FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 7, 2010, K-Bomb Centcom, Los Angeles, CA—In what is arguably a drag-strip journalism first, both Cole Coonce’s Top Fuel Wormhole (his collection of drag racing essays), and its predecessor, Infinity Over Zero (an impressionistic history of the Land Speed Record), have both gone electric. Which is to say these may or may not be the first books on the topics to have a presence on Amazon.com’s Kindle store, but, arguably, these are the first essential ones.

With new, paper-less versions of both of Coonce’s rocket-fueled books now specially formatted for e-readers, modern motor-sports esthetes can download these delicious digital documents and enjoy them with the knowledge that the trees spared by the lack of pulp-processing can now serve as emissions credits for burning rubber and fouling spark plugs.

To that end, K-Bomb Publishing, the imprint that produced both the electric and paper versions of these thick tomes, encourages all consumers to brandish their Kindles at the drag races and, as the next pair of monopropellant-powered Funny Cars blasts by, exclaim to anybody who can hear over the noise that with enough pulp-free purchases of Top Fuel Wormhole, drag racing could ultimately be considered carbon neutral.

Indeed, with an electronic acquisition of Top Fuel Wormhole, the drag-racing reader can enjoy Coonce’s exhaustive essays on San Fernando Raceway, Arley Langlo, Lions Drag Strip, “Wild Willie” Borsch, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Shirley Muldowney, “Jocko” Johnson, Blaine Johnson, the “Surfers,” Tony Pedregon, Mendy Fry, John Force and others, guilt-free! A similar, relaxed experience is available with the consumption of Infinity Over Zero, which recounts Andy Green’s smashing of both the Land Speed Record and the actual Sound Barrier in a jet-powered car, and explores the intrepid exploits of other fearless land-speed racers such as John Cobb, Mickey Thompson, Glen Leasher, Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons, Gary Gabelich and more.

These thorough, stout books are available for wireless auto-delivery to one’s e-reader for the nice prices of $6.95 (Infinity) and $7.95 (Top Fuel Wormhole).

And for old-school consumers, hard copies of both Wormhole and Infinity Over Zero can still be purchased, of course, at Amazon and elsewhere. But that’s hardly cool these day, is it?

Top Fuel Wormhole is now Kindle-ready

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MURPHY MAKES HISTORY AND MARCHES TO GLORY (excerpt)

Jim Murphy and the WW Two Top Fueler @ the 1998 March Meet (photo by Cole Coonce)

Goodguys 39th March Meet, Famoso Raceway, March 13-15, 1998—Wam! Bam! Wallakazaam! What a rootin’ tootin’ drag race! And it all boiled down to two dragsters—the venerable awe-inspiring, Jim Murphy-shoed W.W. Two machine against the immaculate fresh-outta’-the-oven Foothill Flyer slingshot (shoed by “Nitro Neil” Bisciglia)—squaring off for all the prestige and glory that is part and parcel of winning Top Fuel Eliminator at the March Meet.

The box score will reveal that Murphy did a masterful job of negotiating W.W. Two past the traction-deficient bottom end and posted a quarter-mile elapsed time of 6.26 seconds to defeat the Foothill Flyer, which began spinning the tires about 300 feet into the run whereupon Bisciglia prudently shut off the engine while savoring runner-up status. But this doesn’t do the March Meet justice, and once the smoke cleared after this final pair of fuelers BA-WHAPPED their way down the quarter mile, it was hard not to reflect on a March Meet that was absolutely loaded with awe-inspiring moments…

Indeed, there were so many highlights, this writer is at a loss as to where to starting litanizing them; The beginning would be the logical place to start, I guess, but that was Friday night’s qualifying session, which was rained out—no epic moments there. But come Saturday, it was hellzapoppin’ right off the bat, courtesy of Denver Schutz. Schutz catapulted his way to the #1 qualifying position of the 8-car show (where he stayed) with an early shut off (!) 6.01 @ 209 mph, a run that was as smooth as a baby’s keister to the 1/8^th mile—in fact, the Eirich, Schiller & Schutz Ground Zero fueler clocked an unprecedented 203 mph at half-track—before tire shake forced Schutz to abort the run. “Everybody’s accusing me of shutting it off early all the time, falling on my ass in order to save (the engine)—well, I’m tired of doing that! But it was vibrating so bad down there, the tires were so far out of balance, I couldn’t see,” said an exhilarated Schutz, champing at the prospect of driving it out the back door come race day. No matter how stunning, however, this wasn’t the run that sent the railbirds into orbit. Nor was the #2 shot by Mike McClennan, who wowed ‘em with a rod-tossin’, crank-charrin’ 6.09 @ 218…

The biggest damage to the spectator’s and participant’s sense of reality transpired during the final session of Top Fuel qualifying late Saturday afternoon, when the wheat began to separate from the chaff. Amongst the 21 cars entered, the list of non-qualifiers as of Saturday afternoon would make for a pretty decent hot-rod harvest unto itself: Champion Speed Shop, Fuller & Dunlap, Pure Hell, The Birky Bunch, the Foothill Flyer, W.W. Two, Steiner & Berger and others were all in line to get tickets to Sunday’s dance.

Dunlap punched his ticket early, clocking a 6.15 at 216 mph, which enabled the Mike Fuller MotorsportsFugowie fueler which was doin’ the monkey at 180 mph through the lights and playing pong with the guardrails while upside down. (Butch was okay… the once-gorgeous race car was actually fairly intact except for a missing rear wheel and slick, an obliterated set of front tires, a bongoed blower set-up and an inch or so of chrome-moly missing off of the top of the roll cage… yikes! Suffice it to say, Butch, who is an excavator and contractor when he ain’t running a Top Fuel dragster, operated very little heavy machinery the rest of the weekend; in fact, nothing more strenuous than a blender. Doctor’s orders!) machine to enter the show—and also kept him out in front of Butch Blair’s barrel-rolling

More high drama manifested when “Nitro Neil” attempted to qualify the brand new Stirling-chassied Foothill Flyer, which arrived at engine czar Ken Castagnino’s shop at 6 am the previous Monday morning—sans motor. It had been a tumultuous, topsy-turvy week for Neil, car owner Pete Jensen, engine donor Ron “Pro” Welty and the rest of the Foothill Flyer’s “Free Mexican Air Force,” as they thrashed on the dragster for five days, ultimately towing to Bakersfield without having even fired the engine.

More than one member of the nitro cognoscenti raised an eyebrow in disbelief as the FMAF worked like an Alabama chain gang to finish prepping the new car, only to smoke the tires during their first two qualifying attempts. All that overtime paid off, however, as Neil silenced the non-believers with an in-the-pocket 6.37 at 224 mph, a clocking which prevailed for 8^th and final position on the eliminator ladder.

Once the euphoria of Bisciglia’s accomplishment was digested, the place went absolutely ballistic after the W.W. Two’s subsequent benchmark performance, the obliteration of the 250 speed barrier, as Jim Murphy turned a time of 6.25 seconds @ 250.00 mph. What makes this feat even more startling is the notion that is was all a mistake… “It was a little unexpected,” said W.W. Two czar, Jim Herbert. “We tried to soften everything just to get down the track—we weren’t in the program—the new combination (Mastodon aluminum heads) seems to be making a little different power curve.”

Herbert’s driver describes this momentous run as kind of a turkey—at last initially. “I held the brake, it was a screwed up run. it was real doggy off the start.” After Murphy let go of the brake handle, the tires started spinning again and the car veers toward the guardrail, so Murphy grabbed the brake again! “It was really screwed up,” Murphy reiterates. But all this tugging on the brakes loaded the motor REAL GOOD… when Murphy finally let go of the brake at about 700 feet into the run (while heroically hugging the guardrail) the motor was makin’ bacon like Farmer John on disco biscuits… “It was pullin’ and pullin’ and pullin’,” said Murphy later. “I was gonna run it right to the light—I wanted to make sure we got in. We didn’t want to be sitting out.”

“I don’t like a lot of speed; speed hurts things, luckily it didn’t this time,” Herbert revealed. (Actually, further evaluation proved they had hurt a main bearing.) “He got a little disorientated down there,” Herbert continued. “The car was still moving at half track on him, he kind of lost where he was at and when it did hook up it started to haul ass.” Herbert tersely doled out praise for his driver: “He drove the wheels off of it; we’re here to be in the show. I’m not a very good loser.” — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Drag Racing USA)

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JIM HERBERT R.I.P.

Jim Herbert plugs his ears (photo by Cole Coonce)

MARCH 3, 1999—It is with great sorrow that I report that Jim Herbert, majordomo of the W.W. Two AA/Fuel Dragster, passed on this morning.

Details are still forthcoming, but apparently it was heart related. The timing of his passing is somewhat ironic because his health had been sketchy for years, but he really seemed to be getting healthier lately.

I was discussing benchmarks recently with some Internet bleacher bums and some folks mentioned the 6.000 that Ted “the Bad Lieutenant” Taylor recorded in the W.W. Two car as a definitive moment in drag-strip history. We would be remiss to mention that Herbert’s hot rod was the second slingshot in the 5’s. He also tuned his latest driver, Jim Murphy, to that 250 mph moon shot at Famoso.

I had the honor of “getting next” to Herbert during the course of my drag strip journalism endeavors—which is to say he would return my phone calls. Straight up, nobody commanded my respect more than this man—and I have had the pleasure of meeting a plethora of both abstract and forward thinkers in a variety of mediums. Herbert, however, had really been in a groove for the last decade or so. It was a real privilege to meet the man as he truly hit his stride.

One of the most epic sights in drag racing was watching Herbert snap the ground wire off the mag and WHAPP! WHAPP! WHAPP! the mighty, beastly W.W. Two fueler would awaken with a roar. Herbert would point the driver (Taylor, Gary Ritter, Murphy) into the beams and with these few graceful and economic hand gestures he would let everyone gathered around the starting line know exactly whom they were reckoning with.

“Epic.” “Graceful.” Hey! We should all hit our marks with such dignity and panache. Jim, the drag strip community will be poorer without your presence. You were truly a hero, whose penchant for setting racers and race fans on their ear was matched only by your humility and modesty.

I can’t tell you how happy I am for you. You had the opportunity to shine like a diamond, but you were never ostentatious. You will be missed. — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Nitronic Research)

A bittersweet victory. (photo by Cole Coonce)

WW TWO IN BAKERSFIELD TEAR-JERKER

Goodguys 40th March Meet, Famoso Raceway, March 13-15—It was perhaps the most poignant final round in the history of the sport…

Facing off against “Wild Bill” Alexander for the honor of Top Fuel Eliminator at the Goodguys March Meet was the W.W. Two AA/Fuel Dragster, the defending champs, who were sans their esteemed point man, Jim “the Lizard” Herbert, who had passed on to the Great Flow Bench in the Sky a mere ten days prior, a victim of a heart aneurysm.

Herbert died with the secrets of his tune-up still locked in his noggin. Defense of the March Meet title was left to his surviving teammates (who were ambivalent about campaigning the dragster in Herbert’s absence but were persuaded to go racing by Herbert’s widow, Cheri) and their ability to unlock and decipher the secrets of a complicated matrix of nozzles, weights and measures that comprised the blown-Chrysler-on-nitro tune-up that had been taken to the grave. Befitting of a man of his stature, the winner of Top Fuel Eliminator at the March Meet was also the recipient of the Jim Herbert Memorial Trophy.

During qualifying, the chances of driver Jim “Holy Smokes” Murphy and the rest of the W.W. Two team transforming their appearance here into a proper wake seemed remote. After three qualifying attempts, they anchored the bump spot with an elapsed time of 6.23, far off the pace set by “Swingin’ Sammy” Hale in the Champion Speed Shop/Juxtapoz Chevy-powered fueler, who had rocketed to an unprecedented 5.87 at 232 mph to snare the pole position.

