Racers For Coffee

Far and away, the single most significant person in the sport affected by Glendora’s testing rule is Chris “the Golden Greek” Karamesines.  Back in ‘67, the Greek told a respectful reporter how he felt his life’s mission was to simply give drag race fans “a good show”.  Many bench racing sessions are livened up by village elders telling and retelling stories of AHRA top fuel Grand American Series fields in which Karamesines always held the rapt attention of fans…made sure they got their proverbial money’s worth with high drama..and high jinks.  The Greek was infamous for taking on Don Garlits in a nearly unending series of match races spanning the North American continent.  Garlits reportedly lost 52 of these 2 car matches..in one year’s time.  Talk about holding class….and having class.  The rough and tumble sport we suffer through, at times, in order to relish accomplishment has been served well by Karamesines’ humor and self- effacing ways with  localized press and promoters.

Now Eighty Years Young, Karamesines may be legislated away from his passion.  We celebrated a short series of Internationalist appearances last year; hassles with alientation by Glendora-driven sponsorship of events and infrastructure within which to race…Cordova and its’ ilk…might just keep Chris off the trail…and away from friends and fans.  Shame on the business which would fail to grasp this unique “family value”.

…the other shoe dropped when testing definitions were specified by Glendora a few dozen hours ago.  Internationalists have been given more than the traditional cold shoulder..famous since Larry Carrier ran that Tennessee based for-profit during my troubled teens.  Now anyone even pondering running anything but the big show series could lose in a ratcheted chain of reprimands promised by the plutocratic successors to Wally Parks.

No match racing…no lower cost shows ala PT Barnum…no test and tune sessions.  Do they want racers to sneak off to Europe and run match races in Sweden to figure out tune ups?

Meanwhile, Jeff Burk and his cast of characters which include “Jeffty” and Chris Martin have put together a six race nostalgic seventies show with no overdrive/small supercharger rules, coupled with one mag for midwest-style cost containment.  BDS has happily reported blower availability for this bunch…and come to think of it…for budget Fuel Alts who want to come out of perpetual semi-retirement.  Point being, this attempt at a show within a budget is its’ own R and D project for what the ‘Hot’ cars must eventually revolve back towards….

Leave it to me to read the “trades” of Drag Racing right after viewing a John Carpenter drive-in special.  When thumbing through the past 48 hours, however, too much of the teetering stumble towards Pomona appears undead…zombie creatures of a marketing entity inhabiting a corpse of drag racing’s pride.  The bluntness of Glendora banning, in effect, match racing any TF or FC “professional” machines makes me happy..for once..that Shirley Muldowney has long since retired.  The notion of trying to keep Chris Karamesines away from Spokane, for example, is laughable.  Credibility is not at the top of rational rule making, here.  More second-tier teams have survived and engineered transitions during dry times by match racing than have been harmed in any way by ‘testing’ budgets.  I feel nearly sick knowing barnstorming at the top levels has been legislated out of existance.  Lack of sponsorship is not promising any alternatives to the big tour.

The similar limited options on a national open ‘pro’ level are much more mitigated by the circuit riders running coast to coast.  News that the West Coast PM circuit is undergoing a revival this year with multiple dates at Sacramento and Medford certainly votes ‘doorslammer’ as a needful creature for those two plants.  The nostalgia FC scene will, I continue to maintain, play itself out on the left coast…leaving street-and-up as a small plant matinee show.

The larger plants, I feel, are due to follow the larger investment banks into implosion

…sometime during the last decade of the 20th century, the slowly developed nipponese-based high performance car journalist community began to coalesce their energy.  The colorful, often misogynistic, and always technically fascinating show and club scenes in LA, NYC and in-between had showcase quality periodicals available to help popularize, justify and…galvanize the import way of both racing and static action.

