Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Racers Roundtable: The Golden Era of Gassers

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The Racers Roundtable: The Golden Era of Gassers · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Racers Roundtable, a podcast sponsored by the Eastern Museum
• 0:04
  of Motor Racing where history meets horsepower and legends live on each
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  episode brings together voices from across the motor sports world, from grassroots
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  heroes to seasoned veterans as they share stories, insights, and behind the scenes
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  tales that shaped their racing journeys.
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  Whether you're a diehard fan of dirt tracks, drag strips, or open wheel icons,
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  the racer's round table is your seat at the table for candid conversations and
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  timeless memories from those who lived it.
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  Strap in tight because it's time to talk.
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  Racing history, one lap at a time.
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  I wanna introduce our panel here.
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  I guess I'll start to the right here.
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  Thelma Hall, and she's gonna tell us stories about the good old days.
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  Then we got Fred Baird.
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  Now everybody knows Freddy because he's old as dirt, and next to
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  next to him is Thelma's son Ken.
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  Now Ken is a twin, the Michael and Ken.
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  But Michael couldn't come today because of work issues next to me
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  is none other than Greg Swenson.
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  He's a local guy.
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  He's got the car out there, and on the end is another old guy like me.
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  That's Ken Bingham.
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  We're gonna start this way and then I'm gonna have the guys talk about the cars
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  where they got 'em and the history album.
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  I just want you to all know I talked to Fred at Bruce Larson's drag Fest.
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  He said, you ought to have Gene Ty's car up in the museum.
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  I said, yeah, ought to.
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  And he said, well, I have it.
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  He said, so over the course of the end of the year and the
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  beginning, we talked back and forth.
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  And decide.
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  We had room for it.
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  We wanted to do it.
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  We were gonna go with this theme or topic, and I want you to all know that
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  Fred brought the car from Florida.
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  Give him a hand.
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  He hauled it up.
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  And when we originally made the, made the arrangements, he was gonna bring
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  it up last week and then light come on.
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  I said, well, why don't you bring it up like the Friday before our
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  open house and then you can hang around and talk on the panel.
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  So that's what we did.
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  So we got Fred to thank for that car being here, which was a very,
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  very famous car in the East Coast and I'm just so tickled to have it.
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  In the meantime, I wanna thank you all for coming out and sticking around.
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  This is gonna be exciting.
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  Fred, tell us about the origin of the Gasser class.
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  It kind of evolved as the sport evolved in the early fifties, and
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  it became obvious that some cars.
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  We're completely stuck.
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  Some of us weren't, so it really wasn't fair as everything was heads up.
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  A Christmas tree was something that showed up in your house once a year.
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  So they started a modified class, which suddenly people like, what's
• 3:00
  that guy from Florida Garbage.
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  He started, couldn't afford a whole car, so he started building little teeny things
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  then that wasn't fair to run against him.
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  So they started classes and they got refined.
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  When did we start modified production?
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  I think early sixties.
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  Early sixties?
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  Yeah, early sixties.
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  I still miss it because now the Gassers were race cars.
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  They'd started out to be pass their own modified street cars.
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  Now they weren't.
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  So there was a void now between Gassers, which were really
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  race cars and strictly stocks.
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  So they did in modified production and depending on the track, but it
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  was limited to one four barrel battery ignition engine make for the body style.
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  And it was fair rules.
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  Boy, there was some badass cars at York in the highway classes back then.
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  I always came on, I'm a little younger than you.
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  I came on Honda, little behind.
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  But of course I looked at my hot rod magazine.
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  To me, if you took the front bumper off, it became a guesser.
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  Is that that Pretty true?
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  And a threequarter cam, whatever a threequarter cam is, means nobody had,
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  nobody ever explained that because it seems like in a V eight, only
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  12 valves would open and close if you had a three quarter cam anyway.
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  Yeah, you.
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  Did that and it just evolved, you know?
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  Yeah.
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  Something about drag rushes have always wanted to go faster.
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  It's part of the sport and you take weight off the front end, it puts more
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  traction on the rear tires and, and then somebody figured out, well, let's
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  move the engine back a little bit.
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  Yeah.
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  So that for the wait over that came to a new rule called 10%.
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  So it all evolved.
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  Thank God for gentleman named Wiley Parks.
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  It had the foresight to organize it.
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  If you only be there now, I don't know where it would've gone.
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  I don't know where.
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  NASCAR would never probably existed if it hadn't have been for Mr. Bill France.
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  I have the most respect in the world for those two gentlemen.
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  Gene Ty's car that Fred hauled up from Florida.
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  It's down in our drag racing area.
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  Behind it is a showcase with some of gene's, race pictures and some of things.
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  The intake down there, he was the first one to divine that and figure
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  it out and everybody copied it because he didn't have time to patent
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  it, so everybody else copied him.
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  But it's, it was a one off deal down there, so it's in the showcase
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  behind, so when you get done, you get intermission or something, be sure to
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  go down and check that stuff because it's really neat and I'm just so proud
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  to have it and have the car here.
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  I wish we could have Gene here, but he has health problems
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  and he couldn't make the drip.
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  Bill Klein brought us the archive stuff down there.
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  He, uh, from his collection, which I didn't know, Fred actually owns the car
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  and maintains the car for Gene, so the car wouldn't be here without Judy's help.
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  She is.
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  The best help that I've ever had and works for less pay than anybody I've ever had.
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  And he needs a lot of help and puts up with me.
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  The only person that's put up with me more than she has with my mother.
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  May she rest in peace and I think she died to get some rest.
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  So thank you all for the applause for Judy.
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  And if the car sparkles, you have to thank her because I
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  don't clean cars, I paint 'em.
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  She does a beautiful job.
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  She spent two days cleaning jean's car inside, underneath in the trunk.
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  She cleaned everything in that car because it's going to the museum.
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  I want it to look nice.
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  And when it arrived, we were down there trying to get his position and set the
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  stanchions up and she was still polishing.
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  Sitting next to me is Ken Hall.
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  He's one of the twins maybe on my phone.
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  I can't tell him, but he said he's Ken.
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  The only way I know is I called Ken's phone number.
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  So I think I got Ken.
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  I'm gonna let him talk a little bit.
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  His mother's sitting down here, they weren't involved with the Ks
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  Pittman card and I'm gonna let let him tell the whole story in the
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  background and include your mother.
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  My father was Harry Hall.
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  I was too young to be a part of that car.
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  I was only two years old when he crashed that car in Englishtown.
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  So it really doesn't have many memories in my mind except probably my dad cursing
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  that, you know, he crashed his car.
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  My father started out, well, he had his own cars.
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  He was through Pontiac, worked for a dealership, and
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  they gave him a car to race.
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  Then he bought a 41 Willies and had a blown Oldsmobile in it.
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  And he had help from a gentleman, uh, Bristol area named Jack Culp.
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  I'm sure maybe Bruce had heard of him.
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  I remember Jack, yeah.
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  You remember Jack?
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  Well, Jack was very famous with, with engines very good
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  with Chryslers and Oldsmobiles.
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  In fact, Ks would credit Jack Culp for teaching him how to
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  tune those engines because Jack was a master with those engines.
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  So my father started hanging around Culp's garage and then started driving Jack's.
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  He had a Willy's also and then the bread truck that had a 3 92 in it.
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  Yeah.
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  Or Oldsmobile.
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  Then it went to 92.
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  So my father had his start through Jack Culp when he got put into the,
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  uh, hall of Fame down in Carolina.
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  He credited Jack Col to a lot of it.
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  I wish my dad was still here to see this and be a part of this.
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  It was a big part of his life growing up.
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  Then he became, he met Ks.
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  Ks came east, had his opal?
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  No, that was op opiate.
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  He sold a 33.
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  The steel one.
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  Steel 33.
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  The steel 33 64.
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  Yeah.
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  And my father met Ks then and started hanging out with 'em, helping him.
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  And they ran their cars together, a lot of races.
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  And then Ks was selling the 33 Willies that the doors off of down here.
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  And my father bought the Ks car from him.
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  And I, I still don't know the year I, I asked my mom and she
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  didn't remember, we're guessing around 68, somewhere in there.
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  Maybe Fred seven or, well, the car was new in seven.
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  Yeah, I think that was 68.
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  68 that Y all bought it.
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  Okay.
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  And then Ks built the Opal.
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  Right.
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  And then he had also the Austin, which was the football car.
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  Yeah, the football, which was Mazmanian car.
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  Mazmanian bought it.
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  Yep.
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  So Ks bought that.
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  So they had a couple cars there floating around, driving.
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  But my dad primarily drove the Ks car, which was.
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  So the day he died said it was his favorite car.
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  He loved that car.
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  It was beautiful.
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  And the gentleman who painted that car was a great story.
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  He told me that, which I laughed at every time he told me.
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  Him and Ks, when the car was brand new, brought out to Molly.
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  Yeah, Molly was in Los Angeles and Molly used to paint all
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  the Hell's Angels motorcycle.
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  So my dad said, him and Ks brought the car there.
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  It's in gel coat.
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  And they said, you know, Molly came out and he was just hippie,
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  like long hair, crazy looking, you know, since the sixties.
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  And this was just him painted Hell's Angels bike.
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  So he looked like a Hell's Angel.
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  So he said, what do you want K?
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  I said, I want it orange tangerine after that and my name on it.
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  You do what you want.
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  So he said, come back in a week.
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  They told me he was, Molly would push the car in his little garage.
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  He had this one car garage and he would get stoned out of his mind smoking pot.
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  And he would paint these cars and they looked incredible.
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  So they said they went to his house.
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  A week later they opened the garage door.
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  This smoke rolled outta the door.
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  Out comes Molly.
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  He could hardly even see straight.
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  And dad said it was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen.
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  But that was Anita story.
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  I thought, man, it's so well I have the nose piece of the car.
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  I couldn't bring it.
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  Today.
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  It looks like a caveman coming at you.
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  And it says Paint by Molly.
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  And that's how they got the car.
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  But my dad drove the car for four years or so.
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  He crashed it in Englishtown in 72 at the Summer Nationals.
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  And I learned this after Doug Wood.
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  There's a old story behind that as well.
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  But Doug is the reason why I have this.
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  My family has a door today, but Brian was there at the track and was one of
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  the first guys to my father when the car crashed at the end of the track, which
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  I didn't know, I just learned last year.
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  I bet he can't run that fast.
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  I said, well, what happened when?
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  When he got to my dad and he says, I've never heard such foul language in my life.
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  And he says, not 'cause he was hurt, because the battery behind the
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  seat was dripping ass asshole over.
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  And he was telling me, just get me the hell out of this car.
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  So I thought it was on fire.
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  He said, no, it was no fire.
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  Just your dad.
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  And there cursing up a storm trying to get outta that car.
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  Anyway, the front wheel broke off.
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  He crashed the car.
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  The door had gone out in the weeds.
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  We got the door back a couple years ago.
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  Doug was a big ambassador.
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  Getting that back for is a big story.
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  But dad ran the 33, he ran against Ks for years and he was his teammate Up
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  until he crashed that car, he built a Vega and that was blown 3 92 on gasoline.
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  And to this day my dad ran, I, I think it was Georgia, he ran and set the national
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  record in blown gas and funny car and a week later they switched into alcohol.
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  So in my mind, my dad still has the record.
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  That makes sense.
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  You know, I, that's just how I look at it.
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  Then he had the vaga and we bought brand Anderson's Dodge
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  Dart and Cup of cars from there.
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  But just growing up, I know this car is, the pictures you can see of my dad in the
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  car and driving it and getting into her back in Englishtown back in around 82.
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  That car was his pride and joy.
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  And to be a teammate with Ks meant the world to him.
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  Ks was just one of the most flamboyant, fun, seemed calm, but
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  Dad said he was just a piece of work.
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  Ks was hell with fireworks.
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  He'd throw mates at everything.
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  Didn't matter where you're at, going through the Baltimore Harbor
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  Tunnel, he still throw a handful out the window at one time.
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  Or Dad told me, throw one time, he says, Ks had a real southern draw.
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  He was from Texas.
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  And he said to my dad, they were walking through India at
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  the Nationals in like 68, 69.
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  They run the cars there and he walked by my dad.
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  He says, Harry, how fast can you run?
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  Dad said, I okay.
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  That's how fast you know.
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  I wanna test you now.
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  Dad says, all right, well let's go.
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  He's, there was a guy that Ks hated.
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  And he walked into one of the porta johns there at the racetrack.
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  So Ks takes up two amens outta his pocket, twists the fuse together, lights him in
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  the cigar, and drops in the vent tube.
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  My dad said I couldn't run any fats than I was.
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  Get the hell outta there.
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  He says, all I hear is this fud.
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  This guy come outta his sink, cover head to toe toilet paper, and he says Ks.
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  He says, I don't know who's gonna kill your worst, me or him.
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  Let's get the hell outta here.
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  But he says, we laughed so hard, but my mom could tell you stories too about
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  his daughter and she's gone up, oh yeah, we're gonna pass the mom now, because
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  she was there more than I was, you know?
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  But the stories that I got from my dad were just awesome with Ks.
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  And like I said, that car was his favorite.
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  He loved it.
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  Built 33, backing around 95, 96.
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  With my family.
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  It wasn't the same.
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  It was a little lower.
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  Wasn't like an old Gasser.
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  I wish we have done it different, but.
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  He said the same later, the 30 threes were his thing, and Rocky
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  Perone owns series of Gassers.
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  He owns replica of the Ks car, which is in museum in California,
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  and he owns the Big John Mazmanian 40 that's out there as well.
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  And also a replica of his father's boss, hydro 33.
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  Home yet, which isn't home yet.
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  Yep.
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  So I was fortunate enough to, I drove the Big John MAs Manini car.
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  In fact, I drove it against Freddie Bear in the Ks car at Bud's Creek
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  the first time I ever drove the car.
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  And, uh, Rocky's father-in-law had set the wheelie bars up a little
• 14:00
  higher, not thinking about it.
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  When I left the line, the thing was really carrying the wheels
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  out and I didn't know any better.
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  Just like driving a Super Bowl down the track, I'm like, well, I guess
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  this is how it's supposed to leave.
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  I didn't know they stayed in it.
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  And then these guys came back to all applaud going crazy.
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  Well, we got the on the track and you're sitting here now and,
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  and, uh, you'll agree with me.
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  Fred Bear and I walked up each other and we both had tears in our eyes and I
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  said, man, that was for Ks and my dad.
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  And that was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
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  I was honored.
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  Race against Fred Barr.
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  I was a hundred.
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  Oh, it meant the world to me.
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  I haven't driven the Ks car yet.