(As a parenthetical to Hale’s benchmark—“We’re going to bypass the .90s,” is how “Swingin’ Sammy” prophesied the run—bodacious manifold pressure kicked out both the ingress and egress lines of the oil system, creating a geyser of Torco that lubricated the left slick like a banana peel on a back-lot sidewalk. As an oil-blind Hale fought for control of his 230 mph Valdez, jettisoned oil actually doused the driver in the next lane, Circuit Breaker hot shoe Howard Haight, who was busy swapping lanes—not once but twice—with the caroming Champion machine. To reiterate, in addition to Sammy, Howard Haight also received an oil bath… from the digger in the other lane! Howard, who has cut his teeth on a variety of mean machines including the infamous Pure Heaven AA/Fuel Altered, said it was the scariest ride he had ever taken.)

Despite the performance of the W.W. Two machine being well behind the curve of Sammy Hale’s moon shot, during eliminations kismet, providence and perspiration intervened on behalf of Herbert’s survivors… Murphy began the afternoon by zipping past Gerry Steiner, 6.11 @ 215 mph to Steiner’s charging 6.13, 242 mph. (As a consolation, Steiner’s boisterous assault on the lights stood for Top Speed of the Meet.) In the semi-finals, Murphy upped the ante with a 6.09 clocking that dropped Denver Schutz’s trailing 6.29. (Note: FTN would be remiss in not mentioning Schutz’s first-round opponent, Jack Harris in the Dale “the Snail” Emory-tuned Nitro Thunder dragster; these guys qualified 2^nd at a rollicking 6.04 but had traction problems against Schutz. . . )

On the other side of the ladder, however, Alexander, shoe for Frank “Root Beer” Hedge’s Mastercam team the unenviable #5 position on the elimination ladder and pitted Alexander against “Swingin’ Sammy” Hale. But in eliminations the Champion team made a strategic mistake as the Chevy put out a cylinder or two, lost and regained traction and sashayed to a losing 6.54 against Bill’s superior 6.17 at an impressive 234 mph. Despite an aggressive clutch set-up, fate continued to bless Alexander in the semi-final round of eliminations. His competition, Rick McGee in the Tedford, Hester & McGee entry, appeared en route to an easy victory as the Mastercam machine struck the tires on the launch and limped down the racetrack. At 1000 feet, however, as McGee was all alone ten yards from the end zone, he fumbled, striking the centerline cones and was disqualified. McGee’s transgression left Hedge & Alexander with the uneasy task of playing Snidely Whiplash to the W.W. Two team’s Dudley Dooright. . .

Indeed, as Hedge emerged from the undulating clouds of tire smoke en route to his tow vehicle and was informed that he actually had won that heat, he was noticeably shaken and appeared rather distraught. “This is Herbert’s race,” he said, moments before regaining his senses and cranking up both the nitro percentage and the lead on the magneto.

Despite any perceived trepidation concerning spoiling a Cinderella story, the Mastercam machine was loaded like an elephant gun in the final round. The motor was as loud, over-the-top and boisterous as it has ever sounded. The burnout was particularly deafening. As “Wild Bill” pulled ‘er into the beams, the blower straps caught on fire due to a leak out of the left header bank. Starter Larry Sutton (of Lions Drag Strip fame and an absolute Timelord of the Xmas tree) doused the flames with a fire extinguisher and motioned Bill into the beams (!); the blower straps caught on fire again and Sutton hit the extinguisher once more before giving Alexander the kill sign. Sutton then wheeled around and held up one finger to Murphy, signifying a solo shot to victory. It was a touching coda to one of the most emotional weekends in drag racing as crew members gathered around Murphy and the W.W. Two machine in a semi-circle, most of whom raised the right hand and the air and extended their index fingers in salute to their fallen leader. As Murphy popped the parachutes at the culmination of a 6.23, 208 victory lap, railbirds, racers and bleacher bums were openly weeping.

In general, the event was a slam-dunk success. The staging lanes, bleachers and porta-potties were all filled to capacity. Moreover, the impromptu tribute to Jim Herbert was as inspired as it was implausible. But the success of W.W. Two—in spite of the absence of their fallen leader—begs this question: When was the last time you cried at a drag race? — Cole Coonce

(Originally published in Full Throttle News)

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TOP FUEL WORMHOLE is available here.

(photo by Cole Coonce)

“We did it all, and we’ll never see times like these again.”—Dean Batchelor, The American Hot Rod.

At first I thought it was a mirage. Or an apparition. I was suffering from an acute lack of sleep, my disorientation and sensory deprivation amplified by a lack of proper coffee as well as the blinding reflection of the morning sun as it bounced off of the milky-white, crystallized floor of the dry lakebed. I shook my head, threw back the dregs of the caffeine, and blinked. It was no hallucination. There I was at Edwards AFB, deep in the heart of the cruel and unforgiving Mojave Desert, a landscape that a French philosopher once called a “slow catastrophe,” and three paces from my bones was the man who organized hot rodding after WWII on this very same uninhabitable desert. That’s right: Wally Parks, President of the Southern California Timing Association in 1946. Editor of Petersen Publishing’s Hot Rod Magazinein 1948. President of the National Hot Rod Association during its birthin’ in 1951, until Dallas Gardner stepped in during the Reagan Years. And probably the first man to call the linear pursuit of horsepower a “drag race,” way back in 1939 in the Racing News.

I was stunned and I was silent. I did not know how to approach the man. Or, closer to the heart of the matter, maybe I did not know how to approach the myth and the legend that is Wally Parks as he stood there larger-than-life, towering over the proceedings at the most mystical and legendary plot of real estate in these here United States of America.

Ah yes, the mythology. There has been more history, folklore, and mythology concocted at the Muroc Dry Lake than anywhere else on the planet since the days of Apollo and Aphrodite making noise on Mt. Olympus. For it was at this wasteland where the Muroc Racing Association, predecessor to the SCTA, predecessor to the Russetta Timing Association, predecessor to the NHRA, etc., etc., etc., began in 1932, hosting competition between renegade hot rodders from the far side of the San Gabriel Mountains, men who would test their mettle, bravado and mechanical acumen by racing hari-kari across the lakebed, sometimes four or five abreast, kicking up such a furious tempest of dust and debris in their wake that only the leader of the pack could actually see where he was going. The other drivers? Well, crashing into your colleagues and barrel-rolling, hobbling into the nearest hospital in Palmdale, 30 miles away via an undulating washboard of a dirt road, only to find upon your return—assuming you survived—what was left of your race car had been scavenged and stripped down to the frame rails, that was the price one paid for inferior horsepower out there in the Mojave Desert during the years of Herbert Hoover and FDR. This, race fans, was the true genesis of drag racing.

Beyond the isolation of this primeval racing on the lakebeds and just when we thought America had already made the world safe for democracy, a funny thing happened beyond either pond that flanks these here Continental United States—the Second World War. And not to trivialize the battles Iwo Jima or Normandy, but the SoCal hot rodding community also suffered a loss in the War. By virtue of eminent domain, the Muroc Dry Lake, the birth place of drag racing, was claimed by Uncle Sam as a “proving ground” for military aerospace research and development. The pangs of this loss were mitigated by a couple of factors: The dry lakes racers and the car clubbers were migrating to other lakebeds, among them El Mirage, Harper, and Rosamond where they continued “cuttin’ the crystals” during single-file “speed trials” (side-by-side competition was now deemed entirely too unsafe at the dry lakes) nearly every weekend; as well as the fact that at night the lakester guys and the car clubbers were matching wheels at either say, Slauson Avenue or Lincoln Boulevard or Glenoaks out in the Valley; or, as early as 1950, they wuz’ changing rear tires and gear ratios, pouring increasingly generous helpings of nitromethane into the combustion chambers of their flathead Ford V-8s and “draggin’” down at CJ Hart’s chunk of airstrip known as the Santa Ana Drags out in Orange County where, for once, they didn’t have to worry about outrunning the fuzz as well as the competition.

And as Chuck Yeager banged through the palpitating turbulence of the Speed of Sound over the hallowed ground of Edwards AFB (nee Muroc Field) in October ‘47, teenagers continued racing across the alkali crystals of the Mojave, or down the concrete banks of the arid, withered L.A. River bed. Soon after Yeager’s scrotal-squeezing supersonic gonzo sleigh ride, President Eisenhower unleashed the clandestine ramjet-propelled SR-71 spy planes, which would rocket through the heavens over Muroc—50,000 feet high!—at speeds in excess of 2,000 miles per hour, subsequently blaze over the bleached bones of the coyotes in Death Valley, and ultimately descend, minutes later, 300 miles away into Nevada’s notorious Area 51. At Muroc in 1959, NASA unveiled its team of astronauts destined for the moon, the Mercury Seven.

Through all of this, there was Wally, always astute and alert as per the trends of speed-addled youth, be it time trials at the dry lakes, rumbles at the malt shop, or draggin’ at the strip. A man of epic scope and vision, he was deftly plotting the co-option, development and commodification of America’s horniness for horsepower into what Parks called in a April 1950 Hot Rod feature “Controlled Drag Racing,” as administered by his yet to be unveiled NHRA. (The birth of the NHRA itself is part and parcel emblematic of how much mythology is intrinsic to the history of hot rodding. To wit, in 1951 Parks asked Lee O. Ryan, Petersen Publishing’s GM, to compose a fictitious “letter to the editor” expressing concern over the lack of direction in hot rodding. In rebuttal, Parks proposed an organization “dedicated to safety,” while providing the gearhead with a place to race, thus decreeing the formation of the NHRA whilst simultaneously inviting everyone to join.)

Suffice it to say, what made Wally Parks’ presence out at Muroc 1996 interesting was how the NHRA, which began as a nationwide extension of the ethos of the MRA and the SCTA—y’know, bitchin’ trophies for the industrious back yard tinkerer—has metamorphosed into an organization that became a player and a schmoozer in the Multi-National Corridors of Power in America. There are no luxury suites out in the desert. There isn’t even any running water. But as I stood there blinking my eyes, there was Wally…

So the paradox is this: out of the ashes of the Dry Lakes rose the multi-headed Phoenix which is Hot Rod Magazine, the NHRA, National Dragster, the Winston $1,000,000 series, and the “members only” glass-tower corporate suites that lease for $30,000 per event so’s High Society-types can watch the races on closed-circuit monitors while sipping snifters of Napoleon Brandy and eating weenies on a stick. That entire reality is of no concern to the lakebed Bedouins, however. This is because the SCTA and the whole culture of the dry lakes have continued to exist on their own terms for all those years since WWII, albeit with a low profile. In fact, it has been flourishing out at El Mirage with dyed-in-the-wool lake guys supplemented by refugees from the drag-strip wars, veterans of the 1320 who could no longer abide the rampant parts attrition as well as the exorbitant costs of contemporary drag racing. 13,000 gearheads descended upon Muroc on Saturday April 27^th 1996, to symbolically reclaim Muroc, ironically a happening that never would have come to pass without the clout, sociopolitical machinations and handshaking ability of Wally Parks.

And like I say, while wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I stood in the shadow of the exalted hot rodder who embodies the duality of man, the avuncular and towering Wally Parks. I thrust a micro-cassette recorder in his mug, and lofted a softball of a question like, “How does it feel to be back on the dry lakes?” and away he went…

“We’re all absolutely delighted,” sez Wally, “that we’ve had a chance to come back here, because it’s been 55 years since the SCTA ran here. I think having access to this place has got as much value for historic reasons as it has for the satisfaction of running down the course. But the thing we like most is the people who have returned here, who were once up here, and the newcomers who come in to see it. We just think we’ve got 100 percent success and we are very grateful to the Air Base here and the commander for letting us be here.