Tearing their forfathers limb from limb when necessary to advance technology, while keeping a nod and a wink about the seriousness of spending all that cash and social currency was a real triumph for the times.  Leading the march of magazines for years was a now deceased read called TURBO, an at times risk taking publication.  While not IMPORT RACER, neither was it CAR CRAFT-purposefully not stuck in the past days of a graying market.  The durability of TURBO was limited by free exchange of parts, projects pursued outside expen$ive complete-car shops, spending habits of a generation, itself, growing into gestating families…a culture that, too, began to age and lose the economic footing such machines required.  The aluminum motor  is hardly friendly to budget minded modifications, by the nature of the material itself.

A new multigenerational scene is needed to keep this style of high performance automotive enthusiasm going strong.  As the low rider culture has discovered,  fashions can become part of a style…can gain broader meaning..a way of representation which can become timeless to a community.

I make it habitual to follow the slings and arrows of investors in our internationally-linked economy.  Ever since I first chose a drop in the Canadian “Loony” to time a foray into Vancouver, I’ve realized my personal goals and planning absolutely depend on the big wave action of markets abroad.  The falling Chinese manufacturing base has markedly changed conditions from a year ago, when it comes to metals.

While this is not clearly a mapped-out ‘bottom’ one can time, I am certain that market saturation is closer than we expect.  Flagging construction of vehicles of all types has restarted searches for gently used parts.  I think of crankshafts as a prime example.  When a shaft with 40 passes left is attainable, the tendency is to burrow into the rest of the shop to complete a motor.

What this equates is a return, with a positive and joyous attitude, to the true arts of hot rodding.  The great pasttime was abandoned by a majority of high-end (..and, thus highly publicized..) builders at the end of the last century.  I feel warm knowing the market conditions which drive down the impetus to purchase one’s dream outright is driving us back to build it ourselves.

Coupled with unwanted rolling racers overflowing the ad sections, we are on the verge of renewing the face of a sport.  I have not been this hopeful of a revival of grass roots hot rodding and racing since I picked up my first copy of Full Throttle News.

No better tribute to the life of Dick Kraft would be to strip down to the lightweight core some great ride and create a purpose-modified machine out of reused parts.

The death of a child at a Tacoma Dome motorexhibition yesterday is bringing forth a predictable discussion which includes everything to fingerpointing to debating the cultural mores of working class males.  This situation, resulting from a reported errant shaft chipping away from a driveline and flying into the stands, immediately recalled decades of debris at fuel features.  Drag racing’s top catagories had a reputation for parts flinging, particularly at venues with close-in grandstand viewing: Lions, Irwindale, Puyallup and Woodburn come to mind.  What particularly comes to mind is the infamous Herm Pederson episode involving questions of construction following Herm’s crash at an OCIR PDA race.  That event changed the legal exposure culture on the drag strip forever.

The Woody Gilmore legal and business response of ceasing operations begins to feel like a likely outcome, here.  Liability insurance, difficult to get as it is, may soon go out of reach for any so-called “motorsports” features subjecting people to the reach of parts.  Reevaluation spectator safety from an analytical, not reactionary standpoint is critical as we creep closer to the Pomona opener.

As I discussed within my house earlier today, racing as “inherently dangerous” is a standard phrase on tickets, racing release forms and restricted areas throughout drag racing.  Glendora is right about one thing: their liability insurance and safety oversight really is as good as good gets when high performance machines are let loose with what can be totally unpredictable situations.

I salute NHRA for this..for Wally Parks’ sometimes heavy-handedness in insisting upon dedication to safety.  I wonder how drag racing will end up without his leadership..and if the sport can take yet another PR hit of this nature.

Compton’s Glendora….Glendora’s Compton?…whatever…has posted a very vulnerable and sensitive-manly letter to the “community” he claims to oversee and perhaps own.  The vast audience his missive covers includes marketing reps, team managers, owners, drivers and..perhaps as a token oversight…the ticket buyers.