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  And Rocky says, before I die, he's gonna let me make a pass in the Ks car.
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  My brother driven many times, Fred's driven it.
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  We all, I I think we all, it's like luggage.
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  We just passed that thing around.
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  Yeah.
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  Prostitutes.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  It's bad.
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  Anyway, uh, so, uh, I've gotten a chance to drive these old cars and my
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  father was there when I drove a couple of 'em and he told me the same thing.
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  He says, they're just like, they were back in the day.
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  He says, be ready.
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  They're a handful somewhere.
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  I have a picture of my dad of the Ks car going through the lights at Maple Grove
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  with a front wheels, a foot in the air.
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  I've seen that picture.
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  Yep.
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  And he used to tell me, he says, did no matter what you were doing straight,
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  it'll be straight as an narrow, but you just pick the front up outta nowhere,
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  half track or finish line or whatever.
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  And he said that thing was a lot of fun to drive.
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  We were fortunate to go through it, to have Ks in our life and, and to
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  have Freddy and everybody, and my mother got to be a part of that.
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  I'm gonna give her the microphone for a minute.
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  I'm sure she'll have something to interject here and tell me where I
• 15:27
  screwed up and did something wrong.
• 15:29
  But thank you all for letting me come out and ramble on for a few minutes.
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  And, um, I'm now, wait a minute.
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  I got a Ken and Thelma story.
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  We're at Beaver Springs and I'm running you, I think you were in the Ks car.
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  Maybe the balls that I was Mike.
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  I was Mike.
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  Was that Mike?
• 15:46
  Okay.
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  Well, how they look alike.
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  I'm driving the Ks car and this is bj.
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  That's before Judy and, uh, get ready to make a run.
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  And I said, Harry, how about turn me up with a nomad?
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  And he goes, what?
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  And I says, I need somebody to turn me the nomad and bring me back after the run.
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  You know what I'm talking about?
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  And he goes, you want me to?
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  Yeah.
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  Well Harry was a big man.
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  And it took a shoehorn to get him in the nomad.
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  And Thelma got in the right side and they towed me up.
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  And as well as I remember, I won.
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  Uh, because the other end here, it comes down the return road.
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  He's got a smile that you couldn't get out of the nomad with him.
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  You had to take the two out individually.
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  Next run, he says, can I please tell you it was my car?
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  But that is my last good story of you.
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  And Harry together.
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  I'll never forget it.
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  That was wonderful.
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  Thank you Fred.
• 17:04
  Well, mom, what do you, I know you've got probably something you could add to
• 17:07
  about the Ks days or Oh, the Ks days.
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  They were fantastic.
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  The one incident I remember very, very well, if Ks was gonna be running at
• 17:16
  English town and Harry racing as well, he would normally stay at our home.
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  And the one time when he was with us, he had brought his two
• 17:26
  daughters, Tammy and Debbie.
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  Tammy was a her set with Linda Vaughn.
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  And I can remember we were getting ready to go to Englishtown.
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  Tammy was still in the house trying to get ready to be her set tall boots up
• 17:41
  to her knees, was part of her outfit.
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  And we're all outside waiting for Tammy.
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  NKS is going, Tammy, get out here.
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  We're gonna be late.
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  Let's go.
• 17:53
  Let's go.
• 17:54
  Tammy still wasn't coming out.
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  He's still in Tammy.
• 17:57
  We gotta go.
• 17:58
  Here comes Tammy.
• 17:59
  Running out of the house had her tall boots on.
• 18:02
  They had laces that were unbelievable.
• 18:05
  Didn't have time to lace her shoes.
• 18:07
  So she's running across the lawn, holding onto her shoe laces her
• 18:14
  feet, trying to run across the lawn.
• 18:16
  Well, we were rolling in stitches, laughing at her, trying to come across the
• 18:21
  lawn, but it was just so funny to see her.
• 18:24
  We had a lot of good times with Kay.
• 18:27
  His daughters.
• 18:28
  And with drag racing, the many friends that were like family
• 18:33
  to us we're so thankful for.
• 18:35
  And today I also wanna thank, being that Mike could not be here today,
• 18:41
  his beautiful daughter Tori, who is a successful dirt track racer,
• 18:48
  and also Allison, Ken's girlfriend.
• 18:51
  Thank you for being with us.
• 18:53
  Thank you.
• 18:58
  Thank you, Thelma.
• 18:59
  I, I just wanted to throw a little word in here.
• 19:02
  From my point of view, many years ago, I guess 10, 12 years ago, before
• 19:07
  Ken's dad died, they had the race up at Beaver Springs, after the York
• 19:11
  Mussel of Armenia, and they raced kind of as a booked in circuit.
• 19:16
  His dad, I was really impressed when they staged the cars, the two crew
• 19:20
  people with their dad at the time, pull the cars up, look at each other and go
• 19:26
  like that before they went down with a race that I thought that is true.
• 19:30
  Sportsmanship one didn't take off without the other or try
• 19:33
  to burn the other one down.
• 19:34
  They made sure they were ready to go and away they went.
• 19:37
  Well, what you didn't hear is my dad would be in the car before we'd
• 19:39
  stage and he'd always gimme words of advice, like, don't be a dumb
• 19:42
  ass, or turn a fuel pump this crap.
• 19:45
  Better come home in one piece, or I'm gonna beat you with senseless.
• 19:48
  You know?
• 19:48
  So he always had some encouraging stories from my dad.
• 19:50
  As I'm staging the car.
• 19:52
  I only got to talk to Kay one time in my life.
• 19:55
  And that was up in Carlisle.
• 19:56
  And I think the good guys were up there, which was probably 20 years ago.
• 19:59
  And he was there as a featured car and speaker and stuff.
• 20:02
  And I was listening to him.
• 20:03
  He said, police said we were really nuts driving cars with
• 20:06
  wheel bases in 90 inches.
• 20:08
  Just untamable.
• 20:09
  But you know, that's what they did.
• 20:10
  That's the way it was.
• 20:11
  Stock frames.
• 20:12
  Stock frames, yeah.
• 20:12
  Uhhuh.
• 20:13
  Yeah, that was a stock frame car.
• 20:15
  Incredible.
• 20:16
  I mean, they were men, you know, so Well now I'm gonna turn the
• 20:19
  microphone over to Greg here.
• 20:21
  Greg is a local guy and I never ever can remember the name of his car.
• 20:26
  What's it called?
• 20:27
  Hale.
• 20:27
  No, actually this car is Mickey Hale's, old Gasser, and he raced
• 20:33
  in the Ohio Outlaw Gasser circuit, which was sponsored by Scott Rods.
• 20:39
  And I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the history of the
• 20:41
  car, how I came to own it.
• 20:43
  But before I do any of that, I just want to make a shout out to, uh, gene Alizer.
• 20:49
  And just to say that way back when, when Darwin Dahl had his events out
• 20:54
  there at the York Fairgrounds, gene was at a couple of those events.
• 20:58
  And I remember his car was parked not too far from where we were parked at the time.
• 21:04
  I was racing a little tube frame car.
• 21:06
  It was a 1987 Dodge Charger body sitting on a, uh, Alston Pro Gas chassis.
• 21:12
  And it was basically just looked like an old supergas car, fun little car to drive.
• 21:17
  We were asked to come and join the show, got a chance to meet and spend
• 21:21
  a good bit of time talking with Gene Atheer while we were there.
• 21:24
  A wonderful, wonderful person.
• 21:26
  And certainly he was, you know, one of my heroes growing up.
• 21:29
  Certainly remember when he ran the Weasel at the first drag race I ever went to,
• 21:34
  which was the 1969 Super Stock Nationals.
• 21:38
  They had that out at York and he had the corvee at that point in time.
• 21:42
  You know, he certainly became foremost in my attention just getting a chance to,
• 21:47
  uh, see him as one of my heroes growing up, along with, uh, a guy sitting in the
• 21:52
  back of the room with that on there, Mr.
• 21:54
  Bruce Larson.
• 21:55
  Alright.
• 21:57
  My brother and I, I have a twin brother Gary, and, uh, we both became sort of
• 22:01
  partners in crime with all this stuff.
• 22:04
  See, I can't keep 'em straight.
• 22:05
  They're twins.
• 22:07
  It was an interesting story that I'll just sort of share with you
• 22:10
  guys 'cause it's sort of funny.
• 22:11
  But my brother and I, when we were about 10 years old, we were basically both
• 22:15
  really into like dinosaurs and snakes.
• 22:18
  And my father was an old machinist.
• 22:21
  He started his career as a, uh, tool and die maker.
• 22:24
  And he worked his way through manufacturing as the years went on.
• 22:28
  But when we were about 10 years old, we were on vacation and my father was
• 22:32
  so sick and tired of hearing about dinosaurs and snakes that he walked into
• 22:36
  a magazine rack at a shopping center that we were at, and he picked out
• 22:40
  a, a uh, copy of popular hot rotting.
• 22:43
  It had gas, Rhonda on the cover, an old funny car, and he basically
• 22:47
  said, I think it was a 1967 issue.
• 22:50
  And he gave it to my brother and I and he said, here, read this.
• 22:54
  And we never stopped much to his dismay, I think in later years.
• 22:59
  But basically that's how we really got interested in cars.
• 23:02
  And we both have continued in that vein ever since.
• 23:05
  Primarily started as spectators and then eventually got to get into collecting
• 23:10
  cars and racing and stuff like that.
• 23:12
  But I am just a local bracket racer that's really, you know, what I do.
• 23:17
  But I got into collecting some cars along the way and, and had
• 23:20
  a chance to drive a few of these things, which are very interesting.
• 23:24
  But again, I'd like to, you know, shout out to Gene Alizer and say that if he
• 23:28
  remembers a guy that had a black pro gas looking charger way back when, I certainly
• 23:34
  remember the time that he spent with me.
• 23:37
  And a wonderful, wonderful person.
• 23:39
  But as an interesting point since we're talking about Gassers, a few years ago we
• 23:45
  bought a 1950 Chevrolet and it was built by a fellow by the name of Harry Logan.
• 23:51
  We purchased it from Harry and Carol, Logan and Harry happened to say, you
• 23:56
  know, when I wound up building this car, there's a friend of mine who was
• 24:00
  into racing and he raced an old Gasser.
• 24:02
  And in fact, I was at his wedding and he became my best man at my wedding.
• 24:08
  And his name is Harry Zaner.
• 24:10
  And so interestingly, you guys probably remember a green 32 5 window Ford coop.
• 24:18
  There's a picture of it downstairs.
• 24:19
  So there's a little bit of a connection with that.
• 24:22
  1950 Chevrolet with Harry Lou Zader through Harry Logan.
• 24:26
  But basically what wound up happening with me over the years is back around
• 24:30
  2019, right before I retired from Harley Davidson, I wound up getting an interest
• 24:36
  in the, certainly over the years, I always had an interest in the older
• 24:41
  style cars, even though I was driving a more modern style car at the track.
• 24:46
  One of the cars that piqued my interest was this 1948 Austin Gasser.
• 24:51
  It was advertised in racing junk.
• 24:53
  And you know, my brother being my partner in crime is the one that alerted me to it.
• 24:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:58
  And said, you ought to look at this.
• 25:00
  And so I did.
• 25:02
  And I wound up calling the owner who was Mickey Hale.
• 25:04
  And Mickey Hale was looking to sell the Gasser at the time.
• 25:08
  Like I said, he had had it probably since around 2010.
• 25:12
  And he was racing in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers.
• 25:16
  And I'm guessing that you guys probably ran against Mickey Hal in the early days.
• 25:21
  But at any rate, working with Mickey, we sort of put together some of the
• 25:24
  history of the car, and I have some pictures of it here, which will sort
• 25:28
  of show you what it went through.
• 25:30
  So basically up in the upper left is how it started life.
• 25:34
  It was a car that was put together out on the West Coast.
• 25:38
  And a fellow by the name of Jeff Wright put it together and he built
• 25:43
  it with a lone 3 92 with a torque flat transmission, and he raced it
• 25:47
  to a best time of about eight 40.
• 25:49
  Basically, he kept it for a number of years it was called,
• 25:52
  of all things fat boys Folly.
• 25:54
  After some time he wound up selling it and he sold it to a guy by the name of Don
• 25:59
  Wilson and Don was from British Columbia.
• 26:03
  And this is the way it looked when Jeff Wright built it.
• 26:06
  I can't say that I'm real happy with the paint job, but it was
• 26:10
  still cool for back in the day.
• 26:12
  But when Don Wilson bought it, he turned it into a bracket car.
• 26:15
  And this is a picture of what it looked like when he had it and he
• 26:19
  was running around 10 seventies.
• 26:20
  He had a small block Chevrolet in it with a single four arrow and he was,
• 26:24
  like I said, from British Columbia and ran up around that neck of the woods.
• 26:28
  And then at some point in time, Mickey Hale bought the car and
• 26:32
  when he first bought it, it looked pretty much like this.
• 26:36
  Right now you can see the car is sitting outside.
• 26:39
  It's got some striping along the side, and he has a graphic in the
• 26:43
  front, which he had put on it pretty much right before I bought the car.
• 26:47
  But basically he was running in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers.
• 26:50
  His best time he told me was eight 20, running at about 156 miles an hour.
• 26:56
  Had some real good success with it.
• 26:58
  Here's a picture of him when he was running the floor wide down at Zm Max.
• 27:02
  In, uh, North Carolina.
• 27:04
  He also was up there at Beaver Springs, at the Gasa reunion there
• 27:09
  and at Thompson Dragway out in Ohio.
• 27:12
  He actually won a number of times at the events.
• 27:15
  Apparently, I guess he won Bowling Green twice with the Ohio Outlaw Gassers.
• 27:20
  There's a, a Night of Fire that's held out in Ohio with right at
• 27:24
  the Summer Motorsports Park, and he won that apparently two times.
• 27:28
  He also raced at Indy, at the US Nationals.
• 27:32
  I guess there was some displays, you guys did some exhibition stuff out there.
• 27:37
  And he told me he won that in 2013 and 2015.
• 27:41
  I won it in 12.
• 27:42
  You did?
• 27:43
  I won it in 12 and I think he won it in 13.
• 27:46
  And you guys might have some stories to share about racing against Mickey Hal.
• 27:51
  Yeah, we did a lot.
• 27:52
  Yeah.
• 27:52
  And I still keep in touch with him.
• 27:55
  Where'd we see Mickey?
• 27:56
  Was that the Gators?
• 27:57
  Yeah, we just saw him at the Gators this year.
• 28:00
  Okay.
• 28:00
  Spent some time with him and he's a good guy.
• 28:03
  Oh, great guy.
• 28:04
  And uh, and I wound up buying it from him.