“Our presence here,” he continued reciting, his towering, lean torso magnificently framed against blue skies and Jet Propulsion Laboratories’ rocket launchers burrowed into the nearby Rosamond Hills, “ties in with research and development programs and their technology and so forth, which is the spirit of Edwards AFB, the test center, which is what this is all about: people testing new ideas. It may not apply to aircraft but it all comes out of the same box.”

Aahh, the Mojave Desert is the perfect backdrop for a powerful oratory, and at 83 years of age, Wally Parks was showcasing his rhetorical skills. But something was a little too perfect about this sermonizing. I wasn’t sure if I was interviewing the man who is not only the driving force behind the SCTA’s wistful return to its Mecca, but also the embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism, or if I was merely on the ass-end of a feedback-generated tape loop fed into a 10” speaker implanted into a cryogenically-enhanced human body, not unlike, say, the walking-talking Mr. Lincoln Exhibit at Disneyland. It was weird—I’ve been dying to bench race with the Man, the Myth, the Legend that is Wally Parks, a complex man, a man who personifies the dichotomy of everything that is virtuous, controversial, banal, and perhaps even disturbing about the Master Capitalists of America, be it Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Dick Clark or Bill Gates. As sandstorms started to kick up and pelt my face with sharp crystals of fossilized mud, Wally continued riffing about America and “the pioneering spirit.” Despite the dust devils he never stopped talking. I have to confess at some point I began to tune out Parks’ monologue about the nobility of Muroc, as the repetitive read-only memory functions of his speech were kicking into high gear. I began to free-associate about Mr. Parks’ pivotal role in the SCTA “taking back Muroc” (at least for one weekend), and I began to wonder if this gesture was not unlike a long-in-the-tusk mastodon going home to his elephant’s graveyard. The speechifying continued, and as I dutifully held my micro-cassette aloft I thought, “Who is this guy? Who am I really interviewing? Machiavelli? Dwight D. Eisenhower? Charles Keating? Charles Foster Kane?” As I write this, I am still not sure…

As the interview with Wally continued, I was overcome by the swirling dust and the heat. As the temperature was climbing into the triple-digit range, the sweat and the sand and the sun block coagulated into this afterbirth-ish goop which seemed to gravitate from my brow into the recesses of my eyes. I tried closing one, then the other, but to no avail. I couldn’t see anything beyond vague forms perpendicular to the earth’s curvature—one of which was talking non-stop (Wally)—all of this tableaux more surreal and bizarre than your typical mirage. Wally was either oblivious or just nonplussed by my fevered perspiring and blinking, the loop tape continuing unabated. I knew this was my only chance to heave a curve ball at the most legendary figure in the NHRA. So as I wiped my eyes, I asked him, “Did you derive more pleasure from your tenure at the SCTA or shaping the NHRA into what it is today?” He answered, “Both, although it’s apples and oranges. One is a non-profit dedication and the other one is trying to keep a big thing going…”

At that moment, with the loop tape mechanism finally disengaged, I felt Wally and I were on the verge of a meaningful dialogue. I was poised to ask him if he felt the longevity of the SCTA was perhaps due to a reaction to the politics and fiscal policies of the NHRA. Fate intervened, however. A senior member of Wally’s entourage (I think it was his sister-in-law) sought relief from the heat and the sand and the noise, and Wally, who had been extremely gracious and accommodating with me, begged off further questions, and chivalrously went to assist the member of his party in distress. I was that close to the truth.

*****

Before, during, and after Wally’s discourse on the nobility of the pioneering spirit, various lakesters, nitrous-oxide powered coupes, land-speed streamliners, and blown Studebakers began their procession across the desert, hurtling across the lakebed towards the timing beams, over a 1.3 mile course marked by scores of pylons. There were hundreds of drivers in pursuit of various Muroc speed records in machines encompassing a multitude of engine, body, and chemical combinations. Among them was Al Teague, windin’ out his Spirit of 76 streamliner in second gear at well over 200 mph—this same combustion-engined contraption clocked a Wheel-driven land-speed record 432 mph out at Bonneville a few years back. Joaquin Arnett, who has been tippin’ the can since the late 40s, also showcased the home-built Bean Bandits nitro-burning streamliner. There were a few vintage “belly tank” lakesters—speed machines crafted out of fuel tanks from P-38 Lightning fighter planes that were liberated out of aerospace surplus yards. There was even a land speed entry from Guam.

*****

All told, before the dust settled, fourteen drivers were initiated into the Muroc 200 MPH Club. This included SCTA v.p. Mike Cook, who raced across the desert in his blown Ford T-bird at 227 mph.  While the eclectic assembly of speed machines continued kicking up gigantic rooster tails of dust, their clockings were announced over Channel 1 on citizen’s band radios, which were employed in lieu of a public address system. It was an interesting counterpoint, the juxtaposition of low-fidelity c.b. radios against the various satellite communication systems and megawatt transmitters deployed by the Air Force. Out of earshot of the “p.a.” and beyond the pylons, I encountered a messianic figure trekking across the desert in flip-flops. It was Robert “Jocko” Johnson, inventor, bohemian sculptor, and mechanical visionary. (In 1959 at Riverside, CA, Jocko stunned the world of hot rodding with an 8.35 E.T. in drag racing’s first full-bodied streamliner, a clocking 3/10ths of a second quicker than any other Top Fuel dragster. Before he could improve on this outrageous performance, the streamliner subsequently self-destructed at Lions Drag Strip.) Out at Muroc, Jocko was on a mission whose dual agenda was thus: a) to show Alex Xydias (proprietor of the “So-Cal Speed Shop” in Burbank) a brand new pocket-sized centrifugal force-powered supercharger, a device Jocko designed to replace the relatively bulky and inefficient GMC “roots” design; and b) to get a sno-cone and beat the desert heat. He invited me over to his tent for tacos later that evening and I graciously accepted.

That night, after consuming more than a few of “Jocko’s tacos” and discussing Jocko’s plan to unveil a streamliner propelled by an 18-cylinder, 25 cubic inch radial motor—capable of 400 horsepower(!)—out on the salt flats, it was time to explore the “proving grounds,” as it were. As the racers put their exotic machines to bed, the campfires, the Coleman lanterns and the barbecues provided the sole source of illumination, besides the constellations and the orbiting satellites (which, out in the Mojave Desert, are visible to the naked eye). I wandered through the pits, blown away by the massive proportions of this congregation of motorheads who had migrated to this uninhabitable air strip in the Mojave Desert. And as I waded through the nomads camping in the barren flats of the Seventh Circle of Hell, I overheard a campfire conversation about Project Mercury ace Gordo Cooper’s appearance on a “reality-based” teevee docudrama about the Paranormal, riffing about his brushes with alien spacecraft while in astronaut training. The winds began to howl, I looked up at the stars and the satellite space stations and continued walking.

I heard music over at another campsite and I followed its call. Dusty Springfield was singing “Son of a Preacher Man” over a car stereo ratcheted into the door panels of a not-exactly-cherry flamed ‘52 Chevy sedan, while a couple of “Go Cat Wild!” retro-rockabilly greaser-types, twenty-somethings who had complete and utter distaste for contemporary fashion and values, were engaged in a high-octane bench race session. At that moment I knew the Muroc Reunion was a metaphor. I stood off in the shadows, eavesdropping as these reactionary rodders debated the fall and debasement of the late Dean Moon’s legendary speed emporium, “Moon Special Equipment,” recently rechristened “Mooneyes” by its new Japanese proprietors, and which may or may not be a bastardization of the translation of “Moon.” At this point, I piped in from the darkness and suggested there was still a decent cam-grinder in the employ of “Mooneyes.”

“The issue is just because one good cam-grinder still works there,” said one lanky car clubber with a thick Cockney accent, “doesn’t mean that it isn’t the biggest sell-out in the history of (expletive) hot rodding, man.”

“Dean Moon was a genius,” his friend burped, “but it makes me want to puke that people are trying to make money off all that dashboard crap they sell behind the counters of these so-called speed shops.”

“What people are building today holds absolutely no interest to me,” returned the Brit, spilling his can of libation. “I came from (expletive) millions of miles away to live in this country because I’m a (expletive) hot rod freak, right? And when I got to this country I was so (expletive) disappointed because the entire (expletive) place had sold out. And everybody is driving Japanese (expletive) cars.

“I came to (expletive) America and I came to Muroc today because I thought it was the last bastion of hot rodding,” the émigré gearhead was gathering steam now, double-clutching his soliloquy into overdrive, “and I think that this is (expletive) great today because shit like this rolled up (points to a ‘32 Model A D/Gas lakester) and made me a believer that hot rodding is still alive. (Screw) all that painted chrome and shit, this is a proper hot rod (points to the ‘52 Chevy sedan). You know what? I hate all this ‘family values’ and wearing shorts with flames on it, like ‘blar, blar, blar’ and ‘blar, blar, blar’ and ‘Excuse me, you can’t have no beer on that site.’ ‘Ex-cuse me?’ y’know-what-I-mean? I ain’t got no kids, I don’t want no (expletive) kids, I don’t want to be in an environment where I have to watch my (expletive) behavior because there might be kids present, I want to go and hang out where the is some old (expletive) proper hot rods, man.”

“Our ancestors,” his pal extrapolated, “much like him, left Europe to do what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it. He came over here, and he found he can’t do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.”

“It’s not a case of that exactly,” the Brit resumed. “It’s a case of indoctrination. It’s a case of the asses who run the magazines these days—the writers are getting paid wages by the suits who run the magazine to say what’s trendy because the advertisers tell them to. So he has to say what is trendy, and it’s like ‘new-(expletive)-stalgia!’. What the (expletive) does that mean?

“Street rodding, as far as I’m concerned, means conforming to the rules the magazines have put down. Y’know: it’s easy to have a 350 Chevy with this person’s steering column, and this person’s (expletive) tie-rod, and this person’s (expletive) blah-blah-blah. That’s not, as far as I’m concerned, what hot rodding is all about, which is hauling shee-it out of a (expletive) junkyard and building a car on the jeeg.”

“Real hot rods don’t have tan interiors,” one of his pals summed up.

“You can build an old-looking car out of new pieces, but that doesn’t make it an old hot rod. Old hot rodding, truly, has disappeared. I think an article, really a lament, on the decline of true hot rodding would be a cool thing because nobody wants to do it—they’re scared to do it, they don’t want to put that in a magazine because they are supported by the people who are selling the parts.”

I reckoned he was correct, no magazine would publish those sentiments. I also told these adrenaline-addled hell raisers that most of their heroes—Alex Xydias, Stu Hilborn, Joaquin Arnett, etc. were in their seventies nowadays, and were probably trying to catch some shut-eye. The most reverent yet politic gesture these hep cats could make would be to turn down their stereo, put out their campfire and go to sleep…

The next morning, after a handful of test runs down the parched mud where NASA, the JPL, and the Southern California Timing Association pulled off their bizarre romantic visions (indeed the only place that could not only tolerate but actually nurture their dreams), the winds kicked in with a ferocity that rendered further speed-record attempts futile. As the mother of all sandstorms blew fiercer and more torrentially, the desert rats collapsed their tents and loaded their belongings into their motor homes, trailers, and deuce coupes and began their journey home. But for one weekend this procession of the Timelords of the Apocalypse, a gathering of tribes seriously in touch with the soul of the Universe, got to play in their Garden of Eden—never mind that the only foliage in this Garden were a few sandblasted Joshua trees out by the rocket launchers.

