Today’s planned column needed a little extra work based on newly discovered info, so I began peeking into old email folders for a spark of inspiration to take its place, and what I found horrified me.

Last October, I wrote a column about my first brush with an actual drag race car that lived in a garage across the alley from my childhood home in Culver City, Calif. The car turned out to be a fairly famous one, the Snodgrass & Mahnken Psycho Mustang, an altered-wheelbase early Funny Car/fuel altered kind of thing. At the time, I was still more a student of the sport through magazines and more than a year from seeing my first actual drag race, but I’ll never forget that seminal moment in my drag racing “career.”
 
I asked you all to share your earliest memories of hanging out at the shops and garages of your neighborhood heroes and am aghast that I never actually got around to sharing some of your wonderful stories. As you’re well aware, I deeply value the interaction with my readers and the input they add to the column, so, 11 months later, here I am to rectify that oversight. Enjoy!

Steve Hess: “My first encounter was on my purple Huffy five-speed rail while cruising the apartment parking lots in Rockville, Md., one day. I was probably about 14 as I recall, and the nearest dragstrip was 75-80 Dragway in Monrovia, Md. I spotted what turned out to be a Henry J. Because I had a paper route that covered the area, I had seen the car before but never anyone working on it. This was back in the good ol’ days when even upscale apartments still allowed occasional auto maintenance to take place in plain sight in the parking lot. I pulled a U-turn and muttered something like, ‘Is this your car? What kind of car is it?’

“The owner answered, ‘A Henry J.’ I watched him move some parts from interior to trunk and moved around to get a look at the engine, and then youthful tact failed. I noticed some rust at the top of the cylinders and commented, ‘Looks like you'll have to do some cleanup to get that engine back together’ or some such.

“I was met with a glare, then a ‘What drag racing cars have you worked on? Or do you just read magazines, son?’ Unperturbed, I answered, ‘I read magazines.' 'Oh yeah, which ones?' he asked. Being politely factual, I answered ‘Hot Rod, Car Craft, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated …’ before I noticed he wasn't really interested in the complete bibliography.

“Although I never talked to the owner again nor ever saw the car run at 75-80 or any of the other strips in Maryland, that encounter broke the ice successfully. Years later, I drove past a house near 75-80 and saw a dragster outside the garage on several occasions. I finally stopped one day and spoke to the owner; turns out it was a Comp eliminator dragster. The owner asked if I would be interested in working on the car and going to the races with him. ‘You'd have to learn how to pull the heads off the motor, but we will teach you,’ I recall him saying. He also showed me his racing calendar, which included a trip to North Carolina, as I recall. I went home and told my dad about this fantastic opportunity, but he was appropriately skeptical and practical. ‘Where will you sleep? Will he pay the hotel bill? Will he feed you? How will you get to the tracks and back home? Will you miss any classes?’ (I was attending the University of Maryland at the time.) I was confident I could work out these trivial details, but after a few phone calls, nothing of the opportunity ever came to fruition, and the car disappeared from that home, at least. So much for my first brushes with the drag racing fraternity, but they were the start of a lifelong love. When I attend NHRA divisional points meets or a national event, I spend most of my time talking to the racers because that is the most enjoyable part to me -- it is right up there with watching the actual racing. Those early encounters broke the ice, and to this day, I am always able to dream up something to say when I approach a racer I haven't talked to before or see one I know in the pits.

“I wonder if I can find a purple Huffy five-speed rail to rebuild ... ”

Steve Knight: “While it wasn’t in a local garage, it was at a local dragstrip, Dallas Dragway in Dallas, Ga. My dad took me there when I was about 8 (1980-81) for the Saturday evening match races. While I don’t remember the names, there were several floppers there; for a kid that took the toasters and alarm clocks apart, getting to watch those guys service the engines (they even took the valve covers off! Amazing to my young mind back then) was more of a thrill than I can describe, but what hooked me was a friend of my dad. He had a Vega bracket car with a small-block, they rigged up something for me to sit on, and I got to ride shotgun for a cruise through the pits and up to the staging lanes. He’d clear its throat every now and then and even blipped the throttle in gear once or twice; at that point, I was done for!