• 28:07
  And actually, you know what wound up happening is I bought the car and I
• 28:11
  had not put a motor in it or done any changes to it after I first bought it.
• 28:15
  And he was building a Willy's, he was gonna compete in the Ohio Outlaw Gassers.
• 28:21
  And he basically said, well, I got this Willy's that I'm working on, and
• 28:24
  we would keep in touch back and forth.
• 28:26
  And he said, well, you know, I said, how's the Willy's coming?
• 28:28
  Well, it's not done.
• 28:29
  He said, I gotta get this thing done because I got a couple of
• 28:32
  dates that I have to make happen.
• 28:34
  And I finally got to a point I said, listen, Mickey, I
• 28:36
  said, I still have the Austin.
• 28:38
  I haven't done anything with it yet.
• 28:40
  And if you want, I'll loan you the car back.
• 28:43
  You can put your motor and trans back in it and make the dates that
• 28:47
  you had committed to with that car.
• 28:49
  And we actually bid that.
• 28:51
  No charge.
• 28:52
  No charge.
• 28:56
  I'll take it for you.
• 29:00
  I promised win.
• 29:01
  We'll talk Fred.
• 29:04
  So basically that is, you know what we wound up doing.
• 29:07
  Mickey had it for the better part of a year, raced it, and then he delivered
• 29:11
  it back to me, minus engine of trans.
• 29:14
  And at that point in time, I took the car over to John.
• 29:17
  Little John wound up updating a few things on the chassis.
• 29:21
  One thing that Mickey had never done with it was he basically said, I always
• 29:26
  wanted to put the gas pedal on the driver's side instead of having to swing
• 29:30
  his leg over the transmission tunnel.
• 29:33
  And also I wanted to go to a foot break rather than having the hand brake.
• 29:37
  And we accomplished all that stuff, working with John Little to do that and
• 29:41
  redid some of the interior of the car.
• 29:43
  Actually move the motor slightly forward.
• 29:46
  We have a small block in it and the mounting tabs for the small block
• 29:50
  are the same as the original front mounting tabs for the big block.
• 29:53
  So that gave us a little extra room in the transmission tunnel area to be
• 29:57
  able to put the power Glide in there, which is the same as what Mickey ran.
• 30:01
  It's a different transmission than the actual one that he
• 30:04
  ran, but he ran a Power Glide.
• 30:05
  We have a Power Glide in it.
• 30:07
  The rear is exactly as Mickey ran it.
• 30:09
  And we did lift the front end up a little bit and change the wheels.
• 30:13
  But other than that, you know, it's a fun car to drive every time I get
• 30:17
  in and I got a smile on my face.
• 30:19
  But I can tell you that the way I always term it to people who ask
• 30:23
  about, you know, what's it like to drive one of these things?
• 30:26
  And I basically can't see back.
• 30:28
  I, I would tell them the tube frame car that I used to drive.
• 30:32
  Basically I would put my mother in it and she would be able to drive a 10.
• 30:37
  Oh, I would not put my mother in the Austin.
• 30:41
  They are fun to drive, but they have a short wheel base.
• 30:45
  It's a straight axle.
• 30:46
  Takes a little more attention.
• 30:48
  Yes.
• 30:50
  But it is fun.
• 30:51
  Every time I get in it, like I say, I got a smile on my face.
• 30:54
  The car's out on the porch.
• 30:56
  We parked it yesterday.
• 30:57
  He has to bring over it.
• 30:58
  So we brought head cable, the weather, but he drove it.
• 31:00
  He started and drove it there and of course he could resist
• 31:03
  stomping on a little bit.
• 31:05
  I knew that was gonna happen.
• 31:06
  I told him maybe he could just stomp on off the porch and we lay some rubber
• 31:09
  out there and you know, get his ER on.
• 31:12
  I don't think he'll do it.
• 31:14
  It depends how much you wanna see on the,
• 31:21
  alright.
• 31:22
  Okay.
• 31:23
  Well I just wanna say Greg and his brother Gary are any sister, are really signed
• 31:27
  supporters of the museum and helped me out a lot of times and it's really neat.
• 31:32
  They have several cars.
• 31:34
  So when I get a in a bind and we need a car for a display for a
• 31:38
  certain class, he's got one of 'em.
• 31:40
  So he does bring that car and get that car and, and he was the poster child up
• 31:44
  at Bruce's Drag Fest back in October.
• 31:46
  So I certainly appreciate that.
• 31:48
  Do wanna thank very much all the interaction I've had with Bruce Larson
• 31:52
  and his crew, bill and Dave back there.
• 31:55
  Bruce has been a tremendous influence in my life.
• 31:58
  It's just been a absolute pleasure for me to get to know him and
• 32:03
  the fellows who work with him.
• 32:05
  It's like a dream come true for me to get to know some of
• 32:07
  the folks that are up here.
• 32:09
  Again, I'm just the local bracket racer, but it is an honor, the honor of my life.
• 32:14
  There again, there's Bruce Larson and he's probably one of the biggest contributors
• 32:20
  to the drag racing area of the museum.
• 32:23
  Well, next we gotta move over to another.
• 32:25
  Supporter of the museum is Ken Bingham.
• 32:28
  He comes over and, and helps us fix the museum on Fridays and stuff.
• 32:31
  That's the old farts day when, you know, retirees come over on Friday,
• 32:35
  they're supposed to be fixing stuff and we wind up bullshitting.
• 32:38
  So I'm gonna turn it over to him and let him tell about
• 32:41
  the car out on the patio also.
• 32:44
  Okay.
• 32:44
  It's the, uh, orange 37 Ford Coop.
• 32:47
  It's the, uh, old Nash Collodion, YOC car.
• 32:50
  I guess I should say it.
• 32:51
  It's, uh, Nash and Yoc.
• 32:54
  They were the main guys behind it.
• 32:56
  They originally had what they called the BUN band.
• 32:58
  That, which was a, I think a 27 or 28.
• 33:01
  Model a pickup that they campaigned very successfully.
• 33:05
  They started with that and then they added the 37 into their collection in
• 33:08
  1961 when they took it off the street and turned it into a pure drag car.
• 33:13
  I bought the car out of an ad in the auto ator, probably in about,
• 33:18
  I'm guessing maybe 85, I guess 83.
• 33:22
  84, 85 is where I bought the car, and I actually bought it to flip.
• 33:25
  I was, didn't really know much about the car, I just thought it was a neat car.
• 33:29
  And uh, I bought it and it just happened to be the week before fall, Carlisle,
• 33:34
  from the very beginning, I had been a flea marketer at, uh, Carlisle events.
• 33:38
  So, uh, I told my wife, I said, we'll, pick the car up the day before Carlisle
• 33:43
  and we'll just take it down to the flea market and put it up for sale.
• 33:46
  When I took it in that day, from the minute I entered the grounds
• 33:49
  till I got it to my space, it was kind of like a big magnet.
• 33:52
  I mean, it drew a lot of attention, and like I said, this is in like 83.
• 33:57
  He and I was like, I couldn't figure it out 'cause it
• 34:01
  basically, it was a huge drag car.
• 34:03
  When we got on the spot, my wife said, well, what are you gonna ask for it?
• 34:06
  I said, well, I don't think I'm gonna sell the car.
• 34:08
  And she said, well, I said, well, there's something going on here
• 34:10
  that I can't quite figure out.
• 34:12
  Why is it?
• 34:13
  So many people interested in the car.
• 34:14
  So I said simply just, we'll put a sign on.
• 34:17
  It says Wanted, 'cause I always wanted an early funny car or an A FX car.
• 34:21
  So I put a sign on it, wanted a FX or early funny car.
• 34:25
  Of course, through the process of the weekend being there, I did get some
• 34:28
  guys who were familiar with the car that knew a history about the car.
• 34:32
  At the time it was painted black and it had kid's toy written on it
• 34:36
  for Kid Rear who is the gentleman who bought it from them originally.
• 34:40
  So the few people knew about it.
• 34:43
  But in the process of this car sitting there, I think it was on probably the
• 34:47
  Thursday or Friday, that weekend, a young kid walked into my display and
• 34:51
  said, I know where there's a funny car I think you'd be interested in.
• 34:54
  So I said, okay.
• 34:55
  So he describes the 66 Chevelle that's sitting downstairs.
• 34:58
  Funny car.
• 34:59
  I honestly hadn't heard of the car, so I didn't, you know, he
• 35:02
  was explaining this car to me.
• 35:04
  He's a fairly young fell.
• 35:05
  He was too young to have known the car from back in the day.
• 35:07
  And I eventually said to him, well, how do you know that
• 35:10
  this is actually a funny car?
• 35:11
  He goes, well, he said, it's a centerfold in 1966 Car Craft Magazine.
• 35:16
  I was like, really?
• 35:17
  Okay.
• 35:18
  So in the process, he says, when I get, he said, it's, it's just
• 35:21
  down the street from where I live.
• 35:23
  I'll, uh, get the guy's name and address and I'll let you know about it.
• 35:27
  I listened to her cell phones.
• 35:28
  So anyhow, when I went home that night, I wanted my attic and dug
• 35:32
  out my magazines, and there it is.
• 35:34
  June, 1966.
• 35:35
  Centerfold and I was like, oh my God.
• 35:38
  Mm-hmm This is unbelievable.
• 35:40
  How did I not get this guy's name and address?
• 35:43
  So it went probably, I'm thinking maybe November of that year, I
• 35:47
  finally get a letter back from him that was very apologetic.
• 35:51
  He was sorry that he hadn't gotten back to me, but the guy had moved and he tracked
• 35:56
  him down and found his new address and gave me the new address for me to go.
• 36:01
  Of course I went out and bought the car and brought that car home and kept it.
• 36:03
  But in the process, the car that I bought, the flip, I still have it.
• 36:08
  Never left it go.
• 36:09
  And of course I learned more about the car.
• 36:11
  Uh, these guys were very, very active in the sixties in the local area.
• 36:16
  Raced it extensively in the mid-state area.
• 36:20
  I know they were at York, they were to Hagerstown.
• 36:22
  Uh, I'm not sure about South Mountain Beaver Springs.
• 36:24
  They were there an awful lot.
• 36:26
  I have an interesting story for Beaver Springs.
• 36:28
  When we first got the car back together, we joined the East Coast Gassers.
• 36:33
  First race we went to attend was at Beaver Springs.
• 36:35
  I had never been to Beaver Springs because I quit drag racing in I think 71,
• 36:40
  and that's when Beaver Ball opened up.
• 36:42
  Sohow.
• 36:42
  We get to the track that day with this car.
• 36:45
  We were a little bit late as usual, and I'm in there and this guy comes
• 36:49
  riding down the the aisle with a scooter and he's going, oh my God.
• 36:53
  Oh my God, that's the original car.
• 36:55
  I said, yeah, it's the original Knick Nash car.
• 36:57
  And he goes, they're lining up in the line.
• 36:59
  You gotta get that car up there right away.
• 37:01
  And I said, well, I've gotta get it checked in first.
• 37:03
  And he looks at me.
• 37:04
  He said, well, where's your card?
• 37:05
  So I went in and got my tech card and I handed it to him.
• 37:08
  He scribbled someone and he said, you're ready.
• 37:10
  Get up up in the line.
• 37:11
  That's Beaver Bob.
• 37:14
  He takes off.
• 37:14
  I turned around and some guy said, who is that?
• 37:17
  He goes, well, he owns the track, so if he says you're good to go.
• 37:22
  So we raced it several times up there and then followed the circle around.
• 37:26
  I think it was a year or so later.
• 37:28
  Again, we're back at Beaver Springs and my son was driving the car that day.
• 37:32
  Well, he blew the engine going through the lights and that was the
• 37:35
  last run, last time we ran the car.
• 37:37
  When we got back that night, I was like, you know, this was a lot of fun when I
• 37:41
  was a kid, but this stuff was staying up light and building new engines.
• 37:45
  I said, no, I wasn't cut out for that.
• 37:47
  So we basically took the car and parked it in the back of the barn
• 37:51
  and left it set for a few more years.
• 37:52
  And then one day my son said, you know, we really ought to
• 37:55
  put that car back together.
• 37:57
  So he bought a motor and that's the motor's in it now.
• 37:59
  And I just haven't gotten around to finishing final details so we
• 38:03
  can start it up running some more.
• 38:05
  But the real history belongs to Nick Nash and, uh, Jimmy Ock because
• 38:09
  they were the instigators and the main operators back in the day.
• 38:14
  And, and as far as a, a nice original local East coast car, it's, I personally
• 38:19
  feel it's one of the better guessers, you know, because, uh, it's just a neat,
• 38:23
  and I kept it as original as I could.
• 38:25
  I didn't, the motor I had in it back in the day was a correct motor with
• 38:29
  the right heads and all that nonsense.
• 38:31
  Son bought this motor.
• 38:32
  It's a newer motor.
• 38:33
  It's a three 50 motor, but we just like, okay, just for the sake
• 38:36
  of having something that runs.
• 38:38
  But it's just a nice, neat piece of original history.
• 38:41
  I'm glad I never flipped it.
• 38:43
  Glad I kept it.
• 38:45
  I'm not very successful at flipping, as you can see.
• 38:49
  Fortunately.
• 38:50
  Thank God for that many stay.
• 38:52
  Oh, thank you guys for your cards.
• 38:54
  I just wanted to say something in case you haven't noticed.
• 38:57
  These guys raced each other, but it actually was a big family.
• 39:02
  'cause everybody knew everybody and they all traveled together.
• 39:05
  They, some of 'em slept together and that's a whole different story.
• 39:11
  Okay, that's different.
• 39:12
  It was really united.
• 39:14
  It was.
• 39:14
  It was really neat.
• 39:16
  You don't have that today.
• 39:17
  Everybody's out for each other, but they really mentored each other.
• 39:21
  They helped each other and it was great.
• 39:23
  It was just true sportsmanship.
• 39:25
  So with that being said, I wanted to ask.
• 39:26
  We're gonna turn this into a question and answer period.
• 39:29
  We're gonna sort of angle off onto the SNS Speech office.
• 39:34
  Of course, this was before my time, but I remember, and I think Fred was
• 39:37
  what said probably Beaver Springs.
• 39:39
  You know, the three circle things that they have for the Olympics.
• 39:43
  Well on his car, all the cars, there was five rings.
• 39:47
  You'll see it down on Gene Izer and the Olympics is five rings,
• 39:50
  is the Olympics, five rings?
• 39:52
  Well, he said that stands for a five ring circus, and I thought
• 39:56
  that was pretty probably appropriate because you guys were fun to watch.
• 40:00
  A little history on that.