As the timing officials announced the cancellation of the speed trials over the c.b. radio, I closed my eyes. I could see the plume of thick, charcoal-black death smoke, emanating off of the horizon on the desert floor. And I got the chills as the stinging pricks of the torrential sands continued to dig into my face. Aerospace. Jocko Johnson. Wally Parks. Project Mercury. Rockabilly Anarchists. Sonic Booms. The SCTA. Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Drag Racing. Mach One. The Bean Bandits. They were all the same thing, big chunks of the Southern California Experience, just expressed in different ways out at Muroc. It was all a twisted, glorious manifestation of what the Mercury Seven called “Go! Fever,” a sickness that starts out innocently enough as an intellectual exercise to debunk physics via downforce (with a co-efficient of drag) or propulsion or torque, anything man, just hit the throttle!, a fever so mesmerizing that its victim becomes caught up in his quest for speed, speed, and more speed, until the rational and linear thought processes have been superseded by raw desire, damn the torpedoes and damn the consequences, I want to live man!, even if it means dying, so turn up the boost and gimme some nitro! Jocko Johnson spit out the quote that defined the existence of these veterans of the dry lake sandstorms. Over turkey meat tacos the night before he said, “The more creative you are, the closer you are to God.”

Anybody who tells you that soulless corporations are a necessary ingredient to the pursuit of horsepower has never stepped foot on the fossilized dry lakebeds of the Mojave Desert. Those who have seen and tasted the elements of the dry lakes—sandstorms, whiskey, rocket engines, nitromethane, and maximum velocity penis-shaped land speed vehicles—as they coalesce on a lunar landscape in the Mojave Desert, will tell you this: The sands will come again. Just ask Jocko. Or Wally Parks.

(Author’s note: I must acknowledge a serious debt as per literary sources that informed this article. These include: The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White (Henry Holt and Co. Inc.); High Performance by Robert Post (John Hopkins University); and The American Hot Rod by Dean Batchelor (Motorbooks International).)

(Originally published in Super Stock & Drag Illustrated)

(excerpted from TOP FUEL WORMHOLE: THE COLE COONCE DRAG STRIP READER, VOL. 1)

The “Wild Bill” Alexander Interview

by Cole Coonce

"Wild Bill" Alexander (photo by Ron Lewis)

This story is one of growth, transformation and alchemy as metaphor. Defined as “a medieval chemical philosophy having as its asserted aims the transmutation of base metals into gold,” the process of alchemy involves the charring of metal, a procedure that the man who came to be known as “Wild Bill” Alexander witnessed repeatedly from the cauldron of a cockpit. Indeed, nobody has encountered—and dodged—more molten metal than the bold and angry prince who answered to the name “Alexander.” Every trip down the drag strip was a potentially explosive exercise in metallurgical sorcery, which saw the alchemist himself grow and mutate from Hot Rod Hooligan into hell-bent Speed King and Conqueror to, finally, Elder Statesman of the Nitro Wars.

Alexander began his ascent into adulthood with a bad mojo. As a dyslexic schoolboy from a broken home, Bill sought comfort and camaraderie in the Bel Airs, one of the many ubiquitous car clubs that sprouted up in SoCal during the 1950s. Concurrent with leaving home at 16, he finally found a field he excelled in—and a potential outlet for his prodigious anger: Speed.

His buddies talk about Alexander’s precocious aptitude for wrestling with a hot job. “He was racing my ‘34 Vicky and it had a 3-speed on the steering column,” one Bel Air member remembers. “The gearshift lever broke off in mid-shift and he never even blinked. I was riding in the passenger seat and I couldn’t believe it. He just tossed it aside and continued shifting with a nub on the column.”

In one of the great symmetries of the era, the unsavory street racing favored by the Bel Airs thrived in an impromptu arena that was nothing if not a civic embarrassment: the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. Traditionally, rivers are florid metaphorical tableaus upon which life and culture flourish. Think of the Nile and its fertile lands which gave rise to the Pharaohs of Egypt, among them Alexander the Great. Then think of a narrow piece of muck and concrete that serves no larger purpose than that of a glorified drainage ditch. Yes, although it is known as the breeding ground of nothing except perhaps a case of dysentery, the L.A. River gave rise to the career of “Wild Bill” in the same way that the Nile enabled a rampaging young Pharaoh also known as Alexander to conquer entire empires.

At the concrete delta, Alexander’s reputation grew while outrunning not only car clubbers but also the fuzz. One night, Law Dogs surprised the river-bed drag racers and attempted to broom the juvenile ne’er-do-wells into paddy wagons. The hot rodders peeled rubber and commenced to scattering like excited particles in a science experiment. Forced to improvise, Alexander resorted to scampering in his coupe like a coyote up the dusty bridle trails of Griffith Park and up into the Hollywood Hills. . .

The chaotic, dirty gear-jamming of the L.A. River ultimately yielded to properly sanctioned speed contests at El Mirage, Bonneville and San Fernando Raceway. While operating a drill press during the week, the drag strip was where Alexander’s star shone brighter still. Part working-class hero, part ultimate cockpit chimp, “Wild Bill” was subjected to and rode out the effects of imperfections in tire technology, as well as structural, metallurgical and thermodynamic failures. But he survived the frequent bouts with carnage in style: Shoeing Ernie Alvarado’s Shudder Bug, Bill stood down the notorious and fabled Greer, Black & Prudhomme AA/Fuel Dragster for Top Eliminator at Lions December 8, 1962, a dragster eliminated by only 7 other drivers. After crashing at Fernando in ‘63, he returns to the strip and, under the aegis of horsepower-monger Jim Brissette, is newly christened “Wild Bill” Alexander as he sets Top Speed of his career in his first lap back.  Later he sets Top Speed of the Universe, arguably at 202 mph, and then indisputably at 205.

Occasionally back in the 60s the drag racing press referred to Bill as Alexander the Great. This was apropos, as the precocious terror who became king of Macedonia at the prime age of twenty had an insatiable appetite for destruction and decimation. “Wild Bill” similarly had a scorched-earth policy. For reasons he wouldn’t understand until much later in life, he was anti-social, misunderstood and kinda’ mad at the world. Nobody escaped his agitation: competitors, officials or even teammates.

But, heck, after leaving a wake of wanton bloodshed and genocide, even Alexander the Great eventually mellowed and could be found dancing nude at the tomb of Greek poets. And after retiring as a journeyman in 1971, as the sport of drag racing took a turn Bill wasn’t comfortable with, Alexander returned to the drag strips in the ‘90s with the genesis of California’s front-motored “Prostalgia” Top Fuel wars. But his comeback is distinguished by the same jones for speed that characterized his first tenure in the hot seat; moreover, it is enhanced by a kinder, gentler demeanor and a new lust for life. Indeed, as runner-up at this year’s March Meet at Bakersfield, while driving for “Root Beer Frank” Hedge’s Mastercam AA/Fuel Dragster, Bill posted his career best elapsed time of 6.08 seconds.

"Wild Bill" Alexander and his Nitronic Research 5-Second Club shirt (photo by Cole Coonce)

*****

So some of the guys in the Bel Airs tell me you used to race on the L.A. river bed.

Alexander: Oh yeah (nonplussed). Generally on Friday night. At the time I didn’t haven’t a car. My buddy, Gary, had his ‘34 Victoria. Stan had a ‘57 Chevy—brand new—and we’d go down there and race with Tony Nancy, Floyd Lippencott, Jr. and Tommy Ivo, and all these guys and just street race in the river bed. It had this green slime down there so we had to find a spot with the least amount of green slime in order to race. Whoever’s side had the least amount of green slime won, usually.

Then we went to the River Road—which is Forest Lawn Drive now. We’d get 4 or 500 spectators down there, pit areas, the whole thing.

But it was more than just the L.A. River. It was Glenoaks Blvd…

Alexander: When we were street racing there was a Frostee (Foster’s) Freeze where everyone hung out. That’s when I had my ‘34. You’d park yourself and if some guy came by with a hot car, there was a signal right there. He’d have to stop and you’d just pull out next to him. You’d race down Glenoaks as far as Brand Blvd, turn around and pull back into the Frostee Freeze.

How did you make the leap from street racing and running from the law into climbing into a digger?

Alexander: My brother had built a ‘41 Willys to run the lakebed (El Mirage). He got drafted and left the car at home. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to touch it but instead I—whoop—took it out to the lakebed. It was kind of a dog; it ran 127 mph. A friend of mine said, “Let’s get the rulebook and check it.” We looked at the rulebook and we could take a 265 Chevy and de-stroke it 1/8th of an inch and get it down to 259 inches, put a blower and an injector on it and we could run it in the same class, C/Altered. We did. The record at the time, if I’m not mistaken, was 129 and we took it out and ran 155. Just shattered it. Then we went to Bonneville and ran 172 and then it took back to El Mirage and ran 181—in a ‘41 Willys coupe that went everywhere but where you pointed it. It was the most ill-handling thing—of course, I didn’t know any better because I had never driven anything out there.

After El Mirage one day, on the way back we went to San Fernando to run it and Ernie (Alvarado) was there. The next weekend they came and said, “Hey, you want to go to Long Beach?”  Ivo runs 8.99—it was the first 8 second time (on gas)—in a dual engined, unblown Buick. Ernie, who was a roundy-round guy, went, “Oohh, I like this.” The next weekend they came by and said, “Hey, you want to go to Long Beach again? And how would like to drive a dragster?”

When I was 14 my brother-in-law, Marty Elvehoff, had a slingshot altered that he was doing body work on at his house. I sat in it and I told myself, “Someday I’m going to drive one of these.” So when Ernie asked, I finally had the chance. So we go to Kent Fullers’ and we start building an aluminum body for it. We go down to the river road, fire it up and we had put the main jets in backwards. It was trying to hydraulic the motor. I’m down there trying to turn the fuel shut-off valve on and off, trying to make it run and it goes Ka-Blooey! and kicks the rods out of it—steel rods!  We oiled down the river road… never even got it to the race track.

That had to be a portent of things to come.

Alexander: Oh yeah. So we build a new motor for it, we’re getting ready to go to the races at San Fernando, loading the car up and the phone rings. Ernie’s dad had just died. Obviously, we didn’t run. That lasted almost a year. Ernie and his dad had just gotten close—it just devastated him.

Oh no.

Alexander: Finally, we got around to running it.  We take it to San Fernando, I leave the starting line and you talk about a shock. It probably went out about 400 feet and I’m off the throttle, out of it, dead player. Get down to end and the guys come down and ask, “How was it? How was it?”  I said, “Aw, bitchin’.” Lying through my teeth. . . ly-ing through my teeth. “You want to make another one?” “Yeah!” Lying again. We go back and cool the motor down (we were running on gas), make the next run, go about 700 feet and the comfort zone is gone—I’m petrified—CLICK! It ran 145 or 147 and I’m making the turnoff and I’m thinking there is n-o way I will EVER get this thing to the end of the track.

A blown Pontiac on gas?

Alexander: A blown Pontiac on gas. Probably at that time, the most state of the art car built—Kent Fuller built it. So after the second run, they come down and ask, “How was it?” “Bitchin’! I loved it!” Still lying through my teeth. “You want to make another one? “Yeah, okay… (under his breath) Oh, God. . .”

We go back and r’n’r the thing, cool it down. We go up to make the last pass. The gas record at that time was 168 mph and it turned 165 mph—and I got it down to the end. I shocked myself. Doing that convinced me that I could do it.

Were there any other pivotal moments?

Alexander: Well, shortly thereafter I met my first wife. The only reason she went out with me was because I drove one of those cars with a parachute on ‘em. We got married soon thereafter. So now I’d ask Ernie, “Are we going to run the car this weekend?” and he’d say no. This went on four or five weeks in a row.
What had happened was Ernie didn’t want a married guy driving for him. He didn’t want the responsibility. So he pulled the plug on me and put Tommy Ivo in. Tommy drove it that winter until the March Meet.

