Mark Collins now (above) and then (below), shown at right with partner Ralph Lewis in 1975.

Welcome back to Fan Fotos, shots from the private collections of fans everywhere. We're not talking pretty photos taken from the guardrail, but rather those gritty, lightpole-in-the-way, some-guy's-head-in-the-shot images that somehow better reflect our regular treks to the digs.

Today, we reach deep into the heart o' Texas for 10 great shots from Mark Collins of Dallas. Mark started going to the drags in 1964 while in high school. His older brother, Eddie, had been going to the drags at Green Valley Raceway, north of Fort Worth, with his buddies.

"I had been reading all the hot rod magazines and wanted to go check out drag racing, but being the little brother, it was a while before I was allowed to tag along with big brother and his buddies," he said. "That first Saturday night at Green Valley, I was hooked. Thereafter, I must have been at Green Valley Raceway every time they opened the gates. I could not get enough drag racing. The smells, the sounds, the competition, all of it, captured my imagination. I began taking pictures at the races with a six-dollar camera I had had since elementary school. As soon as I could get the film developed, I shared the pictures with my amazed friends at school.

"When I witnessed my first Top Fuel dragster, I thought that nitromethane was the most insane thing I had ever witnessed. The visual and visceral experience was astounding. The fact that the fans could walk right up to the cars and drivers in the pits had great appeal to me. It was easy to rub shoulders with the heroes I watched on the track. It didn't matter if it was a guy from the local gas station or 'Big' himself. Of course, I never really did talk to Garlits because he was too famous. I felt certain he would not be enlightened by a geeky high school kid. Even so, I had a strong desire to get into the driver's seat someday."

In the 1970s, Mark began driving a '23-T Ford roadster with a flathead V-8 built by his friend Ralph Lewis. "Those 12-second e.t.s weren't Top Fueler-type runs, but I was finally burnin' up the strip. We subsequently built a C/D for Competition eliminator and a AA/DA competing in Pro Comp with moderate success. I will always remember the first time we drove into the participant's entrance under the 1974 Winternationals banner. It was hallowed drag racing ground. I felt like I was participating in something special. There we were, just some unknown guys from Texas with a desire to compete on the national level. I'm sure that was the case with many of the other racers, too. Win or lose, I always loved going to the races. I'm still hooked even though I'm only spectating these days."

Here are Mark's 10 favorite Fan Fotos.
 

According to Mark, this cool image of Shirley Muldowney's Funny Car on a ramp truck was taken at Dallas Int'l Motor Speedway (DIMS) during the Springnationals, which would make it late 1971.

Although Muldowney ran almost exclusively in Mustang-bodied floppers (due, no doubt, to crew chief Connie Kalitta's long-running association with Ford), she ran this Plymouth Barracuda at the end of the season after burning up her Bounty Huntress Mustang in a fire at Dragway 42 in Ohio. The car was a loaner from Don Schumacher, one of his former Stardust entries. I couldn't find out which car it was -- whether it was one "the Shoe" himself drove or one of his team cars -- but Muldowney proudly claims that she got it to run both quicker and faster than it did for the Schumacher team.

When I first opened the image at right from Mark's e-mail, I was thoroughly puzzled. This didn't look like any kind of drag racing shot I'd ever seen, fan or otherwise. Mark calls this somewhat humorous photo "Duck," and once he explained it to me, it made sense. "This image was taken in April 1973 at a Top Fuel meet at DIMS. The point of view is from the hot-car push-start lanes at about the 1,000-foot mark of the track. A Top Fuel car had just detonated uptrack, out of sight of the camera. We could see parts in the air, so everybody was ducking for cover. In the seconds following, little pieces rained down, luckily with no injuries. I think the guy pictured worked at the track." Been there, done that.

More than 25 years after Mark snapped this early-1970s photo, Chris "the Golden Greek" Karamesines is still racing. Mark captured the legendary Top Fuel driver checking the spark plugs between rounds, which, in the era before onboard data computers, was part of how these cars were tuned. And, of course, in the days when the teams weren't working in a narrow valley created by a pair of tractor trailers, you could walk right up and snap a great photo like this.

"That full head of hair was still dark in those days," noted Mark. "I remember taking a few photos and getting the evil eye from 'the Greek.' I suppose he didn't like his photo taken. Take note of height and size of the rear wing. No shade, no awnings, and no power tools. And no teardown between rounds. If the plugs look OK, just pour some more nitro in the tank and go again."

Here's a definite "how it was" moment. The photo border on this antique reads "May 1965" and shows a car in full push-start mode at Green Valley. "The car is a Bantam body on a dragster chassis," he noted. "This Oklahoma car (owner unknown) ran in A/Competition class in Competition eliminator or Little eliminator. The hot car 'loop' for push-start cars at Green Valley Raceway was typical of most dragstrips of the era. The loop was where the fuelers and altereds came roaring to life in front of pickups and station wagons. It was a few more years before I was push-started down this same road in a C/Dragster. What a thrill when that engine came to life!" Lamented Mark, "I wish I had a dollar for every time I was at Green Valley in the '60s."

Here's another photo from that same May 1965 meet at Green Valley. "This was a Top Fuel meet with a 32-car field," he recalled. "In those days, 32- and even 64-car Top Fuel fields were not unusual. This is the intimidating Vance Hunt fueler. Hunt was a great tuner who always had excellent drivers, Watus Simpson among them. It appears that tiny pressure tank in front wouldn't hold enough fuel for a warm-up in modern fuelers. I recently spoke to Vance at the O'Reilly Fall Nationals at Ennis. He amazed me with the wealth of information he possessed about the current Top Fuel scene. It's always great to see some of the legendary figures of drag racing."

