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

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Break Fix's History of Motorsportsseries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
Niagara Dragway was one of the mostpopular and iconic drag strips in New York
State from the early 1960s through 1974.

(00:23):
The Sunday Niagara commercials boom fromSuperstation WKBW during that period,
making Niagara the place to be formaximum automotive excitement during
Niagara's tenure, icons of the sport, GarMuldowney, Perdome Ewen, and many others
rocketed down the Niagara quarter mile.
And this presentation features Trackpromoter Dean Johnson and longtime

(00:44):
competitor at Niagara Jim Otti, who is amember of both the NHRA Division one and
International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
So sit back as we relive that historywith stories, photos, and memories
of those wild Sundays at Niagara.
My name's Kip Zider.
I'm the Visitor Services coordinatorfor the Motor Racing Research Center.
We are very excitedabout this presentation.

(01:04):
I'm gonna start this off bythanking everybody involved in
this because inevitably at the endof it, I forget to thank people.
So the first people I want tothank obviously are are stars here,
Mr. Dean Johnson and Mr. Jim odi.
Hold your applause.
Not at the end, but holdyour applause right now.
I wanna thank Jen who's flittingaround here as our high school.

(01:25):
AV person who's here.
I wanna thank Jim Galbrath, my goodfriend who Jim and I have spent weeks
trying to call 3000 slides down into the250 that we'll be seeing this afternoon.
It's been a very difficult task, onlybecause of the fact that there's just so
much good stuff that we've seen there.
I wanna thank Eric technical wiz who'staping this and all this good stuff.

(01:46):
I want to thank Alison Kreitzerfrom the Easter Museum of Motor
Racing, Les the photographer.
We'll have one gentleman that willspeak for just a couple minutes after
our formal presentation is done here.
His name is Jim and herepresents Skyline Dragway.
We had a couple cars that these guys weregracious enough to bring in this morning.
Parked outside Skyline islocated in Tioga Center.

(02:07):
It's the eighth mile drag strip and thenthe old Shangrila two on the bottom.
Very, very cool placeand I wanna thank Jason.
Who brought in the Christmas tree shortof the interesting cars that we bring
in from time to time, the Christmastree's, the coolest damn thing we've
had in the center in a long time.
I wish I could keep it there.
I wish I could take it home actually,but my wife would get upset about that.
So I wanna thank all these peoplewithout this, without all of their

(02:29):
help and, and Jim's especially, thisjust would not have come to place.
So, brief background on the collection,Dean actually stopped at our place
probably three years ago with a coupledifferent scrapbooks, and Bill Green
and myself started looking throughthe scrapbooks and were literally
just jumping up and down becausethis is my era of drag racing.
I knew all these guys and the archiviststhat we had at the time, for whatever

(02:50):
reason, just wasn't particularlyinterested in the collection.
So Dean left, fortunately to come backto us again about a year and a half ago
with multiple boxes, multiple scrapbooks,all kinds of memorabilia about Niagara.
We advertise ourselves as InternationalMotor Racing Research Center, and
that means we touch on everything.
But this is the first programwe've ever done on drag racing.

(03:13):
I kind of consider this thegolden age of drag racing.
We wanted to get some of thiscollection out into the public view,
so that's why we're here today.
So Dean, thank you verymuch for bringing this.
Without further ado, I think let's roll.
Y We open this weekend, Sunday.

(03:36):
It's opening day.
Look at the lineup.
The incredible line bill andits wheel standing LA dark.
Plus the spectacular superchargesupercharger Azar Bunny Fido,
side by side against Omo zone.
Jimmy Ti.
You're gonna see it and next time youroll up that stuff, like Buddy, you stop.
Think of us and save it for
the Racers Place in New York State outon Lock Foot Road just north of Niagara

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Falls Airport in Niagara Falls, New York.
See you at two.
I have played that so many times that thepeople I work with, I mean, they have lots
of reasons to hate me, but they have hatedme because I just love those commercials.
Those commercials were iconic.
And we'll touch on the commercialsin a second, but before I turn the
microphone over to Dean, I just have acouple questions before we get into your

(04:20):
component and involvement with the track.
When did Niagara first open up?
Who opened it up?
Do you have any idea what the acreagewas or any of the monetary, the price.
What did it cost to buy the land,all that stuff, and how and when
did you become involved in it?
And the final question on that Ihave on that is we're gonna see
several slides here where it'scalled Niagara Airport Drag Strip.

(04:42):
It's called Niagara International,it's called Niagara Dragway.
Were you just trying to keep ahead of thefeds or was there some reason why it was.
Called a number of different names.
In 1961, Niagara was started by my fatherand a fellow by the name of Jerry Hammond.
And my father was, I guess hewas concerned about me doing

(05:03):
some, uh, testing on the street.
He became interested, he, he wanted toknow if there was any way it was possible
to get us street racers off the street.
And I put him onto a P by the nameof Jerry Hammond, who had a dragster
and a speed shop in Niagara Falls.
And between the two of them, theyfigured out that they needed a certain

(05:24):
amount of Anchorage, and they puttogether a, a program where my father
was actually able to put two pieces ofproperty together, totaling 197 acres.
They decided that they couldrun a racetrack and maybe
make a couple of bucks too.
So in 1961, I was with my father and thebulldozer on a tractor trailer came up and

(05:44):
they unloaded it, and the fellow said, uh.
What do you want me to do?
And there were no stakes oranything and we were at one end,
we were at the airport end of thewhat was to become the drag strip.
And my father said.
You see that tree way down thereat the other end of the property.
And the fellow said yes.
And he said, well, that's from hereto there is where I want the track.
There were no stakes, no nothing.

(06:04):
So away they went and the fellowsaid, uh, how much do we want?
And he said, 60 feet wide.
I want it cleaned out.
And uh, that was the deal.
No stakes, no nothing.
And they did have a permitto build a drag strip.
Heaven knows what that meant,but that's what it said.
You have a permit to build a drag strip.
Uh, there was a lot of rain andthey finally got it where it was
running late in the year in 1961.

(06:26):
And the first.
Race that they had.
The cars tore up the starting lineand they had to repave it between the
races and the, and the following race.
And my father was pretty smart.
After they had repaved it, we put downPortland cement and broomed it in and
then wet it and then poured more Portlandcement in and broomed and wet it.
And in effect, it gave us a concretedrag strip, the start and that lasted.

(06:48):
So it worked out pretty well.
There were various names for theStrip, Niagara Airport, Niagara
Dragway, Niagara International.
Originally it was named NiagaraAirport Drag Strip because we were
immediately adjacent to the NiagaraAirport drag strip, and we thought
that would make it easier to find.
And over the years, whatever wasfashionable, we used that name and it

(07:09):
was Niagara this or Niagara Internationalor whatever it was, but it was always
Niagara and it became Sunday Niagara.
Everything seems to have been taggedSunday Niagara, but it was always Niagara.
No matter what was fashionable,it was still Niagara.
This is the NASCAR summernationals to be 67.
If you look.
At the very center, the return roadthere, and that's all dragsters.

(07:32):
And we would put them out at the quartermile and that's when we push started them.
So they would come out at the quartermile and push start up the track.
And there's, there'sa lot of people there.
There's probably 10, 15,000people there in the track.
The airplane, the wing, that's my father.
He's checking up on us.
But it's really a gorgeous picture.
There's one more in there, which probablywe'll see where there's two dragsters

(07:52):
leaving this starring line, which isprobably one of my favorite pictures.
The towers to the left of center.
And just past that, you can see the road.
And that road is full of dragsters,which in this area that's pretty good.
We, we just, we're not a trackknown for a lot of dragsters.
Most of the cars we ran were acompetition car or a Gasser or
super stock, stock, that type thing.

(08:12):
But this is quite a good picture becauseit, it, it, there's a lot of people here.
This is the hot car staging lane.
Tended to put our motorcycles onthe far side and then we would tell
the whatever class we were trying torun, they would come in and line up.
Uh, you can't see the signs, but therewere numbers one through eight or 10.
And we'd say, okay, such and sucha class, we need you to get in

(08:33):
lane one or lane two, whatever.
And then we had another section ofstaging that we ran the stock cars out of.
And so we were able torun the cars pretty good.
Uh, on our biggest race,we ran about 610 cars.
We would run them about every 30 seconds.
We'd run a pair of cars.
You have to, because we just didn'thave the time to do anything else.
We ran a lot of cars andwe ran 'em pretty hard.

(08:55):
If they were running them too slow,they tended to get an earful from me
and I'd be shouting, run 'em, run 'em.
And they'd say, well,there's cars on the track.
And I'd say that they ought toknow by now, they better be off
to the right or left because I'msending another pair down on 'em.
And the dragster guys would haveto stuff their shoots in their
cars and all that, and they'd say,you know, you ran cars down of me.
And I said, I told you you only had a fewseconds to get the heck out of the way.

(09:17):
And they believed me after a while.
You mentioned that youhad a lot of dragsters.
How many different other drag stripswere you guys competing against in
Western New York during your time thereand was there a reason why you guys
drew more top fuelers than maybe most?
Well, a lot of the top fuel carswere, uh, booked in stage shows where
we'd book in a couple of cars andwe'd match race, 'em two outta three.

(09:38):
Sometimes we would run open competition,but as a rule, the bigger cars tended
to go to where there would be a show.
Like the car here, I don't recognizethe top car, but the car on
the bottom is from, uh, London,Ontario, and it's old style.
Nowadays, the cars don't smokethe tires like this anymore.
To me, I like this kind of racing.
I thought when they lostthe smoke and the noise and

(10:00):
everything, in my opinion it lost.
Its a lot of appeal.
But these guys would be turningthese tires and they would, a
lot of them would smoke themright through the finish lights.
They had a lot of horsepowerand I don't know what kind of
horsepower they had back then.
Probably six, 700.
Jim, I, I told I had 3000, 2000.
Okay.
But now they have 10,000or 11,000 horsepower.

(10:21):
It changed quite a bit.
There's the picture that I like in thetop, you can see the spectators and
then you can see the row of dragstersthat they, they're going down and then
they're gonna, after this pair clears,they're gonna come out on the track
and push start coming up to the track.
I got so aggravated that it tookso long to push start these cars.
We built a set of roller starters andused a little Chevrolet motor, and

(10:42):
we would start one car at a time and,uh, we could start them so quick.
It just saved so much time.
And about a week or so after wegot our starter system installed,
NHRA came out and said, youneed to have self starting cars.
So all my work was for Naugh, but it waspretty exciting to see a car come down
with a, another car pushing it and thecar would be absolutely outta control.

(11:04):
And it, it was really somethingto see these cars being pushed.
It was not the safest thing todo, but with a roller star boy,
it speeded things up a lot.
And when you had a lot of cars, youneed to keep the program moving.
And that's what we did.
And that's just a picture looking downtrack and you can see where the tire
marks are kind of all over the place.
And uh, that's a little bitexciting, especially for the driver.

(11:26):
We had a good photographerwhen we were taking pictures.
I wanted to see crowds andI wanted to see our name.
Les Glenn is here with his wife.
His father was a track photographerfor a number of years, so he
has a lot of these pictures.
The thing that I wish we had done morewas I wish we had taken more pictures
in the pits with the car and the driverbecause the cars are nice, but it's
pretty interesting to see the drivers too.

(11:49):
I was gonna bring this up a littlebit later in the discussion, but
regarding sponsorship, I see Gordthere and we have Gordon in several
of these slides I actually talkedto, I think it's the son of.
The gentleman that started thatyears ago, they seem to be one
of your major sponsors, or atleast there for a number of years.
So I was wondering howdid you attract sponsors?
How did you keep sponsors?

