How I got hooked on drags

DRO file photo

6/8/05

or those of you who have hunkered down with me in this incestuous pit, you are reasonably aware of my drag racing background. I went to my first race in June of 1963 and watched Kenny Safford push the "Sours Sisters" Olds Top Fueler to San Fernando Raceway's first 190-mph speed and only have looked back 1,000 times since.

You might also be aware that Jeff Burk's and my drag racing hero is Chris "the Greek" Karamesines. This particular entry into the best solo races I've seen was the one that absolutely, positively turned me into a drag racing junkie.

On Dec. 21, 1963, Chris Karamesines' silver, Rod Stuckey-built dragster was booked to tangle with Southern California's No. 1 homegrown Top Fuel terrorist fueler, the bright yellow Greer-Black-Prudhomme, driven by you-all-know-who at Lions Dragstrip on the Wilmington/Carson border of Southern L.A. county.

I had only been going to the drags about six months at the time, but I was well aware of who Karamesines and Don Prudhomme were. Prudhomme was already a legend in California at age 22. Two years earlier he had won the Bakersfield March Meet and had run a victory skein from June 1962 through May 1963 where he lost something like eight single races in over 100 head-to-head encounters. It practically goes without embellishment that Prudhomme had a lot of fans in the area, especially in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles County where he grew up.

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I, too, grew up in the San Fernando area, and was more than aware who Prudhomme was -- and I respected him and thought he was cool, also. One of the main reasons I was at Lions Dragstrip on the aforementioned Dec. 21 date was because of what the cool Prudhomme had done to my newest sports hero.

The first big race I had ever attended was in early November of the year where Karamesines' entourage, complete with an enclosed Engine Specialists trailer and a 1964 Cadillac Sedan DeVille push car came out to Pomona Raceway to defend their Drag News No. 1 Top Fuel standing against Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen in the Broussard-Purcell-Garrison-Davis dragster. I was blown away by "the Greek," as he whipped out a 7.93 (Pomona track record) backed with a 7.98 and dropped a wheelstanding McEwen.