“While I’ve never been able to involve myself to my level of satisfaction, I’ve been as close as possible ever since, coming full circle this spring at the Southern Nationals when I was a guest of the Parts Plus Top Fuel team. Long and short, I got the dime tour of the pits and to closely watch the crew service the car (I was a career mechanic before hopping to the corporate side with Standard Motor Products). I was no less thrilled than 30 years ago, culminating with a ride in the tow vehicle for a qualifying pass, complete with my son holding Clay’s [Millican] helmet for the ride back to the pits. Care to guess who’s currently hooked on drag racing?”

Gary Crumrine: “My indoctrination to auto sports started when I was about 11 or 12. A guy down the street was wrenching on a '32 coupe and needed someone to hold the wrench up top as he ratcheted the floor from below. I was promised the first ride in the car as a reward but never got it. Sweet ride, though. I grew up with friends like Kevin Olson of Midget Hall of Fame fame. My brother and Kevin were schoolmates, so dirt-track racing was high on the list. I also worked the local oval track where stock cars were king, and because the owner of that track also owned a piece of the local dragstrip, I used to frequent that track a lot as well. A little older, I worked for guys that raced Formula Fords and Formula Vees in SCCA. So I have a pretty well-rounded bunch of life experiences that probably would not have happened if I had not held that first wrench for the hot rod '32 coupe.

“My youth was spent either watching race cars, working on them, or going to car shows and drooling over them. I may not have learned the Gettysburg Address, but I could tell a Pontiac from a Buick, tell you the year and model of all makes, and knew my way around a V-8 or two. My cousin and I were car nuts. We didn’t play baseball or shoot hoops like the neighborhood kids. We were pulling fenders off old Novas, rebuilding carbs, wrenching on our rides from sunup to sundown. How we graduated school, I have no idea. We used to skip school and drive 150 miles to pick through antique junkyards. As long as we made it back to school by the time classes were over, we were good.”

Bill Jenkins, left, and Ronnie "Hut" Hutter, circa 1971

Bill Carrell: “Being from northeast Ohio -- land of the gassers -- I lived in the same town as Ronnie ’Hut’ Hutter of Rumble Guts and Canned Heat fame. In the '60s, he had a small shop in Chardon, Ohio, at the corner of Route 6 and Cherry Avenue. Ron’s was one of the first to have a dyno, and from time to time, you could hear them putting a car through the paces. This new technology acted like the Pied Piper to a 12-year-old, and soon we would be hanging around outside just to get close to the screaming machines. Eventually, we were invited in after the testing to look around. Many a night, I could hear them testing from my house a mile away. The noise eventually became too much for neighbors, and he had to move outside of town. Word got around that there was going to be a gathering of cars late one night to caravan over to Indy, and it was plotted that we would sneak out to watch the gathering at about 10 p.m. This was done, and the bikes all converged at the designated spot like platoons converging on a battlefield. We rode down to the shop only to find they had already left. Getting back home, I found my bedroom light on, the window closed, and the front porch light lit. Mom answered the door and said to wait for Dad. I’ll spare you the grisly details as today it would be labeled child abuse.”

The Guzler in Bristol in 1967 with Jerry Baltes driving

Army Armstrong: “My first recollection of drag racing, and when the hook was set, was in 1965. I was swimming in our local pool and heard a noise that I thought was thunder. As it was a cloudy day with rain in the forecast, I went and showered and got dressed. As I was dressing, I heard it again and again. But it wasn't thunder. It was something I'd never heard before. Being 12 years old, I was quite the adventurer and decided to see where it was coming from and what the heck it was. When I came out the front door of the pool facility, I heard the sharp crack again. Hmmm, definitely from the left, so down the street I went on my Schwinn. Suddenly, there was a very loud noise again coming from my left. Through the intersection, chute out, at probably 180 mph, flashed by Bud and Don's Guzler Top Fuel dragster!
 
