Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Straight Line Speed - the History of Niagara Dragway (Dean Johnson & Jim Oddy)

Transcript

Straight Line Speed - the History of Niagara Dragway (Dean Johnson & Jim Oddy) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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  Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
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  Niagara Dragway was one of the most popular and iconic drag strips in New York
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  State from the early 1960s through 1974.
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  The Sunday Niagara commercials boom from Superstation WKBW during that period,
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  making Niagara the place to be for maximum automotive excitement during
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  Niagara's tenure, icons of the sport, Gar Muldowney, Perdome Ewen, and many others
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  rocketed down the Niagara quarter mile.
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  And this presentation features Track promoter Dean Johnson and longtime
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  competitor at Niagara Jim Otti, who is a member of both the NHRA Division one and
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  International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
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  So sit back as we relive that history with stories, photos, and memories
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  of those wild Sundays at Niagara.
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  My name's Kip Zider.
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  I'm the Visitor Services coordinator for the Motor Racing Research Center.
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  We are very excited about this presentation.
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  I'm gonna start this off by thanking everybody involved in
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  this because inevitably at the end of it, I forget to thank people.
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  So the first people I want to thank obviously are are stars here,
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  Mr. Dean Johnson and Mr. Jim odi.
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  Hold your applause.
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  Not at the end, but hold your applause right now.
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  I wanna thank Jen who's flitting around here as our high school.
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  AV person who's here.
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  I wanna thank Jim Galbrath, my good friend who Jim and I have spent weeks
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  trying to call 3000 slides down into the 250 that we'll be seeing this afternoon.
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  It's been a very difficult task, only because of the fact that there's just so
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  much good stuff that we've seen there.
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  I wanna thank Eric technical wiz who's taping this and all this good stuff.
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  I want to thank Alison Kreitzer from the Easter Museum of Motor
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  Racing, Les the photographer.
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  We'll have one gentleman that will speak for just a couple minutes after
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  our formal presentation is done here.
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  His name is Jim and he represents Skyline Dragway.
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  We had a couple cars that these guys were gracious enough to bring in this morning.
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  Parked outside Skyline is located in Tioga Center.
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  It's the eighth mile drag strip and then the old Shangrila two on the bottom.
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  Very, very cool place and I wanna thank Jason.
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  Who brought in the Christmas tree short of the interesting cars that we bring
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  in from time to time, the Christmas tree's, the coolest damn thing we've
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  had in the center in a long time.
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  I wish I could keep it there.
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  I wish I could take it home actually, but my wife would get upset about that.
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  So I wanna thank all these people without this, without all of their
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  help and, and Jim's especially, this just would not have come to place.
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  So, brief background on the collection, Dean actually stopped at our place
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  probably three years ago with a couple different scrapbooks, and Bill Green
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  and myself started looking through the scrapbooks and were literally
• 2:44
  just jumping up and down because this is my era of drag racing.
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  I knew all these guys and the archivists that we had at the time, for whatever
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  reason, just wasn't particularly interested in the collection.
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  So Dean left, fortunately to come back to us again about a year and a half ago
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  with multiple boxes, multiple scrapbooks, all kinds of memorabilia about Niagara.
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  We advertise ourselves as International Motor Racing Research Center, and
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  that means we touch on everything.
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  But this is the first program we've ever done on drag racing.
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  I kind of consider this the golden age of drag racing.
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  We wanted to get some of this collection out into the public view,
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  so that's why we're here today.
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  So Dean, thank you very much for bringing this.
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  Without further ado, I think let's roll.
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  Y We open this weekend, Sunday.
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  It's opening day.
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  Look at the lineup.
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  The incredible line bill and its wheel standing LA dark.
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  Plus the spectacular supercharge supercharger Azar Bunny Fido,
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  side by side against Omo zone.
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  Jimmy Ti.
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  You're gonna see it and next time you roll up that stuff, like Buddy, you stop.
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  Think of us and save it for
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  the Racers Place in New York State out on Lock Foot Road just north of Niagara
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  Falls Airport in Niagara Falls, New York.
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  See you at two.
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  I have played that so many times that the people I work with, I mean, they have lots
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  of reasons to hate me, but they have hated me because I just love those commercials.
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  Those commercials were iconic.
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  And we'll touch on the commercials in a second, but before I turn the
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  microphone over to Dean, I just have a couple questions before we get into your
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  component and involvement with the track.
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  When did Niagara first open up?
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  Who opened it up?
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  Do you have any idea what the acreage was or any of the monetary, the price.
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  What did it cost to buy the land, all that stuff, and how and when
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  did you become involved in it?
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  And the final question on that I have on that is we're gonna see
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  several slides here where it's called Niagara Airport Drag Strip.
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  It's called Niagara International, it's called Niagara Dragway.
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  Were you just trying to keep ahead of the feds or was there some reason why it was.
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  Called a number of different names.
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  In 1961, Niagara was started by my father and a fellow by the name of Jerry Hammond.
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  And my father was, I guess he was concerned about me doing
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  some, uh, testing on the street.
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  He became interested, he, he wanted to know if there was any way it was possible
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  to get us street racers off the street.
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  And I put him onto a P by the name of Jerry Hammond, who had a dragster
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  and a speed shop in Niagara Falls.
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  And between the two of them, they figured out that they needed a certain
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  amount of Anchorage, and they put together a, a program where my father
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  was actually able to put two pieces of property together, totaling 197 acres.
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  They decided that they could run a racetrack and maybe
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  make a couple of bucks too.
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  So in 1961, I was with my father and the bulldozer on a tractor trailer came up and
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  they unloaded it, and the fellow said, uh.
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  What do you want me to do?
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  And there were no stakes or anything and we were at one end,
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  we were at the airport end of the what was to become the drag strip.
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  And my father said.
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  You see that tree way down there at the other end of the property.
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  And the fellow said yes.
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  And he said, well, that's from here to there is where I want the track.
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  There were no stakes, no nothing.
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  So away they went and the fellow said, uh, how much do we want?
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  And he said, 60 feet wide.
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  I want it cleaned out.
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  And uh, that was the deal.
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  No stakes, no nothing.
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  And they did have a permit to build a drag strip.
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  Heaven knows what that meant, but that's what it said.
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  You have a permit to build a drag strip.
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  Uh, there was a lot of rain and they finally got it where it was
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  running late in the year in 1961.
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  And the first.
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  Race that they had.
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  The cars tore up the starting line and they had to repave it between the
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  races and the, and the following race.
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  And my father was pretty smart.
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  After they had repaved it, we put down Portland cement and broomed it in and
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  then wet it and then poured more Portland cement in and broomed and wet it.
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  And in effect, it gave us a concrete drag strip, the start and that lasted.
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  So it worked out pretty well.
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  There were various names for the Strip, Niagara Airport, Niagara
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  Dragway, Niagara International.
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  Originally it was named Niagara Airport Drag Strip because we were
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  immediately adjacent to the Niagara Airport drag strip, and we thought
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  that would make it easier to find.
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  And over the years, whatever was fashionable, we used that name and it
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  was Niagara this or Niagara International or whatever it was, but it was always
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  Niagara and it became Sunday Niagara.
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  Everything seems to have been tagged Sunday Niagara, but it was always Niagara.
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  No matter what was fashionable, it was still Niagara.
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  This is the NASCAR summer nationals to be 67.
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  If you look.
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  At the very center, the return road there, and that's all dragsters.
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  And we would put them out at the quarter mile and that's when we push started them.
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  So they would come out at the quarter mile and push start up the track.
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  And there's, there's a lot of people there.
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  There's probably 10, 15,000 people there in the track.
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  The airplane, the wing, that's my father.
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  He's checking up on us.
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  But it's really a gorgeous picture.
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  There's one more in there, which probably we'll see where there's two dragsters
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  leaving this starring line, which is probably one of my favorite pictures.
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  The towers to the left of center.
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  And just past that, you can see the road.
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  And that road is full of dragsters, which in this area that's pretty good.
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  We, we just, we're not a track known for a lot of dragsters.
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  Most of the cars we ran were a competition car or a Gasser or
• 8:11
  super stock, stock, that type thing.
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  But this is quite a good picture because it, it, it, there's a lot of people here.
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  This is the hot car staging lane.
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  Tended to put our motorcycles on the far side and then we would tell
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  the whatever class we were trying to run, they would come in and line up.
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  Uh, you can't see the signs, but there were numbers one through eight or 10.
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  And we'd say, okay, such and such a class, we need you to get in
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  lane one or lane two, whatever.
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  And then we had another section of staging that we ran the stock cars out of.
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  And so we were able to run the cars pretty good.
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  Uh, on our biggest race, we ran about 610 cars.
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  We would run them about every 30 seconds.
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  We'd run a pair of cars.
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  You have to, because we just didn't have the time to do anything else.
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  We ran a lot of cars and we ran 'em pretty hard.
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  If they were running them too slow, they tended to get an earful from me
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  and I'd be shouting, run 'em, run 'em.
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  And they'd say, well, there's cars on the track.
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  And I'd say that they ought to know by now, they better be off
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  to the right or left because I'm sending another pair down on 'em.
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  And the dragster guys would have to stuff their shoots in their
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  cars and all that, and they'd say, you know, you ran cars down of me.
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  And I said, I told you you only had a few seconds to get the heck out of the way.
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  And they believed me after a while.
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  You mentioned that you had a lot of dragsters.
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  How many different other drag strips were you guys competing against in
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  Western New York during your time there and was there a reason why you guys
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  drew more top fuelers than maybe most?
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  Well, a lot of the top fuel cars were, uh, booked in stage shows where
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  we'd book in a couple of cars and we'd match race, 'em two outta three.
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  Sometimes we would run open competition, but as a rule, the bigger cars tended
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  to go to where there would be a show.
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  Like the car here, I don't recognize the top car, but the car on
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  the bottom is from, uh, London, Ontario, and it's old style.
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  Nowadays, the cars don't smoke the tires like this anymore.
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  To me, I like this kind of racing.
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  I thought when they lost the smoke and the noise and
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  everything, in my opinion it lost.
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  Its a lot of appeal.
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  But these guys would be turning these tires and they would, a
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  lot of them would smoke them right through the finish lights.
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  They had a lot of horsepower and I don't know what kind of
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  horsepower they had back then.
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  Probably six, 700.
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  Jim, I, I told I had 3000, 2000.
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  Okay.
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  But now they have 10,000 or 11,000 horsepower.
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  It changed quite a bit.
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  There's the picture that I like in the top, you can see the spectators and
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  then you can see the row of dragsters that they, they're going down and then
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  they're gonna, after this pair clears, they're gonna come out on the track
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  and push start coming up to the track.
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  I got so aggravated that it took so long to push start these cars.
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  We built a set of roller starters and used a little Chevrolet motor, and
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  we would start one car at a time and, uh, we could start them so quick.
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  It just saved so much time.
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  And about a week or so after we got our starter system installed,
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  NHRA came out and said, you need to have self starting cars.
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  So all my work was for Naugh, but it was pretty exciting to see a car come down
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  with a, another car pushing it and the car would be absolutely outta control.
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  And it, it was really something to see these cars being pushed.
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  It was not the safest thing to do, but with a roller star boy,
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  it speeded things up a lot.
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  And when you had a lot of cars, you need to keep the program moving.
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  And that's what we did.
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  And that's just a picture looking down track and you can see where the tire
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  marks are kind of all over the place.
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  And uh, that's a little bit exciting, especially for the driver.
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  We had a good photographer when we were taking pictures.
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  I wanted to see crowds and I wanted to see our name.
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  Les Glenn is here with his wife.
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  His father was a track photographer for a number of years, so he
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  has a lot of these pictures.
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  The thing that I wish we had done more was I wish we had taken more pictures
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  in the pits with the car and the driver because the cars are nice, but it's
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  pretty interesting to see the drivers too.
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  I was gonna bring this up a little bit later in the discussion, but
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  regarding sponsorship, I see Gord there and we have Gordon in several
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  of these slides I actually talked to, I think it's the son of.
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  The gentleman that started that years ago, they seem to be one
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  of your major sponsors, or at least there for a number of years.
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  So I was wondering how did you attract sponsors?
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  How did you keep sponsors?
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  Happy?
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  Racing now is nothing but keeping sponsors happy and keeping sponsors and
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  the money still has to keep rolling in.
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  So I'm just wondering what it was like back in your days.
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  All of the speech back then were really good people.
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  I think I traded that sign for a set of bags for one of my cars.
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  I don't think they ever did anything else.
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  We left the sign up 'cause I didn't have anything else to put.
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  That's the truth.
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  The, there was signage down on the pit side and I charged nothing for that.
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  We wanted people to see names to make it look more exciting, so it was like pulling
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  teeth to get people to put a sign up.
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  It isn't like today, we sold all those signs over the years and
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  they now they have great value.
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  So you've made more money selling the sponsorship signs than you did
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  talking to the people to get them to put their names on the sign.
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  We might basically gone $25 for a couple of signs on the pit
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  sign, and that would've been it.
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  And we never took 'em down.
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  We just left them up.
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  They paid $25 and it went for eight or 10 years.
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  We didn't care because it made the place look busy.
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  People make people, if, if you have people and they, and they have a good
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  time, they're gonna tell somebody.
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  Oh, for sure.
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  It's important that people are with people.
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  This is the kind of stuff I like, 'cause it the, it's got a known
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  car and it's got lots of people.
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  This fellow here, the last time I looked, he was very ill.
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  It's Larry Downs, but it's got him putting things together.
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  We're in, as you can see, the tower, you can see the car.
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  It is an exciting picture because it shows a lot of the way things were.
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  And the top one on the right, we used to do a parade.
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  If we were doing exhibition cars, we would do a parade.
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  And then if you look in the left side of that top right picture, you
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  could see yellow and that is rosin.
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  And when we were match racing, we would put Rosin on the track and they would
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  do burnouts and it would improve the traction and it, it would be part of
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  the show where you'd be running a Ford against the Chevrolet or against the
• 14:01
  something or other, and they would put the rosin down and it became quite a show.
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  And the announcer would get who's for Chevrolet and who's for Dodge.
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  And it got to be a lot of fun.
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  And the announcer was a great portion of what people saw because if he
• 14:13
  was good, people saw a good show.
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  This is a rain out, not a total rain out.
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  We're trying to drive the track.
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  So we're driving the cars down the left side and back up the right and,
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  and a lot of times we get comments of people's memories and I just read one
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  where a guy said I was 14 and I got to drive my father's car down the left and
• 14:31
  up the right, down the left and up the right we did that to drive the track.
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  And the girl on the left, she's putting the numbers back on the
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  cars because the rain has knocked the, uh, we used shoe polish.
• 14:41
  They had to replace the shoe polish, but that's what we did to dry the track.
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  And that's me looking slightly dejected.
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  This is out the window in my, uh, office.
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  And it's a great picture because you could see the funny cars, and I don't see Jim
• 14:55
  here, but he's probably here somewhere.
• 14:57
  This is a big race.
• 14:59
  And you could see the rain and of course the forecast would predict rain.
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  And we worked hard to get the stuff in, but boy, it, it's hard to do.
• 15:06
  You can see it's a big race.
• 15:08
  You can see the flip top cars and the mud and the water.