• 40:01
  Five rings at the start of the 64 season, Chuck Stolte, who owned s and
• 40:07
  s parts in that time was sponsoring.
• 40:09
  Five Gassers, of which I was fortunate to be one.
• 40:13
  And he came out with that design and it became our emblem and
• 40:17
  our T-shirts and everything.
• 40:19
  A few years later, the US Olympic Committee who up until that time, if
• 40:24
  you order enough to remember the Olympic symbol, was like a US roadside, whatever
• 40:30
  shape, and they went to the five rings.
• 40:33
  And so what, well, it turns out years later, the s and s team is selected to be.
• 40:40
  Some of the top 50 guessers in the nation, and we were honored
• 40:44
  at the US Nationals that year.
• 40:46
  And David Hales, one of our teammates, sent in pictures that
• 40:50
  NHRA requested to do promotion.
• 40:53
  And he gets a letter back that we can't use any of the pictures
• 40:58
  with the Olympic symbols on him.
• 41:00
  David calls me and he says, what do you remember about this?
• 41:02
  And I said, well, ZY said that he copyrighted it and sued him
• 41:07
  and they wound up settling.
• 41:09
  So we did some research and it turns out, and he had copyrighted it to change
• 41:15
  a copyright 15% is not an infringement.
• 41:19
  Well, the copyright committee decided, and I think Chuck agreed with them, that the
• 41:24
  five colors in the Olympic Committee said they had picked five colors for the rings
• 41:30
  to represent the five continents, which made sense to me and it was all settled.
• 41:36
  And we go, wow.
• 41:37
  David sent all of this back to NHRA.
• 41:40
  Three days later, David got a letter or email from NHRA and says,
• 41:46
  we have checked your information.
• 41:48
  You are correct, right?
• 41:50
  We can use all of your pictures.
• 41:52
  And that's the end of that story.
• 41:54
  Now, footnote is.
• 41:56
  A few years ago, we're doing a reunion race at Old Dominion Speedway, which is
• 42:01
  where David and Jean and I grew up, made our first passes and I think probably
• 42:06
  most rooms have somebody else that made their first passes at Old Dominion.
• 42:11
  We got Chuck's son to bring Chuck out there.
• 42:15
  He become very recluse.
• 42:16
  He enjoyed himself.
• 42:18
  We put him on a golf cart and tow me back up to Return Road and all, and
• 42:22
  he came back the next year with his son, brought him and he gave me an
• 42:26
  envelope to Charles h Stal and he says, here, I think you'd like to have this.
• 42:31
  I open it up and it was that year's.
• 42:34
  Olympic flag dated and I go, oh, this is cool.
• 42:38
  What's this?
• 42:39
  And he says, every year they send me all kinds of stuff.
• 42:44
  And I thought maybe you'd like to have this.
• 42:46
  And I still have it.
• 42:48
  It's an hundred possession.
• 42:49
  Wow.
• 42:49
  But the Olympic five rings, when you see 'em, change the colors
• 42:54
  to yellow and think of the SNST.
• 43:02
  Okay.
• 43:02
  While you're on the mic, tell us about the SNS organization.
• 43:07
  I should mention first, Dave Hales.
• 43:09
  Who lives in Florida and I thought he lived close to Fred, but they on the other
• 43:12
  side of the continent, I guess down there.
• 43:14
  Dave Ha was very instrumental in getting Gene's car here because he's
• 43:18
  more or less the, what do I wanna say?
• 43:20
  He takes care of legal work and Fred does the, the gopher work, but he called me
• 43:25
  and, and was very receptive to us having the car and wanted to check it all out.
• 43:31
  His car is in Speedway?
• 43:33
  Yes.
• 43:34
  David's.
• 43:34
  Willies is the only SNS car that survived all the rest of them got.
• 43:42
  He was a better driver.
• 43:43
  Crashed, killed, shot, buried, whatever happened to all of them.
• 43:48
  And that includes a person that wasn't one of our original five.
• 43:52
  But Rapid, right at that time became an SNS member, and that was Malcolm Durham.
• 43:58
  I know Bruce raced against Malcolm and I knew some other, knew him.
• 44:02
  Malcolm was one of the finest gentlemen I've ever known in my life.
• 44:06
  He was a good racer.
• 44:08
  He was a good friend.
• 44:09
  He was outgoing.
• 44:10
  He would help you if you had a problem.
• 44:13
  Am I right Bruce?
• 44:15
  Absolutely.
• 44:15
  And he, we have him in the showcase down there.
• 44:18
  He was Annet team member.
• 44:19
  Over towards the anchor.
• 44:20
  We have the strip blazer.
• 44:22
  We have a picture of these 63, 4 0 9, I think C3, 4 0 9.
• 44:26
  Then he is later cars.
• 44:27
  We had a little tribute to him 10 years ago, and his wife and son were here.
• 44:32
  Swell guy.
• 44:32
  I only ever met him one time.
• 44:34
  Baltimore, Maryland.
• 44:35
  He was basically close and he raced at Cecil quite often.
• 44:39
  He came to York often too when he wasn't.
• 44:41
  Now you started to ask me something question I wanna ask you is what were
• 44:44
  the first original members of the SNST?
• 44:46
  Which cars?
• 44:48
  Good question.
• 44:49
  Close to you all's heart.
• 44:51
  The Halls Hearts was Ks Petman, Chuck Dozi owned it.
• 44:55
  The SNS 33 Willies all are steel bodied with a Zeel Hemi Gene Ties and the AGAs
• 45:02
  Anglia that's, uh, living downstairs.
• 45:05
  And we, we are very proud to have put it on loan here for the world
• 45:09
  to see much better than being covered in a garage somewhere.
• 45:13
  Very garage.
• 45:14
  So, uh, we're honored that it's here and I, I hope everybody enjoys the car.
• 45:19
  I was the big Gasser in my willies.
• 45:22
  Charlie Hill and Port Artman were the seagas with the Filthy 40, which
• 45:27
  was the only car out of s and s, the original fact that was not s and s Red.
• 45:34
  And then, uh, Dave Hales was the DGA as Willies and Charlie refused to paint his
• 45:40
  car and he refused to let 'em wash it.
• 45:44
  And Bruce probably remembers this.
• 45:46
  They came out with 90 10 up block shock.
• 45:49
  Tremendous invention.
• 45:51
  Zi was warehouse distributor or SNS for almost all the manufacturers.
• 45:56
  'cause he got in on the ground floor of it.
• 45:59
  We each got a pair of em and they were chrome plated.
• 46:02
  Well that was the only chrome on David's and mine.
• 46:04
  And Gene's Car course.
• 46:06
  K's car, which Zi and had Chrome axle and Chrome rear.
• 46:10
  And Jim Clinton's old car, but it was beautiful.
• 46:13
  Gave him to Charlie.
• 46:14
  Charlie took him home and spray painted them black and put him on his car.
• 46:22
  So, which is a little insight in how we became the first successful racing team.
• 46:29
  Others were owned by the same company or the same person,
• 46:33
  but they were competitors.
• 46:35
  We were as NS racing team, but we were competitors to our competitors.
• 46:41
  Gene would not adjust the valves and change the plugs on his car to help put
• 46:46
  a clutch in my car to make next round, and then I might beat him for a little
• 46:50
  eliminator, and it worked every way.
• 46:53
  But years later, in nascar, a very successful team came outta Alabama, known
• 46:59
  as the Alabama gang, which I was fortunate enough during that time to work with
• 47:04
  and for those people, the Allisons knew through me of the success that we had had.
• 47:10
  And when the Alabama gang showed up at your track, you knew you
• 47:15
  had to have your act together.
• 47:17
  'cause it wasn't one car you had to beat, you had to beat 'em all.
• 47:20
  And we traveled together, the s and s team, when we got there,
• 47:25
  you had to go through all of us and we all had fun doing it.
• 47:30
  We loved traveling together.
• 47:32
  I got a bunch of stories in the early sixties of traveling through the South and
• 47:36
  Malcolm Durham that I guess I could tell some of y'all here, but some of 'em are
• 47:42
  signs of the progress that our country has made, and I was proud to be a part of it.
• 47:54
  You were talking about the shocks and, you know, and he'd given you a pair of shocks
• 47:57
  at the time that Ks had the, the Austin.
• 48:00
  He had to go race matre somewhere and he was staying in Jersey
• 48:04
  around our area with my dad.
• 48:06
  I think my dad had the 33.
• 48:07
  He just bought the 33 and Ks had the Austin.
• 48:10
  Yeah.
• 48:10
  He says to my dad, Hey Harry, I got a mat race Virginia this weekend.
• 48:14
  I wanna give you the Austin and I'm gonna take a 33.
• 48:17
  'cause it was a better handling car that Austin.
• 48:19
  My dad said that thing they used to call the football and he said
• 48:22
  that thing would switch lanes.
• 48:24
  It acted like a football.
• 48:25
  Yeah, it would just all never went straight.
• 48:26
  Never went straight.
• 48:27
  So that's all right.
• 48:28
  Well I'm gonna take Austin and we have a, we're gonna race it at
• 48:31
  test that Maple Grove or something.
• 48:32
  My dad took the car home.
• 48:33
  They do unload it and the shocks, he said, it's something to be shot.
• 48:36
  I can't figure it out.
• 48:37
  They don't work for crap.
• 48:38
  They took the shocks apart and the oil in 'em was like WD 40.
• 48:42
  It was so thin.
• 48:43
  So my dad said, well, we got laying around here.
• 48:45
  It's thick.
• 48:45
  So he said, well, a buddy, it was Kenny Coons used to help him with the car.
• 48:48
  Kenny said, I got some of his rear grease over here.
• 48:50
  Let's dump some of that.
• 48:51
  They dumped in it.
• 48:52
  They went out the Maple Grove, not at the time.
• 48:53
  And a gas double.
• 48:55
  A gas.
• 48:55
  The record was eight 40.
• 48:56
  At the time.
• 48:57
  So my dad says they go out and run it and it went at 8 52.
• 49:01
  So they came back and my dad said, don't say a word to Ks so that we,
• 49:07
  next weekend, dad had a match race Ks at like Cecil County or something.
• 49:11
  So Ks comes back from his race for 33.
• 49:14
  Sorry Harry, give my car back.
• 49:15
  Dad says, nah, I'll run this.
• 49:16
  I'm used to driving it right now.
• 49:18
  You run it for 33 and we will run it at Cecil County.
• 49:20
  So they have the first pass and dad said, I want an 8 54 Cashman, 8 68 or something.
• 49:26
  He said, I cleaned his clock and the K walks over and he says,
• 49:29
  Harry, what'd you do to my car?
• 49:32
  He says, I you telling you Tiger.
• 49:33
  He said, I'm running it the rest of the year.
• 49:35
  He said, you can keep that 33, said, oh Harry, I want my car back.
• 49:38
  That was the greatest thing that Ks had the Opal GT at the time and dad had
• 49:43
  the 33 and they used to match race a lot, maple Grove, and they tore around
• 49:47
  the East Coast, up and down and I have articles of match racing these cars.
• 49:50
  Dad says he had just made a run by himself, a single and chaos came
• 49:53
  down with somebody and on the opal.
• 49:56
  And if you ever sat, see an opal gt, little cadet, your feet are
• 49:59
  really, even ca was a short guy.
• 50:01
  You're really crammed in his car.
• 50:03
  Well, K's foot, like you talked about moving the foot pedal
• 50:06
  was up on the trans tunnel.
• 50:08
  And he said, now Ks, if you didn't know Ks, he always smoked cigars,
• 50:12
  always had a cigar in his mouth.
• 50:13
  He even rolled a hole in his fire mask and had a cigar sticking out his fire mask.
• 50:18
  Yeah.
• 50:18
  So dad says, we're down the track.
• 50:20
  I see the car coast and smoke's come outta it.
• 50:22
  I'm wondering what happened to him.
• 50:23
  And he comes to a stop and his foot is out of the windshield and
• 50:26
  had blown the transmission up and blew his foot out the windshield.
• 50:29
  What happened?
• 50:29
  So my dad was walking open his door and he did, he says, tire you okay?
• 50:33
  And he says he's dripping with transmission fluid all over him.
• 50:37
  And he says, his cigars out and he says, I dunno if I'm more upset about my foot
• 50:41
  hanging out the window or my cigars bad.
• 50:44
  He says, Harry, would you push my foot outta the windshield?
• 50:46
  So I get outta this dang thing.
• 50:49
  I heard more great stories and I, it's a shame.
• 50:52
  I was born in 70.
• 50:53
  So I missed that era.
• 50:55
  And I have to say to my dad, helped said it was, I missed being a part of that
• 50:58
  era back then when they ran these cars.
• 51:00
  Because the stories I heard the crazy crap it did.
• 51:03
  They were staying at an indie and my dad was in a, one of the hotels and he was
• 51:07
  talking, I forget the guy's name, who was one of the master tuners back then as
• 51:10
  someone who's an engine builder, but they were in a hotel of a mile down the road.
• 51:13
  So my dad was in the parking lot and Ks and MAs, Manian and, and Junior Thompson,
• 51:19
  all these guys just there talking and they were tuning someone's car.
• 51:21
  So my dad said, I just can't get his barrel of out to go right?
• 51:24
  And I have a problem with it.
• 51:25
  So the guy said to my dad, where's your car at?
• 51:26
  Dad's up at the hotel here.
• 51:28
  Why don't you bring it down?
• 51:29
  We'll look at it.
• 51:29
  So dad went up, unloaded it off the trailer and drove it
• 51:32
  down the highway to the hotel.
• 51:34
  The guy says, what are you doing?
• 51:35
  He says, you told me to bring it down.
• 51:36
  The guy says, yeah, on the trailer.
• 51:39
  But that was back in the day when you get away with that a
• 51:40
  little bit more, you know, you weren't getting in trouble for it.
• 51:43
  I have pictures at home that I, I cherish this day of like my dad.
• 51:46
  There's a picture of him at Island Dragway the first time ever.
• 51:49
  He first met K being towed down the track in K is all steel high
• 51:53
  roof 33 when he first met him.
• 51:55
  Yeah, the steel car.
• 51:57
  Steel car.
• 51:57
  And that's when he crashed, I think in Texas or something like that.
• 52:00
  No, Noel.
• 52:01
  Yeah.
• 52:01
  Where he was born.
• 52:01
  Where he was born, yeah.
• 52:02
  Where he was born.
• 52:03
  More great stories of those cars, of what they did and what you guys went through.
• 52:07
  I mean, like I said, dad told me that that KS car was an original 33 frame rails.
• 52:12
  That they would just beef up a little bit and do stuff to 'em
• 52:15
  to, you know, to make 'em legal.
