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Bernstein had heard that Prentiss Cunningham had let his driver, Jerry Smith, go, and Kenny was quick to fill the void. This proved to be a good deal for the fledgling Top Fuel pilot. Cunningham's "Texas Weasel" dragster was a regular on the U.S. Fuel circuit, making nearly all the dates. If Bernstein could show something in that competition, it would be a real feather in his cap. Prior to the Cunningham assignment, Bernstein had only made occasional appearances on the circuits: This would be a big step up.

The first few efforts with Cunningham weren't too memorable. The team debuted on April 10-11 with dates at Oklahoma City on Saturday night and Tulsa (Southwestern Int'l Raceway) on Sunday. Bernstein clocked a best 7.37/204.08 at Tulsa, but both of his appearances resulted in DNQs.

The next weekend, he qualified at Corpus Christi Raceway, but as luck would have it, he drew Cortines and the Carrolls in the first round and was dispatched handily. While his first 1969 try at Corpus Christi didn't produce much, it would be at this track that Bernstein would get his first notice ... at least from my perspective.

This shot was taken at Kenny's Orange County, California shop the year he switched over to Top Fuel Note the 403 number. Even though Kenny was living in SoCal, he maintained his Texas roots by using his division 4 (Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana) number. It was probably the only time in a couple of decades that he started a season with a triple digit. (Jeff Burk photo)

I have to back track here just for a second. The Texas area racers had one of the best reporters touting them in the late 1960s. Joanne Peters, "the Texas Rose," wrote a column for Drag News called the "Texas Rose" and there she wrote down everything that happened in the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisisana area and that meant complete qualifying with e.t.s and speeds and complete eliminations with the same amenities. It was in her columns that I followed racers like Bernstein and other circuit stalwarts like the Carrolls and Cortines, Hunt, Jimmy Nix, Floyd Head and Eddie Taylor, Doug "Bull Flea" Mead, Jackie Peebles and Chip Woodall, Richard Tharp, the Anderson Bros., the Rodriquez Bros., the Haggerty Bros./"U.S. Kids", "the Green Gang," Bobby Langley, and the then back-to-back NHRA Top Fuel champion Bennie Osborn. For a new guy like Bernstein to step up and win with any consistency in a crowd like that was a truly big deal.

Bernstein's leap into, at least, local prominence occurred at Corpus Christi. The track hosted a two-day 16-car Top Fuel show on June 21-22 and it featured a number of the above racers. Bernstein won, topping Ed Kelly and Larry Reep's car in round one, Mead's Louisiana-based "Bull Flea," Gary Bailey in the Casarez & Thorn dragster, and in the final, none other than the world champ himself Osborn. In that race, Bernstein left first and clocked a 7.15 to hold off Osborn's 7.31.

After a first-round loss at Pel-State Dragway in Opelousas, Louisiana on June 28, Bernstein and Cunningham's "Texas Weasel" journeyed up to Okahoma for the Fourth of July Weekend where they experienced their back-to-back DNQs at Oklahoma City and Tulsa earlier in the season. This time, things went differently.

At Oklahoma City, Bernstein got past old Lubbock classmate Raymond Beadle in "Spanky" Wright's dragster, Bailey in the Casarez & Thorn/T-Bar Chassis dragster, and in the final, the future three-time AHRA Top Fuel World Champion John Wiebe. Bernstein left Weibe sitting at the green, taking a slightly stunning 7.16, 187.50 to 7.14, 221.12 holeshot win.

He just missed a double at Tulsa. After beating St. Louis chassis builder Jerry Dawson and Colorado hot shoe Ed Renck, Bernstein lost a close one to Gary Bailey in the final. Still, the message had been delivered ... Bernstein and "the Texas Weasel" were to be taken seriously ... certainly, at least, in the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana area.

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