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  It, it was just brutal.
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  It hurt your headcount terribly.
• 15:14
  But we were able to get the race in.
• 15:16
  We didn't care who you brought as long as you paid 50 cents for your kid.
• 15:21
  Was this bring a chimp to the race stage?
• 15:23
  We, we don't care.
• 15:24
  We got our 50 cents.
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  We were happy.
• 15:28
  A lot of the stuff I never saw, I didn't see this particular thing.
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  And there's a lot of pictures where there's some really pretty girls
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  and I think where the heck was I?
• 15:36
  'cause I never saw that end of things.
• 15:38
  But I never saw the chip or, or this fellow.
• 15:40
  But like I say, if you paid 50 cents, I'm for it.
• 15:43
  Is that what the admission charge was back then?
• 15:46
  Huh.
• 15:46
  Jim and I were talking about what we paid.
• 15:48
  When the track opened, it was a dollar general admission and
• 15:52
  it was a dollar to race, and it was a dollar to get in the pits.
• 15:57
  Well, that's just outrageous.
• 15:58
  I don't know how I agree.
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  It's much like today it's, it is.
• 16:02
  Places are about the same.
• 16:03
  On our last race, we charged $6 general admission and $1 to
• 16:09
  race, and $1 to get in the pits.
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  And we were frightened to death that the $6 would have turned people away because
• 16:16
  we thought $6 was really pretty dangerous.
• 16:19
  Hard to believe.
• 16:20
  That's amazing.
• 16:21
  Regardless of today's economy or back then, that's just.
• 16:25
  So we're touching now kind of on our local hero segment.
• 16:29
  We've got three slides here of Jim Zaia.
• 16:32
  Is Jim in the audience?
• 16:34
  No, I guess not.
• 16:34
  His wife is not.
• 16:35
  Okay.
• 16:36
  I'm sorry about that.
• 16:37
  No, she's not doing so hot.
• 16:39
  Jim's a good guy.
• 16:40
  Well, yeah, if you could comment a little bit on Jim.
• 16:42
  Now we've got slides that we're gonna leave till the end for Mr. Otti here, who
• 16:46
  again is a, a very, very much of a local hero and actually kind of a national hero.
• 16:50
  But if you could speak a little bit to Jim here, and then we've
• 16:54
  got a bunch of other slides that we just kind of called local folks.
• 16:57
  So if you could speak to that.
• 16:58
  Well, Jim Zs from Niagara Falls.
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  I don't think I've ever seen a car of his.
• 17:02
  It wasn't gorgeous.
• 17:04
  The car that I like the most is the one on upper right.
• 17:07
  That's one that was my favorite.
• 17:08
  Uh, he's campaigning a car very similar to the one you see on
• 17:11
  the upper left, but it's a, it is totally changed an awful lot.
• 17:14
  There's a lot of work been done on it, but he, he would run these cars here.
• 17:18
  He was very successful.
• 17:19
  He took a lot of my money and he's always got a, Hey, I never, you,
• 17:23
  you, you forgot to give me a check.
• 17:25
  And so I, I had a check left over for when we were running NASCAR and
• 17:29
  I gave him a blank and I told him, fill it out, whatever you want.
• 17:31
  He still has that.
• 17:34
  So Mr. Adi, did you ever run against Jim?
• 17:38
  Did Jim run against Jim?
• 17:39
  Actually, we were pretty good friends.
• 17:41
  We hung out a lot together, but actually Jim ran his cars in, uh,
• 17:45
  what they called modified illuminator.
• 17:47
  And all my cars were competition eliminator cars.
• 17:49
  We never actually raced each other, but we hung out a lot and took a bunch of
• 17:53
  Dean's money, so we were pretty happy.
• 17:55
  When you say you took a bunch of Dean's money, what would it
• 17:58
  have meant on a regular basis?
• 17:59
  Let's, let's exclude the big events for the moment, but on a week to
• 18:02
  week basis, what would winning your class put in your pocket?
• 18:06
  Well, I remember the days like competition limited to win with, we got $400, which
• 18:10
  was pretty good money, and back in the day I kind of did that full time.
• 18:14
  All I did was race, so it was really important that we did well.
• 18:18
  Did you pay simply the guy that won or did you pay a second?
• 18:22
  I mean, I know how drag racing works, but if you get knocked out in the
• 18:24
  first round, you probably go home, say Thanks, we'll see you next week.
• 18:27
  But how did you structure the prize money?
• 18:29
  Normally we paid four places and at different races we paid
• 18:33
  round money against the winnings.
• 18:35
  And this is Jim Za again, and this is Jim with his whole family on the left.
• 18:39
  And this is one of my favorite pictures here.
• 18:41
  Jim broke an axle or a drive shaft.
• 18:43
  We have time to fill, so we let him push a car for ways and uh,
• 18:47
  it was good exercise for him.
• 18:48
  And whenever he gets mouthy, I bring that picture up and say how much I love it.
• 18:53
  He has a fit and can't breathe and everything.
• 18:55
  It's just wonderful.
• 18:56
  But that's the car that I like.
• 18:57
  And he didn't do much braking.
• 18:59
  His cars were pretty complete and they spent very little time like this.
• 19:03
  This is Bob Sullivan and that's me on the left before my first wife.
• 19:07
  That would be the one woman to the right.
• 19:10
  We got married, and this is Shirley and Bob Sullivan, this car.
• 19:13
  And they also had a top fuel car and they call pandemonium and it's appropriate.
• 19:18
  And good friends.
• 19:19
  And now they're, they are both gone, but wonderful, wonderful people.
• 19:22
  Larry Downs on the left side, that's Larry again.
• 19:26
  And I'm in this picture on the right.
• 19:28
  Larry Downs and Paul Ack.
• 19:30
  Anyway, he had a Buick Dragster and Paul blew his motor or he had
• 19:34
  a big motor and he put the big motor into uh, Larry Downs' car.
• 19:38
  And uh, I think he drove it and they, they were relatively successful on it.
• 19:42
  But Paul crashed a car one time, uh, on one of our big races.
• 19:46
  All that was left was the cage of the car and he was upside down on the finish line.
• 19:51
  And uh, we didn't wanna turn it over 'cause we knew he was dead.
• 19:54
  And so we're discussing what we should do with the body.
• 19:57
  And finally he said, Hey, uh, can you get me the heck outta here?
• 20:00
  And we said, well, he is alive.
• 20:01
  I guess we can turn it over.
• 20:02
  So he broke his finger.
• 20:03
  Good thing he landed on his head, which didn't hurt him a bit.
• 20:07
  So this is, um, Chippewa and it's a Satan's car club, but he was a,
• 20:11
  a wonderful striping and stripping and made a good living at it.
• 20:15
  And he also drove Fran ADA's car, and that, I think is an Oldsmobile
• 20:19
  engine in that, if I'm not mistaken.
• 20:21
  And you can see the tires dragster with what?
• 20:24
  Six inch tires.
• 20:25
  They, they don't do that anymore.
• 20:26
  They're big tires now.
• 20:28
  The car on the left and on the car on the right originally was Tommy iVOS car.
• 20:32
  Ivo was an actor who got into drag racing and he had a car called the Buick Master.
• 20:37
  It had four Buick motors in it, and uh, they put a part of a car
• 20:42
  to make it look like a car on the rear of it, but it was four wheel
• 20:45
  drive and it was very impressive.
• 20:47
  There'd probably be pictures in here coming along.
• 20:49
  It wasn't particularly fast, but it made a lot of smoke.
• 20:51
  And when we were doing promotions it was pretty exciting.
• 20:55
  I, I like the odd cars and I think most of the people did too.
• 20:58
  So this is a clutch artist, dragsters, this little sea dragster.
• 21:02
  There's a club in Buffalo that's been around forever and uh, even some of
• 21:07
  the, the members are still around, but the, this is their little sea
• 21:11
  dragster and it's a good little car.
• 21:13
  You know who Station wagon that is?
• 21:15
  Uh, yes, I saw it.
• 21:16
  I can't remember who it was, but Dan Cini.
• 21:18
  Okay.
• 21:18
  Dan Cini was a member of the Clutch Artist and he was a business manager
• 21:22
  probably for the clutch artist.
• 21:23
  That was a killer car.
• 21:24
  Hard to beat that car.
• 21:26
  Yeah, the station wagon in the back.
• 21:27
  This is Jerry Hamam Hammond ran the track 1961 and part of 1962 and the car he's
• 21:34
  got there is a, a little Mustang with a 2 89 cubic inches blown and it's a nitro.
• 21:39
  And this is the car stopping and I don't know who's running on, on the far
• 21:43
  side, but that's how they stop them.
• 21:45
  Obviously you have a full body car against a, a rail.
• 21:48
  Is that some kind of like a competition eliminator thing or a match race or what?
• 21:52
  What would do is there were national records for all of these cars and
• 21:54
  so Jerry's car was called a double B alter and this, this car here
• 21:58
  would probably be an a gas dragster.
• 22:01
  So whatever the record was, they, they would run each other using their records.
• 22:05
  So one car would get a later start than the other handicap's called.
• 22:09
  Oh, okay.
• 22:09
  Alright.
• 22:10
  Not bracket racing.
• 22:11
  No, no.
• 22:12
  Bracket racing came along later.
• 22:14
  Much later, yeah, much later.
• 22:16
  Okay, this, this is early because you can see the tower in the picture on the,
• 22:20
  on the left the tower was pretty shaky.
• 22:22
  And uh, I have a picture of a very famous announcer and he is standing
• 22:26
  and you had to stand on the floor, Jo.
• 22:28
  'cause if you didn't, you go through to the first floor, the
• 22:30
  ceiling's falling down and it's just the way it was back in the day.
• 22:34
  And, and you, we ran it that way and nobody thought a thing about it.
• 22:37
  That's just the way it was.
• 22:39
  We were glad to run.
• 22:40
  Well it was all that sponsorship money that you collected that Oh yeah.
• 22:43
  I don't, I don't know what I did with that $72.
• 22:48
  Alright.
• 22:49
  This was our first snow out on the left and these fellows that
• 22:52
  come in from Massachusetts to go racing and uh, we got snowed out.
• 22:56
  This little dragster here, I believe the fellow on the left is Rick Johnson.
• 23:00
  He runs Johnson Building Company now.
• 23:03
  Now this is Val Port on the bottom right.
• 23:06
  And I was his crew probably in 67.
• 23:09
  I was his crew, which is pretty frightening in Florida when we
• 23:13
  won the Florida Internationals.
• 23:15
  This car on the right is Tommy iVOS, wagon Master.
• 23:18
  This is Summer Nationals.
• 23:20
  This little car on the, on the left is a fellow that came from,
• 23:23
  uh, big North of Barry, Ontario.
• 23:26
  And he would come every week and he was not a winner, but he
• 23:28
  was a good guy and he, he liked to go racing and so they, they.
• 23:32
  Well, one of the reasons we wanted to use this slide was you see the
• 23:35
  NHRA in the left and you see the NASCAR summer nationals on the right.
• 23:40
  So what I'd like you to speak about, and Jim, if you have some thoughts on
• 23:43
  this, everybody knows NHRA, it's been around since parks started it years ago.
• 23:48
  Was the track NHRA sanction when you opened it up?
• 23:50
  And how did you become a NASCAR sanctioned track?
• 23:54
  We, we ran in 1965, we ran NHRA regional meet and we had, uh, 9,007 people in that.
• 24:03
  And Dal was a divisional director for the division one, which we
• 24:07
  were in, and he called the race.
• 24:09
  It rained for a couple of minutes and quit.
• 24:11
  We had 9,007 people in the place.
• 24:13
  The rain quit, the sun came out.
• 24:14
  So we had all these people, Dominic called the race without asking
• 24:18
  me, and I was fit to be tied.
• 24:20
  So we had people coming in and people going out.
• 24:22
  Ultimately the race was called and we ran the race a month later,
• 24:26
  so they took a quarter of that.
• 24:27
  'cause that was NHRA they, for this race.
• 24:30
  They took one quarter of the money for them and they rescheduled
• 24:33
  the race for a month later.
• 24:35
  And so they took a quarter of that.
• 24:36
  Also.
• 24:37
  There was a riot over the money and it was really a bad deal and
• 24:41
  he should never have done that.
• 24:43
  Is that what precipitated, how did you become a NASCAR section track?
• 24:47
  Well, when we ran this event in 1965, they had a meeting of Division one on
• 24:53
  the east coast, and all the operators and managers were there and dial
• 24:57
  and dah was telling us the changes and who got what races and when they
• 25:01
  announced the races, we didn't get one.
• 25:03
  And I got up and it like 150 people and I said, what's going on here?
• 25:07
  We, we didn't get a race diamond Choice.
• 25:09
  You had one last year.
• 25:10
  So I went to, uh, the fellow that was my promotional fellow, Ian Michel, he
• 25:16
  and I walked out and we had a quick discussion about what we should do.
• 25:21
  We decided we were gonna call NASCAR Drag Race Division and see if we can run over
• 25:25
  there Pittsburgh and ask him, we wanna.
• 25:28
  Wanna run under the sanction, and we wanted to, uh, uh,
• 25:31
  run some of their big events.
• 25:32
  We called up Ed Berger, who was the head of NASCAR drag racing,
• 25:36
  and, uh, he said, come on over.
• 25:38
  And so we walked back in and, and I was just going, I left
• 25:42
  Ian gotta run his big mouth.
• 25:44
  He opened the door and, and a place like this.
• 25:46
  And Darwin's up talking.
• 25:48
  He shouted about everything.
• 25:49
  He said, Hey, Darwin.
• 25:50
  And Darwin says what?
• 25:52
  And Ian said, I don't care where you put your races, but if you
• 25:54
  put your race one against one of our big races, we will kill you.
• 25:58
  And we slammed the door and walked out.
• 26:01
  That's pretty subtle.
• 26:03
  I got you have in your records Western Union note that Dow and sent to me, Dean,
• 26:08
  you're no longer sanctioned with the NHRE.
• 26:11
  And I said, Dowen, you already knew that.
• 26:13
  We told you we quit.
• 26:14
  So we went over and talked to Ed Berger and he said, well, what do you want?
• 26:18
  And we said, oh, we'd like to run the NASCAR summer nationals.
• 26:20
  He said, okay.
• 26:22
  How many years did NASCAR.
• 26:24
  I sanction drag racing.
• 26:25
  We ran a couple years with nascar.
• 26:27
  Okay.
• 26:28
  And we ran a lot of their big meets.
• 26:29
  They were cheap compared to everything else.
• 26:31
  We had the ability to get a lot of interesting cars.
• 26:34
  They, they, they ran a Coca-Cola Cade of cars, which was, it toured
• 26:37
  mostly in the, uh, central to the eastern part of the world.
• 26:41
  And, uh, the great shows great, great, great shows, but they
• 26:44
  weren't the very biggest of the big.
• 26:46
  But they were big.
• 26:47
  They did all of the great shows.
• 26:49
  They didn't break a lot, the good people.
• 26:51
  So we ran them a couple of times.
• 26:53
  We were very satisfied.
• 26:54
  We ran a lot of, uh.
• 26:56
  Record runs for nascar and we did a lot of stuff with nascar.