“Wow! What the heck was that? I was stunned; I couldn't even move. Then the smell hit me and ruined me for life. Nitro! It was a dizzying experience.
 
“By now, they had pushed the car back to their garage. I snuck up to the corner of the garage to get a better look at this missile. They were talking while they took off the valve covers, something about running the valves; better check the bottom end, too. As I found out later, they had their police buddies block off the streets, and they made a pass getting ready for the Big Go at Indy.

"Later, I would spend time hanging at Don Mattison's garage. I still see Don once in a while, and he keeps threatening to build a Cackle car. I sincerely hope he does, as he was a very dominant part of Midwest Top Fuel action."

Rick Lind: “I was introduced to drag racing in '73 or '74 by my dad. He took me to Irwindale as a kid when he would go with the Joint Venture dragster, owned by his high school friend Bill Carmichael and driven by Larry Sutton. My first memory of the car was the front-motored car pictured that Bill ran out of his mom's garage in Norwalk. They sold that car and moved to a rear-engined car that ran in Pro Comp in AA/DA. It seemed like we were at Irwindale every Saturday, and I even got to travel a couple times with them to Sacramento and Santa Maria. I was lucky enough to go with my dad to work on the car and got to help a little at the track, cleaning the car and other minor details.
 
“My dad also ran a back-motored '27-T roadster with a 296-cid flathead called the Cookie Monster at the Antique Nationals. According to Dad, this car was the second roadster built by the Bean Bandits. I have a ton of great memories from those days and still keep in touch with Larry, Jerry Darien, and ‘crewman to the stars’ Randy Green.

"Here's a photo of Larry in the Joint Venture and one of me, my brother Jeff, and Randy Green on the starting line after the Last Drag Race at Irwindale."
 

Steve Studer: “I grew up in Columbus and started hitchhiking to National Trail Raceway when I was 13. One spring morning, Doug Ford, the lead counterman at JEGS and part-time announcer at NTR, pulled over and gave me a ride to the track. Doug took me around the pits and introduced me to every racer he knew. I was pinching myself to make sure this was really happening. That first day, I helped change slicks on a C/SP Corvette named Crankenstein driven by Jim Thompson, who was the shop foreman at JEGS.

"Back then, JEGS was a small brick building at 11th Avenue and I-71 with a greasy three-quarter-inch plywood counter and a couple of bays in the rear. Before you know it, I was working there after school, cleaning the JEGS Barracuda Funny Car and helping out around the shop. It was really cool when Gordon Collett came to work for Jeg around 1968. Not long afterwards, Doug Ford, Jim Thompson, Dan Truax, and Bob Riffle left JEGS and teamed up with Gil Kirk and Bill McGraw to form The Rod Shop over on the east side of Columbus. The Rod Shop was one of the first really successful drag racing teams (seven cars), with all the cars painted red, white, and blue. The following year, Gil secured the Dodge factory sponsorship for the whole team, and it was off to the races. In 1971, Mike Fons won the world championship in Pro Stock in Tulsa [Okla.], beating Ronnie Sox in the semi’s and Herb McCandless in the final. I still keep in touch with Doug Ford, Gordon Collett, and Gil Kirk whenever possible. Those were defining times in my life and some of the best memories."

