7/9/04
 Jeff Burk Photo |
My first trip to the U.S. Nationals was in 1973. I originally had planned, along with my fellow drag fanatic, Niles Smith, to go in 1972. However, we were both very rebellious in our youth and when we got wind of what Don Garlits was trying to do in Tulsa, Okla., we decided to pass on Indy and go there. Our feeling back then was that since the race cars were getting much more expensive to run, it seemed unfair that NHRA, which was in full bloom in '72, could only muster what amounted to (counting full contingencies) roughly $5,000.
In 1972, the marquee Top Fuel cars were running 6.1s at speeds of 240-mph. Like a crack habit that's starting to squeeze its host, the fuel guys needed to get more money from the powers that be. Say what you will about him, Garlits took on NHRA and posted a publicized $35,000 for Top Fuel and Funny Car. Every big fuel name, save for a half-dozen or so NHRA competitors, showed at Tulsa, and maybe for the only time in NHRA history, an event was held the same weekend as their "biggie," and blew it off in quality.
This was not lost on the establishment. In 1973, the NHRA Top Fuel purse at Indy went from roughly $5,000 to a little over $18,000. Moreover, Garlits held another Tulsa race that year, but got off the Labor Day weekend. Smith and I thought, "OK, point made, let's go to Indy this year and see what all the noise is about the U.S. Nationals."
In 1973, I was a maniac drag racing fan. I bought every publication that posted drag race results, and literally wrote books of stats just for myself. In 1972, I spent somewhere toward $500 to a $1,000 bucks of mine and my parents money to cover phone bills created from my calling race tracks like U.S. 30 in Gary, Ind. or some of the Southern tracks for results. I wanted to know everything.
That was okay. But don't forget, in the 1970s and the previous decade, the world had changed dramatically. I went from a quiet, introspective Catholic boy to a college-age fire-breathing, sometimes obnoxious, SDS radical, who also spent many hours in front of the stereo absorbed into Captain Beefheart, the Firesign Theater, Frank Zappa, and the Velvet Underground, chain-smoking "Maui Wowie," and "Congolese Purple." I also had discovered among others a new literary hero, one Hunter S. Thompson, through his crazed and hilarious rants in Rolling Stone. I won't go into the gory details, but Smith, who shared most of my prejudices, knew the best way to drive to the U.S. Nationals. We had already road-tested this approach going to Tulsa the previous year.
We turned his '57 Ford ranchero into a rolling bar and mobile narcotics lab and hit the highway. Consequently, I have no memory of my first U.S. Nationals. Sorry. Good night.
But seriously folks, we did make it. No busts, no crashes, just an ant-like dotted trip from North Hollywood, Calif. to the uncharted depths of inner Indiana. I do remember that we hallucinated a lot, but the content is foggy. I just didn't have the recall of a Thompson or our (meaning Smith and myself) beatnik predecessors like Neil Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. All I know is that we made it to Indy.
I do remember one thing. (After all, this was 31 years ago.) Somehow we missed a bunch of turnoffs, drove through some stop signs and hedges, and wound up in a park where they had a small wooden building with the stuffed remains of the World's Largest Cow. As cross-eyed as I was, I was impressed a ton. We went into this building and all we saw was this huge cow. Sort of like Roy Rogers' horse "Trigger." It looked real as real as a parking ticket.
If my cratered memory serves me well, I tried to get on top of the thing, but failed. Instead, I gave up and discovered that the tail had fallen off the thing. I think we hauled ass and made it to Crawfordsville with a wake of unrealized tickets scattered in the ether.
Anyway, to Indy!
It was everything it was cracked up to be. Even at age 26, I had attended a lot of great drag races, and this clambake was right near the top. For one thing, the pro fields were huge. I used to know this off the top of my head, but, for example in Funny Car, I'd guess there were over 40, maybe 50, trying to squeeze their fat butts into a 16-car show, and that tight fit applied to every class on the premises.
No special times for pro qualifying. After an hour or so of Sportsman cars, they just wheeled up the Pros. I had been to Bakersfield's March Meet in 1964 through 1967, and those really were premier events. However, despite the usual lambasting that NHRA took because of its leadership role, the nationals were everything I had hoped for.
In round one, the Tulsa flagship met up with the 1972 winner, Gary Beck. Believe me, the fans were aware of the politics in this joust. Garlits jumped the Canadian off the line, but Beck showed himself as a genuine force to be reckoned with when he powered past him to take a 6.01 to 6.13 win. After that, Beck ran Indy's first in a semi-final 5.96 win over David Baca's dad, eventual 1977 Indy winner Dennis.
Qualifying was stupendous. The Top Fuel class was filled with racers from every part of the country, but it remained for Ohio's Jim Bucher to lead the pack with an outstanding 6.09 in his Chevy-powered Kenner SSP-backed dragster.
That "from every part of the country" remark was what made Indy so special for me that year. I saw so many eastern, Midwestern, and southern cars for the first time, dozens of them. Top Fuel obscurities like "Chicago" Harry Claster's dragster or the many match-race Funny Cars that normally didn't make NHRA events were content to get along on dozens of 1973 appearance fees.
If I had one run that stood out for me, it was one that came from an exhibition
car. Smith and I were dazzled somewhere between the 800- to 1,000-foot mark
on the Sportsman side of the track when the announcers alerted us that the late
Dave Anderson was going to try for the total and complete track record in Tony
Fox's "Pollution Packer" rocket dragster.
At that time, the five-second zone had only been entered less than a year ago
by the Top Fuel dragsters. The car didn't make any noise, but when it "rocketed"
(can't think of a better word) by us, we were overwhelmed, and when the announcer
declared a 4.62, 344.56, Smith cut through the fog with words that I vividly
remember, "Dude, that was TOO fast!" It was. A glimpse (save for the
speed) of what drag racing would look like a quarter of a century later.
Turns out that it wasn't too fast. True, no fueler or Funny Car has run 340, but a 4.62 has been surpassed probably hundreds of times.
The drag racing future appeared limitless that weekend. How could anyone not be impressed by that run and everything else we had saw. I came away from the Indy shebang revived and ready to go face first into the future. And I will say, that even though a few years later I wound up working for NHRA, I would no longer brook anymore horseshit about them being deadbeats and corporate grifters. I loved what I saw.
Would it be that this will be the case in 2004 at its 50th birthday? I don't think so, but, hey, I've made statements like that before. This is a corporate world now, and it has asserted itself to the point where drag racing is now just another sports-oriented advertising medium. Things ain't the same.
Thirty one years ago, I was in heaven at Indy. I'll settle for Limbo in 2004.
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