• 26:59
  Jim, did you run NASCAR sanctioned races and, and was there any difference
• 27:04
  short of whose name is on the tower at a cost of what, 15 bucks or
• 27:09
  whatever we have established for that?
• 27:10
  Was there any difference running NHRA versus nascar?
• 27:14
  Well, everything was pretty much the same.
• 27:16
  I did run that event and we were pretty happy.
• 27:18
  We set the record in the double leg gas super for nascar,
• 27:21
  which made a pretty good day.
• 27:22
  I think we won the event.
• 27:23
  So it was all good for us.
• 27:25
  It was sort of a different sanctioning.
• 27:27
  Everything else basically was the same in terms of Yeah, you
• 27:29
  couldn't tell the difference.
• 27:30
  Okay.
• 27:31
  Other than, other than the signage.
• 27:31
  Okay.
• 27:32
  Alright.
• 27:33
  So now we're entering kind of what we call our cars and stars thing.
• 27:38
  Exhibition cars.
• 27:39
  Exhibition cars.
• 27:40
  I mean, I don't mean to harp on this.
• 27:41
  This was kind of my era, the Hemi Under Glass, the LA Dart
• 27:44
  Wheel standards like this.
• 27:45
  So we've got a fair number of slides.
• 27:48
  If you could just kind of comment on the names, and maybe we can get in this later.
• 27:53
  I'm interested in.
• 27:54
  We're gonna see Gars, we're gonna see Shirley, we're gonna see McCue,
• 27:56
  and we're gonna see all these people in a couple seconds here.
• 27:59
  Can you comment on who was great to work with, who maybe was a
• 28:02
  little bit difficult to work with?
• 28:04
  Just kind of stuff like that?
• 28:05
  I would say there were only two cars that I was unhappy with over the years.
• 28:09
  I had a couple of cars that didn't show, but for the most part everybody showed.
• 28:13
  This is Bill Schuberg in the La Dart on the far side in the hand under
• 28:17
  glass, which would be Bob Riggle.
• 28:19
  Bob Riggle was the driver when, uh, Jay Leno went on his head had a roundy
• 28:24
  round race strike not too long ago.
• 28:26
  Bob Riggle.
• 28:27
  Died shortly after that.
• 28:29
  Not related, but he just, he died.
• 28:31
  But these were a lot of fun and they were scary as heck when they ran.
• 28:35
  I would go in the tower.
• 28:36
  I couldn't watch 'em because when they started, they didn't
• 28:38
  spend a lot of time on the track.
• 28:40
  We never had to cut the grass.
• 28:41
  They were off in the ding weeds.
• 28:43
  And, uh, I had a deal one time where Bill called me in the middle of the Saturday
• 28:47
  night and he said, I wrecked my car.
• 28:49
  And I said, okay.
• 28:50
  And I said, well, I still want you to come.
• 28:52
  And he said, well, there's nothing left.
• 28:53
  And I said, well, I advertise you.
• 28:54
  I want people to know why you're not here.
• 28:57
  And I said, who did you get to replace you?
• 28:59
  And he said, I didn't get anybody.
• 29:00
  And I said, well, surprise me.
• 29:02
  And, and we'll have, so there's two cars here.
• 29:03
  So he got somebody up and they got another wheel stander.
• 29:07
  And they showed up.
• 29:08
  And when Bill showed up, I don't think there was anything in his
• 29:11
  car that was worth anything.
• 29:12
  There was just total garbage.
• 29:14
  It was just totally wrecked.
• 29:15
  But he was parked outside, so the people had to walk by him to
• 29:19
  see why he wasn't on the track.
• 29:21
  He wrecked that car.
• 29:22
  He wrecked a lot of cars.
• 29:24
  All these, all these wheel standard guys.
• 29:25
  They wrecked a lot of cars, and a lot of times they'd go down the track and
• 29:29
  they'd, they'd wanna get a better track.
• 29:30
  So they'd come back there.
• 29:31
  That's what the car looked like.
• 29:33
  And that was parked outside the, the entrance.
• 29:35
  But, uh, the, the cars would go down the track and if they weren't happy, they'd
• 29:39
  turn around, they'd come back up the track and you don't know if they're gonna stop.
• 29:42
  And I lost a Christmas tree once to, uh, a fellow that had the
• 29:46
  car was called a mystery mover.
• 29:47
  And I, I was booking cars for Reunion, and he was saying,
• 29:50
  well, I, I had the mystery mover.
• 29:52
  And I said, I, I don't remember the car.
• 29:54
  And he was, he described the car.
• 29:55
  And I said, I, I don't remember the car.
• 29:56
  And he said, I ran over your tree.
• 29:58
  And I said, now I know who you are.
• 30:01
  So he ran over brand new tree.
• 30:02
  I hadn't had the tree for a week and he ran the tree over.
• 30:05
  So these guys all came to do match races, right?
• 30:08
  Am I correct in that?
• 30:08
  Well, we, they didn't start out match racing, but we match raced them.
• 30:12
  You, you're gonna come, we're gonna give you as much grief as you can.
• 30:15
  So if your car doesn't run, you're gonna get beat by somebody better.
• 30:19
  So we, we ran them, we ran them all.
• 30:22
  But you paid these guys to come.
• 30:23
  Yeah.
• 30:23
  Right?
• 30:24
  Yeah.
• 30:24
  Okay.
• 30:25
  Berry and the, how much did you pay like the wheel standard guys?
• 30:28
  700, 750. Now I, that car there, I own half that car.
• 30:32
  He borrowed $5,000 for me and signed a paper that said I owned half the car.
• 30:37
  I was with a group of people at one time and there were, I don't
• 30:41
  know, 15 or 20 people and everybody in that group owned half that car.
• 30:44
  He sold that car to everybody.
• 30:49
  I said, yeah, I don't half that car.
• 30:50
  They said, yeah, we do too.
• 30:51
  This is Nicole Moran.
• 30:53
  The fellow on the right is Brutus Lou Arrington.
• 30:55
  Tell the California guys 'cause their hair is just perfect.
• 30:58
  And uh, the girl, Nicole was from Montreal.
• 31:02
  But yeah, back to cars, it's just match racing.
• 31:05
  This is, uh, Peewee Wallace on the left, Phil Cast Nova and the Virginian.
• 31:10
  You could see the signs and so I have like 20 or $30 worth of signs.
• 31:15
  But we left them up because it made things look busy.
• 31:17
  This is TACA four.
• 31:19
  This is 1965 when we had the 9,007 people and we had not enough seating
• 31:26
  and the people were lined up along the drag strip and we couldn't
• 31:29
  control, but we just ran the race.
• 31:30
  They were five feet from the race car.
• 31:33
  I thought the interesting thing about this shot is that Taca is
• 31:36
  still multi-generational 'cause task is still a funny car guy.
• 31:39
  Yep.
• 31:39
  And still getting the job done.
• 31:41
  So I don't know what generation Taska this would be, but they
• 31:45
  were New England based, I think.
• 31:46
  Right?
• 31:46
  Rhode Island or Massachusetts, something like that.
• 31:49
  I'm a little confused on a gas and comp gas and all the rest of that stuff.
• 31:53
  Is this a car you would've run against?
• 31:55
  Well, a FX car, it would fit in comp preliminary, but it
• 31:59
  was actually a separate class.
• 32:00
  I'm pretty sure where the A FX just raced against a FX cars.
• 32:03
  That was kind of the beginning of the funny car.
• 32:05
  But we did a deal once where car broke or didn't show or something.
• 32:09
  Yeah.
• 32:09
  And we ran Jim against one of these cars, handicapped probably.
• 32:13
  That was a fill.
• 32:14
  How'd you do?
• 32:16
  If I remember right, I'm pretty sure it was Bruce Larson with a Cobra.
• 32:20
  But you, you could lie because nobody could remember.
• 32:22
  Well, and I don't, and, and I don't remember, but I didn't
• 32:25
  even know what I was doing.
• 32:25
  I just went there to race.
• 32:27
  The next thing you know I'm doing a match race with Bruce Larson, who was a
• 32:30
  pretty famous individual at that point.
• 32:32
  Sure.
• 32:32
  It was an a sports car.
• 32:33
  It was a Cobra.
• 32:34
  Really ran fast.
• 32:36
  I'm sure I didn't win or maybe I would've remembered it.
• 32:39
  No, we think you won.
• 32:40
  Right?
• 32:41
  Didn't he win?
• 32:42
  Yeah, he won every, everybody knew he won.
• 32:45
  Okay.
• 32:47
  Okay.
• 32:48
  This is Jungle Jim, and I think this is Nu Jungle Jim.
• 32:50
  Number two car, when these guys got going, they would have an a car or
• 32:54
  a number one car, number two car.
• 32:56
  If I couldn't get the number one car, we would buy the number two car and
• 33:00
  nobody would know the difference anyway.
• 33:02
  Oh yeah.
• 33:02
  Yeah.
• 33:02
  They would.
• 33:04
  Most of the inspectors wouldn't have a clue.
• 33:05
  Oh yeah.
• 33:06
  If Jungle Pam wasn't with him, but Jungle Pam never was at
• 33:09
  Niagara, and I wish I could open a racetrack just to have her show up.
• 33:14
  So she was the show, and the nice thing about her is it never
• 33:18
  seemed to have gone to her head.
• 33:20
  She always seemed to be pretty level-headed and she just
• 33:23
  never seemed to have changed.
• 33:25
  Love that to death because she didn't get nutty.
• 33:28
  She worked in the car, did she?
• 33:29
  Oh yeah.
• 33:30
  She was part of the crew.
• 33:31
  And, and I've seen some stuff where she said, yeah, you see all of the fancy
• 33:34
  dresses and the low cut this and the short that, and she said, it doesn't show
• 33:39
  the time when they're traveling between places and you're sleeping in the back of
• 33:43
  a truck and they're bouncing around and no food, and you don't see any of that.
• 33:47
  You just see a skimpy outfit and, and a car making a lot of tire smoke.
• 33:51
  She said, you didn't see the, the work that went into this stuff.
• 33:55
  So I, I, I always liked her and I, most men do, but she just seemed
• 33:58
  to be very levelheaded and it never seemed to go to her head.
• 34:01
  And she still around and makes appearances and that would be
• 34:04
  on my bucket list to meet her.
• 34:05
  I, I just think she's the best thing.
• 34:07
  This is, it is just another race.
• 34:09
  You could see the weather's really shaky here on the right, and this is one
• 34:12
  of the few pictures on the very right is Ian Mickel, who does my promotion.
• 34:17
  Mr. Cosmopolitan, I ran the racetrack, he ran the promotion.
• 34:21
  He didn't have much to do.
• 34:23
  We ran a good show.
• 34:24
  He just put the people in.
• 34:26
  I did the rest.
• 34:27
  I had a good crew.
• 34:27
  I, I'm so fortunate when I hired everybody, there wasn't anybody that
• 34:31
  didn't love the racing and there wasn't anybody that wasn't honest.
• 34:34
  There was no favorites and somebody got a favor and, and there was none of that,
• 34:38
  which is very important because you don't want people to think that, Hey,
• 34:43
  Jim's here, he is gonna get a treat.
• 34:45
  We didn't give Jim any treats.
• 34:46
  We, we made it as life as impossible as we possibly could.
• 34:51
  Him and Zeke.
• 34:52
  Well, on the subject of promotion, let's, let's talk about that for just a second.
• 34:55
  We're all familiar with the radio ad. How did, how did that actually.
• 34:59
  Come about.
• 35:00
  We were in WKBW in the recording lab and Ian was saying, I
• 35:05
  want this different sound.
• 35:06
  He wanted this Sunday Niagara, everybody's in there screaming Sunday Niagara.
• 35:10
  It was like a nutcase.
• 35:12
  And finally one of the tech guys said, you know, do you want this sound?
• 35:16
  And he screamed the Sunday Niagara Ian said, that's the sound I want.
• 35:19
  And that's the sound that it, we used it on all of our ads.
• 35:23
  So that was just a tech guy from the radio Yep.
• 35:25
  That did that?
• 35:25
  Yep.
• 35:25
  He wasn't supposed to be doing any recording.
• 35:28
  Oh, okay.
• 35:28
  But he got listened to all of us arguing back and forth and he
• 35:31
  said, is this the sound you want?
• 35:32
  And he did it and Ian said, yeah.
• 35:34
  Why did you do that sooner?
• 35:37
  Okay.
• 35:38
  So apart from the famous radio ads, how else did you promote the track?
• 35:41
  We, we did mailers and uh, we would mail out.
• 35:44
  I remember one time we mailed out.
• 35:46
  33,000 pieces of mailing, 33,000.
• 35:51
  Everything had to be by zip code or in Canada Postal Code.
• 35:55
  Everything had to be in order.
• 35:57
  And uh, we had to call a post office and say we're coming.
• 36:00
  And it would normally take probably two van loads to do this stuff.
• 36:04
  So to do 33,000, I might have 20 people in my house.
• 36:10
  Somebody be stamping and somebody be licking and somebody be sorting.
• 36:13
  And I wish we had taken pictures because when people say, oh,
• 36:17
  it's really hard to promote now.
• 36:18
  Yeah, you go and you tap in something and it pops up on somebody's screen and
• 36:22
  they go, wow, that was a lot of work.
• 36:24
  You ain't seen nothing until you've seen 33,000 pieces of literature.
• 36:28
  More match races, stone, woods and Cook.
• 36:30
  They ran early Gassers and very famous.
• 36:34
  This is Connie Colletta and that's Miss NASCAR on the far right.
• 36:38
  And uh, there's some pictures of him with a trophy and, and he's all dirty
• 36:42
  and he's been working on his car and there's a pretty girl and he is got
• 36:46
  around a girl and I don't think the girl wants anybody touching, 'cause everybody
• 36:50
  in that group was not very clean.
• 36:52
  We've been working hard and he's holding this trophy.
• 36:55
  He didn't win.
• 36:56
  But the Kendall people did the promotion, and so they've got the Kendall's got a
• 37:00
  big trophy and he's holding the trophy.
• 37:02
  Well, he didn't win, but nobody knew.
• 37:04
  I must admit, I didn't realize till we saw the slide.
• 37:07
  I didn't realize Colletta drove a funny car.
• 37:09
  Did he drive a funny car before he got into a top few car?
• 37:12
  No, drags dragster first.
• 37:13
  Oh, really?
• 37:14
  Okay.
• 37:14
  I didn't realize that.
• 37:15
  Yeah.
• 37:16
  Now the other car is Caleta also.
• 37:18
  That's a little bit later.
• 37:19
  And then he went back to Dragsters.
• 37:21
  This is Tommy Ivo.
• 37:23
  He's quite the showman.
• 37:24
  That's his car, his trailer, and I think he had a Corvette in there somewhere.
• 37:28
  I'm sure everybody's been over to the center.
• 37:30
  But the top fuel car that we have on the floor was actually
• 37:32
  built by Tommy Ivo in 1963.
• 37:36
  The records that we have indicate that he built somewhere between 10 and 12 chassis.
• 37:40
  He became known as I'm sure most of you know as tv, Tommy Ivo.
• 37:44
  He appeared in numerous TV shows and a couple movies, I think in the sixties.
• 37:48
  But he competed at Niagara on more than one occasion.
• 37:51
  Yes.