(12:09):
Happy?
Racing now is nothing but keepingsponsors happy and keeping sponsors and
the money still has to keep rolling in.
So I'm just wondering what itwas like back in your days.
All of the speech back thenwere really good people.
I think I traded that sign for aset of bags for one of my cars.
I don't think they ever did anything else.
We left the sign up 'cause Ididn't have anything else to put.

(12:30):
That's the truth.
The, there was signage down on the pitside and I charged nothing for that.
We wanted people to see names to make itlook more exciting, so it was like pulling
teeth to get people to put a sign up.
It isn't like today, we sold allthose signs over the years and
they now they have great value.
So you've made more money sellingthe sponsorship signs than you did

(12:54):
talking to the people to get themto put their names on the sign.
We might basically gone $25 fora couple of signs on the pit
sign, and that would've been it.
And we never took 'em down.
We just left them up.
They paid $25 and it wentfor eight or 10 years.
We didn't care because itmade the place look busy.
People make people, if, if you havepeople and they, and they have a good
time, they're gonna tell somebody.

(13:16):
Oh, for sure.
It's important thatpeople are with people.
This is the kind of stuff I like,'cause it the, it's got a known
car and it's got lots of people.
This fellow here, the lasttime I looked, he was very ill.
It's Larry Downs, but it's gothim putting things together.
We're in, as you can see, thetower, you can see the car.
It is an exciting picture because itshows a lot of the way things were.

(13:39):
And the top one on the right,we used to do a parade.
If we were doing exhibitioncars, we would do a parade.
And then if you look in the leftside of that top right picture, you
could see yellow and that is rosin.
And when we were match racing, we wouldput Rosin on the track and they would
do burnouts and it would improve thetraction and it, it would be part of
the show where you'd be running a Fordagainst the Chevrolet or against the

(14:01):
something or other, and they would putthe rosin down and it became quite a show.
And the announcer would get who'sfor Chevrolet and who's for Dodge.
And it got to be a lot of fun.
And the announcer was a great portionof what people saw because if he
was good, people saw a good show.
This is a rain out, not a total rain out.
We're trying to drive the track.
So we're driving the cars down theleft side and back up the right and,

(14:22):
and a lot of times we get comments ofpeople's memories and I just read one
where a guy said I was 14 and I got todrive my father's car down the left and
up the right, down the left and up theright we did that to drive the track.
And the girl on the left, she'sputting the numbers back on the
cars because the rain has knockedthe, uh, we used shoe polish.
They had to replace the shoe polish,but that's what we did to dry the track.

(14:45):
And that's me looking slightly dejected.
This is out the window in my, uh, office.
And it's a great picture because you couldsee the funny cars, and I don't see Jim
here, but he's probably here somewhere.
This is a big race.
And you could see the rain and ofcourse the forecast would predict rain.
And we worked hard to get the stuffin, but boy, it, it's hard to do.

(15:06):
You can see it's a big race.
You can see the flip top carsand the mud and the water.
It, it was just brutal.
It hurt your headcount terribly.
But we were able to get the race in.
We didn't care who you brought as longas you paid 50 cents for your kid.
Was this bring a chimp to the race stage?
We, we don't care.
We got our 50 cents.
We were happy.

(15:28):
A lot of the stuff I never saw, Ididn't see this particular thing.
And there's a lot of pictures wherethere's some really pretty girls
and I think where the heck was I?
'cause I never saw that end of things.
But I never saw thechip or, or this fellow.
But like I say, if youpaid 50 cents, I'm for it.
Is that what the admissioncharge was back then?
Huh.
Jim and I were talking about what we paid.

(15:48):
When the track opened, it wasa dollar general admission and
it was a dollar to race, and itwas a dollar to get in the pits.
Well, that's just outrageous.
I don't know how I agree.
It's much like today it's, it is.
Places are about the same.
On our last race, we charged$6 general admission and $1 to

(16:09):
race, and $1 to get in the pits.
And we were frightened to death that the$6 would have turned people away because
we thought $6 was really pretty dangerous.
Hard to believe.
That's amazing.
Regardless of today's economyor back then, that's just.
So we're touching now kindof on our local hero segment.

(16:29):
We've got three slides here of Jim Zaia.
Is Jim in the audience?
No, I guess not.
His wife is not.
Okay.
I'm sorry about that.
No, she's not doing so hot.
Jim's a good guy.
Well, yeah, if you couldcomment a little bit on Jim.
Now we've got slides that we're gonnaleave till the end for Mr. Otti here, who
again is a, a very, very much of a localhero and actually kind of a national hero.

(16:50):
But if you could speak a littlebit to Jim here, and then we've
got a bunch of other slides thatwe just kind of called local folks.
So if you could speak to that.
Well, Jim Zs from Niagara Falls.
I don't think I've ever seen a car of his.
It wasn't gorgeous.
The car that I like the mostis the one on upper right.
That's one that was my favorite.
Uh, he's campaigning a car verysimilar to the one you see on

(17:11):
the upper left, but it's a, itis totally changed an awful lot.
There's a lot of work been done on it,but he, he would run these cars here.
He was very successful.
He took a lot of my money and he'salways got a, Hey, I never, you,
you, you forgot to give me a check.
And so I, I had a check left overfor when we were running NASCAR and
I gave him a blank and I told him,fill it out, whatever you want.

(17:31):
He still has that.
So Mr. Adi, did you ever run against Jim?
Did Jim run against Jim?
Actually, we were pretty good friends.
We hung out a lot together, butactually Jim ran his cars in, uh,
what they called modified illuminator.
And all my cars werecompetition eliminator cars.
We never actually raced each other, butwe hung out a lot and took a bunch of

(17:53):
Dean's money, so we were pretty happy.
When you say you took a bunchof Dean's money, what would it
have meant on a regular basis?
Let's, let's exclude the big eventsfor the moment, but on a week to
week basis, what would winningyour class put in your pocket?
Well, I remember the days like competitionlimited to win with, we got $400, which
was pretty good money, and back inthe day I kind of did that full time.

(18:14):
All I did was race, so it wasreally important that we did well.
Did you pay simply the guy thatwon or did you pay a second?
I mean, I know how drag racing works,but if you get knocked out in the
first round, you probably go home,say Thanks, we'll see you next week.
But how did you structure the prize money?
Normally we paid four placesand at different races we paid
round money against the winnings.

(18:35):
And this is Jim Za again, and this isJim with his whole family on the left.
And this is one of myfavorite pictures here.
Jim broke an axle or a drive shaft.
We have time to fill, so we lethim push a car for ways and uh,
it was good exercise for him.
And whenever he gets mouthy, I bring thatpicture up and say how much I love it.
He has a fit and can'tbreathe and everything.
It's just wonderful.

(18:56):
But that's the car that I like.
And he didn't do much braking.
His cars were pretty complete andthey spent very little time like this.
This is Bob Sullivan and that's meon the left before my first wife.
That would be the one woman to the right.
We got married, and this isShirley and Bob Sullivan, this car.
And they also had a top fuel car and theycall pandemonium and it's appropriate.

(19:18):
And good friends.
And now they're, they are both gone,but wonderful, wonderful people.
Larry Downs on the leftside, that's Larry again.
And I'm in this picture on the right.
Larry Downs and Paul Ack.
Anyway, he had a Buick Dragsterand Paul blew his motor or he had
a big motor and he put the bigmotor into uh, Larry Downs' car.

(19:38):
And uh, I think he drove it and they,they were relatively successful on it.
But Paul crashed a car one time,uh, on one of our big races.
All that was left was the cage of the carand he was upside down on the finish line.
And uh, we didn't wanna turn itover 'cause we knew he was dead.
And so we're discussing whatwe should do with the body.
And finally he said, Hey, uh, canyou get me the heck outta here?

(20:00):
And we said, well, he is alive.
I guess we can turn it over.
So he broke his finger.
Good thing he landed on his head,which didn't hurt him a bit.
So this is, um, Chippewa and it'sa Satan's car club, but he was a,
a wonderful striping and strippingand made a good living at it.
And he also drove Fran ADA's car,and that, I think is an Oldsmobile
engine in that, if I'm not mistaken.

(20:21):
And you can see thetires dragster with what?
Six inch tires.
They, they don't do that anymore.
They're big tires now.
The car on the left and on the car onthe right originally was Tommy iVOS car.
Ivo was an actor who got into drag racingand he had a car called the Buick Master.
It had four Buick motors in it,and uh, they put a part of a car

(20:42):
to make it look like a car on therear of it, but it was four wheel
drive and it was very impressive.
There'd probably be picturesin here coming along.
It wasn't particularly fast,but it made a lot of smoke.
And when we were doing promotionsit was pretty exciting.
I, I like the odd cars and Ithink most of the people did too.
So this is a clutch artist,dragsters, this little sea dragster.
There's a club in Buffalo that's beenaround forever and uh, even some of

(21:07):
the, the members are still around,but the, this is their little sea
dragster and it's a good little car.
You know who Station wagon that is?
Uh, yes, I saw it.
I can't remember who it was, but Dan Cini.
Okay.
Dan Cini was a member of the ClutchArtist and he was a business manager
probably for the clutch artist.
That was a killer car.
Hard to beat that car.
Yeah, the station wagon in the back.

(21:27):
This is Jerry Hamam Hammond ran the track1961 and part of 1962 and the car he's
got there is a, a little Mustang with a2 89 cubic inches blown and it's a nitro.
And this is the car stopping and Idon't know who's running on, on the far
side, but that's how they stop them.
Obviously you have a fullbody car against a, a rail.

(21:48):
Is that some kind of like a competitioneliminator thing or a match race or what?
What would do is there were nationalrecords for all of these cars and
so Jerry's car was called a doubleB alter and this, this car here
would probably be an a gas dragster.
So whatever the record was, they, theywould run each other using their records.
So one car would get a later startthan the other handicap's called.

(22:09):
Oh, okay.
Alright.
Not bracket racing.
No, no.
Bracket racing came along later.
Much later, yeah, much later.
Okay, this, this is early because youcan see the tower in the picture on the,
on the left the tower was pretty shaky.
And uh, I have a picture of a veryfamous announcer and he is standing
and you had to stand on the floor, Jo.
'cause if you didn't, you gothrough to the first floor, the

(22:30):
ceiling's falling down and it'sjust the way it was back in the day.
And, and you, we ran it that wayand nobody thought a thing about it.
That's just the way it was.
We were glad to run.
Well it was all that sponsorshipmoney that you collected that Oh yeah.
I don't, I don't knowwhat I did with that $72.
Alright.
This was our first snow out onthe left and these fellows that

(22:52):
come in from Massachusetts to goracing and uh, we got snowed out.
This little dragster here, I believethe fellow on the left is Rick Johnson.
He runs Johnson Building Company now.
Now this is Val Port on the bottom right.
And I was his crew probably in 67.
I was his crew, which is prettyfrightening in Florida when we

(23:13):
won the Florida Internationals.
This car on the right isTommy iVOS, wagon Master.
This is Summer Nationals.
This little car on the, on theleft is a fellow that came from,
uh, big North of Barry, Ontario.
And he would come every weekand he was not a winner, but he
was a good guy and he, he likedto go racing and so they, they.
Well, one of the reasons we wantedto use this slide was you see the

(23:35):
NHRA in the left and you see theNASCAR summer nationals on the right.
So what I'd like you to speak about,and Jim, if you have some thoughts on
this, everybody knows NHRA, it's beenaround since parks started it years ago.
Was the track NHRA sanctionwhen you opened it up?
And how did you become aNASCAR sanctioned track?
We, we ran in 1965, we ran NHRA regionalmeet and we had, uh, 9,007 people in that.