Was it still a hobby at that point or were you able to actually get some grocery money out of it?

Alexander: It was strictly a hobby. But after the March Meet, the car sat in Ernie’s garage for four months and I got the brilliant idea to tell him, “Give me your garage, give me your push car, give me your trailer, give me the race car and I will turn it into a Top Fuel car—with my money, it won’t cost you a penny.” Duh. Dumb idea, right? I didn’t have a pot to piss in, I’m married with one, soon to be two kids. He said, “Okay.” So every penny I could beg, borrow and steal went towards converting the injector over: new nozzle, new barrel valve, all that stuff so we could run it on fuel. Edgar Hugglebuss and I went out to Long Beach every Saturday night and that thing would go 200’ and it would turn right. So I’d get out of it. Edgar said if he had insurance he’d drive it. Right. That really pissed me off. So I told him, “I’m getting this (expletive) down there. It’s either going to the end or it is going to crash—one or the other, I don’t care anymore.” So I legged it on down there and about the 300’ mark, it turned right and I turned left and it went right through it. It did the same thing on every pass I ever made with that car. It was just one of those idiosyncrasies. From then on we went down for a long time and set Top Time or Low E.T. and then we’d get beat. Until a 32-car showdown there where we went and beat Greer, Black & Prudhomme. That was our first win and it seemed like we almost couldn’t get beat after that. Until it crashed.

So from late ‘62 and into ‘63, you were among the elite fueler guys.

Alexander: None of us felt that way. At that time we were a bunch of kids having fun—a bunch of kids who knew we weren’t going to live past 35. With Ernie’s car, I never took a penny, although it made a ton of money.

So you didn’t quit your day job at this point?

Alexander: It never dawned on me it could be possible. All the money went into the racing account which Ernie ended up keeping after I crashed. But after that I always took 33%. I did not drive for anything less.

Tell me about the crash.

Alexander: Mickey Thompson saved my life. The very first time we tried to run at Long Beach the inspectors looked at what was one of the first over-the-head hoop rollbars and they didn’t like it. So they called Mickey on the radio and he said, “If you put two bars halfway up the rollbars down to the rear-end mounts, I’ll let you run it.” So we put two “sissy rails” on it. That’s what prompted the body to be designed the way it was. Ernie hated those sissy rails so much. Lujie Lesovsky (Indy car builder) built the body up on the sides and into the parachute pack to hide the sissy bars. He said, “I can’t just stop here,” like most of the guys did.

So you’re saying this actually precipitated the design of, say, Stellings & Hampshire.

Alexander: Ernie’s car was something that everybody went off of and made better. Ernie’s car was kind of boxy. The Greer, Black & Prudhomme car was a little slicker—it looked a little smoother and nicer. Everybody smoothed ‘em out, but Ernie’s was the first of its kind.

Until that Sunday at the Pond in April of ‘63.

Alexander: Right. In those day we ran 15 or 16 pounds of air in the rear tires. We made the first run and broke the track record—mile an hour and E.T. Came back for the first round and instead of 15 or 16 we ran a pound less. “If that was good, this ought to be better.” Same thing, Low E.T., Top Speed, track record. Come back the next round, it’s a pound lower. So screw it: “If that was good, this ought to be really good.” Went out and did the same thing. Come to the final round and one of the last things I remember is that we were another pound lower. My theory is that the tires finally got so low that it spun the wheel in the tire and at half track started spitting tire out and kicked the right hand tire off, blew it up, it drove it into the dirt, nosed in about 1000 feet and ended up clearing the flags over the finish line and then all hell broke loose. It just dug in and catapulted. Flat out, it blew a right tire.

After it catapulted, it came apart like a cheap watch. The front end broke off, the engine took off. People told me that the chutes came out when it was 20 feet in the air. When I got stopped, my hand was still on my shoulder like I had pulled the chutes. They did a magnificent job of getting me out of the car. Dave Wallace and Harry Hibler (track personnel) saved my life. Harry looked at me and said, “Goddammit, don’t you die.” I rolled my eyes back in my head and he said, “You son of a bitch.” He thought I had died. They hauled me off to the hospital—we called it the butcher shop. Meanwhile, a friend of my wife’s called her and said, “You and Renee can come live with us.” My wife said, “What are you talking about?” “I just saw on teevee that Bill got killed out at San Fernando.”

(silence)

Alexander: Yeah, heavy stuff. Ernie’s damn near dead—he’s in shock and was in the next room.

Besides that dark day at the Pond, how was it getting the Shudder Bug down the strip?

Alexander: That car taught me everything I know today. It was an evil car—I didn’t know that at the time. At that time, it was state of the art. But it was an evil little bastard. It taught me how to feel the car, rather than let the car act and then I react. It taught me to turn the wheel before the back of the car ever reacted. It taught me to be ahead of it—to feel the car. Ernie’s car taught me so very much—but it also taught me that life is very precious.

Maybe that’s the car they should use in the drag racing schools. So when you came back, that was the advent of “Wild Bill”?

Alexander: When I first drove again I went faster and quicker than I ever went in my life.

Out of the box?

Alexander: Out of the box. I was worried that I would have this big flashback where I was upside down and on fire. It didn’t happen, I just legged it on through there like it was no big deal. I don’t remember the guy’s name who was in the tower, but he said, “Oh, that’s old ‘Wild Bill’ for ya’.” I got stuck with the name.

This was with Hippo (Everett Brammer) and Jim Brissette, right? How did this partnership come together?

Alexander: Hippo went to Jim Brissette and said, “Would you put your motor in my car if I get Bill Alexander to drive for me?” He said, “Sure.” Then he asked me, “Would you drive my car if I get Jim Brissette to put his motor in the car?”

We started out with a 354 and would smoke the tires, went to a 331 and would smoke the tires, and finally ended up with a 300-incher and the thing ran good. We could finally control the horsepower. But through all of that Jimmy decided, “Screw this.” He ordered a brand new Woody Gilmore car, 144-inch-long come-catch-me-throw-me-down-top-of-the-line, with the engine about 3 inches off the rear end. It didn’t have immediate success. Fastest car in the world for maybe two years, quickest car in the world for maybe four months.

The reputation was that the car would stay together for maybe three rounds.

Alexander: It would haul ass in qualifying. The first round nobody wanted us; second round everybody wanted us because they knew the rods were coming out at half-track. It was because Jimmy was making so much more horsepower and the car worked so good that it worked the motor that much harder. It would have main bearing problems, which became rod bearing problems. Jimmy tried everything—we drilled the main caps and had extra lines going into the main caps—and then the fingers started pointing. “Bill is driving it too hard.” For the last eight months it was finger pointing, not by Jimmy so much, but by his friends and people at the races. Yeah—we’re running 206 and a tenth of a second ahead of the field sometimes and “he’s driving the car too hard.”

What was your deal with Brissette?

Alexander: 33 percent, bottom line. I packed the parachute and drove.

The consensus was that Brissette wouldn’t settle for anything but big numbers.

Alexander: Exactly. Blowing the engine up and catching it on fire—that didn’t bother me. Blowing the rods out, getting oiled in, I’m okay with that. Ernie’s car, every run we ever made, I got oiled in. But then we started blowing blowers off—this became rather serious. Actually, it became very serious.

We went to Fremont one night and whistled the sucker down through there, get about 900’ and ka-blooey: We split the blower right down the middle. Come back, put the spare on it, go out there and whistle it through…  ka-blooey: We split the blower right down the middle. Some guy who had already qualified goes over and pulls the blower off his car and goes “plink!” “I want to see you guys run over 200 mph.” Jimmy throws that sucker on the motor, run it down there till’ about 1100 feet, it sneezes and splits that blower. Somebody else walks over with another blower. Etc., etc. By the final, we leave the starting line, I’ve got the other guy covered and the thing is really hauling ass. I’m thinking, “All right!” And I’m whistling down there…  Ka-blooey! It goes off. The blower lifts and comes back and hits me right between the eyes. The entire blower and the injector. It falls in my lap, it pulls my hands off the wheel and into my lap. This all takes place in a millisecond. I lift the thing out of the car, throw it out on the cowl, grab a hold of the steering wheel and I’m still trying to drive. There is oil on my goggles—they are all cracked by now. I take one hand off, wipe off my goggles. “Okay, I’m still fine.” The blower goes, “clink, clink, clink” hits the tires, goes back in the air and hits me right back in the eyes again. This all sounds like bullshit, but it went “boink, boink.” I went, “Aww,  s-s-h-h-it.” It hit the tire again, came back and hit me in the face and that is the last thing I remember until the ambulance guys were taking me out of the car.

When I became conscious the first thing out of my mouth was, “Did I win?” “No, you lost.” “Aww, s-s-h-h-it.” It ripped my finger from the knuckle down and split my nose from my forehead down. It was going, “phfffllttt. . . phfffllttt. . . phfffllttt.”

And it was more of a mercenary deal at this point?

Alexander: If it hadn’t have been for drag racing, I wouldn’t have been able to have a wife and raise two kids. I worked during the day and I made more on the weekends than I did during a whole week. I was able to take care of my family and provide for them much better than I ever knew.

Who did you drive after Brissette?

Alexander: I didn’t drive for a couple of years. Then Bob Sbarbaro called me from San Francisco. I would commute—all expenses paid. Plus 33 percent. I started driving for him but we didn’t get along. Bob was very outgoing and loved everybody. I was very withdrawn and really a homebody. (At this point) I did racing for a living—not because I enjoyed it.

So it would it be safe to say that you enjoyed being in the cockpit, but not socializing.

Alexander: The only thing I liked about racing was driving the car. As far as socializing, I didn’t do it. Maybe people got the wrong impression of me. But that was me and has been me—until not long ago.

I couldn’t tell you why I was the way I was. I didn’t know any different; I didn’t know any better.

Why were you so mad at the world?

Alexander: I had a shitty childhood—a gawd-awful childhood. Walking the streets when I was 7 or 8 years old. (Details deleted at Alexander’s request). I hated the world and I was an angry, very upset young man who took my anger out on anything or everything.

But driving a fuel car had to be the ultimate release.

Alexander: It was the ultimate release, but as soon as I got out of the car the anger came back. It was a lousy way to live. It ruined my first marriage.

With a co-efficient of drag racing.

Alexander: Not really—that’s what I thought. But in hindsight, I ruined that marriage. I was a pissed off young man who didn’t know why he was angry. I didn’t realize this until six or seven years ago. I have been trying to turn my life around for six or seven years.

Isn’t it interesting that the front-motored fueler thing has come back and you have a chance, perhaps, to undo some things?

Alexander: This is where you are exactly right. This is where I have a chance to make up for a lot of the bad things I said and the bad things I did. As far as moaning and bad-mouthing of sanctioning bodies—I made a lot of mistakes.

So there you were in the late ‘60s and the sport is getting more professional. How come you didn’t ride that wave? Did your outspoken manner make it difficult?

Alexander: I had a wife and two kids I had to be responsible for. I had an opportunity to go on tour but I was afraid I couldn’t make enough money to support them. My marriage was shaky, so I thought I should stay home and try to salvage it—which wasn’t salvageable.

Do you regret that choice?

Alexander: No. I’m glad I did it. I would have liked to have taken the chance but I wasn’t about to gamble with my wife and kids.

Is what you’re doing now providing a venue for some of you guys who felt that you didn’t get a chance to ride out that last wave as you saw fit?

Alexander: This has let a lot of us do what we wanted to do when we were younger—and maybe a little more talented. But it is allowing us to fulfill maybe a dream, or maybe the reality of something we stopped doing then because of families, business or whatever.

It takes a certain kind of mind to run a nitro car, particularly to tune one…

Alexander: Now you’re out of my league. I know how to drive and pack the parachute—and mix nitro. And I try to stay away from mixing nitro because I just assume pour straight nitro in it.