• 37:52
  I think it's pretty cool that we've got one of his cars next door and
• 37:54
  here he is and he's a good guy.
• 37:57
  Okay.
• 37:57
  Gars, really not much you can say about him.
• 38:00
  He's been there.
• 38:01
  He is done that he is done.
• 38:02
  Everything.
• 38:02
  Innovator, old guy he is.
• 38:04
  Gotta be 93.
• 38:05
  Very successful.
• 38:07
  Worked hard at it.
• 38:08
  I don't know how.
• 38:09
  He ghost as many things as he does, and people like me would go up and
• 38:12
  say, Don, you remember me in a, he says, oh, certainly I remember.
• 38:16
  Yeah.
• 38:16
  Right.
• 38:17
  But he, he, he's a good guy and he's paid his dues.
• 38:20
  He, he is the king.
• 38:21
  Well, he was the innovator when the motor blew up and tore
• 38:25
  off half of his right foot.
• 38:27
  Yeah.
• 38:27
  My understanding is that's when he said, maybe it's a little safer if
• 38:30
  I put all this hardware behind my head instead of in front of my face.
• 38:33
  And so he was the innovator of the rear engine.
• 38:35
  There had been some rear engine dragsters around.
• 38:38
  We had Steven Piper brothers had a dragster that was a short wheel
• 38:43
  based car that very innovative.
• 38:45
  Everything was behind the driver, which is kind of what you wanted.
• 38:48
  It was a lower class car than top fuel.
• 38:50
  It was like a B dragster, something like that.
• 38:53
  But it very innovative.
• 38:54
  Jim just, did you ever have any desire to go top fuel, funny car or anything?
• 38:59
  No, not really.
• 39:00
  I was pretty busy what I was doing.
• 39:01
  I did crew on some fuel funny cars and kind of got.
• 39:05
  Itching to do it, but it was back in the days when we're hurting a lot of drivers.
• 39:09
  I didn't wanna be responsible for someone getting hurt or burn up.
• 39:12
  I had a lot of friends that were getting burnt and killed and so
• 39:14
  I kind of stayed away from it.
• 39:16
  This is Don Pdo on the far left and then the fellow in the center
• 39:21
  on the left is rolling Leon?
• 39:23
  Rolling Leon now.
• 39:24
  He died a couple of years ago, but PDO is still around.
• 39:27
  Tough card to beat.
• 39:28
  This is Jeannie Pru and, and uh, that's Bill Berry on the top left.
• 39:34
  Uh, and these are just race pictures, that's all.
• 39:37
  Isn't that McCune on the lower right.
• 39:39
  PDO and McCune became famous Match Racers.
• 39:42
  The Mongoose and the snake.
• 39:43
  Yes.
• 39:44
  And they worked hard to promote it.
• 39:45
  They good for them.
• 39:46
  They worked hard at it.
• 39:48
  Uh, this car on the lower right I think is Shirley owing before she was famous.
• 39:53
  Yeah.
• 39:53
  These are all Shirley's.
• 39:55
  Yep.
• 39:56
  And I like Shirley.
• 39:56
  Shirley's always been nice to me.
• 39:59
  And what I like about Shirley is she spent the time with the youngsters.
• 40:03
  They'd come up and they'd ask her questions and she didn't go buzz off.
• 40:06
  She spent the time with these people and I like that.
• 40:08
  And I know my daughter was somewhere where, where Shirley was and she
• 40:12
  said, uh, do you know my dad?
• 40:14
  You know, I'm Dean Johnson.
• 40:15
  She said, oh, absolutely, and blah, blah, blah.
• 40:17
  And she was so nice to my daughter and she didn't have to be.
• 40:20
  So I like that.
• 40:21
  This is Paula Murphy.
• 40:23
  On the left, I had published a picture of a fellow underneath a. One of her cars and
• 40:29
  I had said, I wonder who's under the car.
• 40:32
  And I got this email and all you can see is from the waist down.
• 40:35
  I say bare feet.
• 40:36
  And the fellow said, uh, that was me and it was her son.
• 40:39
  Somehow I got their phone number and I called him up and I was
• 40:43
  asking him how everybody was doing, and I said, how was your mother?
• 40:46
  And he said, here, you ask her and handed the phone over to Paula and I got to
• 40:50
  talk to her and I thought, well, how lucky am I, all these people that were
• 40:54
  out and about and all these experiences?
• 40:56
  And, uh, so I got to speak to her and I thought, boy, I'm so lucky.
• 41:00
  And she has died since.
• 41:02
  But I just thought she was so nice.
• 41:04
  Pretty lucky for me.
• 41:05
  Blue Max.
• 41:06
  Nice crowd too, by the way.
• 41:07
  And it's cold.
• 41:08
  Look at the all the heavy clothing and uh, we had a photo cell go out
• 41:12
  and if a photo cell goes out, you can't get a elapsed time on the car.
• 41:16
  And so I was down adjusting the photo cell and they turned that car loose,
• 41:20
  which is why I have no hearing today.
• 41:23
  Probably that picture will show up in here somewhere.
• 41:25
  But when I had my head down on the track, all of the dust,
• 41:29
  there was nothing on the ground.
• 41:30
  Anything, any dust was picked up by the exhaust noise.
• 41:33
  And I would've known that if I hadn't have reset this stupid photo cell.
• 41:37
  But I had my face right down on the ground and all this dirt and dust was held off
• 41:41
  the ground by the noise on this car.
• 41:43
  Speaking of the, uh, coats in the background, when did Niagara Open
• 41:46
  and how long was your normal season?
• 41:48
  When would you, you'd, you'd run through when?
• 41:50
  September, October.
• 41:51
  It was difficult to make ends meet after Labor Day.
• 41:55
  We would tend to pack it in by Labor Day, and we would open as soon as we could.
• 41:58
  Did I, I remember we opened one time, it was probably Mother's
• 42:02
  Day and, and uh, we went, oh boy, how are we gonna get around this?
• 42:06
  So we went out and bought a gazillion roses and every
• 42:08
  woman that came in got a rose.
• 42:10
  So we kind of got off the hook a little bit.
• 42:12
  But, uh, it is tough to run race on Mother's Day when mother's not
• 42:16
  happy about you going drag racing.
• 42:18
  This is, uh, Arnie Beswick.
• 42:19
  Arnie Beswick just had a birthday.
• 42:21
  I think he's 95.
• 42:22
  I have a friend that lives down near him.
• 42:25
  I said, I have this photo.
• 42:26
  Would you please ask Arnie to sign it?
• 42:28
  So Arnie signed it and he said, that's not me in the photo.
• 42:32
  So I have, I have a photo signed by Arnie Beswick.
• 42:35
  That's not Arnie Beswick.
• 42:37
  So this photo that we're looking at?
• 42:38
  Yep.
• 42:39
  That's not, Nope.
• 42:40
  I don't know who it is.
• 42:41
  Well, I guess we didn't vet that very good, did we?
• 42:44
  Wow.
• 42:45
  But he said I signed it.
• 42:46
  That's interesting.
• 42:47
  He said, I signed it, but it's not me, Jim.
• 42:49
  We were so proud of that.
• 42:52
  Who knew.
• 42:52
  So I sent a bunch of stuff to Arnie to be signed.
• 42:55
  He's a farmer.
• 42:56
  They called him the farmer.
• 42:57
  And the stuff never came.
• 42:58
  And I waited a month or so and I called him and he said, oh, I had the back of
• 43:02
  my car open and the wind blew it out and I about had a hernia and I had so
• 43:08
  other stuff and I, I sent him the other stuff and I said, please be careful.
• 43:11
  I got a call.
• 43:12
  He said, you aren't gonna believe this.
• 43:13
  He said There was a farmer up Paul in his field and he found all your pictures.
• 43:17
  So he signed everything that I sent to him.
• 43:19
  So if you need something signed by Arnold Beswick, I probably
• 43:22
  have a hundred or so pieces.
• 43:23
  He had a major fire at his barn.
• 43:26
  It burned all of his memorabilia and all of his old cars up.
• 43:30
  He had nothing left.
• 43:31
  And he's probably one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
• 43:34
  Aside from that not being him.
• 43:37
  Uh, I don't know who the dragster is.
• 43:40
  Uh, the bottom one, it's a Ford engine, which is kind of rare.
• 43:43
  And it's Herbie Rogers out of London, Ontario.
• 43:46
  And it's an ejected Ford, which is, uh, they call it a camera.
• 43:49
  Herbie has been gone for a long time, but it was, it was a good running car.
• 43:53
  This car here, I don't know what it is.
• 43:55
  I just like the picture here.
• 43:56
  That's kind of behind us.
• 43:57
  I don't know who that is.
• 43:58
  Hard to tell.
• 43:59
  On the dragsters, we put the ed pink car in because he was a master engine
• 44:03
  builder and Mr. Pink just passed away.
• 44:05
  Did he just die?
• 44:06
  Yeah.
• 44:06
  Yeah.
• 44:07
  Very, very recently.
• 44:08
  But he was very old.
• 44:09
  He was, he was 93.
• 44:11
  Oh, I thought he was a bit older than that.
• 44:12
  Well known.
• 44:13
  If you had one of his engines, you had a good.
• 44:16
  Uh, these are just cars that paid to get in and go racing.
• 44:19
  We're segueing into not fuels, not funny cars, but just all
• 44:24
  the other classes that you ran.
• 44:25
  And maybe you could speak to this, and Jim could certainly speak to this about
• 44:30
  the various other classes that ran.
• 44:33
  And without getting overly technical, just the differences between, I'm
• 44:37
  assuming that's a Gasser and honestly I don't know what the, what you
• 44:41
  would consider the car on the right.
• 44:42
  So can you speak to that a little bit, Jim?
• 44:44
  Yeah.
• 44:44
  Well the Gassers are generally like full body coops.
• 44:46
  Back in the day, they ran in modified eliminator, uh, a gas through F gas with
• 44:50
  different size motors and weight brakes.
• 44:53
  And then the Royal T car here, that's a. Let's see, that would be an A altered car.
• 44:57
  It's not supercharged.
• 44:58
  And that would run in competition eliminator.
• 45:01
  And that's where you were?
• 45:01
  Yeah.
• 45:02
  Yeah.
• 45:02
  We raised him a lot.
• 45:03
  Can't think of his name, but he was good.
• 45:05
  Yeah, more alters.
• 45:06
  Double a fuel altered.
• 45:07
  And a double a al Altered Charlie, he one with the Canada flag.
• 45:11
  Yep.
• 45:12
  Yeah.
• 45:12
  Now were most of these guys from the western New York area?
• 45:15
  Canada.
• 45:16
  Well, the car here on the right, on the upper part is Charlie Havelin.
• 45:20
  His son is still racing and he was from a cow farm.
• 45:24
  And his father, he said, I'm, I'm going racing.
• 45:26
  And his father said, not till the chores are done, and then he'd
• 45:29
  have to get home in time to milk.
• 45:30
  The cows father said, no, no, no, you're not leaving until all the chores are done.
• 45:35
  And uh, I spoken quite a bit to his son and they're all campaigning the same car.
• 45:40
  Believe it or not, this is a rear engine car built by Steven Piper.
• 45:44
  This was before Don Gar was doing rear engine, but you see everything
• 45:49
  here is behind the driver.
• 45:51
  This is a sidewinder.
• 45:52
  A sidewinder, yeah.
• 45:52
  The engine's about a across lots.
• 45:54
  Very innovative.
• 45:55
  We ran a lot of Dragsters.
• 45:56
  This fellow on the bottom, probably EJ Potter, I'm not sure.
• 46:00
  There were two.
• 46:01
  There was a Ford and there was EJ Potter, and this may be
• 46:04
  the Ford that's Potter there.
• 46:06
  I toured Australia with him and, uh, bury and, and uh, just Tyree, this
• 46:11
  one here is a fuel bike, I believe.
• 46:13
  Top Fuel.
• 46:14
  This is a good show.
• 46:15
  I, I, I don't think that's ej, I think that's, there's another,
• 46:19
  another group and, and that's not ej.
• 46:22
  Were the bikes part of the weekly show.
• 46:24
  None of us particularly cared about bikes.
• 46:27
  And, and so as a result, we did them dirt and we didn't care.
• 46:32
  And, and finally I had a little tiny girl come up to me and she said, I, I don't
• 46:36
  like the way you're running the bikes.
• 46:37
  And she ran a bike and she probably weighed 95 pounds soaking wet.
• 46:40
  And I said, if you don't like the way we run the bikes, you run the damn things.
• 46:43
  I said, we're, we're not interested.
• 46:45
  I said, when you're done, give me a list of who gets what.
• 46:48
  And leave me alone.
• 46:49
  So the next week she ran the bikes.
• 46:51
  They never ran any better and the guy said, we don't know what you
• 46:54
  did, but we love the way you do it.
• 46:55
  And I said, go see that little itty bitty girl over there.
• 46:58
  He ran the bikes, she did a wonderful job.
• 47:00
  And the bikes weren't second class anymore.
• 47:03
  We ran a few jets and these were our Arons jets.
• 47:06
  They were okay.
• 47:07
  They were better at night.
• 47:09
  And most of the people like Jim don't like them because they
• 47:11
  claim they oiled the track.
• 47:13
  We didn't care.
• 47:15
  Maybe I didn't notice in the photographs.
• 47:17
  Did the track have lights?
• 47:18
  Did you run at night?
• 47:19
  I got permission to put lights up.
• 47:21
  We put 'em up.
• 47:22
  I spent, uh, probably 120, $125,000.
• 47:25
  We ran a couple of races and the town said, we don't like them.
• 47:28
  Take them down.
• 47:29
  So where did they go?
• 47:30
  They went to, uh, it was called Empire at the time.
• 47:33
  Empire Drag Strip.
• 47:34
  Oh, another drag strip.
• 47:34
  Okay.
• 47:35
  Yeah.
• 47:35
  And they, uh, forgot to pay me.
• 47:38
  Well, perhaps they'll see this.
• 47:40
  Well, if you're in the audience, anybody.
• 47:42
  I sued them and, um, they offered me, uh, $3,500 for the a
• 47:48
  hundred thousand dollars lights.
• 47:50
  And I, I was not happy.
• 47:52
  And my lawyer said, take the money.
• 47:53
  And I said, I don't think so.
• 47:55
  And he said, take the money.
• 47:57
  And I said, why would I want the money?
• 47:58
  And he said, because if you don't take the money, they probably will kill you.
• 48:03
  And I said, what are you talking about?
• 48:05
  And he said, well.
• 48:06
  They were kind of from the underworld and they, they would be offended at you.
• 48:09
  So I said, send me that $3,500.
• 48:12
  So I paid the lawyer.
• 48:13
  I ended up with about $2,700, $2,500 for the a hundred thousand dollars I wanted.
• 48:19
  Hell on wheels was a real standard.
• 48:20
  It was interesting.
• 48:21
  It was just another wheel standard.
• 48:23
  A lot of people liked them.
• 48:25
  Little Red Wagon.
• 48:25
  Always a good one.
• 48:27
  The two cars here, the, the one is um, the Volkswagen, I can't think of the name.
• 48:31
  And this, this is stage called West, the one in nearest us.