• 52:17
  And I, I look inside the cars, then the pictures of 'em and I
• 52:20
  think, how did you guys live?
• 52:21
  You guys were insane back then.
• 52:23
  Oh good.
• 52:23
  That young we could deliver.
• 52:25
  That's it, you know, but like my dad used to say, that's all we knew.
• 52:27
  You know?
• 52:28
  That's what you, we race in.
• 52:29
  I see the helmets that down on display here in these rooms.
• 52:31
  The helmets that you guys wore and the fire suits that you wore.
• 52:34
  I look at today with what we have at technology, and I think
• 52:37
  you guys were outta your mind.
• 52:39
  They got the job done, they got the job done.
• 52:43
  One of gene old's early helmets.
• 52:45
  Is downstairs in the display case.
• 52:48
  Bill Cline brought it up.
• 52:50
  I mean, I knew Gene had had a long time before Gene mother talked
• 52:54
  him into not racing motorcycles anymore because it was dangerous.
• 52:59
  So he went drag racing, but he had that helmet from there and he wore
• 53:04
  that helmet into his funny car career.
• 53:07
  Bill says there's new manufacturers, there's no tags, there's no date.
• 53:12
  It's almost as old as dirt.
• 53:14
  But it was all we knew and it was all we had.
• 53:17
  Thank you Lord for taking care of us.
• 53:20
  You're still here to tell the story, right?
• 53:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 53:22
  But uh, you're right.
• 53:23
  I mean, look at some of these helmets and Yeah, and the things that, and
• 53:26
  look at the roll bars, a lot of these sprint cars, every picture you see.
• 53:31
  The helmet is this far above a robbar.
• 53:34
  Now where is the safety in that one?
• 53:36
  Folks who passed that protect, right?
• 53:38
  Everybody did it.
• 53:40
  All of them were the same.
• 53:41
  And that's why I say I have my father's fire suit downstairs on display.
• 53:44
  That was probably from around 74 or five, I'm guessing.
• 53:48
  The blue fire suit.
• 53:48
  Mom and I look at that today, the fire suits that we have now, like
• 53:51
  Bruce that you wore and stuff.
• 53:52
  And I think it's amazing the helmet that's down there.
• 53:55
  I mean, I'm afraid to drop it from my waist high.
• 53:57
  It's on a crack in half.
• 53:58
  And I think you guys felt safe in these things.
• 54:00
  But it's funny we say that I drove for almost 20 years a
• 54:04
  jet car for the Hannah Hell.
• 54:06
  For El Hannah did a hell of a job.
• 54:07
  Thank you.
• 54:08
  I appreciate it very much, bud.
• 54:09
  I really did.
• 54:10
  I closed my eyes 'cause speed scares the hell outta me.
• 54:12
  Only wait a minute, folks.
• 54:13
  Not only did he do a hell of a job of driving stupid
• 54:17
  jet, I know my dad said that.
• 54:19
  Yeah.
• 54:20
  My dad, when I first drove it, he said, why do you wanna drive that weed burner?
• 54:23
  What do you thinking?
• 54:24
  But he.
• 54:26
  Made probably thousands and thousands of friends for himself and drag racing.
• 54:34
  This gentleman was so good with the crowd, with the public that even if he'd been
• 54:40
  bad, Al Hannah would've kept him on.
• 54:44
  I paid him to hang out.
• 54:45
  That's all it was.
• 54:46
  Yeah.
• 54:47
  Well, thank you.
• 54:47
  Al was good people.
• 54:48
  Yes, he was.
• 54:49
  Al was good people and we just lost Al Hannah a few months ago.
• 54:52
  Uh, he was my boss for years with the jet cars.
• 54:55
  We go on story about that.
• 54:56
  We're not here for the, for that, but he will be missed.
• 54:59
  He was a good guy.
• 54:59
  He, yeah, he's the one that hired me and took me to another level.
• 55:02
  My mother and my father took me to a level of racing and I was fortunate them
• 55:06
  to build cars with us and let me and my twin brother drive the willies and
• 55:11
  the, the T buck and everything else.
• 55:13
  So thank you mom for that.
• 55:14
  We're very fortunate to have family who did it way back when, and I don't know
• 55:18
  who made the rule, whether it was the NHRA or Old Dominion or Costco or what.
• 55:24
  But the new rules for that year were that you had to take your jacket and soak it
• 55:31
  in boar rats tire and hang it up to dry.
• 55:36
  Yeah.
• 55:36
  To fireproof your jacket.
• 55:38
  Well, thank God none of 'em ever caught on fire that I know because
• 55:41
  I can't imagine it helping.
• 55:44
  But felt nice and they were stiffer than, uh, they would stand by themselves.
• 55:49
  I trustee, they like canvas.
• 55:52
  It's funny you say about Old Dominion Manassas Dragway.
• 55:55
  I drove Rocky's one Gasser down there at Manassas Dragway reunion.
• 56:00
  Yeah.
• 56:00
  Three reunion.
• 56:00
  We ran each, we ran each other.
• 56:02
  I think when I staged, I remember going up to the pre looking over
• 56:04
  for Freddy and I could have reached over and touched his door handle.
• 56:08
  I thought, please go straight.
• 56:10
  For you and me both.
• 56:11
  Oh yeah.
• 56:12
  Yeah.
• 56:12
  And we left the line, I, we went 300 feet and it was smoke in the tires.
• 56:16
  I only had a half throttle and it was, I mean, from guardrail to center line.
• 56:20
  And then I'm going, now if I'm doing this, what's Fred doing?
• 56:22
  So I kept looking for Fred, is he in his lane?
• 56:25
  Where are we at now?
• 56:25
  And we had better tires and better that point.
• 56:28
  When that first race there, it was no wider, but there were no guardrails.
• 56:34
  And this is in the late fifties, you'd be getting ready for the
• 56:37
  flagman and the crowd would be down about three or 400 feet.
• 56:42
  And you took off.
• 56:44
  And as you got there, they backed up and still on the edge of the track.
• 56:49
  I don't think we ever ran over anybody.
• 56:52
  You don't think so, right?
• 56:53
  I don't.
• 56:53
  I never heard stories, but, well, it didn't happen when
• 56:56
  I was there, thank goodness.
• 56:57
  But it was the way it was.
• 56:59
  It was accepted and we were being as safe as we could.
• 57:02
  I mean, we had a paper thin helmet and four ax jacket and a seatbelt.
• 57:07
  Cost a dollar 98 at Pep Boys.
• 57:14
  That was probably down with sheet metal screws
• 57:19
  and Thank you Wiley Parks and Bill French for making safety rules.
• 57:23
  And everybody that contributed, because we're sure we're still having fun, huh?
• 57:28
  Bruce?
• 57:29
  Yeah.
• 57:29
  And Bruce.
• 57:30
  Bruce can share stories too on all that?
• 57:32
  Yeah.
• 57:33
  Oh boy.
• 57:34
  Yeah.
• 57:34
  What kind of fire suit did you have when you drove that car?
• 57:36
  Do you remember?
• 57:36
  T-shirt.
• 57:37
  No fire suit.
• 57:38
  No.
• 57:38
  Fire suit?
• 57:40
  No.
• 57:40
  No.
• 57:41
  Well, you had a helmet though, right?
• 57:42
  Jeans and a no Gloves.
• 57:43
  Jeans and a t. T-shirt, no gloves.
• 57:46
  Well, I remember pictures somewhere.
• 57:47
  I, who it was driving a funny car and they had gardening gloves on.
• 57:52
  I thought, who are they Right behind past that.
• 57:55
  But I, I guess I thought maybe they were soaked in, uh, borax.
• 57:59
  Whatever.
• 57:59
  They, they were safe.
• 58:00
  Yeah, they were like brand new.
• 58:02
  Yeah.
• 58:02
  They never got his hand around the steering.
• 58:04
  Nope.
• 58:04
  Never, never once.
• 58:05
  Guys, I apologize 'cause Fred and I could sit here for hours, just keep
• 58:09
  telling stories and I'm just remembering stories as you guys were saying about
• 58:12
  the shocks and stuff and it was, we're the entertainment department.
• 58:15
  You all are serious.
• 58:16
  Yeah, really.
• 58:18
  I sit and tell the funny stories.
• 58:19
  These guys are telling the historical facts that I'm like, well, I fucking idiot
• 58:22
  sitting here telling these goofy stories.
• 58:24
  But as my mom would say, I'm sure we all said we were lucky enough to have my dad
• 58:28
  and Ks and yeah, Freddy and all these guys that contributed to what my dad got to do.
• 58:32
  And um, we were fortunate to do it.
• 58:34
  The cars that were still around today, unfortunately a lot of
• 58:37
  those cars aren't here anymore.
• 58:38
  The Ks, the 33 Act crashed, like you said, a lot of the, uh, original s and
• 58:42
  s guys that earth cars are all crashed.
• 58:44
  Or Charlie's the filthy 40, the filthy for crashed.
• 58:47
  Uh, my car got crashed.
• 58:49
  A guy who became real good drag racer in New York.
• 58:53
  Bob Chipper.
• 58:54
  Oh yeah, chipper Bob Chipper.
• 58:55
  Bought my car and raced it with a blown small block in it with a four
• 58:59
  speed set the mile an hour record.
• 59:01
  For big ass super in that car with a blown small block with a four speed.
• 59:06
  Wow.
• 59:06
  He was in a buildup area and a Mopar Super stocker went to do
• 59:10
  a burnout and was in reverse and slammed into the driver's door.
• 59:16
  Today we fixed it.
• 59:18
  Yeah.
• 59:18
  He scrapped it and put everything in a 33 Willies and then he went to funny cars.
• 59:23
  You we ran with him.
• 59:23
  Yeah.
• 59:24
  Yeah.
• 59:24
  I thought you probably ran him with him for years.
• 59:26
  Yeah, but that was the end of mine.
• 59:29
  All ties.
• 59:30
  First Anglia, the stock top one that won the nationals.
• 59:34
  It was just on an Anglia chassis and after one year it was war slam out, so we cut
• 59:43
  the car up 'cause he built his car, single car garage under his parents' house.
• 59:48
  So we started a new car and I started bracing and more roll cage, no them
• 59:56
  more rollbar, but strengthening the frame, gussets and plating and stuff
• 1:00:02
  that we all learned as time went on.
• 1:00:05
  And then that car sold and sold and disappeared.
• 1:00:08
  So we don't know what happened to that.
• 1:00:10
  David's car made the rounds and he bought it back a few years ago, restored it.
• 1:00:17
  In fact, the person that painted it 29 years later painted it again.
• 1:00:22
  He was a friend of ours.
• 1:00:23
  He painted my, all my stock cars.
• 1:00:25
  He painted 'em my, and I said, uh, this paint job is under warranty, isn't it?
• 1:00:30
  So, uh, that's the one in the museum.
• 1:00:33
  Malcolm's Corver became Allie's, Corver, he bought it from Malcolm
• 1:00:38
  before he went to the Loki cars.
• 1:00:40
  Now you crash your car and you fix it back.
• 1:00:43
  Then you just got another one.
• 1:00:46
  They were still prevalent.
• 1:00:46
  Yeah, you can still get 'em.
• 1:00:47
  Well, I'm gonna pass it down to you guys, but I always wanted to This a one thing.
• 1:00:51
  Jeff, thank you so much and the museum for letting us put
• 1:00:55
  my dad's door in the museum.
• 1:00:57
  And Doug Wood, this all would've been possible without you, my honor.
• 1:01:01
  Believe me,
• 1:01:04
  that door had been long gone for years.
• 1:01:06
  And if you were at the uh, Lebanon car show last year, Doug presented the doors.
• 1:01:10
  A picture over here of him, presented the door to our family on stage,
• 1:01:13
  and that door had been missing for years and years and years.
• 1:01:16
  Doug bought it at an auction.
• 1:01:19
  And we'll learn the story of how we were looking for it, which we
• 1:01:22
  didn't know Doug until this time.
• 1:01:23
  And he so graciously donated it to our family.
• 1:01:27
  I had talked to Jeff and said, wait a minute.
• 1:01:29
  He said he was giving it to me and but you outbid me now you say he gave it to you.
• 1:01:34
  What steal here?
• 1:01:36
  Uh, I read, you forgot.
• 1:01:38
  I don't wanna hear it.
• 1:01:38
  The dinner.
• 1:01:41
  And Doug, we still owe you dinner.
• 1:01:42
  We keep trying to get this planned.
• 1:01:43
  And anyway, uh, the Dohan came back to us last year.
• 1:01:48
  I believe it was at, at the, uh, Lebanon Drag Fest.
• 1:01:50
  So I talked to Jeff and I said, instead of it sitting in our home,
• 1:01:55
  you know, and doing nothing, it would be an honor to have my dad and Ks
• 1:01:59
  remembered and put here on display with my dad's fire suit and a couple other
• 1:02:03
  items, Jeff and the whole staff here.
• 1:02:05
  Thank you so much.
• 1:02:06
  It means the world to my family.
• 1:02:07
  We're really proud to have it.
• 1:02:08
  And I also wanna say something, Doug also donated K S's
• 1:02:14
  toolbox, what would you call it?
• 1:02:15
  It is a big box that he kept his suit and stuff and traveled with him.
• 1:02:20
  Yeah, it's downstairs with full pictures.
• 1:02:23
  It's a box.
• 1:02:23
  It's a box.
• 1:02:24
  A wooden box.
• 1:02:25
  Okay.
• 1:02:25
  Unfortunately I don't have enough room to put it on the floor.
• 1:02:28
  I'm figured.
• 1:02:29
  Maybe we can hang it from the ceiling or something.
• 1:02:31
  That was Lynn's thing.
• 1:02:32
  Well, we'll hang it from the ceiling.
• 1:02:33
  Well, thank God the snow load's high.
• 1:02:35
  I just wanted to know it's there when we get done with our inventory,
• 1:02:38
  I'll get it out to be seen.
• 1:02:40
  But do you want the CliffNotes version of how I came into all this stuff?
• 1:02:43
  Yeah.
• 1:02:44
  So a friend of mine is in the business of helping people sell cars
• 1:02:47
  on the internet and stuff like that.
• 1:02:49
  Howard Rackey apparently was a friend of Ks Pitman's.
• 1:02:52
  Oh yes.
• 1:02:53
  Also.
• 1:02:53
  And when Ks would come into town, if he wasn't staying with the
• 1:02:57
  halls, he would stay with Howard.
• 1:02:59
  When Howard passed away several years ago, my buddy JD was contacted to help
• 1:03:06
  liquidate Howard's car collection.