(24:03):
And Dal was a divisional directorfor the division one, which we
were in, and he called the race.
It rained for a coupleof minutes and quit.
We had 9,007 people in the place.
The rain quit, the sun came out.
So we had all these people, Dominiccalled the race without asking
me, and I was fit to be tied.
So we had people comingin and people going out.
Ultimately the race was calledand we ran the race a month later,

(24:26):
so they took a quarter of that.
'cause that was NHRA they, for this race.
They took one quarter of the moneyfor them and they rescheduled
the race for a month later.
And so they took a quarter of that.
Also.
There was a riot over the moneyand it was really a bad deal and
he should never have done that.
Is that what precipitated, how didyou become a NASCAR section track?

(24:47):
Well, when we ran this event in 1965,they had a meeting of Division one on
the east coast, and all the operatorsand managers were there and dial
and dah was telling us the changesand who got what races and when they
announced the races, we didn't get one.
And I got up and it like 150 peopleand I said, what's going on here?

(25:07):
We, we didn't get a race diamond Choice.
You had one last year.
So I went to, uh, the fellow that wasmy promotional fellow, Ian Michel, he
and I walked out and we had a quickdiscussion about what we should do.
We decided we were gonna call NASCAR DragRace Division and see if we can run over
there Pittsburgh and ask him, we wanna.

(25:28):
Wanna run under the sanction,and we wanted to, uh, uh,
run some of their big events.
We called up Ed Berger, who wasthe head of NASCAR drag racing,
and, uh, he said, come on over.
And so we walked back in and,and I was just going, I left
Ian gotta run his big mouth.
He opened the door and,and a place like this.
And Darwin's up talking.
He shouted about everything.

(25:49):
He said, Hey, Darwin.
And Darwin says what?
And Ian said, I don't care whereyou put your races, but if you
put your race one against one ofour big races, we will kill you.
And we slammed the door and walked out.
That's pretty subtle.
I got you have in your records WesternUnion note that Dow and sent to me, Dean,
you're no longer sanctioned with the NHRE.

(26:11):
And I said, Dowen, you already knew that.
We told you we quit.
So we went over and talked to Ed Bergerand he said, well, what do you want?
And we said, oh, we'd like torun the NASCAR summer nationals.
He said, okay.
How many years did NASCAR.
I sanction drag racing.
We ran a couple years with nascar.
Okay.
And we ran a lot of their big meets.
They were cheap comparedto everything else.

(26:31):
We had the ability to geta lot of interesting cars.
They, they, they ran a Coca-ColaCade of cars, which was, it toured
mostly in the, uh, central tothe eastern part of the world.
And, uh, the great shows great,great, great shows, but they
weren't the very biggest of the big.
But they were big.
They did all of the great shows.
They didn't break a lot, the good people.
So we ran them a couple of times.

(26:53):
We were very satisfied.
We ran a lot of, uh.
Record runs for nascar and wedid a lot of stuff with nascar.
Jim, did you run NASCAR sanctionedraces and, and was there any difference
short of whose name is on the towerat a cost of what, 15 bucks or
whatever we have established for that?
Was there any differencerunning NHRA versus nascar?

(27:14):
Well, everything was pretty much the same.
I did run that event andwe were pretty happy.
We set the record in the doubleleg gas super for nascar,
which made a pretty good day.
I think we won the event.
So it was all good for us.
It was sort of a different sanctioning.
Everything else basically wasthe same in terms of Yeah, you
couldn't tell the difference.
Okay.
Other than, other than the signage.
Okay.
Alright.
So now we're entering kind of whatwe call our cars and stars thing.

(27:38):
Exhibition cars.
Exhibition cars.
I mean, I don't mean to harp on this.
This was kind of my era, theHemi Under Glass, the LA Dart
Wheel standards like this.
So we've got a fair number of slides.
If you could just kind of comment on thenames, and maybe we can get in this later.
I'm interested in.
We're gonna see Gars, we're gonnasee Shirley, we're gonna see McCue,
and we're gonna see all thesepeople in a couple seconds here.

(27:59):
Can you comment on who was greatto work with, who maybe was a
little bit difficult to work with?
Just kind of stuff like that?
I would say there were only two carsthat I was unhappy with over the years.
I had a couple of cars that didn't show,but for the most part everybody showed.
This is Bill Schuberg in the La Darton the far side in the hand under
glass, which would be Bob Riggle.

(28:19):
Bob Riggle was the driver when, uh,Jay Leno went on his head had a roundy
round race strike not too long ago.
Bob Riggle.
Died shortly after that.
Not related, but he just, he died.
But these were a lot of fun and theywere scary as heck when they ran.
I would go in the tower.
I couldn't watch 'em becausewhen they started, they didn't
spend a lot of time on the track.

(28:40):
We never had to cut the grass.
They were off in the ding weeds.
And, uh, I had a deal one time where Billcalled me in the middle of the Saturday
night and he said, I wrecked my car.
And I said, okay.
And I said, well, Istill want you to come.
And he said, well, there's nothing left.
And I said, well, I advertise you.
I want people to know why you're not here.
And I said, who didyou get to replace you?
And he said, I didn't get anybody.

(29:00):
And I said, well, surprise me.
And, and we'll have, sothere's two cars here.
So he got somebody up and theygot another wheel stander.
And they showed up.
And when Bill showed up, I don'tthink there was anything in his
car that was worth anything.
There was just total garbage.
It was just totally wrecked.
But he was parked outside, sothe people had to walk by him to
see why he wasn't on the track.

(29:21):
He wrecked that car.
He wrecked a lot of cars.
All these, all these wheel standard guys.
They wrecked a lot of cars, and a lotof times they'd go down the track and
they'd, they'd wanna get a better track.
So they'd come back there.
That's what the car looked like.
And that was parkedoutside the, the entrance.
But, uh, the, the cars would go down thetrack and if they weren't happy, they'd
turn around, they'd come back up the trackand you don't know if they're gonna stop.

(29:42):
And I lost a Christmas tree onceto, uh, a fellow that had the
car was called a mystery mover.
And I, I was booking cars forReunion, and he was saying,
well, I, I had the mystery mover.
And I said, I, I don't remember the car.
And he was, he described the car.
And I said, I, I don't remember the car.
And he said, I ran over your tree.
And I said, now I know who you are.
So he ran over brand new tree.

(30:02):
I hadn't had the tree for aweek and he ran the tree over.
So these guys all cameto do match races, right?
Am I correct in that?
Well, we, they didn't start out matchracing, but we match raced them.
You, you're gonna come, we're gonnagive you as much grief as you can.
So if your car doesn't run, you'regonna get beat by somebody better.
So we, we ran them, we ran them all.
But you paid these guys to come.

(30:23):
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Berry and the, how much did youpay like the wheel standard guys?
700, 750. Now I, that carthere, I own half that car.
He borrowed $5,000 for me and signed apaper that said I owned half the car.
I was with a group of people atone time and there were, I don't
know, 15 or 20 people and everybodyin that group owned half that car.

(30:44):
He sold that car to everybody.
I said, yeah, I don't half that car.
They said, yeah, we do too.
This is Nicole Moran.
The fellow on the rightis Brutus Lou Arrington.
Tell the California guys 'causetheir hair is just perfect.
And uh, the girl, Nicolewas from Montreal.
But yeah, back to cars,it's just match racing.

(31:05):
This is, uh, Peewee Wallace on theleft, Phil Cast Nova and the Virginian.
You could see the signs and so Ihave like 20 or $30 worth of signs.
But we left them up becauseit made things look busy.
This is TACA four.
This is 1965 when we had the 9,007people and we had not enough seating

(31:26):
and the people were lined up alongthe drag strip and we couldn't
control, but we just ran the race.
They were five feet from the race car.
I thought the interesting thingabout this shot is that Taca is
still multi-generational 'causetask is still a funny car guy.
Yep.
And still getting the job done.
So I don't know what generationTaska this would be, but they
were New England based, I think.

(31:46):
Right?
Rhode Island or Massachusetts,something like that.
I'm a little confused on a gas and compgas and all the rest of that stuff.
Is this a car you would've run against?
Well, a FX car, it would fitin comp preliminary, but it
was actually a separate class.
I'm pretty sure where the A FXjust raced against a FX cars.
That was kind of thebeginning of the funny car.
But we did a deal once where carbroke or didn't show or something.

(32:09):
Yeah.
And we ran Jim against one ofthese cars, handicapped probably.
That was a fill.
How'd you do?
If I remember right, I'm pretty sureit was Bruce Larson with a Cobra.
But you, you could liebecause nobody could remember.
Well, and I don't, and, and Idon't remember, but I didn't
even know what I was doing.
I just went there to race.
The next thing you know I'm doing amatch race with Bruce Larson, who was a

(32:30):
pretty famous individual at that point.
Sure.
It was an a sports car.
It was a Cobra.
Really ran fast.
I'm sure I didn't win or maybeI would've remembered it.
No, we think you won.
Right?
Didn't he win?
Yeah, he won every, everybody knew he won.
Okay.
Okay.
This is Jungle Jim, and Ithink this is Nu Jungle Jim.

(32:50):
Number two car, when these guys gotgoing, they would have an a car or
a number one car, number two car.
If I couldn't get the number one car,we would buy the number two car and
nobody would know the difference anyway.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
They would.
Most of the inspectorswouldn't have a clue.
Oh yeah.
If Jungle Pam wasn't with him,but Jungle Pam never was at
Niagara, and I wish I could open aracetrack just to have her show up.

(33:14):
So she was the show, and thenice thing about her is it never
seemed to have gone to her head.
She always seemed to be prettylevel-headed and she just
never seemed to have changed.
Love that to death becauseshe didn't get nutty.
She worked in the car, did she?
Oh yeah.
She was part of the crew.
And, and I've seen some stuff where shesaid, yeah, you see all of the fancy

(33:34):
dresses and the low cut this and theshort that, and she said, it doesn't show
the time when they're traveling betweenplaces and you're sleeping in the back of
a truck and they're bouncing around andno food, and you don't see any of that.
You just see a skimpy outfit and,and a car making a lot of tire smoke.
She said, you didn't see the, thework that went into this stuff.

(33:55):
So I, I, I always liked her and I,most men do, but she just seemed
to be very levelheaded and itnever seemed to go to her head.
And she still around and makesappearances and that would be
on my bucket list to meet her.
I, I just think she's the best thing.
This is, it is just another race.
You could see the weather's reallyshaky here on the right, and this is one
of the few pictures on the very rightis Ian Mickel, who does my promotion.

(34:17):
Mr. Cosmopolitan, I ran theracetrack, he ran the promotion.
He didn't have much to do.
We ran a good show.
He just put the people in.
I did the rest.
I had a good crew.
I, I'm so fortunate when I hiredeverybody, there wasn't anybody that
didn't love the racing and therewasn't anybody that wasn't honest.
There was no favorites and somebody gota favor and, and there was none of that,

(34:38):
which is very important because youdon't want people to think that, Hey,
Jim's here, he is gonna get a treat.
We didn't give Jim any treats.
We, we made it as life asimpossible as we possibly could.
Him and Zeke.
Well, on the subject of promotion, let's,let's talk about that for just a second.
We're all familiar with the radioad. How did, how did that actually.

(34:59):
Come about.
We were in WKBW in the recordinglab and Ian was saying, I
want this different sound.
He wanted this Sunday Niagara, everybody'sin there screaming Sunday Niagara.
It was like a nutcase.
And finally one of the tech guys said,you know, do you want this sound?
And he screamed the Sunday NiagaraIan said, that's the sound I want.

