by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com):
back in the late 60′s/early 70′s, just as the sport of drag racing was going over the hump into big time sports sponsorship and technological overkill, going to the drags on saturday night was one of the best shows ever staged for your spectacle entertainment. in those days you parked next to the fence, spread out a blanket and broke open the cooler (aka, beer) and kicked back and GAWKED. it was one crazy fool racing another down the strip (reaching over 200mph in a 1/4 mile – starting from a dead stop) one after the next after the next. as they went up in division ranking, you reach the national challengers (there is a national ratings system just like in any sport), the speeds and the madness only went uphill into the startospheric levels of technological insanity.
AC: you could buy 'pit passes' and get right up next to everything - close enough to touch it. i remember being so stupid drunk i was literally staggering and lurching. yet, they actually let me get so close to the starting line of the races that i could have TOUCHED the car as it took off in front of me. i swear it's true. i distinctly remember suddenly realizing how stupid and dangerous my drunken behavior was (at that moment) and i actually made myself step back. nobody else gave a shit - or even seems to notice. they were all drunk on the ACTION. it's a really insane environment - especially back then. smoke, noise, fire, people running around madly, screaming everywhere. like a war zone.---
imagine just what this task involves. try to see in your mind simply sitting in your car at a stating line. you wait (with supreme tension) for the “christmas tree’ (the row of red lights that runs down in sequence until you hit that GREEN light at the end). then you slam on the gas and hold on for dear life as you ridiculously overcharged ‘automobile’ (that you built in your garage out of parts of junk) takes off as close to like a rocket as the human mind is capable of while still on the ground. you go faster and faster, holding onto the steering wheel to PREVENT it from turning at all – the slightest move could send you careening into outer space (or even the bleachers full of screaming people) like a nike missiile. you go faster and FASTER until – in what must be like the blink of an eye – it’s over. then you have to stop! 1/4 mile. it’s over in a few seconds. most cars need parachutes to slow down.
as a crowd member, if you opted to pay for a bleacher seat, you got an elevated view of the starting line and all the NOISE. when those turbocharged, overbuilt crazy drag machines take off from the christmas tree (usually after heating up the slicks with a flaming burnout – real flames in them days), it was the single LOUDEST thing i’ve EVER HEARD. i grew up next to mcchord air force base (the afterburners would literally crack our window panes). i’ve lost significant hearing at rock concerts blatting out WAY past the high-decibel pain threshold (i actually saw The Who conquer the notorious “echo”in the old kingdone using sheer VOLUME!!) but, when it comes to gut-shaking, earth-shattering, heart-stopping (and i mean that your heart would literally stop for a second) SOUND, the old drag strips has no challengers.
but, believe it or not, as ridiculously nutso as this activity was – imagine expoloding engines, exploding gearboxes, FIRE, and taking off like an airplane with no wings – there were actually territories of drag spectacle (great term, huh?) that were even too dangerous to allow to compete. for instance, very early on in drag racing history, people started putting rockets and missiles on their cars (and built their cars AROUND rockets and missiles – sorta like slim pickens riding that a-bomb in ‘dr. strangelove’. the after-burners alone would fry your competion in the next lane (oh, did i mention that you race side-by-side next to some other lunatic in a similar patchwork machine trying to BEAT YOU to the finish line?) so, they had to ban them from racing. the same thing happened with jet engines. some of those early jet cars (with names like ‘the green monster’) are still the fastest things that ever go down a drag strip. but, again, just too crazy to compete.
motocycles were also seperated from the general racing categories because it wasn’t fair competition. bikes are so light weight that next to a relatively heavy car, even a smaller engine on a bike could completely skunk a souped-up drag automobile. so, just try to imagine a stripped down motorcycle built onto a supercharged V-8 boat engine. crazy stuff. and then them crazy bikerats started building motorcycles around rocket engines (uh-oh.) drag bikes quickly went into their own category fast – and ususally didn’t run with the cars becasue if was too embarrassing. cars people began to hate bike people. HA!
