavyweight championship again, but we all know that if he gets over with a big shot, regardless of opposition, the fight will come to a screeching halt. 426 cubic inches with dual four-barrels lovingly massaged every month produce that kind of euphoria, that momentary surge of invincibility.

For three days, I bathed in that mental luxury with that big-inch red monster and it re-activated an emotion that played a large roll in my getting hooked on drag racing. The car, hell the event, provided a feeling, but probably an illusion, of power in a world that is designed to make you feel powerless. A '66 Dodge Hemi Charger, a front-motored Top Fueler transformed the owners into people with clout. Whether they changed bus tires for a living or were a don in a Mafia crime family, when they got behind the wheel of their particular Frankensteins they were someone to reckon with.

That's what makes the annual Bakersfield party click. Wally Parks used to say that these cars, hot rods, were a very real extension of the owners, their "Here I am" to the world. The Reunion was an Exhibit A of that statement, times two.

My feeling after packing up the Charger and heading for home on Sunday was, wouldn't it be great if all NHRA and IHRA national events could instill this kind of emotion. Lately, I wonder and I say that keeping all types of pro sports in mind.

If you go to a race like the O'Reilly Auto Parts Fallnationals at the Texas Motorplex (as I did recently), it would be really a pain in the ass to wheel around in some pride-and-joy muscle car. You're bumping and running with all types of drivers and, for my money, it would be akin to bringing a bat, ball and glove to a major league baseball game. To my way of thinking, that's too much baggage.

The event itself doesn't require a '66 Hemi Charger to have fun. But as good as the Texas Motorplex race was (and I love great elapsed times and mph), I didn't enjoy it as much as the Bakersfield bash.

You can put your finger on any number of things to get to why. On the good side, the purses have risen noticeably, but obviously so has everything else, sort of like an ante. In the wake of that purse ascension has come a lot of negative crap and again, that applies to entertainments like baseball, football, and basketball. The performers are pissed at everything from the leagues and associations to the press, everyone's sweating the sponsors, fans are ticked at the high scale ticket prices, cynicism abounds, and a number of industry folks wonder if they'll be working or racing the next season. Those irritants were greatly scaled down in the period of 6-71 blowers, nitro Chevy engines, and 12-inch tires, the era which the Bakersfield event successfully recreates.

It's true that the actual racing at the California Hot Rod Reunion is really secondary to what goes on socially. Steve Gibbs, the NHRA Vice-President/Director of the NHRA Motorsports Museum, estimated that a little less than 200 cars took part with 24 of them being Top Fuelers and that about 10,000 people filled the Famoso facility as of Saturday. While not discounting the need for racing action (no sense in having a few hundred people hanging out at an abandoned airstrip in the middle of a walnut grove), Gibbs stressed that the event was really a social affair and felt that was what would keep people coming back to the show.

Based on what I saw, those remarks are on the money. I have been to five of the eight Reunions and I have yet to hear from anyone remotely connected to the sport, that they felt the event was anything less than good. Nobody thought that the experience was "just a bunch of old farts sitting around and telling stories."

The reviews on the program in those terms outshine to a degree what one might hear after attending either association's national events. A Tony Schumacher might go 330 mph and draw "Wows," or John Force may strike a responsive chord with the fans, but many, many times, there are spectators, and veteran ones at that, who just shake their heads and wonder if they want to do it again. The prices, the parking, and, I hate to say it, the hard sell of it all, seems a tad overwhelming.

I propose a jump start of the marriage between Father Time (nostalgia) and Mother Earth (the current reality) and there likely is no new ground being broken here. We, drag racing, need to weld the good feelings and the connectedness of something like the California Reunion with the hardcore competition that all sports are vacuumed into. How do we do that? I'm not sure; that's not my department. However as to why? It greatly enhances the enjoyment of drag racing, and I for one will investigate anything that keeps the sport off the rocks.

 

photo by Jeff Burk

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