• 48:35
  And the other bug I saw, I was at Norwalk one time when this car on the
• 48:39
  behind hit the rail and got turned around and upside down and the motor
• 48:44
  went out of the car and sailed.
• 48:46
  They had an ambulance there and it went over the ambulance and
• 48:49
  went over a light pole and landed out where nobody was standing.
• 48:53
  Fortunately.
• 48:54
  But it was pretty exciting 'cause it was still running high LPM when it went by me.
• 49:00
  These are wanna be, these are brothers, believe it or not.
• 49:02
  They were okay.
• 49:04
  They never oppressed me and I don't think we ever paid them.
• 49:07
  They weren't good enough that, but I should have paid them.
• 49:09
  But they had to learn somewhere, so that's why they were there.
• 49:12
  Well, we put these in because Jim was just fascinated by the bugs.
• 49:15
  So this is our ode to Jim Galbrath.
• 49:17
  We put these slides in, well.
• 49:18
  Uh, they were free and it was, the sixties and seventies were very innovative,
• 49:23
  and we had people on bicycles with rockets strapped to the back, and there
• 49:28
  was a lot of strange stuff out there.
• 49:30
  This was a Corvette wheel stander, and it got upside down, no big deal.
• 49:34
  They run over and flipped it on his feet and he was good to go.
• 49:38
  This was a car called Double Trouble.
• 49:40
  It crashed at Niagara before I was there, and I, I don't know any
• 49:44
  of the details other than nobody was hurt, I guess, or killed.
• 49:48
  That's all I know.
• 49:48
  Two Chevrolet Motors.
• 49:50
  This is, uh, the Hearst Harry Olds.
• 49:52
  I like this car.
• 49:52
  And we had run it one time and we booked it again.
• 49:55
  They had a problem with it.
• 49:56
  Tower to pull to the right or pull to the left.
• 49:58
  And finally some kid came up and he, he said, well, why don't you just put
• 50:01
  the steering so that it steers in the opposite direction so it'll go straight.
• 50:06
  So they did that up here.
• 50:07
  One of the engines quit or something, and he got off track.
• 50:10
  Joe Beck tested our, uh, barrier.
• 50:14
  We had, uh, telephone poles in the ground with big, heavy cables,
• 50:17
  and the telephone pole was right next to where he was sitting.
• 50:21
  If it would've been older, a bit more, Joe Beck wouldn't be Joe Beck.
• 50:24
  So that was the last run of the Hearst Harry Olds.
• 50:27
  I loved it.
• 50:28
  Uh, there's the picture where, uh, Kendall's giving this trophy to,
• 50:32
  to kind col letter for no reason,
• 50:37
  which is great.
• 50:37
  I, I thought it was wonderful.
• 50:39
  You know, it's group motion.
• 50:40
  This was the car that ran and won the NASCAR summer nationals.
• 50:45
  It's called the Probe.
• 50:46
  I like the photo on the right where you have the sole eliminator.
• 50:49
  Oh yeah.
• 50:50
  I thought that was pretty cool.
• 50:51
  Stupid stuff.
• 50:51
  We could get away with it back then, and it was no big deal.
• 50:54
  We didn't think anything ever.
• 50:55
  We just thought of the radio station would like it.
• 50:58
  And so we did a soul show.
• 51:00
  We had a good time.
• 51:01
  This was our winners slide, obviously.
• 51:04
  So that lets me ask the question, what was the most money you would've paid to win
• 51:10
  a Top Fuel or a funny car for a big show?
• 51:13
  And then on a regular, I think you already said you paid like $400.
• 51:16
  Jim, did you become rich winning your class week after week at Niagara?
• 51:20
  Ask Jim what I did to him in a later years when you won a week.
• 51:24
  Then he got tired of me one Sunday afternoon.
• 51:28
  I had won comp eliminator and I'd go up to get paid and he says,
• 51:30
  you can't come back next week.
• 51:32
  I said, oh no, I I I'll, I'll be, yeah, I'll be back.
• 51:35
  No, no, no, you won't.
• 51:37
  You're gonna take a break.
• 51:38
  He says.
• 51:39
  That lasted a a while and uh, we finally came to an agreement.
• 51:44
  I'm pretty sure we raised the following week.
• 51:47
  What would've been the most money you would've won?
• 51:49
  And did you pay in cash when everybody went up to the
• 51:51
  payout window or was it cash?
• 51:53
  No, Dean was all checks, no cash.
• 51:55
  Did, do you hustle off to the bank right away?
• 51:57
  Yeah,
• 51:59
  there was no rubber there.
• 52:00
  It was all good.
• 52:01
  That's good.
• 52:01
  Yeah.
• 52:02
  Um, some of the bigger events, there'll be some contingency stuff where different
• 52:05
  people kick in for when accomplishment or a real good Sunday to go home a thousand
• 52:10
  dollars, which is pretty good money.
• 52:12
  Back in the day when you ran the NASCAR Summer Nationals Dean,
• 52:15
  how much top prize money at that?
• 52:17
  Well, there would've been a lot of contingency money, and I tell you
• 52:20
  the truth, I don't remember, but it would, it probably would've been
• 52:23
  500, $800,000 plus contingency money.
• 52:27
  Couldn't live on it unless you were really pretty competitive.
• 52:30
  Back to what Jim said about me telling him not to, we told
• 52:33
  him if you ran an eliminator.
• 52:35
  What happens?
• 52:36
  There were some cars that killed the eliminators.
• 52:39
  He happened to own one.
• 52:40
  And so they say, oh, DY Iss gonna be at Niagara.
• 52:43
  I'm gonna go somewhere else.
• 52:44
  And so I fixed it.
• 52:45
  So Dy wasn't at Niagara every week, so they knew Dy was out somewhere and they
• 52:49
  had to figure out where he was, but they knew he wasn't gonna be at Niagara.
• 52:52
  So we always had a good car count when he was elsewhere.
• 52:57
  And I, I did that for quite a while, but the cars are so good.
• 53:01
  They killed the class.
• 53:02
  Say, well, I can't win, but I'll be runner up.
• 53:04
  I said, take a break and go race and bother somebody else.
• 53:07
  When you weren't at Niagara, where else did you run?
• 53:10
  We raced a lot back in the day.
• 53:12
  Back in the day.
• 53:12
  Lancaster, they'd run on Thursday nights, so we'd run there on Thursday night and
• 53:16
  then, uh, Friday night's, uh, empire was running and Saturday night we'd go to
• 53:21
  Gregory Park, Yuga, and then Sunday, if anything left, we'd go race at Niagara.
• 53:26
  We were busy.
• 53:27
  Okay.
• 53:27
  So theoretically you could run four nights a week?
• 53:29
  Correct.
• 53:29
  Okay.
• 53:30
  Well that's And if you would win Yeah.
• 53:32
  Every four nights, that probably helped out quite a bit.
• 53:35
  I was kind of doing that for a living for quite a while.
• 53:38
  So it was worth doing, oh boy.
• 53:41
  Sorry, we had to throw a couple of these in.
• 53:44
  What is a racetrack without beauty Queens?
• 53:46
  So we have two of these, Dean, if you would care to comment on any of this
• 53:50
  or care to not comment on any of this.
• 53:53
  I, during the summer months, it was tough to make ends meet and we were doing a lot
• 53:56
  of silly stuff to try and put people in.
• 54:00
  I wouldn't ever do this again because I hired a model once and
• 54:05
  I don't ever wanna do that again.
• 54:07
  It's like going to a meat market.
• 54:09
  I don't know how the women could do that.
• 54:11
  And uh, I wrote about this process of hiring a woman and I wrote at
• 54:16
  the start, my apologies to, and it was Audrey Hagan, who was very
• 54:19
  smart and she's very good looking.
• 54:21
  I had to interview her and I don't ever wanna do that again.
• 54:26
  I'm a farm kid.
• 54:27
  I am not from the city.
• 54:28
  Anything to do with, it was like going to a meat market.
• 54:31
  It was terrible.
• 54:32
  It was just terrible.
• 54:33
  Who numbered?
• 54:34
  I don't know.
• 54:35
  And what did that mean?
• 54:37
  I don't know.
• 54:37
  I don't know.
• 54:38
  I see pictures in here and there's some really, really pretty girls.
• 54:41
  And I never saw these girls.
• 54:43
  All I did was run a racetrack and I was not interested in anything else.
• 54:46
  And I look back and I go, I can't believe I didn't see that girl.
• 54:50
  And I see these pictures and I go, on the other hand, she's probably
• 54:52
  as old as me right now, so no more interest in me than I have in her.
• 54:57
  But these girls were pretty good sports.
• 54:59
  Look at you.
• 55:00
  Oh yeah.
• 55:01
  That's why you wanna talk about a nerd.
• 55:03
  That's me.
• 55:04
  Look at you.
• 55:04
  The, the best part about this, this girl.
• 55:07
  Paul Zago, who was, is a racer, took her for his senior prom or her senior prom.
• 55:13
  Really?
• 55:13
  Yep.
• 55:14
  Unbelievable.
• 55:14
  And she's sitting on, uh, Bob Sullivan's dragster on the Wheel and
• 55:19
  that you can see Sullivan name on it.
• 55:21
  That was Paul Skoda's girlfriend.
• 55:23
  Who'd have thought.
• 55:24
  That's me and all my splendor on the left.
• 55:26
  My wife, I had a friend that painted this thing with trust me on it.
• 55:31
  And this is me and my wife after our reunion, which we were gonna
• 55:35
  make a lot of money and we didn't.
• 55:37
  And, uh, I, I had to work for another 10 years to get out of debt.
• 55:43
  But I had a lot of t-shirts, two or 3000 extra t-shirts at the end of it.
• 55:47
  This is Dizzy Dean on the left.
• 55:49
  I didn't know that.
• 55:49
  Dizzy Dean published Wheelspin Magazine in Canada.
• 55:52
  And then this is John Lundberg.
• 55:55
  It was John, what was his nickname?
• 55:55
  Iron Long or something?
• 55:57
  Yeah.
• 55:57
  To that effect, John Lundberg.
• 55:58
  Right?
• 55:59
  Is it wonderful to announce her in a wonderful person.
• 56:01
  They took this girl who was running around in this bathing suit, and they
• 56:05
  put her in Bill Berry's wheel stander.
• 56:08
  So Bill Rebury has got a fire suit.
• 56:11
  He's strapped into a seat, he's got a fire suit, a helmet and goggles and all that.
• 56:15
  And they put this girl in without a helmet in a bathing suit.
• 56:20
  And they told her to hang on to the, uh, cross members.
• 56:23
  And she said, there can't be anything wrong with that.
• 56:26
  And Bill went out and the car goes up so high, it gets on the skid plates.
• 56:31
  Well, when it gets up that high, it stops.
• 56:33
  But she didn't.
• 56:34
  And so she, so when the car goes.
• 56:37
  And so she's going up and the car stopped going up.
• 56:40
  So she's banging her head on the roof of the thing and then of course
• 56:44
  the car quits and she comes down and then he goes back up again.
• 56:48
  And I can't imagine what she was thinking.
• 56:51
  And this was all nascar.
• 56:52
  They put her into this.
• 56:53
  This was somebody's girlfriend and I think they were trying to get rid of
• 56:57
  her, but, but they have pictures of her.
• 57:00
  It was wonderful.
• 57:02
  I'm glad NASCAR did it 'cause I wouldn't have had the brass.
• 57:06
  So we thought we'd throw a couple of these in.
• 57:08
  This is basically the people that made the place run?
• 57:10
  Yeah.
• 57:10
  Okay.
• 57:11
  All the people that helped you out.
• 57:13
  This is my, uh, secretary short sherry.
• 57:15
  And then this is Ray Jones, who's now gone.
• 57:18
  This is Paul Schneider.
• 57:20
  And he's gone, and I don't know who this is, but she was reading the
• 57:23
  clocks clock reader on the left top.
• 57:26
  This, this was why you had to work another 10 years, right?
• 57:29
  Wasn't because of the reunion 96.
• 57:31
  And it didn't come out quite as well as you had hoped.
• 57:33
  Yeah.
• 57:34
  It's another statement didn't turn out well.
• 57:36
  The track had closed, this is a one or two years ago.
• 57:39
  There's Bobby Pine on there.
• 57:40
  I thought Bob would be here today and then Randy's there.
• 57:44
  Bob Kelman on the second from the right.
• 57:47
  This is a Christmas tree that we built.
• 57:49
  We spent like $33,000 on it because we were stupid and we could, and uh, I sold
• 57:55
  it for $2,000 each light, there were five spotlights in it to make it work.
• 58:00
  And it was like 35 feet tall.
• 58:02
  This is a magazine that we put out.
• 58:04
  This is at Lancaster.
• 58:06
  My wife, myself, dude, Jim Zaki on the right, the picture on the right on the
• 58:11
  bottom is a Christmas tree working.
• 58:12
  It was a working Christmas tree.
• 58:14
  It went out to a speed shop in on the East Coast Sunday.
• 58:21
  This Sunday reasoning Challenge 72 Auto racing's.
• 58:25
  Big go September.
• 58:26
  Fabulous Sunday.
• 58:27
  Niagara, this is it.
• 58:28
  The race racers are talking about Challenge 72, where you're gonna
• 58:31
  see some of the roughest, toughest wheel to wheel competition racing.
• 58:34
  Never stations in Dagara.
• 58:35
  And without a doubt, just one of the unreal drivers.
• 58:37
  They all gotta get by his Bob Belows.
• 58:38
  An incredible Jimmy Ti, the man who went in the summer national just
• 58:41
  two weeks ago and blew the doors off the finest comp cars in the country.
• 58:44
  Yeah, the word is out baby.
• 58:46
  This Sunday everyone's heading Niagara and the Giant Challenge 72 1
• 58:49
  sensational day only, no reserve seats.
• 58:51
  Gates open at 10:00 AM championships at 3:00 PM sharp, free overnight
• 58:54
  caming for fans and drivers towing in for the big beat.
• 58:56
  And don't forget, once again, as promised, the track will be spray coated before
• 58:59
  the race time with amazing revolutionary world breaking VHT Track lock.
• 59:03
  This is it with 3 72 Niagara Racers yearbooks to the first
• 59:05
  thousand fans of the pits.
• 59:06
  That's Sunday Niagara.
• 59:08
  This Sunday, the championship of championships, the fabulous challenge 72.
• 59:12
  Don't miss it.
• 59:12
  We'll see you now.
• 59:17
  Oh boy.
• 59:17
  So we did that just because we could and we had to hear Sunday Niagara again.
• 59:21
  But this is our very subtle way of segueing into the great Mr. Jim ti, who we
• 59:26
  are honored to have here along with Dean.
• 59:28
  And we've got three slides here with multiple cars.
• 59:32
  So Jim, if you could start out what got you into drag racing?
• 59:36
  How did you rank Niagara as opposed to maybe some of the other places?
• 59:40
  I know you won India at least once.
• 59:42
  I'm not sure if you want it more than that, but that's the big time.
• 59:45
  That's India and Labor Day weekend.
• 59:47
  That's where the greats are made.
• 59:49
  So if you could just spend a few minutes commenting on your
• 59:51
  career, we'd appreciate that.
• 59:53
  This is a 65 year journey.
• 59:55
  You know, we've got time.