"Wild Bill" Alexander, in the Ground Zero Top Fuel dragster at the 2003 March Meet (photo by Cole Coonce)

(Originally published in Drag Racing USA)

Listen to the interview with Cole Coonce here: http://www.kerosenebomb.com/Cole-Coonce-World-Racing-Roundup-Interview.mp3

(Top Fuel Wormhole can be found on Amazon.com and lulu.com)

In reviewing Top Fuel Wormhole, online motorhead daily BangShift.com (“The Car Junkie Daily Magazine”) pontificates thusly: “Part travel log, part history lesson, part social commentary, sometimes frustrating, always thought provoking, and ultimately an awesome read, Top Fuel Wormhole; The Cole Coonce Drag Strip Reader is one of the most challenging and interesting books on any form of racing, drag or otherwise, we have read in some time.”

The review concludes that: “This is the most unique and thought provoking drag racing book we have read in 10 years, if ever. We say that even though we had to hit the thesaurus a couple times to figure out what the hell the guy was saying. The forward is written by Robert Post and it’s clear from the get-go that the not one punch will by pulled. None are.”

BangShift.com: Book Review: Top Fuel Wormhole, the Cole Coonce Drag Strip Reader

Top Fuel Wormhole is available on Amazon as well as here: K-Bomb Store

In the words of some wise savant: “Get you some!”

Top Fuel Wormhole available on amazon.com

by Cole Coonce

(PUBLISHERS NOTE: THIS STORY TO BE INCLUDED IN VOLUME 2 OF THE COLE COONCE DRAG STRIP READER)

by Cole Coonce

Drag Strip Girl

Zukovic and I were kickin’ it in some rather trendoid hipster coffee klatch at Melbourne and Vermont in East Hollywood, drinking espresso and discussing the troubles with the age we live in. Zukovic is a failed screenwriter who now stacks cars with a forklift at the Pick-Your-Part in Santa Fe Springs.

Our conversation turned to the topic of Hollywood, particularly how the studios had portrayed hot rodders on celluloid.

I told Zukovic about a videotape I had rented the night before, a piece of B-movie pap from 1956 called Drag Strip Girl. As I riffed on the plot of this forgotten cinematic flop I started experiencing a hazy, unsettling feeling of spooky familiarity. I assumed it was merely side effects from the fourth cup of Cafe Gavina, but I was wrong. No, this particular bout of disorientation was different than the others. I continued to reveal the plot synopsis and when I got to the obligatory part about “so the old folks are tryin’ to close down the newly opened drag strip, and to make things worse the drag strip chickee challenges two j.d. hoodlums to a street race” when — BAM — this uncanny sense of deja vu thumped me right between the goalposts of my mind.

“In fact,” I spluttered, “They were running red lights through this very intersection!”

Zukovic was dubious: “Sure they did, Coonce.”

“No, I’m serious,” I replied. “The landscape was different, but I remember seeing a street sign in the movie that said ‘Melbourne’. And there was this red brick apartment building just like that one.”

I pointed across the street to this decrepit, crumbling tenement. “Okay, minus the earthquake damage, but I swear it was the same building.”

I felt like Dorothy back in Kansas at the end of the Wizard of Oz, but I continued my riffing. “Drag Strip Girl is your basic 1950’s malt shop America love triangle,” I told Zukovic, “but with a twist. In order to cross-collateralize sex, hot rodding, rock `n’ roll, and the spirit of wild youth — all under the guise of promoting ‘proper drag racing’ — American International Pictures staged a really reckless street race, including one character hopping out of one car and into the gal’s car at maximum velocity on this very strip of asphalt.” Everything was getting clearer now. “The race started right up there,” I said, pointing to what is now the House of Pies on Franklin and Vermont. “And it ended past Sunset, around Fountain—you know, where the blue Scientology hospital is.”

At this point our conversation segued into other moments when the disparate worlds of Hollywood and hot rodding intersected. I mentioned that Robert E. Petersen was once employed as a publicist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before he simultaneously started both Hot Rod Magazine and the NHRA with Wally Parks. And that John Frankenheimer, the director of Grand Prix and The Manchurian Candidate, was slated to direct a film biography of drag strip hero “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, a projected shelved due to “creative differences” between Frankenheimer and “Big Daddy” hisself. But beaucoup other drag racing “projects” did in fact get produced by the moguls of Hollywood: The Ghost of Drag Strip Hollow, Bikini Beach, Funny Car Summer, Two Lane Blacktop, Heart Like a Wheel, ad infinitum. Invigorated by the coffee and conversation and jonesin’ for nitromethane — even if it was only a glimpse of raw fuel on videotape — Zukovic and I devised a plan: we would each procure as many drag racing movies as we could possibly locate in the cobwebbed vaults of our local video stores and then rendezvous at my pad. With that accomplished, I would round up all the obsessive-weirdo film buffs and race fans that we knew. This motley intelligentsia consisted of an assortment of eccentric bohemian-types, among them: Ikky Shivers, a malcontent documentary filmmaker from Death Valley; Sarah Clayton, a local unemployed beatnik painter; Cuz’n Roy Gittens, a traveling harmonica and washboard player from Ranlo, North Carolina; Sean Vigle, an out-of-work cultural anthropologist from Echo Park; and Professor Prina, an instructor who teaches a class called the “Films of Keanu Reeves” to hopelessly art-damaged college students in Pasadena.

It would be a weekend-long cathode ray orgy of drag racing motion pictures. And at these screenings, unlike your local walk-in theater (“Quiet—the audience is listening”), running monologues during the movie was not only tolerated, it was encouraged… As the gearheads and film theorists sauntered into to my living room I warned them that we would plow through this motion picture marathon — Zukovic and I accumulated 19 videocassettes — until the last reel had been projected or until the coffee maker hydrauliced. The assembled riff raff nodded and mumbled in agreement, seeming to understand the seriousness of the task at hand: not only would this impromptu film panel chronicle the marriage of cinema and hot rodding, we would also look for the definitive drag racing movie — if it even existed.

DAY ONE

As I dimmed the lights for our first feature, the aroma of Cafe Bustello brewing in the coffee maker permeated the entire house. It is a smell that is second only to the pungent punch of nitromethane, and it seemed to be a fitting surrogate for the sensory delights of the drag racing experience. A brew richer than Top Fuel dragster driver Eddie Hill’s fuel mixture, the members of this rag-tag roundtable would consume a 55-gallon drum’s worth of this go-faster nectar before the weekend was over.

I figured some light escapist entertainment would ease us into this marathon, so I slipped Bikini Beach into the VCR. This 1964 piece is another teen exploitation flick from the shrewd crew at American International Pictures, a film distribution company run by that infamous titan of the tawdry, Samuel Arkoff. Drag racing was merely an incongruous backdrop for Arkoff and director William Asher to stage a typical teenage love triangle story: Surfer Boy (Frankie Avalon) meets Bikini Girl (Annette Funicello) at a beach with no old people. British Rock Star/Dragster Driver a/k/a “Potato Bug” (also Avalon) woos Bikini Girl away from Surfer Boy. Surfer Boy drag races British Rock Star for rights to Bikini Girl.

“This Potato Bug character is really just a thinly-veiled composite of all four of the Beatles, isn’t he?” Zukovic wondered.

“Well,” I said. “You’ve got to realize that this is 1964, and the Beatles just commandeered the top three positions of the American Top Forty simultaneously. In 1964 America, if you weren’t a teenage girl, you were a little freaked out by this development.”

“Yeah, but the Surfers just called Potato Bug a ‘crumpet eater.’ Don’t you find that a little xenophobic?”

“Maybe, but the British Invasion is about to ruin surf music, some would argue rock ‘n’ roll itself. We were really lucky the Beatles didn’t kill drag racing, just music.”

Meanwhile Don Rickles, cast as a drag racing renaissance man (beatnik artist, chassis builder, “motorologist,” track announcer, and malt shop proprietor) known as the “Big Drag,” is loaning Frankie Avalon use of the Greer, Black, & Prudhomme Top Fueler for his big race against Potato Bug. Clayton, currently an artist in Los Angeles herself, is groaning at the caricature of splatter painters such as Jackson Pollock in the guise of the “Big Drag.”

“Why are they trivializing Jackson Pollock? He was really cool.”

“I think they are spoofing “Big Daddy” Roth and Von Dutch more than Pollock,” Vigle replied.

“Hollywood will always ridicule what it’s incapable of understanding,” Zukovic chimed in. “The genius of Arkoff and A.I.P. is that it made a lot of money by being completely asinine.”

While Zuke rhapsodized about the “intelligence” of the Hollywood money-changers, the “Big Drag” was showing Frankie and his surfer pals how to operate the dragster:

“Don’t pull out the choke.”

“Why not?”

“Because it releases the parachute.”

The movie eventually cut to exterior shots of Pomona and the 1964 Winternationals, resplendent vintage footage of “Big Daddy” Don Garlits in his gunslinger-black “Wynn’s Jammer” AA/FD, “TV Tommy” Ivo, the Albertson Olds Special, and Chris Karamesines’ “Chizler” rail, all juxtaposed against the serene San Gabriel Mountains.

“Every time I went to drive-in movie theatre in the deep South and I saw these beach movies with dragsters racing alongside those majestic mountains, or whenever I heard a song by the Beach Boys on my AM radio, I knew there was something going on in California I needed to experience,” Cuz’n Roy solemnly intoned.

It was time to put in another movie and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

Since the sequencing of our feature festival was entirely free-form and improvisational, I decided to step back further in time to 1956 and subject the panel to another A.I.P. teen-o-rama time bomb, Hot Rod Girl. Set at the old San Fernando Raceway, which was also nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the story line of this B-picture was as predictable as rush hour traffic.

“Rifleman” Chuck Connors stars as the cop with a conscience. Hot Rod Girl’s raison d’etre is a parable about the perils of street racing (which we all know will degenerate into a youth-on-the-loose “chicken race”), compared to the sanctioned, chaperoned sanctuary of legitimate drag racing. Clayton dismissed it as “malt shop propaganda,” but I thought the footage of San Fernando Raceway was worth the histrionic Hollywood moralizing. Of course A.I.P. really revels in the gratuitous carnage, while hypocritically admonishing the movie-goer to drive the straight and narrow. Yeah, right… In 1956, after watching Hot Rod Girl at the drive-in on Foothill Boulevard, how many teenagers do you think realized the error in their ways, and then obeyed the traffic laws all the way back to the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank?

As our feature reached its drag strip denouement, I sensed I was losing the attention of our audience. Too many moral lessons, not enough funny cars on fire, I reckoned. It was still early, but I hoped Funny Car Summer would rejuvenate the troops.

It did not. A 1973 16-millimeter documentary shot at OCIR, Irwindale, Sacramento Raceway, and Utah(!), Funny Car Summer has very little moralizing (or dramatic tension for that matter) to get in the way of the drag racing. Ostensibly, this flick concerns itself with the trials and tribulations of independent funny car racer “Fireman Jim” Dunn. The night racing sequences are pretty underexposed, leaving the viewer in the dark as to who is racing, both literally and figuratively. Occasionally someone in our panel could make out which racecar we were watching, or even who the driver was, say, “Big John” Mazmanian or Pat Foster in Barry Setzer’s flopper, but those moments were fleeting. I really enjoyed watching an endless parade of anonymous header flames panning across the screen— I found it rather mantra-like. Unfortunately, there is a thin line between Zen and tedium, and my opinion as to which side of (un)consciousness FCS landed on was among the minority consensus. (Only Cuz’n Roy shared my enthusiasm, but he likes listening to a radio that has been simultaneously jammed to two different frequencies.)

