photo by Jeff Burk

The Cordova Forty-Niners

I'm writing this one month and one day before drag racing's BIG one. The Mac Tools U.S. Nationals? Hah, it is to laugh. No, we're talkin', make that writin', about what is the 49th edition of the annual World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova Dragway Park at Cordova, Illinois.

I am quite sure that this race is the first 49th anniversary of any drag race in the sport's annals. The big NHRA Labor Day event was run for the first time, as nearly everyone has been indoctrinated, in 1955; the Cordova race got rolling in 1953. True, the Cordova show started out at the nearby Lawrenceville Airport in northwestern Illinois and moved to Cordova in 1957, but the race has always been known as the World Series, near as I can tell.

And, of course, I don't mean to compare the two events in size and scope. In the 1950s and the very early 1960s, the Cordova event certainly rivaled Indy when it came to hot cars. After all, NHRA didn't run nitro-motivated machinery from 1957 through 1963 whereas Cordova flooded the facility with these cars. However, Indy deserves its reputation because ... well ... it's Indy. Actually, to my way of thinking, Indy is not the best race on the NHRA calendar. There are more Sportsman cars at this event (possibly) than other NHRA national events, but the cars the fans come to see, i.e. Top Fuel and Funny Car are not much more numerous than one would see at Pomona, the Texas events, and a few others. Indy has been successfully absorbed into the look-alike wallpaper backdrop of all NHRA national events with only the pre-press hype separating it from the chaff.

Cordova has always been a wild and wacky event, oozing personality. The first car to win Top Eliminator was an Allison aircraft-powered dragster run by Art Arfons. The winner of the 1959 event was the Leffler & Loukas AA/Modified Fuel coupe, which just happened to beat one of the headliners at this 49th anniversary roast, Chris Karamesines, in the final.

In 1966, Cordova ran an all-out Funny Car show, which was won by Larry Reyes in the "Kingfish" Barracuda. Reyes beat Arnie Beswick in that final, but of special interest was a car he beat in the semifinals, and also the headliner, at this race. Don Garlits brought his 1966 Dodge Dart roadster (actually the Marvin Schwartz Garlits Chassis Spl. Top Fueler with Dodge skin) with Emory Cook in the saddle. In that semifinal round, Reyes got a huge leap off the line against the Garlits' roadster with reporter Ben Brown saying in effect that at about half track, Reyes was "a good 75 feet in front of Cook." The Garlits car quit spinning its tires soon enough and they both were close heading into the lights with Reyes winning 8.80, 160.14 to Cook's 9.04, 192.30. That 36-year-old race is typical of the fare that the World Series has given its drooling public for a half century.

As stated above, and can be guessed, the headliners at the 49th anniversary will be the most successful racer on the planet for most of those nearly 50 years, Don Garlits, and the single most legendary racer of the period, Chicago's Chris "the Greek" Karamesines. The Cordova event is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23-24, with Garlits and "the Greek" meeting twice on Saturday night.

It would take too long to research how many times this pair have met in World Series history, but suffice to say the fabled old track couldn't have picked two better racers to characterize this event on its 49th birthday.

Obviously, there are others for the gala event. On Friday, Funny Car pilots Bob Bode and Jack Wyatt will meet up with UDRA Pro Mods and Alcohol Funny Cars matching as well. The Nostalgia fuel cars will be present on Friday with "Diamond Dave" Miller driving for "Broadway Bob" Metzler, the Hall of Fame Great Lakes Dragaway owner, the Paris Bros. in-line, twin blown Chrysler, rear-motored fuel dragster, and Jim Lutz heading the bill.

The big deal will be Saturday. Along with the Garlits/Karamesines tango, the nitro Funny Cars of the Creasy Family, Bode, Wyatt, Tim Wilkerson, Todd Paton, and John Lawson will be cranking out close to 300-mph speeds.

There will be jets, wheelstanders, UDRA Pro Mods and Funny Cars, and Fuel Altereds, and a special burnout competition. DragRacingOnline will sponsor a Quick Eight competition.

Bob Whitsell's twin Cadillac, front engine dragster will match up with one of two race cars being brought by the star of the 2000 show, Rex Stevens. As some might recall, Stevens provided the ultra sighting of a race car going nearly the entire Cordova quarter-mile sans driver. Rex blew the motor on the burnout on that run, and a piece of the blower bag was slightly pressing the throttle linkage on the blower. Stevens unbuckled and got out of the Speed Sport roadster in the first 60 feet of the track, and he and the rest of the capacity house watched in amazement to see he would become the first driver to ever watch his car set low e.t. without him in it. It chugged down the track to about the 1,200-foot mark where it parked along the retaining wall.

Certainly, any reader can spot my prejudices in regard to races like this. They are precious and few. It bugs me that there are so many younger fans who missed the events that propelled drag racing into the sports fans' consciousness. "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday" emanated from match race events and not national events. And these races were of the type that will be seen at Cordova a week before Indy ... "Run Watcha Brung" in the truest sense of the phrase. More variety, madness, and backyard invention than you can stand.

In addition to the World Series proper, there are other social amenities that the big races lack. Tubs full of Icehouse 5-percent beer at a $1.00 a can. That's less than a coke; at Indy, a Coke's $2.50. At Cordova, they have clowns for the kids, and loose elements from both sexes dressed in their humidity-fighting best. The food's cheap, the t-shirt souvenirs don't cost $25 and $30 a pop, the wild geese don't attack, and the only dangerous drunk I have ever seen at Cordova was a sponsor who did a header outside of the port-a-pottie behind the Cordova tower.

In addition, after the pro cars, which will appear in a two-hour wrap up Friday and a three-hour nighttime segment on Saturday, there are casinos. Less than a half-hour away from the track and across the Mississippi River, there are two or three of these litter pits in Bettendorf and Clinton, Iowa.

In Indianapolis, drag racing NHRA-style is what you get in the countrified atmosphere of Clermont, Indiana, but the only casinos you see there are in hotel brochures.

I'd recommend both The World Series and the U.S. Nationals to the readership. It would be a great way to see how drag racing got into the popular racing consciousness in the first place (Cordova) and, for better or worse, see what it's become in the past 49 years.

And then let us know what you think.

Editor's Note: After sending in this latest installment of his Chronicles, Chris got hired for a full-time job. Yep, it's true. For those of you who had money wagered, Martin is a clerk in a porno-film shop in West Hollywood. Sadly, he won't be making the trek to the midwest for either of the races he wrote about. That is, unless he spends too much time in the back room, stocking shelves, if you know what we mean. Stay tuned.

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