• 1:03:09
  He took care of the cars, but he said, Hey, Doug, look, I've
• 1:03:11
  got all this KS Pitman stuff.
• 1:03:13
  Do you want any of it?
• 1:03:14
  Of course, I had no idea the pole story that was going on, so I said, yeah, I'll
• 1:03:19
  take anything of kss that you've got.
• 1:03:21
  So I paid whatever the estate wanted for the goodies.
• 1:03:25
  You know, I was just gonna hang on to it, but then I got to thinking that, you
• 1:03:29
  know, I don't know that it's sitting in my basement's doing anybody any good.
• 1:03:33
  So I was gonna give it to Rocky to go out to Lions with the tribute car and the
• 1:03:39
  year before I gave the door to you guys.
• 1:03:42
  Rocky told me the story that the hall family had been trying
• 1:03:46
  to get ahold of that door from Howard for years, years and years.
• 1:03:50
  I don't know the backstory, but there was some bad blood I think that was going on.
• 1:03:54
  He, he said, no, there's no way you're getting it from me, but I,
• 1:03:57
  I'll buy that grill shell from you.
• 1:03:59
  Something like that.
• 1:04:00
  When I heard the story, Rocky took me over to meet Ken and Mike.
• 1:04:04
  Mom wasn't there that day.
• 1:04:06
  And I just knew that that's where the door needed to live.
• 1:04:09
  So I decided at that time that I was gonna gift it to them.
• 1:04:12
  And I had a friend of mine make the cherry stand that it's sitting on,
• 1:04:16
  and I gifted it to 'em at Drag Fest.
• 1:04:19
  Honestly, it has been, my honor, really has what we've, we've looked
• 1:04:25
  for that door for a long time.
• 1:04:26
  I knew where it was, and my dad had, actually, years ago, probably in the
• 1:04:29
  early eighties, mid eighties, had given the door to a guy that worked
• 1:04:32
  at Vargo, was Dick Long, Dick did tech there and things like that.
• 1:04:36
  It was just a, everybody knew Dick at Vargo, so he gave
• 1:04:39
  him the hang in his barn.
• 1:04:40
  He had a big display in his barn of all kinds of memorabilia.
• 1:04:43
  It was a really cool thing, like Bruce Larson's, it was a
• 1:04:45
  beautiful display and everybody, it was just a lot of memorabilia.
• 1:04:48
  Well, when Dick had passed, his son sold the door to Howard.
• 1:04:54
  And we didn't know anything about it.
• 1:04:55
  We didn't know what had happened.
• 1:04:57
  I just heard that Dick had passed and I thought, okay, well let me reach
• 1:05:00
  out and talk to, I tried to call his wife, no one to answer the phone and
• 1:05:04
  I was trying to get the door back.
• 1:05:05
  I said, you know, if things are gonna start getting just gone,
• 1:05:08
  or I want the door back, 'cause it was never theirs to sell.
• 1:05:10
  So when it got sold to Howard, I, I found out Howard had it and I had met Howard
• 1:05:14
  through Ks and my dad, I had said, Howard, I understand that you have the door.
• 1:05:19
  I'd like to get it back.
• 1:05:20
  It was my dad's, you know.
• 1:05:21
  And he said, well, I bought it, it's mine.
• 1:05:23
  And I said, well, it wasn't for sale.
• 1:05:25
  I want it back.
• 1:05:26
  My dad gave it a dick just to display in his barn and it
• 1:05:28
  was never meant to be sold.
• 1:05:30
  It was his loan to him.
• 1:05:31
  So it became a sort of a heated argument on the phone.
• 1:05:34
  And I just said, I hung up and I'm calling him back.
• 1:05:36
  I said, listen, I don't wanna fight with you.
• 1:05:37
  I just wanna say in writing, let's do something of some kind of
• 1:05:40
  contract that I get the door back before it gets sold again to someone
• 1:05:43
  who we have no idea where it is.
• 1:05:44
  So he pretty much didn't agree with that and hung the phone up on me and,
• 1:05:48
  and it was never to be seen again.
• 1:05:50
  And this is where you came in, you purchased the door years later.
• 1:05:53
  At that point I give up on it.
• 1:05:54
  I thought it was just gone.
• 1:05:55
  It was who knows where.
• 1:05:56
  So when you approached me and my brother at the car show with.
• 1:06:00
  And told us you had the door.
• 1:06:01
  It was like the Easter bunny.
• 1:06:02
  He had just delivered Santa Claus to me.
• 1:06:04
  So that's where the whole story came from.
• 1:06:07
  So that's where you have been such an instrumental part of getting this back.
• 1:06:11
  You and your family.
• 1:06:12
  So our family, thanks you so much, Doug.
• 1:06:14
  Thank you.
• 1:06:15
  And Howard, thank Harry.
• 1:06:17
  Thanks.
• 1:06:17
  You and the Howard in this story, some of you may know among his car collection
• 1:06:24
  was a clone of K'S 56 Ford pickup that he had in numerous shows all over this area.
• 1:06:32
  The York shows, Lebanon Valley.
• 1:06:35
  He built that truck in honor of his friend Ks and that may
• 1:06:40
  TA together for some of y'all.
• 1:06:42
  Yeah, that's cool.
• 1:06:43
  That is.
• 1:06:43
  I just wanna mention, I contacted Rocky Perone when we decided to get
• 1:06:48
  this all together a few months ago.
• 1:06:50
  Told him what we were doing and he, I, I can almost hear him bawling on the phone.
• 1:06:53
  He said, I gotta go to Texas.
• 1:06:55
  We're having a match race with the funny cars.
• 1:06:57
  I can't come.
• 1:06:58
  And you didn't hear it canceled?
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, but his cars were here on display three years ago, I guess for
• 1:07:04
  a couple years, two, three years ago.
• 1:07:06
  So his dad's car was here and the, the new car that they reincarnated was here.
• 1:07:11
  So we'll get it back.
• 1:07:12
  So now I wanna know why you guys built your race cars.
• 1:07:17
  Out of the orphaned foreign car, back lot special cars where you just cheap.
• 1:07:23
  You don't wanna spend the money for a good car like Ken's cars.
• 1:07:26
  At least it's a Ford.
• 1:07:27
  All the offbeat stuff is what you put these cars out of.
• 1:07:31
  What was that all about?
• 1:07:32
  The wheelies was cheap.
• 1:07:33
  Austin, that was a foreign car, wasn't that?
• 1:07:35
  What are you talking about?
• 1:07:37
  Why were you, wait a minute.
• 1:07:38
  Alright, here you go.
• 1:07:39
  Here we go.
• 1:07:39
  Story.
• 1:07:40
  David paid $20 for his Willies.
• 1:07:45
  It still has it and still has it.
• 1:07:47
  Well, it paid more for it the second time, by the way.
• 1:07:51
  Uh, and he worked for Fort Motor Company.
• 1:07:54
  Oh yeah.
• 1:07:55
  Well not at that time.
• 1:07:56
  We looked for a long time after David's car got wrecked on a towing accident.
• 1:08:00
  Coming back from SCO for Willies.
• 1:08:03
  A lot of funny stories with those trips, but we finally found David's Willies.
• 1:08:08
  In a guy's yard who was a hoarder.
• 1:08:10
  Didn't know it at the time, there was a word like that, but there is
• 1:08:13
  now, they had school buses packed up to the windows and the doors with
• 1:08:17
  stuff, refrigerators, everything.
• 1:08:19
  And he had this willers, I don't wanna sell it.
• 1:08:22
  We wound up making a deal because we didn't want the engine to transmission the
• 1:08:27
  rear end, the tires and wheels, the seats.
• 1:08:30
  And so he got it for $20, but we had to give him a $20 deposit.
• 1:08:35
  And then we brought all of those parts back.
• 1:08:38
  Put 'em in a pile.
• 1:08:39
  Got the $20 deposit back.
• 1:08:41
  Now, a year later, all ties wants to build an Anglia.
• 1:08:45
  Hey, the guy TB in near Brandywine, Maryland had an Anglia.
• 1:08:49
  So we go over there, all ties.
• 1:08:51
  Bought the Anglia for the total of $15, but he had to give a $20 deposit
• 1:08:57
  until he brought the engine to trade.
• 1:08:59
  Oh, and when we went over to get the Anglia, all the David's
• 1:09:03
  stuff was still in the same pile.
• 1:09:08
  And when we took all the Anglia parts back, got the $20 deposit back, my
• 1:09:13
  will is the one that I have now.
• 1:09:15
  I bought in 67 before we found David in Mont, Maryland,
• 1:09:20
  which we just came through.
• 1:09:22
  We found this, and the gentleman had this willie's and a Willie's pickup truck.
• 1:09:28
  Well this Willie's was his parts.
• 1:09:31
  His pickup truck was his farm truck when Willie's had been sitting there.
• 1:09:35
  And it was a sapling about that big had grown up between the
• 1:09:39
  front bumper and the front end.
• 1:09:42
  And we made a deal for it.
• 1:09:43
  And I don't remember how much.
• 1:09:45
  20 bucks, $25 in my memory.
• 1:09:49
  And there are no tires and wheels on it.
• 1:09:51
  So we go back the next weekend and the old man's not farmer
• 1:09:56
  is not there, but his son is.
• 1:09:58
  So we tell the son, we're gonna give you a hundred dollars deposit.
• 1:10:03
  We're gonna jack up the pickup truck, take the tires and wheels
• 1:10:06
  off of it, put it on the wheelies.
• 1:10:09
  And while we're making this, I saw the sapling down and the boy.
• 1:10:14
  Yeah.
• 1:10:14
  Okay.
• 1:10:15
  Well the sapling had to be cut down.
• 1:10:17
  Took the bumper off.
• 1:10:18
  You still couldn't get the car out.
• 1:10:19
  It was in the woods.
• 1:10:21
  We got the tires and wheels on the car, hooking up a tow bar, and
• 1:10:25
  he comes home and goes ballistic.
• 1:10:28
  Yelling at his kid, yelling at David and I by cutting his tree out.
• 1:10:33
  Hell, man, you got hundreds of 'em.
• 1:10:36
  David gets mad at it.
• 1:10:37
  Well, David didn't even get mad at anybody, but he's got
• 1:10:40
  his money back and we left.
• 1:10:42
  That was 62, 63.
• 1:10:44
  David built a car.
• 1:10:45
  Now I'm going to college in DC at night trying to get smarter.
• 1:10:50
  It didn't work.
• 1:10:53
  One of my classmates says, friend of mine's got a Willie's guy he's
• 1:10:58
  gonna build and he's lost interest and he's paying rent on his garage.
• 1:11:03
  You wanna buy it?
• 1:11:03
  I said, oh, yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Said, when can I look at it?
• 1:11:05
  How about Saturday?
• 1:11:06
  Okay, so I go over, walk in this garage.
• 1:11:09
  I'm looking at the car, I look inside.
• 1:11:12
  And here's this giant slash where somebody has taken an ax to the sail area and I
• 1:11:18
  go, this car came from Mont, Maryland.
• 1:11:23
  And this guy goes, yeah, how did you know?
• 1:11:25
  I said, David Ha and I. Oh yeah, he doesn't like you guys.
• 1:11:31
  Well, I still own that little girl.
• 1:11:35
  Or we now own it.
• 1:11:36
  I have a partner.
• 1:11:37
  We own it and we love it.
• 1:11:38
  She's raced it.
• 1:11:40
  I've raced it a whole lot.
• 1:11:41
  The original frame from under that car is under the KS Pitman Rocky Perone car.
• 1:11:47
  Kidding.
• 1:11:47
  Tell us about that.
• 1:11:48
  That's my 33 Willy frame.
• 1:11:50
  Frame.
• 1:11:50
  Underneath of our Willys is under the Big John MAs Manian car.
• 1:11:55
  Wow.
• 1:11:56
  Talk about incest man.
• 1:12:00
  And what was the other frame?
• 1:12:01
  You were telling me the story the other day.
• 1:12:02
  Who's, whose other frames where the 33 frame came with one
• 1:12:07
  of the Lias Rex Red Throat.
• 1:12:09
  Some of y'all know him from Florida.
• 1:12:12
  Four door pre effect.
• 1:12:13
  Crazy man.
• 1:12:14
  Very involved with our nascar hot rod reunions.
• 1:12:17
  Friend of his had an Anglia.
• 1:12:19
  We were looking to build a new izer car.
• 1:12:23
  I go down, I look at it and I go, ah.
• 1:12:27
  And they wanted to on him at the time.
• 1:12:29
  I don't know.
• 1:12:30
  Rick says, what, what about the frame fork?
• 1:12:32
  And I said Frame.
• 1:12:33
  'cause it was just a body in the garage.
• 1:12:35
  So go out behind a shed and here is an Anglia frame.
• 1:12:40
  And it turns out Rex had boxed it, Rex professional welder.
• 1:12:44
  He had boxed it or to look at it.
• 1:12:47
  When we dig it up out the weeds, there's another frame.
• 1:12:50
  Really in the dirt.
• 1:12:51
  But I look at it, I crave it, stand it up, and I go, uh, this is a Willy's frame.
• 1:12:57
  And he goes, yeah, about that years ago.
• 1:13:00
  And I never have done anything with it.
• 1:13:02
  And I go, well, does all this go with the body?
• 1:13:06
  He said, yeah, I could do that.
• 1:13:09
  I'm driving outta his driveway.
• 1:13:11
  I didn't even get to the main highway 'cause we were building the Ks car.
• 1:13:16
  But going by the 67 rules, it had to be on a manufactured frame.
• 1:13:23
  It couldn't be on a 68, you could put 'em on a tube chassis.
• 1:13:26
  But we built that in 67 Ks did.
• 1:13:29
  So that's what Rocky wanted.
• 1:13:31
  I wasn't a hundred yards outta their yard loading the car up.
• 1:13:34
  I call Rocky and I go, I got a 33 frame.
• 1:13:41
  So you probably thought you were elucidating at that point, right?
• 1:13:45
  The whole family stays together.
• 1:13:47
  And that's what all forms of racing are.
• 1:13:50
  And all of you that are racers know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 1:13:53
  You got a family that's your blood to, but it's nowhere near as good
• 1:13:58
  or big as the family you got racing.
• 1:14:00
  Amen.
• 1:14:01
  And that's how I see it.
• 1:14:03
  Yeah, that's very true.
• 1:14:04
  I'll just say that earlier I talked about my partnering crime being my twin
• 1:14:09
  brother, and so I just wanted to let y'all know he just walked in the door.
• 1:14:15
  So the guy in the back there
• 1:14:19
  over the years, best friends growing up and basically had a lot of the same
• 1:14:23
  interests and we both went down the same path doing the car stuff and collecting
• 1:14:28
  and racing, and he's here in attendance.