I Can’t really identify specifics within this ‘we shall persevere’ Winston Churchill -lite letter.  I don’t see how national event ticket reductions that barely meet what OCIR did for military ticket buyers in the ’70’s make their product-which is what the “league” wants to be known for- somewhat more accessible.  Promises can be thinly veiled; the Glendoragram simply puts a friendly arm around the shoulder of those it has hoodwinked into thinking this is a viable business model and urges stakeholders to pull up their pants.

I was counseled at a party last night to guard against spreading myself too thin.  After 3 hours sleep..and having danced to “Louie Louie” with our Governor(…gawd; don’t ask), I’m pretty sure the drag racing genetic of driving it out of any situation possible is fully ingrained within me.  The nature of our sport has been described by our historian-Dr. Robert Post- as an “attempt to find satisfaction, meaning and self.”  Ultimately his words apply in my life to politics,  small scale agriculture and drag racing, alike.

Jim Wick spent his final 35 years motivating others to seek their sense of satisfaction by assisting Mr. Wick in the physical mobility activity he needed to get his own kicks.  Wick passed away this week-but not before winning the ‘70 Nationals and ‘71 Winternational SS/A class titles; which you should understand by now is as cool as cool gets.

His UDRA and AHRA action won thousands of fans all over our country, myself included.  I found his simple home track presence at Union Grove to be a symptom of why Great Lakes Dragaway was truly the bedrock of our sport’s heartland history.  His Midwest Pro Stock races were friendly and fast.  The “Matchmaker” Mopar ethos dignified our sport.   Wick never really slowed down.  As a professional caregiver, I can tell you he had to have taken care of himself to live as long as he did as well as he did as a quad affected man.  How to live fully was his thing.

We’ve been watching little Mickey Chrisman, son of Art, incrementally moving forward the craft of the injected front motored dragster for…a good 15 years, it seems.  Mike has dominated in alcohol-fueled machines with breathtaking consistency–and helped pave the way, along with Godhead Gene Adams, for the full-on ‘pop’ version to reemerge within the newstalgia scene I once danced around with nearly insane fanaticism.

Now Chrisman has teamed with fuel rat motor idol John Rodeck for the most interesting newstalgic Top Elim. entry in many years.  Rodeck, who in addition to pioneering aluminum chevy replication has never been afraid to do off the wall program direction, will probably eschew goofyness ala his infamous ’shorty’ mid engine machine of distant memory.  The “program” is the thing today, and a more Adams-esque transition is in the offing.

Another transition has led our hero Arly Langlo of Goleta to bring the history of Top Elim possibly around full circle for a true final …um..strike.  Langlo, the Nitronic Research poster iconoclast, was one of only SEVEN TF entries for Pomona til just a few daze ago.  Now, Natural Dogfur is glowing with pride at their “full field”…featuring the dozen year old chassis of dear ol’ Arlo-the obvious newstalgia TF star who will return to Pomona in about 22 daze… with our attention focused on his mechanical soapbox reputation, not unlike a fast approaching meteor aiming a direct impact on ‘murica.

… a memo from the Monroe LA. plant, following the demise of “Joseph Q-Ball Wales” whose chutes failed the 4th of July weekend, 1966, prompted a discussion which stands ironic, in light of PRO’s advocacy of shortening fuel courses to a thousand foot strip.

A Dale Ham correspondence seems to have offered a 1000 foot solution to race fuelers safely on Monroe’s strip.  Ham, a founder of the Safety Safari school of operations, would have quickly erred on the side of caution, bearing long term further investigation during a year when AAFD machines were turning 210 regularly with chassis built for 185mph.  This golden year in the sport could have also marked a shorter course within its’ history, as we now realize.   So…why doesn’t blower and mag restrictive engine regulation get the voice it needs.  So much about fuel racing is tenuous even in fat budget years.

The jury is still out; Internationalists are still gunning for 1320′.  Allowing this discussion to air out fully seems to have precedent, after all.