At first, I was like that. I absolutely loved Top Fuel; to hell with Funny Car -- a passing fad. I lived at Lions, San Fernando and Irwindale (this was before Orange County). In the late fall of 1964 at Lions, I saw one of my all-time favorite cars, the Stone-Woods-Cook "Swindler A" A/GS '41 Willys do a best of three with Jack Chrisman's Sachs & Sons blown and injected, nitro-burning '64 Comet Funny Car. Though I pulled for Doug Cook with all my might, Chrisman's cackler had secretly won me over.

Later, on July 30-31, 1966, AHRA held their Nationals for everything from Z/SA to blown Funny Cars (no Top Fuel, Top Gas, etc. until the following weekend). That Chrisman showing put me nearly first in line to see both days. The cars I wanted to see were the blown Funny Cars: Dee Keaton's "Cyclone" Comet, Steve Bovan's Blair's Speed Shop '65 Nova, Pat Foster in the Corvette Auto Parts entry, Roger Wolford in the "Secret Weapon" Jeep and the late, great 21-year-old (not yet "Jungle") Jim Liberman at the wheel of the Goodies Speed Shop/Larry Hopkins Pontiac/"Brutus" GTO. Their (and others like them) antics pulled me out of the closet. To my closest drag race friends (all Top Fuel aficionados and Funny Car haters), their little pal with the big mouth had joined the enemy and wanted more than anything to be at Capitol to see the "King of Kings" show.

Photo by Tim Marshall

To the best of my knowledge, it was the first Funny Car extravaganza that featured only blown cars ... and they were the very best. Don and Roy Gay brought out their Pontiac GTOs and their chief rival, Gary Dyer, showed with the "Mr. Norm" fastback" Dodge Charger. There was also Arnie Beswick's tiger-striped Gay Pontiac-backed GTO, Chrisman, Larry Arnold's "Kingfish" Barracuda, Californian Darrell Droke's Downey Ford Mustang, Gordon Gilkeson's "Viking" Chevy II, Bobby Wood's Wood Chevrolet-backed "Palomino" Chevelle, the Ron O'Donnell-driven AMT Piranha, and, at that time, the John Farkonas Dodge Charger, driven by Pat Minick, and wrenched by a young unknown named Austin Coil. This was a big one in terms of a cash prize ... $2,000 to win, $1,000 for runner-up.

Photo by Tim Marshall

As might be guessed, the show was noisy, breakage filled, relatively fast and, surprisingly, won to a significant degree, on luck.

As it sometimes turns out, the quickest and fastest car doesn't always win. Of the 10 cars, Dyer and Beswick had the best rides. Beswick, the beloved "Farmer" from Morrison, Illinois, set low E.T. on a second-round bye with a blistering 8.62, 169.81 after wowing the capacity crowd with a bumper-scraping first-round wheelie. In round three, he faced off with Wood and ripped off an 8.75, 167.91 only to red light against his foe's 396-powered Chevy.