• 59:58
  Yeah.
• 59:59
  Actually a lot of people agree.
• 1:00:02
  This guy over here, he changed a lot of our lives with the
• 1:00:05
  snag or drag strip thing.
• 1:00:07
  We started out racing on abandoned drag strips, and I belonged to a custom
• 1:00:12
  car club in South Buffalo, and we had a Sunday where we went to this Kohler
• 1:00:17
  Air Force base, which is Dragway Parka.
• 1:00:19
  All these cars are running e, G, and F, G and GG.
• 1:00:23
  So I just started asking question, what's all this G stuff about?
• 1:00:26
  Well, it's a gas class, right?
• 1:00:27
  At that point in time had a 36 Chevy coop.
• 1:00:29
  Me and my dad put it together and I had a 57 Chevy six cylinder motor
• 1:00:33
  in it, and went to dunker a couple times a watch, and I thought, well,
• 1:00:37
  I'm gonna enter, I'm gonna enter this deal and see what goes on, right?
• 1:00:40
  So I entered a car, was like an EGAs F gas car.
• 1:00:43
  What happens is I won a trophy, right?
• 1:00:45
  I won a class, won a trophy.
• 1:00:46
  Well, that was the worst thing that ever happened.
• 1:00:49
  Because then we just got more interested in it.
• 1:00:52
  And this Anglia Hill was actually the first actual race car I built.
• 1:00:56
  A bunch of us Motorheads were hanging around your host one night, and it
• 1:00:59
  was a weekend of the Indy Nationals, which was a big deal, right?
• 1:01:03
  So there was three or four of us.
• 1:01:04
  So let's go to Indy.
• 1:01:05
  One guy had a nice, fairly new Pontiac, so he said, well, you got the best car.
• 1:01:09
  We'll take that.
• 1:01:10
  We'll go to Indy.
• 1:01:11
  We're just going for Saturday and we're gonna come back.
• 1:01:13
  It was 1964.
• 1:01:15
  Jack Chrisman, the first funny car.
• 1:01:17
  We were blown away so we couldn't leave.
• 1:01:19
  So I spent the night in the trunk of a Pontiac and we stayed there.
• 1:01:23
  I liked all these Ang, all these gas cuts, these, I kind of
• 1:01:26
  really liked these Anglia cars.
• 1:01:27
  Pull the wheels up in pretty cool car.
• 1:01:30
  So winter of 64 when I found that Anglia up in Canada, we drug it 25 hours.
• 1:01:34
  They drug it out of Canada, spent a winter bowling it.
• 1:01:37
  Dean kind of just got the track going.
• 1:01:39
  It was a pretty good racetrack and he would've these Gasser meets so you
• 1:01:43
  could kind of tell that bunch of guys, Ohio was famous for the Gasser cars.
• 1:01:47
  Joe call all these guys with great gassers and they come, he would have
• 1:01:51
  a special Gasser day and, and we'd have a couple hundred great gassers
• 1:01:55
  so you could judge what you were doing with the rest of these Ohio guys.
• 1:01:58
  So in 64 I got pretty competitive.
• 1:02:00
  I could run close to the record and stuff.
• 1:02:02
  So 65, you know, we just had a old Chevy I towed around, I had a tow bar.
• 1:02:07
  So I tow bared the car to Indy to see if I could run it Indy in 65.
• 1:02:12
  Well I ended up, we got the thing going pretty good.
• 1:02:14
  Had a lot of good help.
• 1:02:16
  We ended up winning.
• 1:02:17
  Final round around BGA at Indy went eleven twenty, a hundred eighteen.
• 1:02:22
  I'll never forget that.
• 1:02:23
  Bob Riffle, which that was the rod shop car, which at that point in
• 1:02:27
  time was a pretty big deal, right?
• 1:02:29
  So we, we won the class and, and the next day, oh, I'm, I'm getting ready
• 1:02:33
  to go home and no, you gotta stay, you gotta race street eliminator, all the
• 1:02:36
  winners, the gas classes, they all faced off what they call little eliminator.
• 1:02:41
  So, okay, we're gonna do that.
• 1:02:43
  So I get out there and I gotta race this black Willie's coop from California,
• 1:02:48
  some stone woods and cook guy.
• 1:02:50
  I don't, I don't know who they were.
• 1:02:51
  So I'm, I'm running down the race track, I'm shifting on hanging, I get about
• 1:02:55
  two feet forward, the finish line, man, I got this deal, this black car comes
• 1:02:59
  running by, blew me off the racetrack.
• 1:03:01
  So I really got interested in that and I went back to the pits and I
• 1:03:04
  hung out the rest of the day and the stone was in crooked pit area.
• 1:03:08
  So I thought, well, this looks cool.
• 1:03:09
  I'm gonna go and put a boiler on Miami Lee and run this super charge gas deal.
• 1:03:13
  Well and its race says you can't do it.
• 1:03:16
  Because it's only got a 90 inch wheel base.
• 1:03:18
  To have a bull, you gotta have 92 inch wheel base.
• 1:03:20
  So I sold that car to a guy in, in, uh, Indy at a Chevrolet dealer and he wanted
• 1:03:25
  that car to display in his dealership.
• 1:03:28
  So I had sold him a car back, well actually Grand Island, I found an
• 1:03:31
  Austin, which was 92 inch wheel base.
• 1:03:34
  So I'm gonna build me a double leg gas car.
• 1:03:36
  I have no idea what I'm doing, but I went to junk car, got old 3 92, got a set of
• 1:03:40
  cylinder heads and I'll never forget it.
• 1:03:42
  I'm building this car and it's about the middle of the winter and I'm out in the
• 1:03:46
  garage and a potbelly stove and a bunch of guys helping and comes Dean Johnson.
• 1:03:51
  I'm like, what's going on?
• 1:03:53
  He said, well, I'm checking to see how your car's coming 'cause you
• 1:03:55
  got a match race May 10th with Stone Woods and crook and, and Ks Pitman.
• 1:04:00
  I said, what are you talking about?
• 1:04:02
  That really kicked us in the butt and we, and we got the thing done
• 1:04:06
  and sure enough, the Saturday before it snowed, but the Sunday was great.
• 1:04:11
  We went and raced and KS had a little trouble with his car
• 1:04:15
  and I ended up beating him, which that really set the hook.
• 1:04:19
  So that really got us going with that car from racing at Niagara and with Ks and,
• 1:04:24
  uh, Doug Cook, when they would come to the East coast, they needed more cars.
• 1:04:29
  So I would tour around them in the summer with them guys.
• 1:04:32
  And they, I mean, Ks put me, he kind of took me under his wing and taught
• 1:04:36
  me really how to run these cars.
• 1:04:37
  I didn't have a clue, but first few years they'd fight over,
• 1:04:41
  who'd get to run me, right?
• 1:04:42
  I'd go in the stadium lanes and they'd be a battle line who got behind me to race?
• 1:04:45
  To race me.
• 1:04:46
  'cause I wasn't very good.
• 1:04:48
  But through the years, come, let's see, it was 1968.
• 1:04:52
  There was such a big discussion over the double A gas cars, 'cause
• 1:04:56
  George Montgomery built a Mustang.
• 1:04:59
  Joe built a Camaro, they started letting turbo cars in and there
• 1:05:03
  was just nothing but arguments.
• 1:05:04
  So any Ray abolished double a gas class, I went to double B gas
• 1:05:09
  and I got pretty good at that.
• 1:05:11
  And in 68 we won the NHRA Division one Points Championship and I was the first
• 1:05:16
  one to ever be elected by the division one to be driver and mechanic of the year.
• 1:05:21
  That was a pretty cool deal with the Austin and like I said, we went Indy with
• 1:05:25
  the Anglia, won the point championship with the Austin and then it got where
• 1:05:30
  the big old car was kind of obsolete.
• 1:05:32
  Everybody started building these Opal GT cars, which is top left and
• 1:05:37
  it was a, it was early seventies and them cars were just being new.
• 1:05:41
  So I looked around junk yard junk.
• 1:05:43
  I couldn't find one wreck.
• 1:05:44
  So one of the guys that was helping me on the car, Mikey, he was a body
• 1:05:47
  man, he worked for Jack Stevens Buick.
• 1:05:50
  So he, he said to me one day, he says, the boss wants to talk to
• 1:05:53
  you about building this opal deal.
• 1:05:56
  So I go in, I talk to Jack Stevens and I asked him, I can't find a car.
• 1:06:00
  He said, well, we can get you all the panels for a car,
• 1:06:03
  quarter panels roof, trunk doors.
• 1:06:06
  Would that work?
• 1:06:07
  I said, well, yeah, yeah, that would, that would be great.
• 1:06:09
  So I ended up, they got me all the panels to build a car.
• 1:06:12
  I said, well, you know, what's this all gonna cost?
• 1:06:14
  He says, well, all you gotta do is on the back of the tail of the car, but
• 1:06:19
  wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?
• 1:06:22
  That was, that was all deal.
• 1:06:24
  That was early seventies and 72.
• 1:06:27
  We ran competition limited at Indy.
• 1:06:29
  We won the double B gas class and then they ended up winning competition
• 1:06:33
  limit there with that car, which was, I mean, that was a 10 or $12,000
• 1:06:37
  payday back then was, was really good.
• 1:06:40
  And two weeks later they had what they call the national
• 1:06:42
  dragster open at Columbus, Ohio, and we went and won that deal.
• 1:06:47
  So I, I was rich, we won two big events in a row and I had people
• 1:06:53
  knocking down the door to buy that car.
• 1:06:55
  So.
• 1:06:55
  They talked me into it, selling it and built some funny
• 1:06:58
  cars and did okay with that.
• 1:07:00
  But that thing tried to kill me a couple of times.
• 1:07:02
  So we had toured the country with the gas cars and it kind of dried up and
• 1:07:06
  everybody wanted to have funny cars.
• 1:07:08
  So I got hooked up with Smoker Smith's funny car, and I went to a couple races.
• 1:07:12
  First race I went to actually was in Dragway Park.
• 1:07:15
  The cars were really fast compared to what had been driving.
• 1:07:19
  So when more sun down through there in the first run, a nice car, custom
• 1:07:22
  auto body painted a beautiful car.
• 1:07:25
  I got to the finish line and let up on the throttle and the windshield
• 1:07:29
  had come down and wrapped around the injector and held the throttle wide open.
• 1:07:32
  So I thought, oh, okay, I'm going 180.
• 1:07:34
  There's a bunch of corn fields so that that don't look too bad.
• 1:07:38
  So I remember I couldn't get a stop, did a shootout, burned the brakes out of it.
• 1:07:42
  I said, well, you know what I'll do, I'll put it in neutral.
• 1:07:44
  So I put it in neutral and it threw the rods out and I still wasn't stopping.
• 1:07:47
  So I put it in reverse and that kicked the bottom out the tra.
• 1:07:51
  It was okay.
• 1:07:52
  Got out the car, I thought, well, we still got the car.
• 1:07:55
  We're good shape.
• 1:07:56
  'cause we had a lot of races lined up.
• 1:07:58
  So I got the bodies up on poles and we're going down the return road and the guy
• 1:08:01
  told him, he starts going pretty fast.
• 1:08:03
  So I'm trying to put the brake on, but I got no brakes.
• 1:08:06
  Next thing you know, the body flies over the back of the car,
• 1:08:09
  tore the back of the car off, and ripped both parachutes off it.
• 1:08:13
  So then I jam on the brake and the body comes.
• 1:08:16
  Now the poles go up through the front of the body.
• 1:08:18
  So I ran in a couple more times.
• 1:08:21
  We had a good race in Pittsburgh and I run the car and it was like 20 pounds heavy.
• 1:08:26
  So I said, oh, I'll take the wheelie bars off, we'll be okay.
• 1:08:29
  So I'm going down two and the car wheels staying a little bit.
• 1:08:31
  It's all right.
• 1:08:32
  So I get down with that finish line thing's driving left.
• 1:08:35
  I'm correcting correct man.
• 1:08:36
  Not this thing's crazy won.
• 1:08:38
  Don't correct.
• 1:08:39
  So we get back in the pitch and the guy comes down with a picture,
• 1:08:41
  he says, tells me this picture.
• 1:08:42
  I said, I carries the wheels on this by the start line.
• 1:08:45
  He says, no, no, this was the finish line.
• 1:08:49
  So I went home and I didn't like that deal.
• 1:08:52
  I had a good friend that helped me through a lot of these cars, big John Elli.
• 1:08:57
  I told him, John, I don't like this funny car thing.
• 1:08:59
  I'm going back to competition eliminator.
• 1:09:01
  If I can find a fiat body, we'll cut it all up and put
• 1:09:04
  it on this funny car chassis.
• 1:09:05
  'cause there's a points race at Drag Park Yuga in two weeks.
• 1:09:10
  Me and John find a guy in Ohio and he's got a fiat body.
• 1:09:13
  So we buy the body and I got my pickup truck with a cap on it and
• 1:09:18
  the body won't fit in the truck.
• 1:09:19
  So we asked the guy if he's got a saw.
• 1:09:21
  So we saw the thing in four pieces and put it in a truck, but we had
• 1:09:25
  modified, we lengthened it and chopped it and we had modified it quite a bit.
• 1:09:29
  Long story short, we put that thing together, went up to drag Park,
• 1:09:33
  Huga, division One Points race, and we won that race and I had missed
• 1:09:37
  the first Division one points race.
• 1:09:40
  But there was four left.
• 1:09:42
  I went to the rest of 'em and I won all four of them, and the final race was
• 1:09:46
  in aco, New Jersey division director.
• 1:09:50
  So we finished the day.
• 1:09:51
  We thought we won the point championship, and the point champ, he gets to go
• 1:09:55
  to Ontario, California, and $5,000.
• 1:09:59
  Well, you collect the money at the pay window in Ontario.
• 1:10:02
  So we're all loaded up, heading out, and here comes Darwin doll
• 1:10:05
  running out the track entry.
• 1:10:06
  Whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 1:10:07
  I, I said, Don, what's the matter?
• 1:10:09
  He said, well, we just did all the points and you and the Zo
• 1:10:13
  brothers are tied for points.
• 1:10:15
  He went to all five.
• 1:10:16
  You went to four.
• 1:10:17
  But he was the car to beat.
• 1:10:19
  Really?
• 1:10:19
  He says, you wanna go to Tyson?
• 1:10:21
  Says, yeah, I wanna go to Ontario, California, man.
• 1:10:23
  Absolutely.
• 1:10:24
  He said, well, they wanna go too.
• 1:10:26
  How are we gonna do it?
• 1:10:27
  I said, oh, you want flip a coin?
• 1:10:28
  What do you wanna do?
• 1:10:29
  Tarzi wants to race you for.
• 1:10:31
  Now it's midnight, right?
• 1:10:33
  Everybody's gone cold, no Christmas tree.
• 1:10:37
  How are we gonna do this?
• 1:10:38
  That one says, I'll get out there and flag you.
• 1:10:40
  I'll have a guy at the finish line.
• 1:10:42
  Whoever wins the race goes to California and the Zi car was called the Italian Way.
• 1:10:48
  They were out of New York City.
• 1:10:49
  I was pretty scared of these dudes when I beat 'em.
• 1:10:53
  I got out of, I got out of there in a hurry.