another interesting and very weird division of drag entertainment (i love saying that) were ‘exhibition cars”. these were machines built around crazy and oddball ideas mostly just to look cool and wig-out the fans. one sort of popular ‘car’ was the ‘wheel-stander’. these were cars that were designed to race down the 1/4 mile on THEIR REAR WHEELS (the front wheels high in the air in front of them). the drivers had NO vision (the front end of their car blocked their sight. apparently, they looked out the side window mirrors) and they steered WITH THEIR BRAKES! those brakes got so hot they would glow bright red and then orange-yellow and literally MELT. to add a little more excitement (and control), the drivers would weld ‘stabilizers’ (iron bars sticking out from the back that would prevent the car from completely flipping up-side-down) that would scrape along the pavement and leave behind a ten-foot tall roostertail of sparks! and they could easily do 125-150 mph on the 1/4 mile drag strip!
this is one of my favorite wheel-standers from back in the the early 70′s, i saw ‘chuck poole’s chuckwagon” (from sacremento) run many times at the puyallup drags. this was a totally stripped down 1968 dodge econoline pick up truck. the front end was virtually a shell with a coupel of bike wheels replacing the front end. in the back truck bed, balanced over the axle, were twin 426″ hemi engines (they were connected together with a cam shaft near the top you can see in the photo.) the front end (the visibly BIGGEST part fo the truck) would ride 10 feet above the ground as it drove. the tailgate was welded open to act as the stabilizer (and sparkler). this thing turned out 2400 horsepower!
of course, whenever a wheel-stander roared down the strip, it ran ALONE. too often the car would lose control and spin around like a top. when you are zipping along at 125 MPH, going into a tailspin isn’t cool. so, actual ‘racing’ was considered too dangerous and they just didn’t really do that. these were strictly for show, to entertain the drunken crowd.
however…. i DID see two wheel-standers race – but only once. one was the chuckwagon. it’s ‘opponent’ was some sort of early 70′s small compact car p
ed in vertical red & white stripes (like a zebra) with huge exhaust pipes coming out the sides (they blew flames, too!) these two lunatics decided (probably after one too many beers) to actually RACE each other side-by-side down the strip. of course, the drag strip managers could only say “YES!!!” it was good for business, ya know…
so, they lined up at the christmas tree, it hit the green light and they both took off, their front ends popping high into the air, both men driving blind by madly stomping on their glowing brakes, driving by mirrors, their brake pads melting. utterly insane. the double shower of sparks was twice as high as usual and they really really raced each other. no pussy-footing around, they both went for it.
about 3/4 of the way down the strip (almost directly in front of the car i was sitting on drinking beer), the ‘zebra’ car lost control and started to spin out – flames, sparks, stripes, smoke. the whole crowd went deathly silent and i swear my heart stopped. the car became airborn and literally took off sideways and slammed straight through the cyclone fencing on the OTHER side of the strip directly opposite me. this was an especially good thing becasue i was sitting just beyond where the fence stopped on my side (clearer sight lines, ya know). people scattered everywhere around me, running for cover. i just sat there on my car with a beer in my hand unable to move.
nobody was hurt. the driver got out of that messy smoking pile of rubbish and walked onto the dragstrip with his ams raised high inthe air – a march of triumph. the crowd went mad for what seemed like an hour. then everybody went on the the rest of the day of racing entrtainment.
a good time was had by all!
ADDENDUM:
…AC:the ‘lil red wagon’, which was another wheel-stander (i think) that was built out of similar style designed dodge truck. i imagine there were several more around the country, too. this wasn’t genius stuff, it was show biz. if it worked everybody else jumped on the ‘wagon’, too (pun intended.) i have no idea who did it first. don’t much care, either. this is a folk art….
…loud volume can actually LOWER room temp. the clash at the paramount made it cold enough to see your breathe. it was amazing. the first PIL show at the showbox cost me a great deal of hearing in my left ear. pussy galore (bob bert’s gas tank drum kit) spiked out a LOT of my high end permanently. but, the noise of a drag strip was beyond the pale. when they took off, there was a brief money when’re everybody in the crowd stop utterly – dead silence. imagine deafening roaring crowd, then an astonishing roar from the machines, then a moment of cosmic silence. then the roar of the crowd would come back. amazing….
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