(35:19):
And that's the sound that it,we used it on all of our ads.
So that was just a techguy from the radio Yep.
That did that?
Yep.
He wasn't supposed tobe doing any recording.
Oh, okay.
But he got listened to all ofus arguing back and forth and he
said, is this the sound you want?
And he did it and Ian said, yeah.
Why did you do that sooner?
Okay.
So apart from the famous radio ads,how else did you promote the track?

(35:41):
We, we did mailers anduh, we would mail out.
I remember one time we mailed out.
33,000 pieces of mailing, 33,000.
Everything had to be by zipcode or in Canada Postal Code.
Everything had to be in order.
And uh, we had to call a postoffice and say we're coming.
And it would normally take probablytwo van loads to do this stuff.

(36:04):
So to do 33,000, I mighthave 20 people in my house.
Somebody be stamping and somebodybe licking and somebody be sorting.
And I wish we had taken picturesbecause when people say, oh,
it's really hard to promote now.
Yeah, you go and you tap in somethingand it pops up on somebody's screen and
they go, wow, that was a lot of work.
You ain't seen nothing until you'veseen 33,000 pieces of literature.

(36:28):
More match races, stone, woods and Cook.
They ran early Gassers and very famous.
This is Connie Colletta and that'sMiss NASCAR on the far right.
And uh, there's some pictures of himwith a trophy and, and he's all dirty
and he's been working on his car andthere's a pretty girl and he is got
around a girl and I don't think the girlwants anybody touching, 'cause everybody

(36:50):
in that group was not very clean.
We've been working hard andhe's holding this trophy.
He didn't win.
But the Kendall people did the promotion,and so they've got the Kendall's got a
big trophy and he's holding the trophy.
Well, he didn't win, but nobody knew.
I must admit, I didn'trealize till we saw the slide.
I didn't realize Collettadrove a funny car.
Did he drive a funny car beforehe got into a top few car?

(37:12):
No, drags dragster first.
Oh, really?
Okay.
I didn't realize that.
Yeah.
Now the other car is Caleta also.
That's a little bit later.
And then he went back to Dragsters.
This is Tommy Ivo.
He's quite the showman.
That's his car, his trailer, and I thinkhe had a Corvette in there somewhere.
I'm sure everybody'sbeen over to the center.
But the top fuel car that wehave on the floor was actually

(37:32):
built by Tommy Ivo in 1963.
The records that we have indicate that hebuilt somewhere between 10 and 12 chassis.
He became known as I'm sure mostof you know as tv, Tommy Ivo.
He appeared in numerous TV shows and acouple movies, I think in the sixties.
But he competed at Niagaraon more than one occasion.
Yes.
I think it's pretty cool that we'vegot one of his cars next door and

(37:54):
here he is and he's a good guy.
Okay.
Gars, really not muchyou can say about him.
He's been there.
He is done that he is done.
Everything.
Innovator, old guy he is.
Gotta be 93.
Very successful.
Worked hard at it.
I don't know how.
He ghost as many things as he does,and people like me would go up and
say, Don, you remember me in a,he says, oh, certainly I remember.

(38:16):
Yeah.
Right.
But he, he, he's a goodguy and he's paid his dues.
He, he is the king.
Well, he was the innovatorwhen the motor blew up and tore
off half of his right foot.
Yeah.
My understanding is that's when hesaid, maybe it's a little safer if
I put all this hardware behind myhead instead of in front of my face.
And so he was the innovatorof the rear engine.
There had been some rearengine dragsters around.

(38:38):
We had Steven Piper brothers hada dragster that was a short wheel
based car that very innovative.
Everything was behind the driver,which is kind of what you wanted.
It was a lower class car than top fuel.
It was like a B dragster,something like that.
But it very innovative.
Jim just, did you ever have any desireto go top fuel, funny car or anything?

(38:59):
No, not really.
I was pretty busy what I was doing.
I did crew on some fuelfunny cars and kind of got.
Itching to do it, but it was back in thedays when we're hurting a lot of drivers.
I didn't wanna be responsible forsomeone getting hurt or burn up.
I had a lot of friends that weregetting burnt and killed and so
I kind of stayed away from it.
This is Don Pdo on the far leftand then the fellow in the center

(39:21):
on the left is rolling Leon?
Rolling Leon now.
He died a couple of yearsago, but PDO is still around.
Tough card to beat.
This is Jeannie Pru and, and uh,that's Bill Berry on the top left.
Uh, and these are justrace pictures, that's all.
Isn't that McCune on the lower right.
PDO and McCune became famous Match Racers.

(39:42):
The Mongoose and the snake.
Yes.
And they worked hard to promote it.
They good for them.
They worked hard at it.
Uh, this car on the lower right I thinkis Shirley owing before she was famous.
Yeah.
These are all Shirley's.
Yep.
And I like Shirley.
Shirley's always been nice to me.
And what I like about Shirley is shespent the time with the youngsters.

(40:03):
They'd come up and they'd ask herquestions and she didn't go buzz off.
She spent the time withthese people and I like that.
And I know my daughter was somewherewhere, where Shirley was and she
said, uh, do you know my dad?
You know, I'm Dean Johnson.
She said, oh, absolutely,and blah, blah, blah.
And she was so nice to my daughterand she didn't have to be.
So I like that.
This is Paula Murphy.

(40:23):
On the left, I had published a picture ofa fellow underneath a. One of her cars and
I had said, I wonder who's under the car.
And I got this email and all youcan see is from the waist down.
I say bare feet.
And the fellow said, uh, thatwas me and it was her son.
Somehow I got their phone numberand I called him up and I was
asking him how everybody was doing,and I said, how was your mother?

(40:46):
And he said, here, you ask her and handedthe phone over to Paula and I got to
talk to her and I thought, well, howlucky am I, all these people that were
out and about and all these experiences?
And, uh, so I got to speak to herand I thought, boy, I'm so lucky.
And she has died since.
But I just thought she was so nice.
Pretty lucky for me.
Blue Max.

(41:06):
Nice crowd too, by the way.
And it's cold.
Look at the all the heavy clothingand uh, we had a photo cell go out
and if a photo cell goes out, youcan't get a elapsed time on the car.
And so I was down adjusting the photocell and they turned that car loose,
which is why I have no hearing today.
Probably that picture willshow up in here somewhere.
But when I had my head downon the track, all of the dust,

(41:29):
there was nothing on the ground.
Anything, any dust was pickedup by the exhaust noise.
And I would've known that if I hadn'thave reset this stupid photo cell.
But I had my face right down on the groundand all this dirt and dust was held off
the ground by the noise on this car.
Speaking of the, uh, coats in thebackground, when did Niagara Open
and how long was your normal season?
When would you, you'd,you'd run through when?

(41:50):
September, October.
It was difficult to makeends meet after Labor Day.
We would tend to pack it in by Labor Day,and we would open as soon as we could.
Did I, I remember we opened onetime, it was probably Mother's
Day and, and uh, we went, oh boy,how are we gonna get around this?
So we went out and boughta gazillion roses and every
woman that came in got a rose.
So we kind of got offthe hook a little bit.

(42:12):
But, uh, it is tough to run raceon Mother's Day when mother's not
happy about you going drag racing.
This is, uh, Arnie Beswick.
Arnie Beswick just had a birthday.
I think he's 95.
I have a friend that lives down near him.
I said, I have this photo.
Would you please ask Arnie to sign it?
So Arnie signed it and he said,that's not me in the photo.

(42:32):
So I have, I have a photosigned by Arnie Beswick.
That's not Arnie Beswick.
So this photo that we're looking at?
Yep.
That's not, Nope.
I don't know who it is.
Well, I guess we didn'tvet that very good, did we?
Wow.
But he said I signed it.
That's interesting.
He said, I signed it,but it's not me, Jim.
We were so proud of that.
Who knew.

(42:52):
So I sent a bunch of stuffto Arnie to be signed.
He's a farmer.
They called him the farmer.
And the stuff never came.
And I waited a month or so and I calledhim and he said, oh, I had the back of
my car open and the wind blew it outand I about had a hernia and I had so
other stuff and I, I sent him the otherstuff and I said, please be careful.
I got a call.
He said, you aren't gonna believe this.

(43:13):
He said There was a farmer up Paul inhis field and he found all your pictures.
So he signed everythingthat I sent to him.
So if you need something signedby Arnold Beswick, I probably
have a hundred or so pieces.
He had a major fire at his barn.
It burned all of his memorabiliaand all of his old cars up.
He had nothing left.
And he's probably one of thenicest people you'll ever meet.

(43:34):
Aside from that not being him.
Uh, I don't know who the dragster is.
Uh, the bottom one, it's a Fordengine, which is kind of rare.
And it's Herbie Rogersout of London, Ontario.
And it's an ejected Ford, whichis, uh, they call it a camera.
Herbie has been gone for a long time,but it was, it was a good running car.
This car here, I don't know what it is.

(43:55):
I just like the picture here.
That's kind of behind us.
I don't know who that is.
Hard to tell.
On the dragsters, we put the ed pinkcar in because he was a master engine
builder and Mr. Pink just passed away.
Did he just die?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very, very recently.
But he was very old.
He was, he was 93.
Oh, I thought he wasa bit older than that.
Well known.
If you had one of hisengines, you had a good.

(44:16):
Uh, these are just cars thatpaid to get in and go racing.
We're segueing into not fuels,not funny cars, but just all
the other classes that you ran.
And maybe you could speak to this, andJim could certainly speak to this about
the various other classes that ran.
And without getting overly technical,just the differences between, I'm

(44:37):
assuming that's a Gasser and honestlyI don't know what the, what you
would consider the car on the right.
So can you speak tothat a little bit, Jim?
Yeah.
Well the Gassers are generallylike full body coops.
Back in the day, they ran in modifiedeliminator, uh, a gas through F gas with
different size motors and weight brakes.
And then the Royal T car here, that's a.Let's see, that would be an A altered car.
It's not supercharged.

(44:58):
And that would run incompetition eliminator.
And that's where you were?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We raised him a lot.
Can't think of his name, but he was good.
Yeah, more alters.
Double a fuel altered.
And a double a al Altered Charlie,he one with the Canada flag.
Yep.
Yeah.
Now were most of these guysfrom the western New York area?
Canada.
Well, the car here on the right, onthe upper part is Charlie Havelin.

(45:20):
His son is still racingand he was from a cow farm.
And his father, he said,I'm, I'm going racing.
And his father said, not till thechores are done, and then he'd
have to get home in time to milk.
The cows father said, no, no, no, you'renot leaving until all the chores are done.
And uh, I spoken quite a bit to his sonand they're all campaigning the same car.

(45:40):
Believe it or not, this is a rearengine car built by Steven Piper.
This was before Don Gar was doingrear engine, but you see everything
here is behind the driver.
This is a sidewinder.
A sidewinder, yeah.
The engine's about a across lots.
Very innovative.
We ran a lot of Dragsters.
This fellow on the bottom,probably EJ Potter, I'm not sure.

(46:00):
There were two.
There was a Ford and therewas EJ Potter, and this may be
the Ford that's Potter there.
I toured Australia with him and, uh,bury and, and uh, just Tyree, this
one here is a fuel bike, I believe.
Top Fuel.
This is a good show.
I, I, I don't think that's ej,I think that's, there's another,
another group and, and that's not ej.

