When “Pebble-Pulp-Chef” got to DANCE with “Big June”

DRO file photo

8/8/05

n 1984, National DRAGSTER began publishing feature articles along with the usual national event coverage and race reports. With Neil Britt and Phil Burgess blocking up front, the staff was cut loose and I wrote the first of these, one detailing the famed 1964 Stone-Woods-Cook-“Big John” Mazmanian/ A/GS match race at Lions. It was a three-part piece dealing with the all the hoopla that initiated the confrontation, the nasty letters that appeared in Drag News (“Big June” vs. “Pebble-Pulp-Chef”) where the teams traded hilarious insults, and the few times they raced each other before the biggie on May 5th.

This installment of my personal favorite single heat deals with one of those “few times they raced each other.” They actually met three times in the 12 months before the best of three that was won by Doug Cook over Mazmanian driver “Bones” Balough. Their ’41 Willys met in an A/GS class final at the ’64 NHRA Winternationals, which was won by Cook on a holeshot, and two weeks earlier in an impromptu duel at the inaugural UDRA meet at Lions. To this writer the first match in the above impromptu duel gets my vote as one of the two or three best races I’ve ever seen.

The UDRA meet was hosted on February 1-2 and was truly one of the best races ever held on the West Coast. Every big name Top Fuel, Fuel Altered, Top Gas huffer, and injected fueler racer was there. So were Stone-Woods-Cook and “Big John.” To the best of my recollection, there was no A/GS class competition, but if there was S-W-C and Mazmanian were not part of it. I believe that both teams were making singles and testing for the upcoming Winternationals and Bakersfield meets and were conserving parts and pieces for expected war.

At this time, drag race fans had been saturated by the aforementioned Drag News ads and most of us fell in line like a hardcore wrestling fan would after listening to a vein-popping locker room interview. One week, S-W-C would lay into the Mazmanian team, chopping the car and the individuals who raced it. The next week, Mazmanian would lecture the Paramount, Calif.-based team on their utter lack of class and sportsmanship. The next week one of the teams would relay to the readers that they were at the same track as the “other guys,” but due to a lack of spine, the “other guy” chose not to back up his mouth and race. And on it would go.

To this day, I’ve never seen such pre-race palaver create an atmosphere where nearly everyone agreed that a certain race had to happen. The situation was as Muhammad Ali put it before his fight with Ernie Terrell, “Since we don’t get along, we’ve got to get it on.” And get it on was what they did some 41 years ago.

It was mid-afternoon Sunday at Lions and two rounds of Top Fuel competition had been completed. In the last race of the round, one of the fuel dragsters had blown and oiled the track, necessitating a lengthy clean up. Most younger fans don’t know how good they have it now. Forty years ago, an oil clean-up could take as long as 45 minutes as the broom crews drove endlessly back and forth over the rice hull ash. If it was a track length oiler, the clean-up would last until Monday afternoon. Anyway…