Howard Ellefson: I grew up in the Westmont neighborhood in Pomona and graduated from Ganesha High School in 1962. I was very fortunate to have grown up in the American Graffiti era. When I got my driver’s license, I joined the Pomona Valley Timing Association, working at the Pomona dragstrip every Sunday. I never realized how lucky I was until many years later. Our normal Sunday meets were always filled with an overabundance of Top Fuelers, A/FXers, and stockers. We used to go to Fontana, San Gabriel, or Lions on Saturdays and then work the next day. When I was in the Navy, I visited many other strips in the country and then realized how big our Pomona meets were. I spent some time hanging with Jack Bayer, Doug Thorley, and Gary Hooker. Hooker and I both worked night shift at General Dynamics; he was in quality control, and I was in maintenance. I used to enjoy going to the March Meets at Bakersfield. Many years later when I was stationed in Pensacola, Fla., I got to spend time with Chuck Griffith and Stan Adams when they ran a match race against Bobby Langley there. My wife and I have made several trips out West over the years and always manage to visit the NHRA museum while there. Really impressed with the progress racing has made since the early '60s! We currently live about six miles from Maple Grove Raceway, so we go there for our nitro fix.”
 

Mickey Bryant: “My shop story goes back to 1959 in Long Beach, Calif. I was a 19-year-old living with my buddy Terry in an apartment complex at the corner of Cherry Avenue and South Street. Directly across the street were two old crusty shops: Tom's Muffler and the very first Jocko's Porting Service. A typical Saturday mid-morning would be to ease over, crossing Cherry Avenue, and slide around the front entrance to Jocko's. Forget Tom's, we wanted to see it: the Jocko streamliner. We would stand as quiet as we could in the corner so as not to disturb Jocko himself as he polished away on some heads. Then it happened. Jocko actually came over one of those Saturdays, wiping his hands with a rag, and said, ‘I bet you guys want to see the car, right?’

“We thought he was coming over to kick us out, but now here we are following him out back to actually see that beautiful streamliner we had seen from a distance tear up the Riverside track. And there it was, nudged up next to the fence, with that red and white body in place. It was how we would start a Saturday most weekends. And the real bonus was when he would actually be working on the car inside the shop. Permanently etched in the memory bank it is.”

Jeff Thomas: “My love affair began when I was 7 years old and my sister took me to U.S. 131 Dragway in Martin, Mich. I was hooked instantly! It wasn't long after that that my best friend Randy's brother, Gary Gruetzmacher, started building a race car. But it wasn't just any race car -- it was a 1969 Monza Corvair. A lot of work and ingenuity went into this car. The tallest gear set available was a 4:11, so he ran (USAC) Midget slicks to increase the gear ratio. He got the IHRA sanctioning body to allow him to mill off the cast intake ‘logs’ on the cylinder heads to be able to bolt directly to the intake ports. Gary worked with General Kinetics cams and Crower Cams to develop a combination that worked. The transmission was surprisingly strong, and he didn't have a lot of trouble in the clutch department, although we could break a half-shaft from time to time. His main sponsor was Lane Automotive (Watervliet, Mich.), and he called the car Sixpack. Gary won a lot of races and still holds a record or two in IHRA competition. He still owns the car, and it is just sitting right now because, as he says, his reactions aren't that good anymore. It was a load of fun to work on this car and help race it at the track(s), experiences I would never trade for anything. We ran at U.S. 131 and Milan Dragway in Michigan; Union Grove Raceway in Wisconsin; Oswego, Ill.; and Osceola, Ind.; among others, and Gary also made the trip to Bristol a time or two and came away with wins. He keeps it at his shop in Bangor, Mich., our hometown. It is truly a unique combination and record-holding car.”

Tom West

Bob Maghy: “I grew up in Westchester, a part of L.A. near LAX, just south of Culver City. I used to ride my bike to a neighbor's house to watch him work on his dragster. His name was Earl Canavan, and he had a Lincoln-powered gas dragster. I hung around as long as I could, hoping he would fire it up, and he sometimes did. Around the corner was Ted Frye's place (Ted ran Edelbrock balancing) with his Hemi-powered F-100 and belly tank, but that's another story.
 