(46:22):
Were the bikes part of the weekly show.
None of us particularly cared about bikes.
And, and so as a result, we didthem dirt and we didn't care.
And, and finally I had a little tiny girlcome up to me and she said, I, I don't
like the way you're running the bikes.
And she ran a bike and she probablyweighed 95 pounds soaking wet.
And I said, if you don't like the way werun the bikes, you run the damn things.

(46:43):
I said, we're, we're not interested.
I said, when you're done, giveme a list of who gets what.
And leave me alone.
So the next week she ran the bikes.
They never ran any better and theguy said, we don't know what you
did, but we love the way you do it.
And I said, go see that littleitty bitty girl over there.
He ran the bikes, she did a wonderful job.
And the bikes weren'tsecond class anymore.
We ran a few jets andthese were our Arons jets.

(47:06):
They were okay.
They were better at night.
And most of the people like Jimdon't like them because they
claim they oiled the track.
We didn't care.
Maybe I didn't notice in the photographs.
Did the track have lights?
Did you run at night?
I got permission to put lights up.
We put 'em up.
I spent, uh, probably 120, $125,000.
We ran a couple of races and thetown said, we don't like them.

(47:28):
Take them down.
So where did they go?
They went to, uh, it wascalled Empire at the time.
Empire Drag Strip.
Oh, another drag strip.
Okay.
Yeah.
And they, uh, forgot to pay me.
Well, perhaps they'll see this.
Well, if you're in the audience, anybody.
I sued them and, um, theyoffered me, uh, $3,500 for the a

(47:48):
hundred thousand dollars lights.
And I, I was not happy.
And my lawyer said, take the money.
And I said, I don't think so.
And he said, take the money.
And I said, why would I want the money?
And he said, because if you don't takethe money, they probably will kill you.
And I said, what are you talking about?
And he said, well.
They were kind of from the underworldand they, they would be offended at you.

(48:09):
So I said, send me that $3,500.
So I paid the lawyer.
I ended up with about $2,700, $2,500 forthe a hundred thousand dollars I wanted.
Hell on wheels was a real standard.
It was interesting.
It was just another wheel standard.
A lot of people liked them.
Little Red Wagon.
Always a good one.
The two cars here, the, the one is um,the Volkswagen, I can't think of the name.

(48:31):
And this, this is stage calledWest, the one in nearest us.
And the other bug I saw, I was atNorwalk one time when this car on the
behind hit the rail and got turnedaround and upside down and the motor
went out of the car and sailed.
They had an ambulance there andit went over the ambulance and
went over a light pole and landedout where nobody was standing.

(48:53):
Fortunately.
But it was pretty exciting 'cause it wasstill running high LPM when it went by me.
These are wanna be, these arebrothers, believe it or not.
They were okay.
They never oppressed me and Idon't think we ever paid them.
They weren't good enough that,but I should have paid them.
But they had to learn somewhere,so that's why they were there.
Well, we put these in because Jimwas just fascinated by the bugs.

(49:15):
So this is our ode to Jim Galbrath.
We put these slides in, well.
Uh, they were free and it was, the sixtiesand seventies were very innovative,
and we had people on bicycles withrockets strapped to the back, and there
was a lot of strange stuff out there.
This was a Corvette wheel stander,and it got upside down, no big deal.
They run over and flipped it onhis feet and he was good to go.

(49:38):
This was a car called Double Trouble.
It crashed at Niagara before Iwas there, and I, I don't know any
of the details other than nobodywas hurt, I guess, or killed.
That's all I know.
Two Chevrolet Motors.
This is, uh, the Hearst Harry Olds.
I like this car.
And we had run it one timeand we booked it again.
They had a problem with it.
Tower to pull to theright or pull to the left.

(49:58):
And finally some kid came up and he,he said, well, why don't you just put
the steering so that it steers in theopposite direction so it'll go straight.
So they did that up here.
One of the engines quit orsomething, and he got off track.
Joe Beck tested our, uh, barrier.
We had, uh, telephone poles inthe ground with big, heavy cables,
and the telephone pole was rightnext to where he was sitting.

(50:21):
If it would've been older, a bitmore, Joe Beck wouldn't be Joe Beck.
So that was the last runof the Hearst Harry Olds.
I loved it.
Uh, there's the picture where, uh,Kendall's giving this trophy to,
to kind col letter for no reason,
which is great.
I, I thought it was wonderful.
You know, it's group motion.
This was the car that ran andwon the NASCAR summer nationals.

(50:45):
It's called the Probe.
I like the photo on the rightwhere you have the sole eliminator.
Oh yeah.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Stupid stuff.
We could get away with it backthen, and it was no big deal.
We didn't think anything ever.
We just thought of theradio station would like it.
And so we did a soul show.
We had a good time.
This was our winners slide, obviously.
So that lets me ask the question, what wasthe most money you would've paid to win

(51:10):
a Top Fuel or a funny car for a big show?
And then on a regular, I think youalready said you paid like $400.
Jim, did you become rich winning yourclass week after week at Niagara?
Ask Jim what I did to him in alater years when you won a week.
Then he got tired of meone Sunday afternoon.
I had won comp eliminator and I'dgo up to get paid and he says,

(51:30):
you can't come back next week.
I said, oh no, I I I'll,I'll be, yeah, I'll be back.
No, no, no, you won't.
You're gonna take a break.
He says.
That lasted a a while and uh,we finally came to an agreement.
I'm pretty sure we raisedthe following week.
What would've been the mostmoney you would've won?
And did you pay in cash wheneverybody went up to the

(51:51):
payout window or was it cash?
No, Dean was all checks, no cash.
Did, do you hustle offto the bank right away?
Yeah,
there was no rubber there.
It was all good.
That's good.
Yeah.
Um, some of the bigger events, there'llbe some contingency stuff where different
people kick in for when accomplishment ora real good Sunday to go home a thousand
dollars, which is pretty good money.

(52:12):
Back in the day when you ran theNASCAR Summer Nationals Dean,
how much top prize money at that?
Well, there would've been a lot ofcontingency money, and I tell you
the truth, I don't remember, butit would, it probably would've been
500, $800,000 plus contingency money.
Couldn't live on it unless youwere really pretty competitive.
Back to what Jim said aboutme telling him not to, we told

(52:33):
him if you ran an eliminator.
What happens?
There were some cars thatkilled the eliminators.
He happened to own one.
And so they say, oh, DYIss gonna be at Niagara.
I'm gonna go somewhere else.
And so I fixed it.
So Dy wasn't at Niagara every week, sothey knew Dy was out somewhere and they
had to figure out where he was, butthey knew he wasn't gonna be at Niagara.
So we always had a good carcount when he was elsewhere.

(52:57):
And I, I did that for quite awhile, but the cars are so good.
They killed the class.
Say, well, I can't win,but I'll be runner up.
I said, take a break and gorace and bother somebody else.
When you weren't at Niagara,where else did you run?
We raced a lot back in the day.
Back in the day.
Lancaster, they'd run on Thursday nights,so we'd run there on Thursday night and
then, uh, Friday night's, uh, empire wasrunning and Saturday night we'd go to

(53:21):
Gregory Park, Yuga, and then Sunday, ifanything left, we'd go race at Niagara.
We were busy.
Okay.
So theoretically you couldrun four nights a week?
Correct.
Okay.
Well that's And if you would win Yeah.
Every four nights, thatprobably helped out quite a bit.
I was kind of doing that fora living for quite a while.
So it was worth doing, oh boy.

(53:41):
Sorry, we had to throwa couple of these in.
What is a racetrack without beauty Queens?
So we have two of these, Dean, if youwould care to comment on any of this
or care to not comment on any of this.
I, during the summer months, it was toughto make ends meet and we were doing a lot
of silly stuff to try and put people in.
I wouldn't ever do this againbecause I hired a model once and

(54:05):
I don't ever wanna do that again.
It's like going to a meat market.
I don't know how the women could do that.
And uh, I wrote about this processof hiring a woman and I wrote at
the start, my apologies to, andit was Audrey Hagan, who was very
smart and she's very good looking.
I had to interview her and Idon't ever wanna do that again.

(54:26):
I'm a farm kid.
I am not from the city.
Anything to do with, it waslike going to a meat market.
It was terrible.
It was just terrible.
Who numbered?
I don't know.
And what did that mean?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I see pictures in here and there'ssome really, really pretty girls.
And I never saw these girls.
All I did was run a racetrack and Iwas not interested in anything else.

(54:46):
And I look back and I go, I can'tbelieve I didn't see that girl.
And I see these pictures and I go,on the other hand, she's probably
as old as me right now, so no moreinterest in me than I have in her.
But these girls were pretty good sports.
Look at you.
Oh yeah.
That's why you wanna talk about a nerd.
That's me.
Look at you.
The, the best part about this, this girl.

(55:07):
Paul Zago, who was, is a racer, took herfor his senior prom or her senior prom.
Really?
Yep.
Unbelievable.
And she's sitting on, uh, BobSullivan's dragster on the Wheel and
that you can see Sullivan name on it.
That was Paul Skoda's girlfriend.
Who'd have thought.
That's me and all my splendor on the left.
My wife, I had a friend that paintedthis thing with trust me on it.

(55:31):
And this is me and my wife afterour reunion, which we were gonna
make a lot of money and we didn't.
And, uh, I, I had to work foranother 10 years to get out of debt.
But I had a lot of t-shirts, two or3000 extra t-shirts at the end of it.
This is Dizzy Dean on the left.
I didn't know that.
Dizzy Dean publishedWheelspin Magazine in Canada.

(55:52):
And then this is John Lundberg.
It was John, what was his nickname?
Iron Long or something?
Yeah.
To that effect, John Lundberg.
Right?
Is it wonderful to announceher in a wonderful person.
They took this girl who was runningaround in this bathing suit, and they
put her in Bill Berry's wheel stander.
So Bill Rebury has got a fire suit.
He's strapped into a seat, he's got a firesuit, a helmet and goggles and all that.

(56:15):
And they put this girl in withouta helmet in a bathing suit.
And they told her to hang onto the, uh, cross members.
And she said, there can'tbe anything wrong with that.
And Bill went out and the car goes upso high, it gets on the skid plates.
Well, when it gets up that high, it stops.
But she didn't.
And so she, so when the car goes.

(56:37):
And so she's going up andthe car stopped going up.
So she's banging her head on theroof of the thing and then of course
the car quits and she comes downand then he goes back up again.
And I can't imagine what she was thinking.
And this was all nascar.
They put her into this.
This was somebody's girlfriend and Ithink they were trying to get rid of
her, but, but they have pictures of her.

(57:00):
It was wonderful.
I'm glad NASCAR did it 'causeI wouldn't have had the brass.
So we thought we'd throwa couple of these in.
This is basically the peoplethat made the place run?
Yeah.
Okay.
All the people that helped you out.
This is my, uh, secretary short sherry.
And then this is RayJones, who's now gone.
This is Paul Schneider.
And he's gone, and I don't know whothis is, but she was reading the

(57:23):
clocks clock reader on the left top.
This, this was why you had towork another 10 years, right?
Wasn't because of the reunion 96.
And it didn't come out quiteas well as you had hoped.
Yeah.
It's another statementdidn't turn out well.
The track had closed, thisis a one or two years ago.
There's Bobby Pine on there.
I thought Bob would be heretoday and then Randy's there.

(57:44):
Bob Kelman on the second from the right.
This is a Christmas tree that we built.
We spent like $33,000 on it because wewere stupid and we could, and uh, I sold
it for $2,000 each light, there werefive spotlights in it to make it work.
And it was like 35 feet tall.
This is a magazine that we put out.

