Drag Racing Online - New Jersey Newsl

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

I was watching the BBC TV News today and was astounded how their view of world news includes so many things you never see on our disgraceful, electronic media here in the states. Do you know there is a terrible famine in Afghanistan, people are dying right and left from starvation? If that's not bad enough, there still a war going on between two different factions there trying to blow each other away. And in Africa there are different tribes or factions waging war on each other in at least five countries. They have managed to kill somewhere between 2.5 to 3.5 million people there since 1998. And that doesn't even take the AIDS situation into consideration, which is killing millions more. There are 25 million people who are HIV-positive in Africa. And if you don't think that is our problem, as Bono of U2 says, Tuberculosis is right behind it, which is communicable by air, and that is only an economy fare light away from hitting the USA, and the rest of the world.

So what does this have to do with drag racing? Every once in awhile I sit down and realize how fortunate we are to be born in the right place, at the right time. I was born in 1942 and saw my first hot rod in about 1955 at the corner of Granville and Crescent in my then home town of Park Ridge, IL. It was a channeled, flat black primered five-window '32 with no fenders, hood or side panels. I had always been drawing cars and WWII reciprocating engine fighter planes from the time I was 7. But when I saw that deuce, lighting struck me and changed my life. I screamed, and the driver of the Ś32 heard me and turned his head toward me as he passed by. If only he knew the impact he had on my future. Then I started spending my lunch money in Junior High on rod magazines, but you all know how that goes.

There was this evolution of hot rodding going on starting in the early 30's. While I may have missed the first 25 years, I was born at that perfect spot in the history of the universe where hot rods, and drag racing, were just bursting, exploding up out of the ground like a big field of brightly colored flowers. I was building plastic models of rods and rails cause I was just a kid, and taught myself to pinstripe at age 14. I would pinstripe anything my parents would let me, the snow shovel, the inside of the washing machine (they wouldn't let me do the outside), etc. I joined the SQUIRES of Chatham (NJ) hot rod club. I worked at the Old Bridge drags starting at the bottom of the pecking order (the guy who wiped the loser's shoe polish number off their windshield when they got eliminated) and worked my way up to flag starter. All of this was before I got my driver's license.

Going to the drags was the best. Every once in awhile somebody would roll in with a new car you hadn't seen and a fire would burn inside you. Not one of envy, one of purely appreciating how neat the thing looked. And then you catch your first snootful of Nitro. Talk about Nirvana.Woof.

There was a period of my life where I worked for drag racing and rodding publications. When you love hot rodding and journalism, being the Editor of HOT ROD as a kid (30) was like being paid to make love to Sophia Loren. Being paid to sit in the press-box at the Daytona 500 or atop the finish line tower at the Indy National Drags. Like I said, WOOF!

In more recent years I attend the Rod and Custom events, indoor and out. Occasionally I attend a Concours because you can find some incredibly good looking cars there, although the owners cringe when you call them hot rods. I love to make 'em cringe. To me, finding a different looking car that looks right, that is not another Xerox cookie-cuttter copy or somebody else's copy of somebody else's copy of a car is pure exhilaration.

If you stop a moment and try to think ahead for 20 years, do you think kids of that generation will be enjoying the heritage of hot rodding and drag racing the way we do presently? Will they stand around some Ś95 Oldsmobile at a car show and swoon about how cool a car it its or was? Not bloody likely. A Honda perhaps.

Today there are 900 million people in China who haven't the faintest idea what a drag race or hot rod is, but we've been able to enjoy this hobby/industry all our lives. So when I see this tragic news about Afghanistan and Africa, I stop and thank God for letting me be born in 1942, in America. It was the perfect place and time to spend my entire life immersed eyeball deep in drag racing and hot rods. And it was during that time frame where drag racing, anyway, was the absolute best. I think back to those many Saturday afternoons at Lions where I'd stand at the push out road (back when race cars were push started) watching pair after pair of slingshots smoldering the tires and clawing their way out of the smoke, GMC blowers whining and pipes thundering as they tried to pound a round peg into a square hole with a 392 Chrysler on 93%. They can close all the drag strips, but they can't erase those memories.

P.S. In closing, here's a shameless plug. I just spent several hours looking at Bill Pitts' SMOKE video tape, presenting drags from Pomona, Carlsbad, Fontana and two years of Bakersfield (Ś65 Garlits Sweep and Ś66 Surfers win). These magic days will never come back again but watching this video is the next best thing. Send a postal money order for $19/video plus $4 for shipping in USA, made out to Bill Pitts at 3127 Del Rey Ave, Carlsbad, CA 92009. It has pair after pair of AA/FD's melting the hides with decent voice over identifying the cars, pass by pass. This is not a professional video tape, these are great home movies of the good old days, but I assure you that if you long for the golden era of drag racing, you will not be disappointed.

If you want to talk to Terry Cook about hot rods, custom cars, or anything else e-mail to leadeast@aol.com

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