• 1:10:56
  They were really good guys, but they were, you know, we run the race nighttime.
• 1:11:01
  I don't know who wins.
• 1:11:02
  It's so close, right?
• 1:11:04
  And at the end of the racetrack it's a big bang and fire and
• 1:11:08
  everybody come down and says, oh you, you blew the thing up, right?
• 1:11:12
  I go, not really.
• 1:11:13
  I says, run great.
• 1:11:13
  Right through the lights.
• 1:11:14
  He said, well, there was a big bang at, and the end of the finish line,
• 1:11:17
  meanwhile, the guy comes walking up.
• 1:11:19
  That was at the end of the finish line.
• 1:11:21
  He says, man, I can't believe you made it through that.
• 1:11:23
  I said, what are you talking about?
• 1:11:25
  He said, well, there was a guy in the bleachers with a shotgun trying
• 1:11:28
  to shoot your front tire route.
• 1:11:31
  I just, I wonder who that was.
• 1:11:33
  Right.
• 1:11:33
  So I'm like, there's no way, whatever.
• 1:11:35
  And we got down and sure enough there's a bullet hole right through the headers.
• 1:11:39
  They went for the front tire, but they got the headers.
• 1:11:42
  Guy was related to the guys who were running.
• 1:11:44
  I'm just guessing.
• 1:11:46
  But anyway, we towed the car right out of the track to get out of there.
• 1:11:51
  When we come back to return, we just kept going.
• 1:11:54
  Another guy grabbed the trailer, we went out in the road and
• 1:11:57
  loaded the car and went home.
• 1:11:58
  We didn't wanna get no power of that deal, but we went to
• 1:12:01
  Ontario and it was was 74, 75.
• 1:12:03
  Carlos set the ET record if it was good for like eight years.
• 1:12:07
  I mean, it was just an incredible race.
• 1:12:08
  So did you ever race those guys again?
• 1:12:11
  No.
• 1:12:11
  No, I did not.
• 1:12:12
  Oh.
• 1:12:13
  No, that was kind of the end.
• 1:12:15
  My, I was lucky enough they had twin boys and they, they were born and
• 1:12:18
  I kind of took a break racing and opened up a shop and started engine
• 1:12:21
  shop and Chasis shop and I was busy for quite a while with that deal.
• 1:12:26
  I didn't race much for about 10 years.
• 1:12:28
  Are you racing now?
• 1:12:29
  Yeah, that's actually was the funny car tried to kill me.
• 1:12:31
  Oh, okay.
• 1:12:32
  Gotcha.
• 1:12:32
  See how close the windshield is to the injector.
• 1:12:34
  Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  You don't wanna do that.
• 1:12:37
  It's not a good deal.
• 1:12:39
  So where do you race now?
• 1:12:40
  Took a break for, oh, like I say, probably eight or 10 years.
• 1:12:43
  I built, I built a little Vete Street car just kinda running around the street, but.
• 1:12:47
  I ended up getting crazy with that deal.
• 1:12:49
  Lancaster one, I put alcohol in it and put on its roof.
• 1:12:52
  There was no door car that ever had run a four second ET so, and this
• 1:12:56
  was a street car where I had a blown big black Chevrolet in it and it was
• 1:12:59
  pretty nice on gas, but I wanna be the first guy in the floors with a
• 1:13:03
  door car, so I put alcohol in it.
• 1:13:05
  First run went 5 0 8.
• 1:13:06
  Oh man, I'm gonna wait till about nine, 10 o'clock and the air comes
• 1:13:10
  in, we're gonna have our first four.
• 1:13:12
  So I went out to said, well I gotta get a real good burnout going here.
• 1:13:15
  Get the tires real.
• 1:13:16
  How about half track?
• 1:13:17
  It flipped up on its roof.
• 1:13:20
  That was the end of my chevette and, and then we, like I said, we took a break
• 1:13:23
  for a while and then IHR came up with this top sportsman quick eight thing.
• 1:13:28
  It was a deal where you had have a door car and they didn't
• 1:13:31
  really care what was in it.
• 1:13:33
  You just, as long as it was a door car, the doors had open and closed
• 1:13:37
  and the driver had to sit on the left.
• 1:13:39
  That was the only rules there were.
• 1:13:41
  So me and Big John Terelli, again, he got me in a lot of his trouble.
• 1:13:45
  He said, you know what, we're gonna kind of build like an alcohol, fine
• 1:13:48
  car torsion bar, front sour rearer.
• 1:13:51
  I said, well, where are we gonna put the driver?
• 1:13:53
  He said, well, we'll build a driver's pod like a jet car has, right?
• 1:13:57
  So I said, well, okay John, we will do this.
• 1:14:00
  So we get an old Corvette body.
• 1:14:01
  We stretched it and built this car.
• 1:14:04
  At that point in time, everybody was trying to run a six second ET and
• 1:14:08
  200 mile an hour with a door car.
• 1:14:11
  So we ran this couple race and ran some seven O's and.
• 1:14:14
  I, I thought, well, they got a nice race coming up at Bristol, Tennessee, and
• 1:14:17
  like, I got some new stuff I wanna try.
• 1:14:20
  We go to Bristol, Tennessee, and this was a top sportsman bracket race, right?
• 1:14:23
  You had to dial in what you want.
• 1:14:25
  So we had run a couple times and didn't run the full quarter.
• 1:14:29
  Fred says, man, this thing's really good.
• 1:14:31
  Fred Ho is driving for me, really good driver.
• 1:14:33
  He said, whatcha gonna dial?
• 1:14:34
  I said, well, what do you think?
• 1:14:35
  He said, I, he says this thing's gonna go well into the sixes.
• 1:14:38
  I said, well, how about 6 75?
• 1:14:40
  He said, I think it's gonna go better than that.
• 1:14:42
  I go, can't.
• 1:14:43
  There's no way.
• 1:14:44
  No one's ever ran a six.
• 1:14:45
  How can we do this?
• 1:14:46
  So, sure enough, he gets in, goes out there, makes a great run.
• 1:14:49
  It goes 6 68 A 2 0 8.
• 1:14:52
  The owner I trade said it was the worst day of his lifetime.
• 1:14:56
  Because everybody just went berserk and everything in the car got for the next
• 1:15:01
  season with was the beginning of pro mod.
• 1:15:03
  Whatever was in that car was outlawed.
• 1:15:05
  No straight front axles, no sour rear, you know, no driver pot on the left.
• 1:15:10
  Had to make it more like a pro stock car and stuff.
• 1:15:13
  And I thought, well, the car was done.
• 1:15:15
  I said, no, John.
• 1:15:16
  No.
• 1:15:16
  John says, no, we'll just put a backup on the chicken and we'll put a suspension
• 1:15:19
  in the front, suspension in the back.
• 1:15:21
  He was really clever at doing this stuff.
• 1:15:23
  I was the welder.
• 1:15:24
  He was a fabricator.
• 1:15:25
  I was the welder.
• 1:15:26
  So whatever he made, he'd make something all day and I'd be
• 1:15:29
  there all night welding it.
• 1:15:31
  But then following year we brought that car back with the way they
• 1:15:35
  wanted it, and we won like three straight events with that car.
• 1:15:39
  They had promised everybody that was gone, but we ended up winning some IHRA
• 1:15:43
  championships and NHRA championships and we ran pull out for 15 years and,
• 1:15:49
  uh, I was inducted in the Northeast Hall of Fame, the East Coast Hall of Fame.
• 1:15:55
  I got a call one day from Don Garla after I had kind of quit the pro mod deal, sold
• 1:16:00
  everything off, moved to North Carolina.
• 1:16:03
  He said, we wanna induct you into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
• 1:16:07
  And I'm thinking it's a joke, right?
• 1:16:08
  Yeah.
• 1:16:09
  You have one of my buddies joking around and I said, no, you don't ever, you
• 1:16:13
  don't ever bring somebody from the east.
• 1:16:16
  It's always West Coast, Perol and McEwen.
• 1:16:18
  It's all West Coast guy.
• 1:16:19
  No East Coast guys ever get in Hall of Fame, right?
• 1:16:22
  I didn't believe it.
• 1:16:24
  He actually had, the next day he had a secretary call me back.
• 1:16:26
  That was probably the biggest and best thing that you could accomplish.
• 1:16:30
  Oh yeah.
• 1:16:31
  I would think so for sure.
• 1:16:31
  In the drag racing world.
• 1:16:33
  And one of the biggest and best things.
• 1:16:35
  Was, is I had my twin boys for all the years of promo, right?
• 1:16:39
  Which they were such a big part of it.
• 1:16:42
  It was when the data logger start coming along and I didn't need a data logger.
• 1:16:46
  I, I looked clutch, disc rod bearings.
• 1:16:49
  I knew what I wanted to do.
• 1:16:50
  I didn't need a data logger, but we got in some trouble a couple times and
• 1:16:54
  couldn't figure out what was wrong.
• 1:16:55
  But when I got the data logger, that's when my, both my boys,
• 1:16:58
  mechanical engineers, I think they interpreted most of this information
• 1:17:03
  a lot better than other people did.
• 1:17:05
  And it was, Hey dad, we need to do this.
• 1:17:07
  Hey dad, we need to do that.
• 1:17:08
  Like, eh, nah, rods look good, cuts.
• 1:17:11
  This are good.
• 1:17:12
  We're going, no, no, we need to do that.
• 1:17:13
  We need to.
• 1:17:14
  And, and that's when you get inducted in the garbage deal.
• 1:17:18
  You gotta find somebody to induct you.
• 1:17:20
  Right?
• 1:17:20
  So this was like, holy moly, what do I do now?
• 1:17:23
  I had some great, some incredible people help me whenever we got in
• 1:17:26
  trouble, for some reason, I, I just got in Florida and I got the wheels back.
• 1:17:31
  Wheels on fire.
• 1:17:32
  Front wheels are two feet in the air.
• 1:17:34
  Over we walked Bob Newburn, like he used to call me, Joe Otie.
• 1:17:37
  Go, Joe Otie, you can't win this race in 60 feet.
• 1:17:40
  And he'd teach me things and Kenney and some chassis guys.
• 1:17:44
  We got to a point where I would just keep throwing horsepower at pretty soon
• 1:17:48
  the car wouldn't go on the racetrack.
• 1:17:49
  Good shock guys would come up and just wanna help.
• 1:17:51
  And I just, I was so lucky from the beginning with Ks Pittman, he was the
• 1:17:56
  first guy to start to help me, but I was just always lucky to have Big John.
• 1:18:00
  Thriller was a big part early of what we did.
• 1:18:03
  So anyway, we ran a lot of circuits.
• 1:18:05
  Pull my car.
• 1:18:06
  We would run 30 events in the summer and all of us worked full-time jobs.
• 1:18:11
  The boys, Fred worked at a plant and I had a shop.
• 1:18:14
  So I go, well, Brett Keppner, he was at the United States Super
• 1:18:17
  Circuit, I-H-R-N-H-R-A, super Chevy.
• 1:18:20
  He was the announcer 'em all.
• 1:18:21
  I I I, I'd like to call him up.
• 1:18:23
  And he said, yeah.
• 1:18:24
  So I asked him if he went and, oh yeah, I'd be glad to gotta go
• 1:18:27
  to Florida and get him fixed up.
• 1:18:30
  So he called me one day and he.
• 1:18:31
  How long have you run Pro Mod?
• 1:18:33
  I said, I don't.
• 1:18:33
  He said, well, you ran 15 years.
• 1:18:35
  He said, you got any idea how many championships you won?
• 1:18:38
  I said, he, I said, I, I don't.
• 1:18:40
  'cause we, like I said, we on so many stories.
• 1:18:42
  He informed me that in 15 years we won 12 championships, which I went to.
• 1:18:47
  There was no way, well, he's a drag racing historian, or he had every
• 1:18:52
  one and named every one of them.
• 1:18:54
  But you're so busy when you're doing it.
• 1:18:57
  I don't think any of us had any idea, you know how much you know?
• 1:19:00
  Yeah.
• 1:19:01
  So he's the guy that inducted you into the Yeah, Brett Kepner.
• 1:19:03
  That's great.
• 1:19:04
  That's great.
• 1:19:04
  Fabulous announcer.
• 1:19:06
  He's still, to this day, a drag race story, and he would go to tracks that
• 1:19:10
  were closed and he, you know, they'd be trailer parks, but here's where this
• 1:19:13
  guy set this record and that record, and it's just perfect authority.
• 1:19:17
  Well, that's quite a story.
• 1:19:18
  That's quite a career.
• 1:19:19
  There you go.
• 1:19:20
  And you blame it all on this guy.
• 1:19:22
  He was instrumental.
• 1:19:23
  Uh, we, there's a lot of people, oh, this guy, a lot of thanks for what he did.
• 1:19:29
  I mean, he stuck his neck out there and built a drag strip.
• 1:19:31
  And run a drag strip when I'm sure when he started out he wasn't thinking he
• 1:19:34
  was gonna end up being rich, but it was something that he wanted to do, and that's
• 1:19:39
  what, that's what makes the difference.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:19:41
  Well, thank you for sharing all that.
• 1:19:43
  Dean, we're somewhat coming to the, where we need to wrap this up and we're
• 1:19:46
  gonna throw it open for questions, but I was just wondering if you got
• 1:19:49
  anything else you'd wanna throw in, or you don't have 37 pages there, do you?
• 1:19:53
  No, I do have that.
• 1:19:55
  Me personally, I was done with drag racing when I had a fellow come up
• 1:19:58
  and they wanted to get some of the signage that I had in my hangar, and
• 1:20:02
  we found all of this stuff that I had no idea I was too lazy to throw away.
• 1:20:06
  What happened is people from the sixties and seventies that, that I
• 1:20:10
  knew and for the most part were my friends, I got to see them again.
• 1:20:14
  And so from 1960 to and 60 and 70 till now.
• 1:20:19
  To see people that were such a big part of my life, you just can't
• 1:20:22
  believe how fortunate I have been.
• 1:20:25
  So I met some awful good people and most of the people now have forgotten
• 1:20:29
  all of the fighting that we did.
• 1:20:31
  And we did a lot.
• 1:20:32
  We've become friends and, and breakfast and sers and different meetings and
• 1:20:38
  it's been a treat to have been a part of this phenomenon, drag racing.
• 1:20:42
  And we got in on the, on the first part of it.
• 1:20:45
  So all of the people, or many of the people that started that were
• 1:20:48
  basically nobody where they were forced to build stuff and they became
• 1:20:52
  very famous for products that were involved in drag racing and, and we.
• 1:20:57
  Basically we were nobody with just an interest in, in the sport and
• 1:21:01
  we became part of history, I guess.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah, I would say so.
• 1:21:04
  Very definitely.
• 1:21:05
  We'd like to open this up for some questions.
• 1:21:08
  A lot of my friends have been asking me why did the Greg Strip close
• 1:21:12
  and how come we closed in, uh, 19, 19 74 was the last year we ran.
• 1:21:17
  The, we had been restricted, it ends up about 21 days a year.
• 1:21:21
  We had one or two Saturdays we could run.
• 1:21:23
  We couldn't start till one.
• 1:21:25
  We had to be done by dusk.
• 1:21:27
  We basically got, uh, regulated out of business.