• 1:14:31
  Well, you guys call yourselves the surf brothers.
• 1:14:33
  The surf brothers.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah.
• 1:14:35
  First thing is he's told five or six stories about you.
• 1:14:38
  I want to know which one of 'em are true.
• 1:14:42
  They're all lies.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah.
• 1:14:46
  Gary and I, like I said, our father was the one who's responsible for us both
• 1:14:51
  getting into this probably way more than he ever had thought we would just,
• 1:14:56
  over the years we've, you know, we've had the pleasure to be a part of all
• 1:14:59
  of this and to make some great friends.
• 1:15:02
  And really, you know, despite the fact that we all have a tendency to focus
• 1:15:05
  on the hardware, I have to say that it's really the friendships that we
• 1:15:09
  make that make this whole car seem as important to us as it really is.
• 1:15:15
  The hardware is the means to an end, but it's the friendships
• 1:15:18
  that make the most difference.
• 1:15:22
  I just wanna say something Greg said about his dad getting him a magazine.
• 1:15:27
  In 1963, when I was 10, we went out to Western Canada where my father was born.
• 1:15:33
  Now, that was a about a three week trip because we drove out,
• 1:15:36
  drove around there and came back.
• 1:15:38
  So of course, 10 years old.
• 1:15:39
  Back in those days, they didn't have phones and computers
• 1:15:42
  and stuff, so I got bored.
• 1:15:43
  Well, we stopped in the grocery store and my dad bought me a Hot Rod magazine.
• 1:15:47
  It was the Argus issue of 1963.
• 1:15:50
  And I read that thing 30 times over that I still have it.
• 1:15:54
  The, it's torn, it's frayed and everything.
• 1:15:57
  And that hooked me.
• 1:15:58
  Yeah, actually my brother and I, uh, I don't know what he said here.
• 1:16:02
  I hope it's not all bad.
• 1:16:05
  You're probably gonna tell the same story.
• 1:16:07
  I'm not going to.
• 1:16:09
  Anyway.
• 1:16:10
  Yeah, my brother and I had gotten into it years and years ago as kids.
• 1:16:13
  We just loved getting Super Stock magazine, seeing all the cars that
• 1:16:17
  were in there and what have you.
• 1:16:18
  Years passed, I ended up, I got married and I had done just a little bit of
• 1:16:22
  drag racing, just a couple of shots down the track, and I was talking to
• 1:16:26
  my wife and she said, well, you've been talking about going racing.
• 1:16:29
  Why don't you just go do it?
• 1:16:31
  And she probably regrets that to this day because we started out, I bought
• 1:16:35
  a 1955 Chevy, which I still have.
• 1:16:38
  And in fact, I've run it up at South Mountain Driveway.
• 1:16:41
  It's been at some of the car shows.
• 1:16:44
  I don't know if we had it in museum.
• 1:16:46
  I think it was, but it, it's bright orange and started with one engine.
• 1:16:50
  Actually, I bought it and I remember when we looked at it down in Maryland
• 1:16:55
  and I was with a friend of mine who's passed away, and I turned to him and I
• 1:16:57
  said, do you think this thing is safe?
• 1:16:59
  He said, well, I think safe enough.
• 1:17:02
  Anyway, we ran it for a while, took it up to Beaver Springs and ran it out of 4 0
• 1:17:06
  6 in it at that 0.406 small block and two speed glide set of five 13 gears in back.
• 1:17:13
  We thought they were four 80 eights, but then we counted teeth
• 1:17:15
  and I think it was five thirteens.
• 1:17:17
  Anyway, ran it at Beaver, ran it at South Mountain, it was running down around 10.
• 1:17:22
  Oh, and we said, well, you know, I think I should get this thing certified.
• 1:17:25
  There was a certification up at South Mountain one day, and
• 1:17:28
  so I ran up there with the car.
• 1:17:31
  Kurt Leho was inspecting, and he looked at the car and he said,
• 1:17:36
  well, this isn't gonna pass.
• 1:17:38
  This isn't gonna pass, this isn't gonna pass, and this isn't gonna.
• 1:17:41
  So I turned to him and said, so you're telling me if I stay
• 1:17:45
  above 10, oh, I can be safe.
• 1:17:47
  This is fine.
• 1:17:48
  He looked up very slowly and purposefully and said, well, have you got a wife?
• 1:17:55
  You got kids and I, and at that point I parked the car and
• 1:18:01
  luckily I had another car to run.
• 1:18:03
  After we got married, I bought a 63 Corvette two frame car, ran that for
• 1:18:07
  about a year and fixed the 55 Chevy.
• 1:18:10
  So we completely redid the frame on it.
• 1:18:12
  We did all the aluminum work and then ran the car after that and it
• 1:18:16
  did certify at that point and that's the way the car is today with the
• 1:18:20
  exception that I changed the motor.
• 1:18:22
  We ended up, we put a 4 21 small block in it and I think it's run
• 1:18:26
  a best up at South Mountain 6 25 or something like that up there.
• 1:18:32
  So it's a fun car reminiscent to the Gassers, although I would call it
• 1:18:36
  more, it's a bracket car at this point.
• 1:18:38
  It started life as a Gasser and the history on it was that we went
• 1:18:42
  back far enough to find out it had been pulled out of a junk yard.
• 1:18:45
  Similar to what happened with your cars.
• 1:18:47
  Fred had a tree growing out of the center of it and a friend of mine had pulled it
• 1:18:52
  out, you know, restored it as a race car and it went through several iterations and
• 1:18:56
  then finally it, it is where it is today.
• 1:18:58
  In fact, we just had it at the Lebanon inch show this past January.
• 1:19:02
  Had a real nice time up there.
• 1:19:03
  It's a great show.
• 1:19:04
  So I'm honored to be here.
• 1:19:06
  It's far from what I expected when I walked in the door, but, or desperate.
• 1:19:12
  But, uh, nevertheless, you know, I have to echo what has been said before, which
• 1:19:16
  is really a, racing is a community.
• 1:19:18
  Everybody looks out for each other and it really, it's a testament to a
• 1:19:24
  group of people that really have the same interests and care for each other.
• 1:19:27
  Now, I guess at this point, I got one more question.
• 1:19:31
  I got two answers, and you're not gonna like one of them.
• 1:19:35
  How did they designate now you ran, when you ran outta s and s
• 1:19:39
  you all ran different classes.
• 1:19:41
  Yes.
• 1:19:41
  What was the difference between A and B?
• 1:19:43
  Was it cubic inches or horsepower?
• 1:19:46
  What made, how did they classify it?
• 1:19:48
  At that time?
• 1:19:49
  The rules were cubic inches.
• 1:19:52
  To weight B was 11 pounds to the cubic inch.
• 1:19:57
  C was 13, D was I think 15 A was maybe seven.
• 1:20:05
  So if you had a 3 0 1 Chevy your car and run B is that weigh 2,709 pounds.
• 1:20:12
  Makes sense.
• 1:20:13
  And they had a p and g to check cubic inches award they
• 1:20:17
  made before they invented pg.
• 1:20:19
  You had to pull ahead if you got protested or you could set the record.
• 1:20:22
  Or cheating.
• 1:20:24
  Huh?
• 1:20:24
  Or cheating.
• 1:20:25
  What?
• 1:20:25
  Cheating.
• 1:20:26
  Never heard that word.
• 1:20:27
  What rules cheating?
• 1:20:29
  They heard.
• 1:20:30
  Do they know what you're talking about?
• 1:20:32
  You know, it's, it's, you know, NHRA.
• 1:20:35
  This was told me, excuse me sir. This is America.
• 1:20:38
  We like to speak English.
• 1:20:41
  NHA had the rule block and I think they started in 1958.
• 1:20:46
  I'll never forget, George N, who was the announcer at York said, yeah,
• 1:20:51
  NHRA tells you what you can't do, but they don't tell you what you can do.
• 1:20:55
  So everybody cheated, and then the guy that cheated the best one, okay, it
• 1:20:59
  wasn't cheating until you got caught.
• 1:21:03
  There you go.
• 1:21:03
  That innovation, that's the second part of the slogan.
• 1:21:06
  It wasn't cheap until you got caught.
• 1:21:07
  Ah, okay.
• 1:21:08
  That was before they went horsepower, because Jimmy ditches to wait.
• 1:21:12
  It was that way until they went to bracket racing, which made it so
• 1:21:16
  much easier for everybody but the racers because then double-edged
• 1:21:20
  sword, then you run 10 seconds flat.
• 1:21:24
  And if you run quicker than that, you're out.
• 1:21:26
  You're outta here.
• 1:21:27
  And that's why I quit drag racing.
• 1:21:29
  And if the guy beats you, you're out because you're racing yourself.
• 1:21:32
  When they made the rule, people started getting ahead of the other
• 1:21:36
  car, hitting the brakes, sandbagging to go across the finish line.
• 1:21:39
  Well, in reality, that creates negative caster, runs the car outta control,
• 1:21:45
  most applies the incorrect steering.
• 1:21:46
  And a lot of cars crash.
• 1:21:48
  And I said, I really like racing to the finish line.
• 1:21:52
  And that's when I went, stock cars fastest car that, you know, it's very hard for
• 1:21:55
  people to understand bracket racing.
• 1:21:58
  They have.
• 1:21:59
  With delay boxes and blah, blah, blah, blah, and what all that is.
• 1:22:03
  It used to be the fastest car won and then, but the fastest car don't win.
• 1:22:08
  Absolutely.
• 1:22:08
  The the audience, the spectators don't get.
• 1:22:10
  We had more fun, didn't we?
• 1:22:12
  I had heard stories, but then I actually saw picture someplace
• 1:22:16
  when they raced at York and I think this was at the, uh, the big super
• 1:22:20
  stock, first super stock nationals.
• 1:22:22
  Of course, York was a long track with a big shutdown area.
• 1:22:24
  People were lined the whole way up.
• 1:22:25
  They would come out on the track, the cars would leave the line and they'd watch
• 1:22:30
  'em come and they'd spread off the track.
• 1:22:32
  Yeah.
• 1:22:32
  And then they'd go past, back on the track, next pair come down through.
• 1:22:36
  And that's how it was.
• 1:22:37
  Talk about safety now.
• 1:22:38
  Wasn't that safe, huh?
• 1:22:40
  Yeah.
• 1:22:40
  That was at York.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  When they ran four wide.
• 1:22:43
  Yeah, four.
• 1:22:44
  Yeah.
• 1:22:44
  I remember ran people all over, but I'd already experienced that.
• 1:22:47
  Believe.
• 1:22:47
  No, I got that was, there's a picture of it downstairs.
• 1:22:50
  A four car wide deal.
• 1:22:52
  But I just want you to all know, I mean, I worked there,
• 1:22:55
  but this was before I did that.
• 1:22:57
  The only two cars.
• 1:22:59
  That actually worked off.
• 1:23:00
  The TAing was the center of two cars.
• 1:23:03
  The normal two cars, when they took off, the two outer cars took off.
• 1:23:06
  So it really wasn't four, it was four wide, but it was only
• 1:23:09
  two lanes working the clock.
• 1:23:11
  So they ran four wide.
• 1:23:13
  Yeah, but they all looked off Christmas tree and then only the two.
• 1:23:17
  Oh yeah.
• 1:23:17
  And the two in the middle were the ones that were, it was all one.
• 1:23:19
  They were the ones that got, they were the ones that got the
• 1:23:21
  time slip, the two outer cars.
• 1:23:24
  There was no time slip.
• 1:23:27
  Yes.
• 1:23:28
  Let's throw it open.
• 1:23:28
  Do you guys out in the audience?
• 1:23:30
  Anybody wanna ask these guys questions?
• 1:23:32
  Yeah.
• 1:23:32
  Would the twins loan me some money?
• 1:23:35
  I don't have any left.
• 1:23:37
  Got good answer.
• 1:23:39
  It's in my car.
• 1:23:39
  Good of cars.
• 1:23:41
  How about loaning me a car to race for a year?
• 1:23:44
  That'd be, work that out.
• 1:23:48
  I think you've got this, you break it, you fix it.
• 1:23:50
  Isn't that the, isn't that the guarantee?
• 1:23:51
  You break it, you fix it.
• 1:23:53
  That's it.
• 1:23:53
  And don't ever lose.
• 1:23:54
  That happened to me one time, but play breaks.
• 1:23:56
  Camaro over I Macquarie running.
• 1:23:58
  Right.
• 1:23:58
  That's took it out and blew it up.
• 1:24:00
  So I wound up fixing it, but I, I did find out what was wrong with it,
• 1:24:04
  but it cost a little time and money.
• 1:24:06
  Yeah, that's the way it goes.
• 1:24:07
  Curious Fred, did you ever get interviewed by the wide World of Sports Fellow?
• 1:24:12
  What's the fla? No, Chris?
• 1:24:15
  No, but they interviewed Porky and it was quite entertaining.
• 1:24:21
  He had a big black wide brim Amy hat on, and of course a
• 1:24:28
  cigarette part of it is on a movie.
• 1:24:31
  What year would it, but I would have Amy's eyeballs.
• 1:24:34
  No.
• 1:24:35
  Now, uh, the first national televise drag race was the 1963 Nationals.
• 1:24:47
  It was on Wild World of Sports and it was delayed for them to edit,
• 1:24:51
  and it was on, I think in October.
• 1:24:53
  And it turns out a b, CY World of sports showed up and they
• 1:24:57
  knew nothing about drag racing.
• 1:25:00
  Here was this guy with media or something who turned out to be Monk
• 1:25:05
  Reynolds, who some of you people know.
• 1:25:07
  Yeah.
• 1:25:07
  He went on to do super stock magazines and drag illustrated.
• 1:25:11
  He was also the promoter of the topless thing at York, US 30, which never happened
• 1:25:17
  because it rained out that weekend.
• 1:25:20
  Oh.
• 1:25:20
  He was quite a promoter.
• 1:25:22
  He was a mailman in Alexandria.
• 1:25:23
  His name was Monk Reynolds and one of the ram rod show he raffled off.
• 1:25:28
  His street Rod pickup.
• 1:25:31
  Street Rod wasn't a term then, but that's what it was.
• 1:25:35
  Luckily his brother-in-law won it.
• 1:25:37
  That was the bankroll for Monk.
• 1:25:39
  And he started Eastern Drag News, which morphed into magazines,
• 1:25:44
  stock car and super stock, drag illustrated and various other things.
• 1:25:49
  But he was there with Eastern drag news wide world of sports.
• 1:25:53
  Guys, what are we doing?
• 1:25:55
  And in East Coast, car would come to the start line.