To relieve the monotony of the out-of-focus night footage, the filmmakers cut to shots of Dunn’s entourage caught in a sandstorm at a drag strip in Salt Lake City. After that nosedive, the filmmakers regurgitated and re-cut footage seen earlier from OCIR, this time as a montage underscored with hopelessly overwrought folk music, schmaltzily sentimentalizing the plight of our racecar driver. For sheer cinematic dreariness, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal has nothing on Funny Car Summer.

Zukovic was unimpressed: “What manner of community-college film school bullshit is this?”

“This is art, my friend.”

Another pair of header flames shot across the screen.

Clayton, the artist, was equally dubious: “This may be art, but these guys might want to figure out how to pull focus on their camera before they shoot another documentary.”

As we argued about the artistic merits of Funny Car Summer, one of the out-of-focus header flames crashed into the guardrail at OCIR. The next shot was of Sush Matsubara smoking a cigarette, pensively contemplating the twisted, bent remnants of the once-gorgeous “Pisano & Matsubara” nitro-burning flopper. I maintain that this scene was worthy of Marcello Mastroianni reflecting on the futility of life at a cafe in Rome in Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2. Only Cuz’n Roy agreed with that sentiment. We both really liked this movie. He even liked the folk music.

Our symposium was starting to get really restless at this point, so I resorted to a film that had very little to do with drag racing, but had everything to do with gratuitous sex and violence: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! This 1966 flick, directed by soft-core pornography purveyor Russ Meyer, squeaked into our hot rodding festival by the narrowest of prerequisites: the film’s sports car and karate sequences, featuring militant go-go dancers, were shot at the El Mirage dry lakebed in the Mojave Desert, where drag racing was born.

Indeed, anti-heroine Tura Satana and her fellow femme fatales scoff at a sports car enthusiast who is racing against the clock—ala the Southern California Timing Association—and challenge him to a real race across the desolate desert floor. Then, not only does Satana smash his prized stopwatch, which he won at a speed trial, she also delivers a lethal karate chop to the poor chap’s neck.

“I think Jim Dunn would have kicked her ass,” Ikky said.

“Yeah, but Frankie Avalon wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Vigle replied.

Zukovic was way beyond this conversation: “What you gentlemen are missing here is how this movie has nothing to do with violence against men, and has everything to do with debunking the various myths about Southern California in the ‘60s.”

This aroused Vigle’s sense of anthropology. “You mean that a pornographer like Russ Meyer has a more accurate perception of the Southern California youth culture than the Hollywood movie corporations?” he asked.

“It is all pornography,” interrupted Clayton, the artist.

“This is well beyond corporations or pornographers co-opting and trivializing a culture they did not understand, and, perhaps more importantly, a culture that is now gone forever” Zukovic replied.

“In the 60’s you stood a better chance of finding a go-go dancer at El Mirage than a British Pop Star like Potato Bug at the Winternationals,” Ikky chimed in.

“Whether it was Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or Bikini Beach that tapped into the psyche of the youth culture more realistically is irrelevant,” Zukovic added. “The point is that once the film studios did tap into what was happening at Zuma Beach or San Fernando Raceway or El Mirage, that was the beginning of the end.”

“Even in the ’60s,” he continued, “the problem with rock ‘n’ roll, surfing, and hot rodding is not that it has gone corporate…no, that’s not it, the problem is that it’s gone. Over. Kaput. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s not that ‘things go corporate, those darn corporations…’ Well, things only go corporate when they are all over.”

“What?”

“If the corporations don’t understand what is going on, then what is going on doesn’t go corporate. I wouldn’t pin the decline of the surf culture and the car culture on Hollywood.”

“What would you pin it on?” I asked.

“Pin it on this: In 1964 there was a left turn into the future that never happened. Only now you realize it didn’t happen because it wasn’t supposed to happen. People then try to get ‘it’ back of course, which is human nature. But there is no ‘it’ to get back. By watching Bikini Beach, you realize how much of it was utter and complete mythology.”

Zukovic was really getting warmed up: “It’s called The Fall, people. It’s called ‘there was a time when the dew was upon the grass, when things were pure AND NOW LOOK WHAT HAS DONE AND GONE AND HAPPENED — THOSE DARN CORPORATIONS HAVE GONE AND CORPORATIONALIZED EVERYTHING.’ That’s the oldest myth in the world. Surf city never existed,” he thundered, as Ikky and Sean stared at their beers, “it just existed in these movies—‘We got to go bring surf city back.’ No, there was never ‘two girls for every boy,’ like these movies and the song imply, it’s a metaphor goddammit, you don’t literalize a metaphor. Not only did that time never exist, it never could exist, that’s why everybody wants it back. If the dream is realizable, it’s not worth dreaming about. Cappice?”

“And at that point the media and the moviemakers feast on the carcass of what was a ‘scene,’ or ‘movement,’ or whatever you want to call it?” I asked.

“Ex-act-ly. It’s a paradoxical thing. Something happens and while it’s happening you don’t know its happening. And then once you realized it happened, you are never gonna’get it back. The minute it’s conscious, it’s gone. That’s when the Hollywood schlockmeisters coming swooping down from the hills to take your baby away like a hungry coyote. That’s when the co-opt surfing, and drag racing, and humping in the back seat of a Woody station wagon and put music to it.”

“This coming from a man who stacks cars at a junkyard,” Clayton said.

The mood got pretty heavy — heavier than the monstrous 4-wheel drive, 4-engined Oldsmobile dragster “T.V. Tommy” Ivo drove in Bikini Beach. I felt it was time to shut down the festival for the night, despite the fact that everyone was wide awake, and despite the protests of Professor Prina. The Professor had been pretty quiet all night, perhaps because he was upset about recent rumors of Keanu Reeves marrying film mogul David Geffen during a closed ceremony in Canada. Or perhaps he was saving his commentary for the screening of Parenthood, the film in which Keanu Reeves crashes a Super Comp dragster.

Regardless, it would have to wait until the next day, when we would continue to watch the films that documented a culture very dear to our hearts and souls—from an era that, according to Zukovic, may or may not have even happened at all.

PART TWO

It had been an exhausting weekend. I felt like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, except instead of being soused on sauce I was buggin’ on bean juice. The reason for copious caffeine intake was thus: I had invited to my house a trail mix of crusters, pop culture scholars, life’s losers, beatniks, and other East Hollywood riff-raff—in other words: inspired amateur gearheads and film critics—whose function was to not only find the definitive drag racing movie, but also to catalogue, classify, and ruminate on the offspring of the marriage of Hollywood and Hot Rodding—a decidedly warped and deformed spawn.

Our mission was half finished. The night before this half-cocked (and half-crocked) cognoscenti had sat through a endless mélange of drag racing flicks. Some were inspired (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), some were tedious (Hot Rod Girl), some were both inspired and tedious (Funny Car Summer). But as fun as the previous night’s session was, things got dark, philosophically speaking, at the end of the night. We felt frustrated in our attempt to find the definitive piece of drag strip cinema, our Citizen Kane. Our Raging Bull. Even our The Right Stuff.

Most of the flicks I screened the night before were shot and set in the 50’s and 60’s. Zukovic (the failed screenwriter who is now employed as a forklift operator at the Pick-Your-Part in Santa Fe Springs) proceeded to insinuate that perhaps what is noble and interesting about the glorious art of drag racing is too abstract to capture on film. Maybe what happened out in the fog at Lions Drag Strip was just a mirage. And that celluloid is incapable of capturing the image of a ghost.

Regardless of how accurately the movie industry portrayed the digs, those were heady days in a magic place: Southern California, the home of the teenage utopia, as evinced by Cuz’n Roy’s (the itinerant washboard musician) in his moving speech about lonely nights spent at the drive-in theater in Ranlo, North Carolina, watching footage of the Winternationals haphazardly grafted onto the plot of the Frankie and Annette vehicle Bikini Beach. Us Californians never knew we were kickin’ it in Xanadu, but the strip and surf-starved residents of Creaking Mailbox, USA were made all too aware of the blithe opulence of the California dragster culture via the films produced by American International Pictures, films that played well to horny teenagers at drive-ins south of the Mason-Dixon line.

DAY TWO

It was now Sunday night, coincidentally the night before the Academy Awards. Last night our “film symposium” had endured an endless loop of mostly Eisenhower to Nixon-era drag racing films, from Hot Rod Girl to Funny Car Summer, none of which unanimously satisfied the discerning tastes and palettes of our hard-to-please critics. Clayton, the local unemployed beatnik painter, dismissed most of the movies as “sock hop damage.” Ikky Shivers, the documentary filmmaker from Death Valley, questioned the technical accuracy of the dragster crash sequence in Bikini Beach. Professor Steven Prina, the scholar who teaches a class at Art Center in Pasadena called “The Films of Keanu Reeves,” does not really like or understand drag racing. Despite this cultural handicap, the Professor is willing to ruminate about Keanu’s role as a dragster driver in the movie Parenthood. Cuz’n Roy was the most lenient in his assessment of the movies, nodding approvingly at Annette Funicello in Bikini Beach as well as toasting “Fireman Jim” Dunn during the sandstorm sequence of Funny Car Summer by raising his bottle of “Mickey’s Big Mouth” to the ceiling. Ironically, the film that had the least to do with drag racing, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, reaped the biggest accolades from our panel during last night’s screening. That was a sad comment on the state of cinema.

It seemed obvious that the fictional accounts of drag strips were mauled and mangled by the graceless paws of the clueless Tinseltown Coyote Gods, so I reckoned we would commence the second day of our festival with some documentaries. When I mentioned that our first couple of films were independent documentaries produced without any input from Hollywood Sheckies, the mood and tenor of the forum brightened considerably. This countenances of this once-sullen bunch lit up like Chrondek Timers as soon as Hot Rod Action hit the screen. Produced by Hot Rod Magazine and NHRA magnate Robert Petersen, this flick handsomely chronicles the 1966 NHRA Winternationals, the Bakersfield March Meet, the U.S. Nationals, as well as the NHRA World Finals in Amarillo, Texas. This includes priceless footage of the late Mike Sorokin in the awe-inspiring “Surfers” AA/FD, Mike Snively in Roland Leong’s formidable “Hawaiian” Top Fueler as well as “Sneaky Pete” Robinson’s triumph as World Champion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Interspersed with the digs are some extremely cool clips of Craig Breedlove launching his rocket-powered salt flat racer into a lake during an epic but futile pursuit of the Land Speed Record at Bonneville.

“Boy Howdy!” shouted Cuz’n Roy, spilling his coffee on my couch as Breedlove waved from the tail section of his speed machine, most of which was submerged in water.

“How would you like to race in the desert at 600 miles-an-hour on the desert floor and then almost drown?” asked Sean Vigle rhetorically.

“I can’t believe they call that monstrosity the ‘Spirit of America’,” bellowed Ms. Clayton.

The cognoscenti all expressed their approval of Mr. Petersen’s documentary, the only qualm came from Professor Prina who considered the timbre of Keith “Wide World of Sport’s” Jackson’s voice-over “an acquired taste—like escargot or butyl nitrate.” Whatever…

Despite the Professor’s neuroses I sensed we were in a groove, the vibrations were positive, Ikky asked for more Cafe Gavina (a brand of bean juice that is particularly hard to find in Death Valley). “Don’t waste time with Hollywood Productions,” I told myself, “stick with the documentaries — they are far more surreal than anything the Film Studios could offer.”

I jammed in something called American Nitro into the VCR and hoped for the best. And I got it. This guy was not unlike Funny Car Summer, but ultimately more successful i.e., no maudlin folk music obnoxiously underscoring the plight of the independent drag racer, and no gratuitous sandstorm footage. Shot mostly at Fremont Raceway, this gem contained plenty of mid-70’s era funny car racing. Also included in this work, however, is an extremely chilling interview with engine builder Ed Pink who discusses the horrors of oil fires in the early days of drag racing, particularly the incident which claimed the life of Top Fuel hero John “the Zookeeper” Mulligan at the U.S. Nationals in 1969. That was a dark day for drag racing, and the footage from this segment rattled the collective soul and psyche of the race fans and film buffs gathered in my living room.

