"I was a gearhead like most kids at that age," Jamison recalled. "I used to read all the magazines, Hot Rod, all of them, and that's what got me interested in drag racing. I had a six-cylinder '35 Plymouth at the time and I ran it in the F/Gas class. I had come up to race, but I also wanted to see the Arfons Bros. Allison-powered dragster, which was one of the really big deal cars out there. It was a long time ago, but I remember that the track was just an airstrip with no guardrail, but with hundreds of racers and a lot of fans (reportedly 7,000) watching from the side. I had a ball, and I didn't win anything, but I had seen and done enough to make me want to come back the next year."

But Jamison didn't and it would prove to be the only time he missed the race. The 1955 season was marked with a case of the "No Money Blues," for the Ohioan. At the time of the

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event, his Plymouth was broken and being a kid he didn't have as much as money as he would have liked to make the trip to Illinois. He bounced back in 1956 for the finale at Lawrenceville, and the grand opening the following year at what is now Cordova Raceway Park.

"I've known Bob Bartels for a long time," he said. "He and a couple of other guys had bought this farmland, and what resulted was a really a state-of-the-art dragstrip for its time. The Cordova tower was a two-story job, although at the time it was open on the sides and up on stilts. However, you had the same lawns that you do now in the pits, and the gravel roads that brought the cars to the staging lanes, which were dirt then."

Jamison's best, and ironically, worst race was the 1959 World Series where he won the F/Gas class. The problem with that win was that there was some "interference" from the outside.

"My wife was at Community General in Sterling, Ill., getting ready to have our second child and said she needed me to get down there," he recalled. "Well, problem was that I was in the second round, so I told her I'd do the very best I could to make it. Well, I just did and everything turned out all right."

The retired ex-car dealer does more than just make a commemorative trip to the World Series every year. He also races his rear-engine, Chevy-powered econo dragster at tracks like Union Grove's Great Lakes Dragway and National Trail Raceway. In addition, his son drives a blown alcohol Top Sportsman dragster that, conveniently enough, won DragRacingOnline's Quick 8 show.

That and being the oldest continuing drag race's most prolific racer. . .hey, life is good, podnuh.