• 1:25:57
  Oh, this will be a good run.
• 1:25:58
  And then a California car.
• 1:26:00
  Come to the start line.
• 1:26:01
  Now you want this.
• 1:26:03
  So if you ever watch that and it's available, everything's available on
• 1:26:07
  the internet, but if you ever watch it.
• 1:26:09
  The vast majority of it.
• 1:26:11
  Every run is an East coast car.
• 1:26:14
  And, uh, pork got interviewed and, uh, quite a few others.
• 1:26:18
  Pork lived right here in Hanover, just 10 miles from here.
• 1:26:21
  2 56 Baltimore Street.
• 1:26:23
  There you go.
• 1:26:23
  I slept on the couch.
• 1:26:24
  Many.
• 1:26:28
  I bet that was a party, but, uh, yeah.
• 1:26:31
  How about that?
• 1:26:32
  It's amazing how everything's all related, you know, it's, it's really neat, you
• 1:26:35
  know, and Port grew up and became an IRS.
• 1:26:39
  Agent.
• 1:26:39
  No kidding.
• 1:26:40
  I never knew that.
• 1:26:41
  That's after drag racing and Len's Artman fiberglass at a guitar shop.
• 1:26:48
  He finished college mid to late 20.
• 1:26:51
  He interviewed for an FBI job and was accepted and he asked for duty station,
• 1:26:58
  no, we assign you duty stations.
• 1:27:01
  Well now he told me a few years ago the FBI finally
• 1:27:04
  dropped that program, but then.
• 1:27:07
  He went and interviewed with IRS and they wanted to hire him, and
• 1:27:11
  he asked for a duty station and they said, where do you want to go?
• 1:27:14
  And he said, York, Pennsylvania.
• 1:27:16
  And they says, no problem.
• 1:27:18
  And he was an IRS agent out of the York, Pennsylvania office and lived at
• 1:27:25
  2 56 Baltimore Street in Hanover from the time he got married until he died.
• 1:27:32
  I never knew that I stick around.
• 1:27:34
  I got a thousand.
• 1:27:37
  And he did.
• 1:27:37
  He didn't fit the mold.
• 1:27:39
  You never thought he, that's the way he'd have been.
• 1:27:41
  He, he knew all the things, the ins and outs all.
• 1:27:44
  Oh, I bet.
• 1:27:44
  Okay.
• 1:27:46
  See, that was before my time.
• 1:27:47
  To the extent that.
• 1:27:49
  He did tax returns for his friends and one of his friends is a Harlow dealer.
• 1:27:55
  Well, he is on 30.
• 1:27:56
  It went logger, but loggers.
• 1:27:59
  Well, every time pork wanted to go to Sturgis, guess who
• 1:28:02
  loaned him a motorcycle?
• 1:28:06
  So there is benefits, right?
• 1:28:07
  Oh, there is benefit.
• 1:28:08
  How about that?
• 1:28:09
  Uh, what a small world.
• 1:28:11
  Wow.
• 1:28:12
  How many of you knew pork?
• 1:28:13
  Yeah.
• 1:28:13
  Did he look I in later life, did he look like Wilford Brumley?
• 1:28:17
  Yes.
• 1:28:18
  The TV actor, the mustache.
• 1:28:20
  Okay.
• 1:28:21
  He and David and I in an airport somewhere on a connection, I think we we're
• 1:28:26
  going to hot rod reunion, California.
• 1:28:28
  We're sitting there pork treating his USA today.
• 1:28:31
  Every day read that paper and we're sitting there and these two women.
• 1:28:37
  David and I are looking at each other portrait.
• 1:28:40
  Finally, they stop and they go, excuse me.
• 1:28:43
  Do you know who you look like?
• 1:28:44
  Yes, Paul Newman,
• 1:28:51
  these poor ladies, looked at each other.
• 1:28:53
  Looked at David, and I looked at pork again and walked away.
• 1:28:59
  But that was poor sense of humor.
• 1:29:00
  Yeah.
• 1:29:01
  He was the most straight faced, hilarious comedian.
• 1:29:06
  But you had to pay attention even if you were poor or you missed the punchline.
• 1:29:10
  Yep.
• 1:29:10
  He was just that good at it, and I'd have loved to have sat in.
• 1:29:15
  On an I interview with somebody that when he was doing an audit for him,
• 1:29:21
  I grew up less than half a mile.
• 1:29:23
  The crow flies from Charlie Hills garage in Wrightsville.
• 1:29:27
  I was back in road.
• 1:29:28
  I mean, if I walked down it was, it was less than half a mile, but I
• 1:29:31
  used to hear him fire the engine up.
• 1:29:32
  This is when I was still a kid.
• 1:29:33
  I used to ride a bicycle down there and stuff.
• 1:29:35
  And then when I got to B 15, I bought my first car, my old 41 Ford.
• 1:29:41
  For a hundred dollars.
• 1:29:42
  It was a lot of money.
• 1:29:43
  You better believe it.
• 1:29:44
  I, I mowed grass all summer to buy that son of a bitch.
• 1:29:47
  I still got it.
• 1:29:49
  And uh, you know, and I'd ride down and got to know Charlie and actually
• 1:29:53
  Charlie and Bob Palmer, who raised Drove bad habit, drove bad habit.
• 1:29:58
  He was a welder stuff.
• 1:29:59
  They actually made some parts 'cause you couldn't buy speed
• 1:30:01
  equipment for stuff like that.
• 1:30:02
  But he made some parts.
• 1:30:04
  I still have 'em on the car yet, you know, and he's gone.
• 1:30:07
  But it's just sentimental.
• 1:30:08
  It's kind of neat, you know, to have that.
• 1:30:10
  God, that was 55 years ago.
• 1:30:12
  Holy shit.
• 1:30:13
  Where'd it go?
• 1:30:14
  But I just wanna throw that in.
• 1:30:16
  Pork has two sons, right?
• 1:30:18
  Yeah, Greg.
• 1:30:19
  And I'm not good with names.
• 1:30:21
  What's her name?
• 1:30:21
  My understanding is, huh.
• 1:30:23
  And my brother and I in a previous life used to play in a metal band.
• 1:30:28
  And Gary was a guitar player, very good guitar player.
• 1:30:31
  And I was the drummer and their sons.
• 1:30:34
  Were also playing in a band around the same time.
• 1:30:37
  It was Pork Sons.
• 1:30:39
  Yeah.
• 1:30:39
  Both of those guys played in a rock band.
• 1:30:41
  I forget what instrument each one of them played, but they were on the
• 1:30:44
  circuit at the same time we were.
• 1:30:46
  Pork had a guitar shop in Hanover.
• 1:30:49
  What was the name of the guitar shop that you remember?
• 1:30:51
  I'm doing good remembering his name.
• 1:30:55
  I'm doing good.
• 1:30:56
  Remembering that I played drums, pork was, was musical and mm-hmm.
• 1:31:01
  So it rubbed off on his voice.
• 1:31:03
  Yes.
• 1:31:03
  And he and Robin were good parents.
• 1:31:05
  I don't know that they ever got into cars, but they were good musicians.
• 1:31:10
  The only race car that pork ever owned.
• 1:31:14
  He and Larry Roberts, who Larry wound up driving the filthy 40 some, had a 32
• 1:31:21
  Chevrolet that was named the Bad News.
• 1:31:25
  They built the car but didn't have a motor and transmission for it.
• 1:31:29
  And the US nationals in Detroit in 59 was coming up and Larry had a new 57 Chevrolet
• 1:31:37
  2 74 speed and he was about a year into the payments on it when they pulled the
• 1:31:43
  engine and transmission out and rolled it up beside parents' garage and put the
• 1:31:49
  motor in, transmission in the bad news car and went to Detroit and won C altered,
• 1:31:55
  I think they put the motor back in.
• 1:31:56
  Larry's 57 and sold the car to Bruce Larson.
• 1:32:00
  That's the car over there.
• 1:32:02
  That was the original Mr. The original.
• 1:32:03
  The original and it didn't look that good.
• 1:32:06
  Then I remember seeing pictures of it when it was called bad news.
• 1:32:11
  Yeah, I guess it was some of Jim Amos's.
• 1:32:14
  Videos to be on video and he has some pictures of it from way back.
• 1:32:18
  And then Charlie did a fuel alt alter.
• 1:32:21
  That was a bad news car.
• 1:32:22
  Bad habit.
• 1:32:23
  Bad habit.
• 1:32:23
  Bad habit, bad.
• 1:32:24
  A bad habit.
• 1:32:25
  Yeah, bad habit.
• 1:32:27
  First it was a dirty 30.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah.
• 1:32:29
  And then that was, then it became, Dick Smith had, well actually, yes.
• 1:32:34
  Scott Hoof Magel now has that car.
• 1:32:36
  That's the one Bob Palmer drove.
• 1:32:37
  Right.
• 1:32:38
  And uh, the, see I remember the Dirty 30, that one is actually
• 1:32:43
  being restored by Scott Hoof.
• 1:32:44
  Magel.
• 1:32:45
  And it's really, you know, when Smitty had it, it became more of
• 1:32:48
  a bracket car and it, it still looks like more of a bracket car.
• 1:32:52
  It's lowered, it doesn't have a straight axle or anything like that.
• 1:32:54
  But it's around a few years ago.
• 1:32:56
  Yep.
• 1:32:56
  Yes it was.
• 1:32:57
  In fact, I was parked right next to him in my tube frame car.
• 1:33:01
  Oh, okay.
• 1:33:01
  Years ago it was, Smitty was in one, you know, it had us lined
• 1:33:05
  up almost like we were racing.
• 1:33:06
  But the bad Habit is owned by Bill Leininger and that's.
• 1:33:10
  Car is currently in St. Mary's, Ohio, and it was restored.
• 1:33:14
  Mike Guffey had it for a while, and he bought it from Mike Guffey.
• 1:33:17
  So let it still around.
• 1:33:19
  And actually, before the York Show was finished, when Darwin started moving
• 1:33:24
  it up here, bill Leininger brought bad habit into that show before the last
• 1:33:29
  show or two that they had in York.
• 1:33:32
  Dick Gerber, who's from Lancaster, he's a vor.
• 1:33:34
  He does upholstery work and stuff.
• 1:33:36
  And when that car showed up in York.
• 1:33:38
  He came into the guy got some, once somebody got Dick and went over and
• 1:33:42
  Dick confirmed that the upholstery in that car, which like snapped in the
• 1:33:46
  comic cover snaps, was the original upholstery that he made for that car.
• 1:33:52
  Really?
• 1:33:52
  Yes.
• 1:33:53
  Wow.
• 1:33:53
  So that car was definitely authentic, but Dick said, yeah, that's, I did that.
• 1:33:58
  So that's really neat.
• 1:33:59
  Why'd you guys buy that?
• 1:34:00
  I'm first in line from Bill, so Bill basically said if he ever decides
• 1:34:06
  to sell it, he is calling me first.
• 1:34:09
  It belongs back here.
• 1:34:10
  Not out there.
• 1:34:11
  Damn it.
• 1:34:12
  It was an east coast car.
• 1:34:13
  It should be here, you know, but that's what happens.
• 1:34:16
  They get passed around, moved around, but it's amazing how they resurface over
• 1:34:19
  years and stuff and it's put away in a garage someplace and somebody dies or gets
• 1:34:23
  married or something and it's for sale.
• 1:34:25
  Hopefully.
• 1:34:26
  Maybe we'll get back here someday.
• 1:34:27
  Alright, well I'm getting singles.
• 1:34:29
  I'm running out of time here.
• 1:34:30
  I mean, this has been a blast and a half.
• 1:34:33
  Uh, not bored of a second, but does anybody have any question for the guys?
• 1:34:37
  Here we go.
• 1:34:38
  Yeah.
• 1:34:38
  I just wanted to know all the gentlemen on the diet today.
• 1:34:42
  How many of you have worn spandex pants,
• 1:34:46
  or are wearing, I think I did.
• 1:34:52
  I'll answer that.
• 1:34:54
  How many more spandex pants?
• 1:34:57
  He doesn't even know what it.
• 1:35:01
  Way back when in the eighties,
• 1:35:06
  we all did some pretty crazy things and part of being in a heavy metal band was to
• 1:35:12
  look, I'm sure you, I don't wear any, so,
• 1:35:18
  so, but back then there was a look that everybody was after.
• 1:35:22
  And so in our previous life, you know, we basically, we would go on stage.
• 1:35:27
  We had fog machines, we had bombs going off and everything else.
• 1:35:31
  And, and yes, we wore some pretty bizarre stuff and I'll just leave it at that.
• 1:35:39
  But I had a pair of red and black tiger striped spand deck pants that,
• 1:35:43
  thank God I sat behind a drum set.
• 1:35:45
  And I don't know where they are anymore, but I do know one
• 1:35:50
  thing I'd never fit in them.
• 1:35:54
  Okay.
• 1:35:55
  Well, I wanna thank all you guys for coming up here and putting up with me.
• 1:36:00
  And Fred
• 1:36:03
  also like to thank Jeff for doing a great job as the mc for this thing.
• 1:36:07
  Also gonna pass one other word of thanks out to EJ Kowalski and his.
• 1:36:12
  Gang over there.
• 1:36:14
  One of the things that EJ has been very much involved in is the vintage
• 1:36:18
  eliminator, and I think that that is such a return to the original days of
• 1:36:23
  racing, and it is chance for us all to really relive the past, the way that it
• 1:36:28
  really was a chance to sort of get back to that golden age of drag racing, you
• 1:36:33
  know, even before it was a golden age.
• 1:36:36
  Again, I think what brings most of us here is the nostalgic value.
• 1:36:40
  And that's got a heck of a lot of nostalgic values.
• 1:36:42
  So thank you ej.
• 1:36:48
  Yeah, thank you all for coming and laughing at the appropriate moments.
• 1:36:52
  We really all appreciate that.
• 1:36:54
  Once again, I wanna thank Fred for bringing the car up.
• 1:36:57
  I mean, that is just, thank you.
• 1:36:59
  That is, and then, and then having him as a, whatever you wanna call him,
• 1:37:04
  it's just a riot, you know, so pick up a schedule over here for the rest of
• 1:37:09
  the events for the rest of the year.
• 1:37:11
  I want to thank you for all coming, and please come back again and, uh,
• 1:37:15
  anytime we're open, Friday and Saturday.
• 1:37:18
  10 to four.
• 1:37:19
  Thanks again.
• 1:37:20
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• 1:37:24
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• 1:37:27
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• 1:37:31
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• 1:37:34
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• 1:37:37
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• 1:37:42
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• 1:37:53
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• 1:37:58
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• 1:38:05
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