• 1:21:30
  You can't run a business 21 days a year.
• 1:21:32
  And so we just couldn't keep up.
• 1:21:35
  We couldn't make ends meet, couldn't pay her bills.
• 1:21:38
  The woman that owned the, there was 129 acres, two sections of property,
• 1:21:42
  and she owned the bottom end 129 acres.
• 1:21:45
  And, uh, I had just paid her a four or $5,000 Christmas
• 1:21:50
  time, but I was still behind.
• 1:21:51
  We had been going on like that forever.
• 1:21:53
  So she took my money and the next day she said, my son is gonna run the track.
• 1:21:57
  And, uh, there wasn't anything I could do.
• 1:21:59
  She was right.
• 1:22:00
  We owed her the money and I couldn't pay it.
• 1:22:02
  And so the next day I went down with an ax.
• 1:22:05
  I was pretty sure I couldn't run the track and I cut absolutely.
• 1:22:09
  Every wire that I could find, I cut in the track or chopped with an ax.
• 1:22:13
  We took all the bleacher boards out and I threw my keys in the tower.
• 1:22:16
  They seemed to keep coming back to me.
• 1:22:18
  She went down there and saw what was going on and she said, well,
• 1:22:21
  how am I gonna run the track?
• 1:22:22
  And I said, well, you've got pavement and you've got the frame for the drag strip.
• 1:22:26
  You're on your own.
• 1:22:27
  Well, she didn't have it and she put us outta business, but it was our fault.
• 1:22:31
  We were late.
• 1:22:32
  And she was right.
• 1:22:33
  But the town of Niagara had seen to it that we just couldn't You, you
• 1:22:37
  can't run a business 21 days a year.
• 1:22:39
  You just can't.
• 1:22:40
  And you're gonna lose some of them to rain.
• 1:22:42
  Or bad weather.
• 1:22:43
  So we were done.
• 1:22:44
  I'm Bruce Mellenbach and this is Bill Mellenbach.
• 1:22:47
  And, uh, we ran Dragway Park in the, uh, seventies and eighties.
• 1:22:51
  To give you a little background on Kaga, our grandfather LB Mellenbach bought the
• 1:22:55
  training base in Kohler, Ontario in 1948.
• 1:22:59
  In 1954 is when they started drag racing with the piston
• 1:23:04
  pushers car club outta Branford.
• 1:23:05
  I've talked to Jim once in a while and Jim is a hundred percent correct.
• 1:23:09
  I mean, the cars ran at Lancaster, then they ran at Empire, then they
• 1:23:13
  come to cga and then they went to, uh, Niagara Sunday, Niagara.
• 1:23:17
  I mean, Jim did it and Zia did it.
• 1:23:19
  FJ Smith did it.
• 1:23:21
  And, and there's a long line of storm along guys and, uh, on and on and on.
• 1:23:25
  So the reason I came up here is I wanted to thank Dean.
• 1:23:29
  For what he's done, because folks, there's gonna be a time come and
• 1:23:32
  it's not that far away where there's gonna be no Dean Johnson's and
• 1:23:35
  no Jim Mati and no Bruce Melba.
• 1:23:38
  And somehow you gotta pass the knowledge along because it's, it's history
• 1:23:42
  of our sport and it's very, very important that we do things like this.
• 1:23:46
  And, you know, people talk about Facebook and how goofy
• 1:23:49
  Facebook is, but you know what?
• 1:23:51
  I wouldn't keep in touch with Dean and Jim's wife and, and so
• 1:23:55
  many more of you that are in here.
• 1:23:57
  If it wasn't for Facebook, it seemed to have got us all back together again.
• 1:24:00
  And, and talking about history.
• 1:24:02
  I just wanted to thank you guys for having this.
• 1:24:04
  It was a pleasure coming and, and hopefully we can do it again someday.
• 1:24:13
  We signed a lot of checks for.
• 1:24:17
  I'm so glad to see you guys here, man, it's, it's great seeing you again.
• 1:24:21
  I had such a great time at Dragway Park, Cuba and your mom and dad.
• 1:24:25
  I will never to my best day forget Bruce and Joan Millen Barker.
• 1:24:31
  They were the happiest, luckiest, just, they were great people to be there.
• 1:24:35
  I remember one time he must have had eight, 10 floor funny cars,
• 1:24:40
  dragsters, and it's pouring rain out and I'm like, oh my God.
• 1:24:44
  He got outta business paying all these guys rain money.
• 1:24:47
  There's Bruce.
• 1:24:47
  He's talking to everybody, laughing and joking.
• 1:24:50
  I'm like, man, how you gonna get out of this one?
• 1:24:53
  He goes, he said, I'm okay.
• 1:24:54
  We got rain insurance.
• 1:24:57
  I'll never forget that.
• 1:24:58
  But he, he, he had some of the big events that I told us at Bruce
• 1:25:02
  before they had Thresh Muller was big in the day and they had a, a
• 1:25:07
  Can-Am national at Drag Park Cuba.
• 1:25:11
  And it was a big, big deal.
• 1:25:12
  I mean, it was again, probably 15, 20,000 people there.
• 1:25:16
  And I had Austin and it was an deal.
• 1:25:19
  And I had reset the double big ass super record and I won the deal and I still
• 1:25:25
  have that trophy on my mandle to this day.
• 1:25:28
  And that was 68, 69, something like that.
• 1:25:32
  And when Bruce and Joan were gone, that place was never the same.
• 1:25:37
  I mean, it's okay.
• 1:25:37
  It's a good racetrack, but what they brought.
• 1:25:40
  And they, you could just see both of 'em.
• 1:25:43
  They put their heart and soul into, and I don't know why they
• 1:25:46
  ever did this, but they really, really enjoyed themself immensely.
• 1:25:50
  The fact that they just loved to do it.
• 1:25:52
  They talked to every racer, every race, car win, loser draw.
• 1:25:56
  They were just roaming the pits.
• 1:25:57
  And that's just stuff I'll never, ever forget.
• 1:25:59
  It was, it was great.
• 1:26:00
  And I'll never thank him enough.
• 1:26:02
  Thank you for coming.
• 1:26:03
  Appreciate it Bruce.
• 1:26:04
  And Bill, thanks very much for coming.
• 1:26:08
  I think before we formally wrap this up, so Jim Holder slide the last two slides.
• 1:26:12
  Let me, let me, uh, have Jim from, uh, skyline come up for just a couple seconds.
• 1:26:16
  If you saw the cars out front, skyline drags down to Tioga Center is about
• 1:26:21
  ready to open their season and we thought we'd invite them over and
• 1:26:24
  let's keep this drag racing deal going.
• 1:26:25
  So if you can take a couple minutes to just tell people what you're doing.
• 1:26:29
  Yeah.
• 1:26:29
  My name is James Robinson, also known as Rabo in the, uh, drag racing world.
• 1:26:34
  Spent most of my career at Empire.
• 1:26:36
  Did a lot of work with the IHA travel with them up and down the East
• 1:26:40
  Coast and recently with Lancaster and always wanted my own place or
• 1:26:45
  my own track since mid twenties.
• 1:26:48
  Thought about it and, uh, you know, lifeguard ahead of me.
• 1:26:50
  And so recently, um, I was able to take my re retirement money out.
• 1:26:55
  An opportunity came up with Skyline.
• 1:26:57
  But I did wanna mention, by the way, the honor it is to stand up
• 1:27:01
  here with these two gentlemen.
• 1:27:02
  They're awesome, awesome guys.
• 1:27:04
  I interviewed.
• 1:27:05
  Dean at Lancaster two years ago.
• 1:27:08
  It was a great interview.
• 1:27:09
  I was at the Empire Nationals and watched Freddy win, uh, what was that like
• 1:27:13
  at midnight, the marathon of a race.
• 1:27:15
  It was crazy.
• 1:27:16
  The last time I walked, I was at Niagara, was about 2003, and I, it was a nice,
• 1:27:20
  warm, you know, Sunday afternoon in July, and I walked all the way down,
• 1:27:24
  all the way down the shutdown area, walked up the return road, you know,
• 1:27:27
  mother Nature was slowly taking over.
• 1:27:29
  And I got back up to the starting line and I was met by an MP from the local military
• 1:27:34
  base in the Niagara County Sheriff.
• 1:27:36
  And they were asking me what I was doing there, what was going on, and
• 1:27:38
  I explained what I, you know, who I, you know how it's that empire
• 1:27:41
  at the time and feeling nostalgic.
• 1:27:43
  And they said, okay, very good.
• 1:27:44
  Get in your car, get out here and never return.
• 1:27:46
  So that's my naive story.
• 1:27:48
  So, anyways.
• 1:27:50
  I'm here to, um, talk about Skyline and one of my friends from Empire and
• 1:27:54
  Lancaster found out that I was gonna talk.
• 1:27:56
  They said say something nice about our track.
• 1:27:58
  There's five operating drag strips in Western New York and they're nice.
• 1:28:02
  That was supposed to be a joke.
• 1:28:03
  Ha ha ha.
• 1:28:04
  They're Lancaster by Buffalo Races on Friday night.
• 1:28:06
  I was actually working there last night.
• 1:28:08
  It was a good night.
• 1:28:09
  Empire.
• 1:28:09
  Donald Lester.
• 1:28:10
  Still operates as a quarter mile on Friday nights.
• 1:28:13
  So if you wanna go quarter mile passes, go out there on Friday night, a little
• 1:28:16
  no drag strip in South Butler called South Butler, nostalgia, Dragway.
• 1:28:20
  And it's truly nostalgic.
• 1:28:22
  They run older cars.
• 1:28:24
  There's a grass median in between the two lanes.
• 1:28:27
  It's the middle of a corn field.
• 1:28:28
  Empire State Timers Association, leveling, known as Esta and Cicero, New York.
• 1:28:34
  And then the one that makes my eye sparkle is Skyline.
• 1:28:38
  It was called Skyview years ago.
• 1:28:40
  It's part of Skyline Motor Sports Park where Shangla two is.
• 1:28:43
  And last year, um, it went up for sale.
• 1:28:47
  And, um, I'm thinking to myself, well, I, I work for New York State, um, there's
• 1:28:51
  no way I can afford the three and a half million dollar price tag unless,
• 1:28:54
  you know somebody wants to help us out.
• 1:28:56
  There's two gentlemen back there, uh, Dave, Jeanette and George Coleman
• 1:29:00
  who stepped up, talked to the guy who actually owns a track, and we met in
• 1:29:04
  December and, uh, he agreed to lease.
• 1:29:06
  And so I, um, took some retirement savings and I'm an expert now.
• 1:29:11
  If you ever wanna make your retirement savings go poof, just come see me.
• 1:29:16
  We, uh, signed the lease, the multiple year lease, signed on with the
• 1:29:20
  World Drag Racing Alliance, one of the newer sanctioning bodies, and,
• 1:29:23
  um, spent the winter just getting together, talking, doing stuff,
• 1:29:28
  and opening day was April 12th.
• 1:29:31
  Poured.
• 1:29:32
  But the good thing about April 12th is Dave and George worked with
• 1:29:36
  Daddy Dave from Street Outlaws on a no prep race and no prep racing.
• 1:29:40
  We could talk about, there's two no prep cars outside.
• 1:29:43
  It's a different type of racing that I'm not used to.
• 1:29:45
  And what we did have a race a few weeks later.
• 1:29:48
  I think I had 10 heart attacks within 20 passes because I'm a
• 1:29:51
  bracket guy and everything I like is usually straight and through.
• 1:29:55
  But we do have once a month, it's called the Upstate Outlaw
• 1:29:58
  Bill Prep series, and it's put on with Daddy, Dave, and the group.
• 1:30:01
  Every Friday night we do testing and tuning so you can come out and just run
• 1:30:05
  down the track and then have a good time.
• 1:30:07
  Saturdays we are doing the no prep.
• 1:30:09
  We're gonna have a junior drag shoot out, you know, it's basically
• 1:30:12
  reserved for um, shows and stuff.
• 1:30:14
  And then Sundays are bracket racing and points.
• 1:30:17
  What we also started on Wednesday nights, one Wednesday night, a
• 1:30:20
  month, we might go to two where you pay $5 at the gate and $5 per pass.
• 1:30:25
  Anybody can come out.
• 1:30:26
  Anybody in this room could go drag racing.
• 1:30:27
  Right now, if you didn't know, one of the nice things about your racing is the
• 1:30:31
  car you drive to work, school, wherever you could take to, to drag strip, and.
• 1:30:36
  Race it.
• 1:30:36
  You don't have to go and make something purpose built to see if
• 1:30:39
  you like it, which is really nice.
• 1:30:40
  By the way, I do want to, uh, mention Bruce.
• 1:30:42
  He puts on races over at Empire.
• 1:30:44
  I was there last year and he is the most detailed oriented
• 1:30:47
  guy I've ever worked with.
• 1:30:48
  It.
• 1:30:49
  He puts on a great show.
• 1:30:50
  So quick, three, two Sportsman series and what, uh, June, July, August of
• 1:30:53
  September at Empire and it's, it's a great race and, uh, it's well ran.
• 1:30:57
  So, but come see us at Skyline.
• 1:30:59
  Uh, I don't know if everybody realize that from Locktons
• 1:31:02
  Glen, it's less than 15 minutes.
• 1:31:03
  It's off of Route 17 C in between Tioga Center and, uh, oligo right up, there's
• 1:31:09
  a sign out the road and it's really nice because it's called Skyline Drive.
• 1:31:12
  It's, you see a sign for Skyline Drive called Mel Road,
• 1:31:15
  and that's where we're at.
• 1:31:16
  We also have a half mile concrete oval there, leased out to a guy who has track
• 1:31:21
  down in Pennsylvania called Evergreen.
• 1:31:23
  And so the place is up and running it, it laid dormant for I think eight years.
• 1:31:28
  And, uh, now it's back up and running and the whole crew that we have is
• 1:31:32
  a hundred percent behind the track.
• 1:31:34
  We wanna make it work.
• 1:31:35
  We want to bring back the name, well bring back the, the excitement,
• 1:31:39
  push Skyview off to the side, but Skyline, so please come and join us.
• 1:31:43
  The other tracks that I mentioned, go to them too because, um, the drag
• 1:31:47
  racing community is pretty tight.
• 1:31:49
  You could go to a national event and walk right up to the driver and talk to the
• 1:31:52
  driver who just went 300 miles per hour, or you could, you know, go into local
• 1:31:57
  pits and this together kind of thing.
• 1:31:59
  It's, it's awesome sport.
• 1:32:00
  I've been loving it since 1987.
• 1:32:02
  But yes, please come see us.
• 1:32:03
  Like I said, thank you Kipp, for asking me to join.
• 1:32:06
  This is awesome.
• 1:32:08
  Great.
• 1:32:08
  Thank you.
• 1:32:09
  Thank you.
• 1:32:10
  Thank you both for taking the time.
• 1:32:11
  Thank all of you for coming down to see this.
• 1:32:14
  Let's wrap it up and go back to the center Sunday.
• 1:32:27
  Just because we could.
• 1:32:29
  Thanks everybody.
• 1:32:37
  This episode is brought to you in part by the International
• 1:32:41
  Motor Racing Research Center.
• 1:32:43
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