(58:04):
This is at Lancaster.
My wife, myself, dude, Jim Zaki on theright, the picture on the right on the
bottom is a Christmas tree working.
It was a working Christmas tree.
It went out to a speed shopin on the East Coast Sunday.
This Sunday reasoningChallenge 72 Auto racing's.

(58:25):
Big go September.
Fabulous Sunday.
Niagara, this is it.
The race racers are talking aboutChallenge 72, where you're gonna
see some of the roughest, toughestwheel to wheel competition racing.
Never stations in Dagara.
And without a doubt, justone of the unreal drivers.
They all gotta get by his Bob Belows.
An incredible Jimmy Ti, the man whowent in the summer national just
two weeks ago and blew the doors offthe finest comp cars in the country.
Yeah, the word is out baby.

(58:46):
This Sunday everyone's headingNiagara and the Giant Challenge 72 1
sensational day only, no reserve seats.
Gates open at 10:00 AM championshipsat 3:00 PM sharp, free overnight
caming for fans and driverstowing in for the big beat.
And don't forget, once again, as promised,the track will be spray coated before
the race time with amazing revolutionaryworld breaking VHT Track lock.
This is it with 3 72 NiagaraRacers yearbooks to the first
thousand fans of the pits.

(59:06):
That's Sunday Niagara.
This Sunday, the championship ofchampionships, the fabulous challenge 72.
Don't miss it.
We'll see you now.
Oh boy.
So we did that just because we couldand we had to hear Sunday Niagara again.
But this is our very subtle way ofsegueing into the great Mr. Jim ti, who we
are honored to have here along with Dean.

(59:28):
And we've got three slideshere with multiple cars.
So Jim, if you could start outwhat got you into drag racing?
How did you rank Niagara as opposedto maybe some of the other places?
I know you won India at least once.
I'm not sure if you want it morethan that, but that's the big time.
That's India and Labor Day weekend.
That's where the greats are made.

(59:49):
So if you could just spend afew minutes commenting on your
career, we'd appreciate that.
This is a 65 year journey.
You know, we've got time.
Yeah.
Actually a lot of people agree.
This guy over here, he changeda lot of our lives with the
snag or drag strip thing.
We started out racing on abandoneddrag strips, and I belonged to a custom

(01:00:12):
car club in South Buffalo, and we hada Sunday where we went to this Kohler
Air Force base, which is Dragway Parka.
All these cars are runninge, G, and F, G and GG.
So I just started asking question,what's all this G stuff about?
Well, it's a gas class, right?
At that point in time had a 36 Chevy coop.
Me and my dad put it together andI had a 57 Chevy six cylinder motor

(01:00:33):
in it, and went to dunker a coupletimes a watch, and I thought, well,
I'm gonna enter, I'm gonna enter thisdeal and see what goes on, right?
So I entered a car, waslike an EGAs F gas car.
What happens is I won a trophy, right?
I won a class, won a trophy.
Well, that was the worstthing that ever happened.
Because then we just gotmore interested in it.
And this Anglia Hill was actuallythe first actual race car I built.

(01:00:56):
A bunch of us Motorheads were hangingaround your host one night, and it
was a weekend of the Indy Nationals,which was a big deal, right?
So there was three or four of us.
So let's go to Indy.
One guy had a nice, fairly new Pontiac,so he said, well, you got the best car.
We'll take that.
We'll go to Indy.
We're just going for Saturdayand we're gonna come back.
It was 1964.
Jack Chrisman, the first funny car.

(01:01:17):
We were blown away so we couldn't leave.
So I spent the night in the trunkof a Pontiac and we stayed there.
I liked all these Ang, allthese gas cuts, these, I kind of
really liked these Anglia cars.
Pull the wheels up in pretty cool car.
So winter of 64 when I found that Angliaup in Canada, we drug it 25 hours.
They drug it out of Canada,spent a winter bowling it.
Dean kind of just got the track going.

(01:01:39):
It was a pretty good racetrack andhe would've these Gasser meets so you
could kind of tell that bunch of guys,Ohio was famous for the Gasser cars.
Joe call all these guys with greatgassers and they come, he would have
a special Gasser day and, and we'dhave a couple hundred great gassers
so you could judge what you were doingwith the rest of these Ohio guys.
So in 64 I got pretty competitive.

(01:02:00):
I could run close to the record and stuff.
So 65, you know, we just had a oldChevy I towed around, I had a tow bar.
So I tow bared the car to Indy tosee if I could run it Indy in 65.
Well I ended up, we got thething going pretty good.
Had a lot of good help.
We ended up winning.
Final round around BGA at Indy wenteleven twenty, a hundred eighteen.

(01:02:22):
I'll never forget that.
Bob Riffle, which that was the rodshop car, which at that point in
time was a pretty big deal, right?
So we, we won the class and, and thenext day, oh, I'm, I'm getting ready
to go home and no, you gotta stay, yougotta race street eliminator, all the
winners, the gas classes, they all facedoff what they call little eliminator.
So, okay, we're gonna do that.

(01:02:43):
So I get out there and I gotta race thisblack Willie's coop from California,
some stone woods and cook guy.
I don't, I don't know who they were.
So I'm, I'm running down the race track,I'm shifting on hanging, I get about
two feet forward, the finish line, man,I got this deal, this black car comes
running by, blew me off the racetrack.
So I really got interested in thatand I went back to the pits and I

(01:03:04):
hung out the rest of the day andthe stone was in crooked pit area.
So I thought, well, this looks cool.
I'm gonna go and put a boiler on MiamiLee and run this super charge gas deal.
Well and its race says you can't do it.
Because it's only gota 90 inch wheel base.
To have a bull, you gottahave 92 inch wheel base.
So I sold that car to a guy in, in, uh,Indy at a Chevrolet dealer and he wanted

(01:03:25):
that car to display in his dealership.
So I had sold him a car back, wellactually Grand Island, I found an
Austin, which was 92 inch wheel base.
So I'm gonna build mea double leg gas car.
I have no idea what I'm doing, but I wentto junk car, got old 3 92, got a set of
cylinder heads and I'll never forget it.
I'm building this car and it's about themiddle of the winter and I'm out in the

(01:03:46):
garage and a potbelly stove and a bunchof guys helping and comes Dean Johnson.
I'm like, what's going on?
He said, well, I'm checking to seehow your car's coming 'cause you
got a match race May 10th with StoneWoods and crook and, and Ks Pitman.
I said, what are you talking about?
That really kicked us in the buttand we, and we got the thing done

(01:04:06):
and sure enough, the Saturday beforeit snowed, but the Sunday was great.
We went and raced and KS hada little trouble with his car
and I ended up beating him,which that really set the hook.
So that really got us going with that carfrom racing at Niagara and with Ks and,
uh, Doug Cook, when they would come tothe East coast, they needed more cars.

(01:04:29):
So I would tour around themin the summer with them guys.
And they, I mean, Ks put me, he kindof took me under his wing and taught
me really how to run these cars.
I didn't have a clue, but firstfew years they'd fight over,
who'd get to run me, right?
I'd go in the stadium lanes and they'd bea battle line who got behind me to race?
To race me.
'cause I wasn't very good.
But through the years, come,let's see, it was 1968.

(01:04:52):
There was such a big discussionover the double A gas cars, 'cause
George Montgomery built a Mustang.
Joe built a Camaro, they startedletting turbo cars in and there
was just nothing but arguments.
So any Ray abolished double agas class, I went to double B gas
and I got pretty good at that.
And in 68 we won the NHRA Division onePoints Championship and I was the first

(01:05:16):
one to ever be elected by the divisionone to be driver and mechanic of the year.
That was a pretty cool deal with theAustin and like I said, we went Indy with
the Anglia, won the point championshipwith the Austin and then it got where
the big old car was kind of obsolete.
Everybody started building theseOpal GT cars, which is top left and

(01:05:37):
it was a, it was early seventiesand them cars were just being new.
So I looked around junk yard junk.
I couldn't find one wreck.
So one of the guys that was helpingme on the car, Mikey, he was a body
man, he worked for Jack Stevens Buick.
So he, he said to me one day, hesays, the boss wants to talk to
you about building this opal deal.
So I go in, I talk to Jack Stevensand I asked him, I can't find a car.

(01:06:00):
He said, well, we can getyou all the panels for a car,
quarter panels roof, trunk doors.
Would that work?
I said, well, yeah, yeah, thatwould, that would be great.
So I ended up, they got meall the panels to build a car.
I said, well, you know,what's this all gonna cost?
He says, well, all you gotta do is onthe back of the tail of the car, but
wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?

(01:06:22):
That was, that was all deal.
That was early seventies and 72.
We ran competition limited at Indy.
We won the double B gas class andthen they ended up winning competition
limit there with that car, whichwas, I mean, that was a 10 or $12,000
payday back then was, was really good.
And two weeks later they hadwhat they call the national

(01:06:42):
dragster open at Columbus, Ohio,and we went and won that deal.
So I, I was rich, we won two bigevents in a row and I had people
knocking down the door to buy that car.
So.
They talked me into it,selling it and built some funny
cars and did okay with that.
But that thing tried tokill me a couple of times.
So we had toured the country with thegas cars and it kind of dried up and

(01:07:06):
everybody wanted to have funny cars.
So I got hooked up with Smoker Smith'sfunny car, and I went to a couple races.
First race I went toactually was in Dragway Park.
The cars were really fastcompared to what had been driving.
So when more sun down through therein the first run, a nice car, custom
auto body painted a beautiful car.
I got to the finish line and let upon the throttle and the windshield

(01:07:29):
had come down and wrapped around theinjector and held the throttle wide open.
So I thought, oh, okay, I'm going 180.
There's a bunch of corn fieldsso that that don't look too bad.
So I remember I couldn't get a stop, dida shootout, burned the brakes out of it.
I said, well, you know whatI'll do, I'll put it in neutral.
So I put it in neutral and it threw therods out and I still wasn't stopping.
So I put it in reverse and thatkicked the bottom out the tra.

(01:07:51):
It was okay.
Got out the car, I thought,well, we still got the car.
We're good shape.
'cause we had a lot of races lined up.
So I got the bodies up on poles and we'regoing down the return road and the guy
told him, he starts going pretty fast.
So I'm trying to put thebrake on, but I got no brakes.
Next thing you know, the bodyflies over the back of the car,
tore the back of the car off, andripped both parachutes off it.

(01:08:13):
So then I jam on thebrake and the body comes.
Now the poles go up throughthe front of the body.
So I ran in a couple more times.
We had a good race in Pittsburgh and I runthe car and it was like 20 pounds heavy.
So I said, oh, I'll take thewheelie bars off, we'll be okay.
So I'm going down two and thecar wheels staying a little bit.
It's all right.
So I get down with that finishline thing's driving left.

(01:08:35):
I'm correcting correct man.
Not this thing's crazy won.
Don't correct.
So we get back in the pitch andthe guy comes down with a picture,
he says, tells me this picture.
I said, I carries the wheelson this by the start line.
He says, no, no, this was the finish line.
So I went home and Ididn't like that deal.
I had a good friend that helped me througha lot of these cars, big John Elli.

(01:08:57):
I told him, John, I don'tlike this funny car thing.
I'm going back to competition eliminator.
If I can find a fiat body,we'll cut it all up and put
it on this funny car chassis.
'cause there's a points raceat Drag Park Yuga in two weeks.
Me and John find a guy inOhio and he's got a fiat body.
So we buy the body and I got mypickup truck with a cap on it and

(01:09:18):
the body won't fit in the truck.
So we asked the guy if he's got a saw.
So we saw the thing in four piecesand put it in a truck, but we had
modified, we lengthened it and choppedit and we had modified it quite a bit.
Long story short, we put that thingtogether, went up to drag Park,
Huga, division One Points race, andwe won that race and I had missed
the first Division one points race.