“This too was the ‘Spirit of America,’” Zukovic solemnly intoned.

“His passing was as tragic to the drag racing community as the school teacher’s who died in the Space Shuttle was to Middle America,” replied Sean Vigle.

“Beebe & Mulligan were the #1 qualifiers at that race with a 6.43, they had the rest of the dragsters covered by 2/10ths of a second,” Ikky mentioned.

He then whispered, “It was perhaps our Hindenburg crash.”

It got pretty quiet for a few moments.

“Wow, you guys really take this stuff seriously. Do any of you remember where you were when you heard about the news about his death?” Professor Prina wondered.

“Yeah…I do,” I said softly.

Yes, the “Zookeeper” pushed the parameters of a Top Fuel car in the 60’s and did not survive. His clutch exploded, a not-uncommon phenomena at the time, perhaps due to strain from the massive horsepower. But a lot of envelopes were subjected to stress tests during that era, both on and off the ol’1320. The racing movie that embodied the social chaos of that time would have to be Two Lane Blacktop. If Mulligan’s demise was symbolic of the end of drag racing’s innocence, then Two Lane Blacktop seemed to be a fitting segue out of American Nitro.

Indeed, this 1971 flick could have only have been shot in post-Altamont America. Starring two rock stars as outlaw drag racers and directed by Monte Hellman, this is the only feature that captivates the zeitgeist of Vietnam-era drag racing. Helleman’s coup was that this feat was accomplished not only without Hollywood’s money, but also without much plot or dialogue either. In fact, there is more dead air in this flick than a baseball broadcast with Marlee Matlin calling the play-by-play.

The “plot” consists of a cross-country street race between Warren Oates in a fresh GTO and the Tuinol tag-team of James Taylor and Dennis Wilson in a primer-colored ‘55 Chevy. The first hot rodder to arrive at a D.C. Post Office pockets the pinks slips to both vehicles.

If the plot seems like an exercise in minimalism, the dialogue is excruciatingly sparse, especially from the rock musicians that were hired as actors. Dennis Wilson (the drummer for the Beach Boys) as “the Mechanic” has one phrase he repeats like a mantra throughout this art film: “I got to check the valves.”

James Taylor, as “the Driver,” at least gets to stretch out with relatively long-winded speeches such as: “He better find himself a relief driver or he’s in trouble…unless he has some uppers.”

It is Warren Oates, however, who delivers a performance worthy of Laurence Olivier. Cast as “GTO,” the pathological liar-cum-methedrine addict-cum-street racer, Oates expertly delivers such literary gems as “If I’m not grounded pretty soon I’m gonna’ go into orbit,” as well as “What are you tryin’ to do… Blow my mind?”

But is the following exchange, as GTO waves off the Driver’s symbolic offering of a flask of hooch, that sums up the tone of this teeth-grinding road picture:

Driver: “I just thought it might relax you while you drive.”

GTO: “This is competition—I got no time.”

Shortly thereafter the rock stars, now with a jailbait hitchhiker in tow, stopped at Shelby County International Raceway to make enough bread “grudge racing” to finish their cross-country endeavor. As the camera panned across the pits, bleachers, and the Tennessee drag strip itself, it looked like Cuz’n Roy was getting a little misty-eyed. This was a resplendent montage of something us Pacific Rim race fans had never cast eyes upon: down ‘n’ dirty drag racing in the Deep South. As Dennis Wilson got under the hood to “check the valves,” Roy grabbed his washboard and harmonica and commenced to improvising a impromptu soundtrack. It sounded a little like “Dixie,” but none of us were really sure. Professor Prina looked very afraid, his knowledge of the South limited to watching Deliverance.

“Y’know,” Ikky said, oblivious to Roy’s corn-pone film score, “Dennis Wilson used to drag race a Super Stocker at “the Pond” a/k/a San Fernando Raceway back in ‘66.”

“Yeah but his acting ability—and I use that phrase loosely—is stiffer than his surfboard,” replied Sean Vigle.

At the conclusion of Two Lane Blacktop I noticed that Professor Prina was still shaken and nervous from Roy’s behavior. To appease our resident academic I finally jammed Parenthood into the tape machine and hoped the race fans could sit patiently through the non-drag race sections of this feature—in essence, the first two acts.

Ostensibly a comedy about the trials, tribulations, and hijinks of life in suburbia, Parenthood was scoring few points with an audience that had been subjected to an overabundance of coffee, Mickey’s Bigmouth’s, and videotapes during the last 24 hours.

“Wasn’t this turkey directed by Opie Taylor?” Vigle asked the Professor.

“If you mean Ron Howard, yes it was,” he replied.

“He also directed Grand Theft Auto,” Ikky bellowed, “now there was a movie.”

“Grand Theft Auto was utterly banal, reductive trailer-park dross,” argued Zukovic.

“Maybe so,” Ikky replied, “but at least there was some action.”

“My, how the mighty have fallen,” someone said.

“Quiet you guys,” Clayton admonished, “ Martha Plimpton just found the helmet that Keanu has been hiding from her.”

“Todd! You promised! No more drag racing!” Plimpton barked shrewishly.

“So I lied!” Keanu shot back.

“What depth!” shouted the Professor.

The argument continued to rage onscreen, Keanu acknowledging he wasn’t really a housepainter after all; in fact, he made his money as—get this—a Super Comp driver. This admission really brought the house down.

“P-l-e-e-a-s-s-e,” groaned Ikky.

It only got worse. The film cut to a meet at Lakeland, Florida. Keanu was racing his rear-engined digger, now with his fiancée’s approval. Reeves was on a nice run, when, apropos of nothing, he crashed into the guardrail at half-track, destroying the car. The symposium booed en masse, except for the Professor, who looked hurt and confused.

“He’s even shittier at driving than he is at acting,” said Vigle.

Ikky was appalled at the technical inaccuracy: “What the hell was that? A Super Comp dragster just doesn’t turn left like that.”

“In Hollywood films they do,” Zukovic countered.

“I’m offended at the implication that everything is hunky dory once he quits drag racing,” I said.

“I think you people are missing the point,” Professor Prina backpedaled. “Although Keanu’s role as the racecar driver is inconsequential, and from an engineering standpoint the race scenes are implausible, that’s not the crux of this picture. What this film does is it promotes Family Values, Patriotism, and …”

“So did Joseph Goebbels and the Third Reich,” said Clayton, the feminist beat painter.

I ejected the cassette immediately. It was late and I was in no mood to watch the plight of white people in the suburbs.

But I was in the mood to try and wrap up this festival on a positive note. I gingerly inserted something that would appeal to everyone, including feminist painters and pop culture scholars: Heart Like a Wheel. This feature is the drag racing corollary to “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Indeed, Frank Capra would be proud.

This epic is the Shirley “Don’t Call Her Cha-Cha” Muldowney story. Thanks to spot-on technical advice and scintillating stunt driving from “T.V. Tommy” Ivo and “the Unsinkable” Kelly Brown, for once Hollywood captured the atmosphere of the digs. The arc of the storyline chronicles the rising tide of female liberation in the 60’s and 70’s as well as the career of one of drag racing’s epic figures.

The crashes and fires play well, there is nothing gratuitous about the carnage at all. More importantly, the casting of Bonnie Bedellia and Beau Bridges as the “Bounty Huntress” and the “Bounty Hunter” is perfect.

“What a cool story,” Clayton gushed. “This whole tale could be a blueprint for the feminist’s paradigm.”

I told her that there are dozens of drag strip dramas that would make excellent fare for films: Garlits, “Wild Willie” Borsch, the Story of Pete Robinson, etc. But it was my hope that Hollywood would just leave drag racing alone because, regardless of the Shirley Muldowney movie, Hollywood would just screw these stories up by casting Keanu Reeves as Pete Robinson or something.

Zukovic agreed. He said, “In the annals and folklore of drag racing there lie a plethora of dramas and anecdotes equal to or greater than any screenwriter could summon, but at this point in time, moments before the new millennium, let us hope that Hollywood leaves drag racing alone—let them find some other source of fodder for their gristmills.”

Zukovic then bid us adieu, and went home to get some sleep before his shift started at Pick-Your-Part in the morning. The rest of the panel also left.

As I closed the door behind them I thought about some of Zukovic’s comments he made the night before after watching Bikini Beach. He maintained that “Surf City” (or “Drag City,” if you will — the two seem interchangeable if you grew up on a farm in the Midwest which seemed to be AIP’s demographic, the only way to get your ya-ya’s out was stump-breakin’ cattle out by the feed trough) never existed, it only existed in the crass, reductive screenplays of hack Hollywood producers and screenwriters anxious to cash in on any “youth movement” that could be packaged and marketed like a hula hoop.

Let’s get real: for all practical purposes Drag Strip Girl, Bikini Beach, The Ghost of Drag Strip Hollow, as quaint and kitsch as they may be, are the cinematic equivalent to Nacho Flavored Licorice Whips. The real drag racing epics were shot without the influence of Hollywood number-crunchers and bean-counters. I.e.: Two Lane Blacktop, Funny Car Summer, American Nitro, and Hot Rod Action.

Sure, Arkoff and his ilk portrayed the surface elements inherent in the drama of the drag strip: speed, danger, sex. (Let’s face it: capturing Top Eliminator is not too far removed from slaying dragons—either way you got to bag the trophy chickee, whether she was the proverbial Rapunzel or the proverbial Linda Vaughn, or in the hot rod movies, a stacked ex-Mouseketeer in a bikini named Annette.) But when you add up the elements of speed, youth, chrome, and fire—set against a backdrop of either the majestic San Gabriel Mountains or the placid, smooth Pacific Ocean—its sum is greater than the total of its parts. That is what Hollywood never captured—the intangibles which separate Camelot from The Last Picture Show.

Zukovic had argued it was all a mirage, but he did not grow up at the drag strip and I did. There was something transcendental going on out there. Some would argue a Renaissance. Thus drag racing possessed something beyond the ken of the opportunistic Sheckies of Movieland — something intangible that these lardass cigar-chomping “movers and shakers” could never grasp. Drag racing had soul. Hollywood never did (at least not since Orson Welles was run out of Tinseltown on a rail in the 1940’s). And when these disparate worlds met, Hollywood was successful only at eviscerating the soul out of drag racing, leaving a hollow form that was then stuffed with the base, crass trappings of exploitation filmmaking. The men-in-suits considered the digs a trivial, white trash culture…

But I know there is something noble about the pursuit of horsepower. It is a crucial, virtuous component to the human spirit. Indeed, the inquisitive nature of humanity is exemplified by the passion and prowess of the likes of Madame Curie, Michelangelo, Descartes, Einstein, and even good ol’ Ayn Rand. During the last American Renaissance, which I maintain transpired at Lions Drag Strip in the 1960’s, there were physicists, artists, and engineers who could rub shoulders with M. Curie, Einstein, Da Vinci, et. al. Human beings like Beebe & Mulligan. Skinner, Jobe & Sorokin. Mickey Thompson. Marcellus & Borsch. “Big Daddy” Don Garlits. “Sneaky Pete” Robinson. Keith Black.

And yes, you can see these men and their machines in various Hollywood epic misfires such as Bikini Beach and Drag Strip Girl But in these movies you will not see what made these men tick. Or tinker.

The End. –30-

(Originally published in Super Stock & Drag Illustrated; slated for publication in Top Fuel Wormhole: The Cole Coonce Drag Strip Reader, Vol. 2)