“A few blocks past Canavan's street was C&O Automotive (C&O Hydro), home of Gene Conway's (then Ciambella) A/GS Willys pickup and, later his Corvette Funny Cars. I actually had to cross two main boulevards, Florence Avenue and Manchester Avenue, so as a youngster, I was taking quite a risk wandering that far, but wander I did. I would stay on my bike and lean on the wall outside of Conway's shop and look at the gassers and hot street cars that made up his customer base in those years. I remember examining every detail of his Willys and a Chevy-powered early MG that was always there. One day, while everyone was busy and probably could have cared less about a kid on a bike, Donnie, who did most of the transmission assembly, actually smiled at me and motioned for me to come in and watch what they were doing. Wow, up close! Years later, I had Gene and Donnie do a Clutchflite for my race car, and after telling Gene about the years watching from a bike in the doorway, we became good friends. A great guy, he often referred people to my small shop for custom headers, roll bars, and chassis work. He was always my go-to transmission guy. The four-hole Hilborns on my current project are left over from his gasser days.
 
“Riding my bike in the opposite direction, there was Jack Seibuhr's Westchester Auto Body, where many a race car appeared as well as drag boats (Jack drove the drag hydro The Witch, I believe). It was there that I first saw Sam Conrad's '29 roadster. An honest-to-goodness member of the L.A. Roadsters, Sam's car had one of AA/SR champ Hugh Tucker's huge Olds engines with six twos, a B&M Hydro, and slicks on the street. That car taught me exactly how a hot rod should look and sound: just plain nasty. My handprints were all over the doorjamb of Jack's shop, that's for sure.
 
“As a friend of Danny Pisano (Pisano & Matsubara Nostalgia Funny Car) in high school, I ended up working for his father, Carmen Pisano, of wedge scattershield fame, and learning plenty. I left there to go to work for Cyclone Headers and left Cyclone to start a 10-year stint at Hedman Hedders (in Culver City, much much closer to Westchester!).

“At Hedman, I built prototype headers, tooling, and most of all, I did all of the custom headers for the race cars that they sponsored. It was during this time that I met ‘Dyno Don’ Nicholson. Kenny Hedman was building a Pro Stock Maverick with a cammer that was essentially a clone of 'Dyno's' car. I built headers, built and modified custom intake manifolds, helped convert to the Lenco trans, and basically did whatever they needed during the short time they ran that car. Nicholson was in the shop occasionally, talking with the Hedmans and guiding their fledgling Pro Stock effort; Earl Wade was doing the major engine work. As another reader noted, ‘Dyno Don’ was a great guy, friendly, easy to talk to, and never condescending.
During the years at Hedman, I had the pleasure of working on many famous race cars, building headers, and then tooling to re-create the headers should they need more while on the road during the racing season. Butch Leal's Ron Butler-built Duster, Bill Bagshaw's Red Light Bandit, Barry Setzer's Funny Car and Pro Stock Vega, a boatload of SoCal Funny Cars, even a strange set of 3-inch zoomies for Garlits that were not as successful as we had hoped -- just some of the stars' cars that I got to actually work on. Some of the racers were quite friendly, and some quite frankly had no time for us shop folk.
 
“Culver City was also home to the Surfers, Traco Racing Engines, Ron Butler Race Cars, Dick Guldstrand, Troutman and Barnes. Isky and Edelbrock had digs in old CC. Bob Hedman knew them all, and we worked with all of them at one time or another. Yes, you can certainly say Culver City (and surrounds) was home to plenty of racers. As a tip of the hat to the Hedman family, it would be great to see a shot or two of Kenny Hedman's Pro Stock Maverick. It was a nice car and ties in nicely with early Pro Stock, 'Dyno Don,' and his Maverick. Bob, Dick and Kenny Hedman, with George Lane, Ron Funfar, and Tom Curnow, were a fun group to work with in a great period in drag racing history.”

OK, gang; that's Part 1. Look for Part 2 and more great stories about your earliest involvement with our wonderful sport. I'm sure this column and next will inspire even more submissions, and I promise to not wait a year to run them. Please include any photos you might have!

I've also already received a good start to the "souvenir parts" column I mentioned last week, so keep 'em coming!

See ya next week.