(01:09:40):
But there was four left.
I went to the rest of 'em and I won allfour of them, and the final race was
in aco, New Jersey division director.
So we finished the day.
We thought we won the point championship,and the point champ, he gets to go
to Ontario, California, and $5,000.
Well, you collect the moneyat the pay window in Ontario.

(01:10:02):
So we're all loaded up, headingout, and here comes Darwin doll
running out the track entry.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
I, I said, Don, what's the matter?
He said, well, we just did allthe points and you and the Zo
brothers are tied for points.
He went to all five.
You went to four.
But he was the car to beat.
Really?
He says, you wanna go to Tyson?
Says, yeah, I wanna go toOntario, California, man.

(01:10:23):
Absolutely.
He said, well, they wanna go too.
How are we gonna do it?
I said, oh, you want flip a coin?
What do you wanna do?
Tarzi wants to race you for.
Now it's midnight, right?
Everybody's gone cold, no Christmas tree.
How are we gonna do this?
That one says, I'll getout there and flag you.
I'll have a guy at the finish line.
Whoever wins the race goes to Californiaand the Zi car was called the Italian Way.

(01:10:48):
They were out of New York City.
I was pretty scared ofthese dudes when I beat 'em.
I got out of, I got outof there in a hurry.
They were really good guys, but theywere, you know, we run the race nighttime.
I don't know who wins.
It's so close, right?
And at the end of the racetrackit's a big bang and fire and

(01:11:08):
everybody come down and says, ohyou, you blew the thing up, right?
I go, not really.
I says, run great.
Right through the lights.
He said, well, there was a big bangat, and the end of the finish line,
meanwhile, the guy comes walking up.
That was at the end of the finish line.
He says, man, I can't believeyou made it through that.
I said, what are you talking about?
He said, well, there was a guy inthe bleachers with a shotgun trying
to shoot your front tire route.

(01:11:31):
I just, I wonder who that was.
Right.
So I'm like, there's no way, whatever.
And we got down and sure enough there'sa bullet hole right through the headers.
They went for the front tire,but they got the headers.
Guy was related to theguys who were running.
I'm just guessing.
But anyway, we towed the car rightout of the track to get out of there.

(01:11:51):
When we come back toreturn, we just kept going.
Another guy grabbed the trailer,we went out in the road and
loaded the car and went home.
We didn't wanna get no powerof that deal, but we went to
Ontario and it was was 74, 75.
Carlos set the ET record if itwas good for like eight years.
I mean, it was just an incredible race.
So did you ever race those guys again?
No.

(01:12:11):
No, I did not.
Oh.
No, that was kind of the end.
My, I was lucky enough they had twinboys and they, they were born and
I kind of took a break racing andopened up a shop and started engine
shop and Chasis shop and I was busyfor quite a while with that deal.
I didn't race much for about 10 years.
Are you racing now?
Yeah, that's actually was thefunny car tried to kill me.

(01:12:31):
Oh, okay.
Gotcha.
See how close the windshieldis to the injector.
Yeah.
You don't wanna do that.
It's not a good deal.
So where do you race now?
Took a break for, oh, like Isay, probably eight or 10 years.
I built, I built a little Vete Street carjust kinda running around the street, but.
I ended up getting crazy with that deal.
Lancaster one, I put alcoholin it and put on its roof.

(01:12:52):
There was no door car that ever hadrun a four second ET so, and this
was a street car where I had a blownbig black Chevrolet in it and it was
pretty nice on gas, but I wanna bethe first guy in the floors with a
door car, so I put alcohol in it.
First run went 5 0 8.
Oh man, I'm gonna wait till aboutnine, 10 o'clock and the air comes
in, we're gonna have our first four.

(01:13:12):
So I went out to said, well I gottaget a real good burnout going here.
Get the tires real.
How about half track?
It flipped up on its roof.
That was the end of my chevette and, andthen we, like I said, we took a break
for a while and then IHR came up withthis top sportsman quick eight thing.
It was a deal where you hadhave a door car and they didn't
really care what was in it.

(01:13:33):
You just, as long as it was a doorcar, the doors had open and closed
and the driver had to sit on the left.
That was the only rules there were.
So me and Big John Terelli, again,he got me in a lot of his trouble.
He said, you know what, we're gonnakind of build like an alcohol, fine
car torsion bar, front sour rearer.
I said, well, where arewe gonna put the driver?

(01:13:53):
He said, well, we'll build a driver'spod like a jet car has, right?
So I said, well, okayJohn, we will do this.
So we get an old Corvette body.
We stretched it and built this car.
At that point in time, everybody wastrying to run a six second ET and
200 mile an hour with a door car.
So we ran this couple raceand ran some seven O's and.

(01:14:14):
I, I thought, well, they got a nice racecoming up at Bristol, Tennessee, and
like, I got some new stuff I wanna try.
We go to Bristol, Tennessee, and thiswas a top sportsman bracket race, right?
You had to dial in what you want.
So we had run a couple timesand didn't run the full quarter.
Fred says, man, this thing's really good.
Fred Ho is driving forme, really good driver.
He said, whatcha gonna dial?

(01:14:34):
I said, well, what do you think?
He said, I, he says this thing'sgonna go well into the sixes.
I said, well, how about 6 75?
He said, I think it'sgonna go better than that.
I go, can't.
There's no way.
No one's ever ran a six.
How can we do this?
So, sure enough, he gets in, goesout there, makes a great run.
It goes 6 68 A 2 0 8.
The owner I trade said it wasthe worst day of his lifetime.

(01:14:56):
Because everybody just went berserk andeverything in the car got for the next
season with was the beginning of pro mod.
Whatever was in that car was outlawed.
No straight front axles, no sour rear,you know, no driver pot on the left.
Had to make it more likea pro stock car and stuff.
And I thought, well, the car was done.
I said, no, John.
No.

(01:15:16):
John says, no, we'll just put a backupon the chicken and we'll put a suspension
in the front, suspension in the back.
He was really clever at doing this stuff.
I was the welder.
He was a fabricator.
I was the welder.
So whatever he made, he'd makesomething all day and I'd be
there all night welding it.
But then following year we broughtthat car back with the way they
wanted it, and we won like threestraight events with that car.

(01:15:39):
They had promised everybody that wasgone, but we ended up winning some IHRA
championships and NHRA championshipsand we ran pull out for 15 years and,
uh, I was inducted in the Northeast Hallof Fame, the East Coast Hall of Fame.
I got a call one day from Don Garla afterI had kind of quit the pro mod deal, sold

(01:16:00):
everything off, moved to North Carolina.
He said, we wanna induct you into theInternational Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
And I'm thinking it's a joke, right?
Yeah.
You have one of my buddies joking aroundand I said, no, you don't ever, you
don't ever bring somebody from the east.
It's always West Coast, Perol and McEwen.
It's all West Coast guy.
No East Coast guys everget in Hall of Fame, right?

(01:16:22):
I didn't believe it.
He actually had, the next dayhe had a secretary call me back.
That was probably the biggest andbest thing that you could accomplish.
Oh yeah.
I would think so for sure.
In the drag racing world.
And one of the biggest and best things.
Was, is I had my twin boys forall the years of promo, right?
Which they were such a big part of it.
It was when the data logger start comingalong and I didn't need a data logger.

(01:16:46):
I, I looked clutch, disc rod bearings.
I knew what I wanted to do.
I didn't need a data logger, but wegot in some trouble a couple times and
couldn't figure out what was wrong.
But when I got the data logger,that's when my, both my boys,
mechanical engineers, I think theyinterpreted most of this information
a lot better than other people did.
And it was, Hey dad, we need to do this.

(01:17:07):
Hey dad, we need to do that.
Like, eh, nah, rods look good, cuts.
This are good.
We're going, no, no, we need to do that.
We need to.
And, and that's when you getinducted in the garbage deal.
You gotta find somebody to induct you.
Right?
So this was like, holymoly, what do I do now?
I had some great, some incrediblepeople help me whenever we got in
trouble, for some reason, I, I just gotin Florida and I got the wheels back.

(01:17:31):
Wheels on fire.
Front wheels are two feet in the air.
Over we walked Bob Newburn, likehe used to call me, Joe Otie.
Go, Joe Otie, you can'twin this race in 60 feet.
And he'd teach me things andKenney and some chassis guys.
We got to a point where I would justkeep throwing horsepower at pretty soon
the car wouldn't go on the racetrack.
Good shock guys would comeup and just wanna help.

(01:17:51):
And I just, I was so lucky from thebeginning with Ks Pittman, he was the
first guy to start to help me, but Iwas just always lucky to have Big John.
Thriller was a big partearly of what we did.
So anyway, we ran a lot of circuits.
Pull my car.
We would run 30 events in the summerand all of us worked full-time jobs.
The boys, Fred worked ata plant and I had a shop.

(01:18:14):
So I go, well, Brett Keppner, hewas at the United States Super
Circuit, I-H-R-N-H-R-A, super Chevy.
He was the announcer 'em all.
I I I, I'd like to call him up.
And he said, yeah.
So I asked him if he went and,oh yeah, I'd be glad to gotta go
to Florida and get him fixed up.
So he called me one day and he.
How long have you run Pro Mod?
I said, I don't.
He said, well, you ran 15 years.

(01:18:35):
He said, you got any idea howmany championships you won?
I said, he, I said, I, I don't.
'cause we, like I said,we on so many stories.
He informed me that in 15 years wewon 12 championships, which I went to.
There was no way, well, he's a dragracing historian, or he had every
one and named every one of them.
But you're so busy when you're doing it.

(01:18:57):
I don't think any of us had anyidea, you know how much you know?
Yeah.
So he's the guy that inductedyou into the Yeah, Brett Kepner.
That's great.
That's great.
Fabulous announcer.
He's still, to this day, a drag racestory, and he would go to tracks that
were closed and he, you know, they'dbe trailer parks, but here's where this
guy set this record and that record,and it's just perfect authority.

(01:19:17):
Well, that's quite a story.
That's quite a career.
There you go.
And you blame it all on this guy.
He was instrumental.
Uh, we, there's a lot of people, oh, thisguy, a lot of thanks for what he did.
I mean, he stuck his neck outthere and built a drag strip.
And run a drag strip when I'm sure whenhe started out he wasn't thinking he
was gonna end up being rich, but it wassomething that he wanted to do, and that's

(01:19:39):
what, that's what makes the difference.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, thank you for sharing all that.
Dean, we're somewhat coming to the,where we need to wrap this up and we're
gonna throw it open for questions,but I was just wondering if you got
anything else you'd wanna throw in, oryou don't have 37 pages there, do you?
No, I do have that.
Me personally, I was done with dragracing when I had a fellow come up
and they wanted to get some of thesignage that I had in my hangar, and

(01:20:02):
we found all of this stuff that I hadno idea I was too lazy to throw away.
What happened is people from thesixties and seventies that, that I
knew and for the most part were myfriends, I got to see them again.
And so from 1960 toand 60 and 70 till now.
To see people that were such a bigpart of my life, you just can't

(01:20:22):
believe how fortunate I have been.
So I met some awful good people andmost of the people now have forgotten
all of the fighting that we did.
And we did a lot.
We've become friends and, and breakfastand sers and different meetings and
it's been a treat to have been apart of this phenomenon, drag racing.
And we got in on the,on the first part of it.

(01:20:45):
So all of the people, or many ofthe people that started that were
basically nobody where they wereforced to build stuff and they became
very famous for products that wereinvolved in drag racing and, and we.
Basically we were nobody with justan interest in, in the sport and
we became part of history, I guess.
Yeah, I would say so.
Very definitely.

(01:21:05):
We'd like to open thisup for some questions.
A lot of my friends have been askingme why did the Greg Strip close
and how come we closed in, uh, 19,19 74 was the last year we ran.
The, we had been restricted, itends up about 21 days a year.
We had one or two Saturdays we could run.
We couldn't start till one.
We had to be done by dusk.

(01:21:27):
We basically got, uh,regulated out of business.
You can't run a business 21 days a year.
And so we just couldn't keep up.
We couldn't make ends meet,couldn't pay her bills.
The woman that owned the, there was129 acres, two sections of property,
and she owned the bottom end 129 acres.
And, uh, I had just paid hera four or $5,000 Christmas

(01:21:50):
time, but I was still behind.
We had been going on like that forever.
So she took my money and the next dayshe said, my son is gonna run the track.
And, uh, there wasn't anything I could do.
She was right.
We owed her the moneyand I couldn't pay it.
And so the next day Iwent down with an ax.
I was pretty sure I couldn't runthe track and I cut absolutely.
Every wire that I could find, I cutin the track or chopped with an ax.

(01:22:13):
We took all the bleacher boards outand I threw my keys in the tower.
They seemed to keep coming back to me.
She went down there and saw whatwas going on and she said, well,
how am I gonna run the track?
And I said, well, you've got pavement andyou've got the frame for the drag strip.
You're on your own.
Well, she didn't have it and she put usoutta business, but it was our fault.
We were late.
And she was right.
But the town of Niagara had seen toit that we just couldn't You, you

(01:22:37):
can't run a business 21 days a year.
You just can't.
And you're gonna losesome of them to rain.
Or bad weather.
So we were done.
I'm Bruce Mellenbach andthis is Bill Mellenbach.
And, uh, we ran Dragway Park inthe, uh, seventies and eighties.
To give you a little background on Kaga,our grandfather LB Mellenbach bought the
training base in Kohler, Ontario in 1948.

(01:22:59):
In 1954 is when they starteddrag racing with the piston
pushers car club outta Branford.
I've talked to Jim once in a whileand Jim is a hundred percent correct.
I mean, the cars ran at Lancaster,then they ran at Empire, then they
come to cga and then they wentto, uh, Niagara Sunday, Niagara.
I mean, Jim did it and Zia did it.
FJ Smith did it.

(01:23:21):
And, and there's a long line of stormalong guys and, uh, on and on and on.
So the reason I came up hereis I wanted to thank Dean.
For what he's done, because folks,there's gonna be a time come and
it's not that far away where there'sgonna be no Dean Johnson's and
no Jim Mati and no Bruce Melba.
And somehow you gotta pass the knowledgealong because it's, it's history

(01:23:42):
of our sport and it's very, veryimportant that we do things like this.
And, you know, people talkabout Facebook and how goofy
Facebook is, but you know what?
I wouldn't keep in touch withDean and Jim's wife and, and so
many more of you that are in here.
If it wasn't for Facebook, it seemedto have got us all back together again.
And, and talking about history.
I just wanted to thankyou guys for having this.

(01:24:04):
It was a pleasure coming and, andhopefully we can do it again someday.
We signed a lot of checks for.
I'm so glad to see you guys here, man,it's, it's great seeing you again.
I had such a great time at DragwayPark, Cuba and your mom and dad.

(01:24:25):
I will never to my best day forgetBruce and Joan Millen Barker.
They were the happiest, luckiest, just,they were great people to be there.
I remember one time he must havehad eight, 10 floor funny cars,
dragsters, and it's pouring rainout and I'm like, oh my God.
He got outta business payingall these guys rain money.

(01:24:47):
There's Bruce.
He's talking to everybody,laughing and joking.
I'm like, man, how yougonna get out of this one?
He goes, he said, I'm okay.
We got rain insurance.
I'll never forget that.
But he, he, he had some of thebig events that I told us at Bruce
before they had Thresh Muller wasbig in the day and they had a, a

(01:25:07):
Can-Am national at Drag Park Cuba.
And it was a big, big deal.
I mean, it was again, probably15, 20,000 people there.
And I had Austin and it was an deal.
And I had reset the double big ass superrecord and I won the deal and I still
have that trophy on my mandle to this day.

(01:25:28):
And that was 68, 69, something like that.
And when Bruce and Joan were gone,that place was never the same.
I mean, it's okay.
It's a good racetrack,but what they brought.
And they, you could just see both of 'em.
They put their heart and soulinto, and I don't know why they
ever did this, but they really,really enjoyed themself immensely.

(01:25:50):
The fact that they just loved to do it.
They talked to every racer,every race, car win, loser draw.
They were just roaming the pits.
And that's just stuffI'll never, ever forget.
It was, it was great.
And I'll never thank him enough.
Thank you for coming.
Appreciate it Bruce.
And Bill, thanks very much for coming.
I think before we formally wrap this up,so Jim Holder slide the last two slides.

(01:26:12):
Let me, let me, uh, have Jim from, uh,skyline come up for just a couple seconds.
If you saw the cars out front, skylinedrags down to Tioga Center is about
ready to open their season and wethought we'd invite them over and
let's keep this drag racing deal going.
So if you can take a couple minutesto just tell people what you're doing.
Yeah.
My name is James Robinson, also knownas Rabo in the, uh, drag racing world.

(01:26:34):
Spent most of my career at Empire.
Did a lot of work with the IHAtravel with them up and down the East
Coast and recently with Lancasterand always wanted my own place or
my own track since mid twenties.
Thought about it and, uh, youknow, lifeguard ahead of me.
And so recently, um, I was able totake my re retirement money out.

(01:26:55):
An opportunity came up with Skyline.
But I did wanna mention, by theway, the honor it is to stand up
here with these two gentlemen.
They're awesome, awesome guys.
I interviewed.
Dean at Lancaster two years ago.
It was a great interview.
I was at the Empire Nationals and watchedFreddy win, uh, what was that like
at midnight, the marathon of a race.

(01:27:15):
It was crazy.
The last time I walked, I was at Niagara,was about 2003, and I, it was a nice,
warm, you know, Sunday afternoon inJuly, and I walked all the way down,
all the way down the shutdown area,walked up the return road, you know,
mother Nature was slowly taking over.
And I got back up to the starting line andI was met by an MP from the local military
base in the Niagara County Sheriff.

(01:27:36):
And they were asking me what I wasdoing there, what was going on, and
I explained what I, you know, whoI, you know how it's that empire
at the time and feeling nostalgic.
And they said, okay, very good.
Get in your car, get outhere and never return.
So that's my naive story.
So, anyways.
I'm here to, um, talk about Skylineand one of my friends from Empire and
Lancaster found out that I was gonna talk.

(01:27:56):
They said say somethingnice about our track.
There's five operating drag stripsin Western New York and they're nice.
That was supposed to be a joke.
Ha ha ha.
They're Lancaster by BuffaloRaces on Friday night.
I was actually working there last night.
It was a good night.
Empire.
Donald Lester.
Still operates as a quartermile on Friday nights.
So if you wanna go quarter mile passes,go out there on Friday night, a little

(01:28:16):
no drag strip in South Butler calledSouth Butler, nostalgia, Dragway.
And it's truly nostalgic.
They run older cars.
There's a grass medianin between the two lanes.
It's the middle of a corn field.
Empire State Timers Association, leveling,known as Esta and Cicero, New York.
And then the one that makesmy eye sparkle is Skyline.

(01:28:38):
It was called Skyview years ago.
It's part of Skyline MotorSports Park where Shangla two is.
And last year, um, it went up for sale.
And, um, I'm thinking to myself, well,I, I work for New York State, um, there's
no way I can afford the three and ahalf million dollar price tag unless,
you know somebody wants to help us out.
There's two gentlemen back there,uh, Dave, Jeanette and George Coleman

(01:29:00):
who stepped up, talked to the guy whoactually owns a track, and we met in
December and, uh, he agreed to lease.
And so I, um, took some retirementsavings and I'm an expert now.
If you ever wanna make your retirementsavings go poof, just come see me.
We, uh, signed the lease, the multipleyear lease, signed on with the
World Drag Racing Alliance, one ofthe newer sanctioning bodies, and,

(01:29:23):
um, spent the winter just gettingtogether, talking, doing stuff,
and opening day was April 12th.
Poured.
But the good thing about April12th is Dave and George worked with
Daddy Dave from Street Outlaws ona no prep race and no prep racing.
We could talk about, there'stwo no prep cars outside.

(01:29:43):
It's a different type ofracing that I'm not used to.
And what we did have arace a few weeks later.
I think I had 10 heart attackswithin 20 passes because I'm a
bracket guy and everything I likeis usually straight and through.
But we do have once a month,it's called the Upstate Outlaw
Bill Prep series, and it's put onwith Daddy, Dave, and the group.
Every Friday night we do testing andtuning so you can come out and just run

(01:30:05):
down the track and then have a good time.
Saturdays we are doing the no prep.
We're gonna have a junior dragshoot out, you know, it's basically
reserved for um, shows and stuff.
And then Sundays arebracket racing and points.
What we also started on Wednesdaynights, one Wednesday night, a
month, we might go to two where youpay $5 at the gate and $5 per pass.
Anybody can come out.

(01:30:26):
Anybody in this room could go drag racing.
Right now, if you didn't know, one ofthe nice things about your racing is the
car you drive to work, school, whereveryou could take to, to drag strip, and.
Race it.
You don't have to go and makesomething purpose built to see if
you like it, which is really nice.
By the way, I do wantto, uh, mention Bruce.
He puts on races over at Empire.
I was there last year and heis the most detailed oriented

(01:30:47):
guy I've ever worked with.
It.
He puts on a great show.
So quick, three, two Sportsman seriesand what, uh, June, July, August of
September at Empire and it's, it'sa great race and, uh, it's well ran.
So, but come see us at Skyline.
Uh, I don't know if everybodyrealize that from Locktons
Glen, it's less than 15 minutes.
It's off of Route 17 C in between TiogaCenter and, uh, oligo right up, there's

(01:31:09):
a sign out the road and it's reallynice because it's called Skyline Drive.
It's, you see a sign forSkyline Drive called Mel Road,
and that's where we're at.
We also have a half mile concrete ovalthere, leased out to a guy who has track
down in Pennsylvania called Evergreen.
And so the place is up and running it,it laid dormant for I think eight years.
And, uh, now it's back up and runningand the whole crew that we have is

(01:31:32):
a hundred percent behind the track.
We wanna make it work.
We want to bring back the name,well bring back the, the excitement,
push Skyview off to the side, butSkyline, so please come and join us.
The other tracks that I mentioned,go to them too because, um, the drag
racing community is pretty tight.
You could go to a national event and walkright up to the driver and talk to the

(01:31:52):
driver who just went 300 miles per hour,or you could, you know, go into local
pits and this together kind of thing.
It's, it's awesome sport.
I've been loving it since 1987.
But yes, please come see us.
Like I said, thank youKipp, for asking me to join.
This is awesome.
Great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you both for taking the time.
Thank all of you forcoming down to see this.

(01:32:14):
Let's wrap it up and goback to the center Sunday.
Just because we could.
Thanks everybody.

(01:32:37):
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Straight Line Speed - the History of Niagara Dragway (Dean Johnson & Jim Oddy)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Straight Line Speed - the History of Niagara Dragway (Dean Johnson & Jim Oddy)