In addition to the aforementioned Simpson, Hunt employed the likes of Ted Arnold, Gary Bailey, Jerry Ellis, J.L. Payne, and some guy you've probably heard of, a young Texan named Kenny Bernstein, who I understand went on to a fair degree of success after his 1966 stint with Hunt. If DragList is correct, this would have been Ellis' ride, which was a Don Garlits chassis.

Mark snapped this photo in April 1973 at DIMS as Bennie "the Wizard" Osborn was climbing into his new rear-engine Top Fueler in the staging lanes. In his slingshot, the Sand Springs, Okla., racer won back-to-back NHRA world championships in 1967 and 1968 at his hometrack in Tulsa, back when the Finals winner was crowned the season champ. Osborn, who never won an NHRA national event away from Tulsa, put it to the big boys in the final at both of those races, beating none other than Don Prudhomme in 1976 and John Mulligan in 1968, denying both what would have been their first world titles.

"Bennie was testing his first rear-engined Top Fueler he built over the winter," recalled Mark. "He simultaneously built the front-engined C/Dragster for my partner Ralph Lewis, which I drove. In fact, he delivered the chassis on this trip, strapping it on the top of his enclosed trailer for the trip from Oklahoma to Texas. I think it was early the following year that 'the Wizard' went on his head in this car in a blowover close to the finish line, and the roll cage kept him from injury. Note the absence of a rear wing. I don't remember why he only had a front-axle wing. Does anyone out there know his status? I do recall that Bennie never cursed that I know of. When someone made him angry, he would call them a 'stinker.' He was always a real gentleman."

I don't know what has become of Osborn, but I know that his championship-winning Top Fueler is still out there; Prudhomme called me a few weeks ago to verify the results of that 1967 Finals because he had somebody trying to sell him the car. Funny, he didn't remember losing that final round. I guess when you've been in as many finals as "the Snake," it's hard to remember any one of them, especially one 42 years ago. Anyone know what became of "the Wizard"?

"Obviously one of the most unique dragsters in history, the Herm Petersen streamliner," noted Mark. "This image is at the 1974 Winternationals. This was my first national event as a participant. Although I didn't qualify in Competition eliminator, I did get to see many of the stars of the sport I had never seen and checked out the California culture."

This great-looking Can Am-inspired Top Fueler of Petersen and partner Sam Fitz made its debut in Pomona that year; the Woody Gilmore-built piece featured a swing-open back deck for easy access to the engine, but, more important, it marked Petersen's return to the cockpit after a horrible crash and fire at Orange County Int’l Raceway the previous July. Petersen was terribly burned – he had second- and third-degree burns over more than 50 percent of his body -- after an axle broke and his dragster overturned. Petersen spent three months in the hospital and almost died twice, but he persevered through the pain and skin-graft operations to bravely return to the cockpit in Pomona. Close friend Denny Bale was quoted in the Kitsap Sun newspaper a few years ago: "We had to lift him in and out of the car. His fingers were all fused. He couldn't hang on to things it hurt him so bad. At the end of a run, he'd have tears in his eyes, the pain was so bad."

Petersen is still out there, a fixture at nostalgia events and the coordinator of a decibel-busting cacklefest contest.

Here's another image from the 1974 Winternationals. You don't have to be a very serious dragstrip scholar to know it's Pomona from the snow-capped mountains in the background of this staging-lanes pic. "My subject was the injected A/D in the foreground that belonged to Jerry and Penny Dorman," he noted. "I thought it was the most beautiful dragster I had ever seen. Everything about it was flawless. It just so happened that Veney's Vega was in the background. Both cars ran in the Pro Comp classification before it split into the Alcohol Dragster and Alcohol Funny Car categories."

 

The Kuhl & Olson Da Revell Fast Guys model was the first large-scale (1/16th) Revell model I ever built (it even came with a Carl Olson figure!), so this photo of Mark's, which he says is from Amarillo in 1974, was special to me, too.

"The K&O team were hard runners and had a state-of-the-art trailer," remembered Mark. "It looks downright spartan compared to the pit layouts of today's Pro teams. Just having an onboard water tank was high tech in those days. Mike Kuhl could make it run fast, and Carl Olson was quick and straight down the strip. Take note of the spare engine door above the trailer fender."

I had the pleasure of working with C.O. for many years here at NHRA, and we have stayed in touch. He's a fan of the column (even the ones that don't include him) and a true hero.

And finally, this rather … um … unusually composed (and self-congratulatory!) photo shows driver Joe Monden and the Lewis-owned Foolish Pleasure Alcohol Dragster on which Mark worked in the pit area at the onetime home of the NHRA Cajun Nationals. "I took this photo when we won the Winston Championship Series race in Baton Rouge [La.] in 1976," reported Mark. "Joe is currently a very successful chassis builder and Top Alcohol crew chief working out of Gainesville, Texas. There are quite a lot of Monden chassis running in the Lucas Oil Series."

This car is sometimes incorrectly listed as Fuelish Pleasure, which was actually an A/Fuel Dragster out of Dallas owned by Charles Tunnell; looking at the full-sized pic, it's obvious this is with two o's. The Fuelish Pleasure moniker also was used by Washington state Alcohol Funny Car racer John Hughes and, more famously, by Gary Clapshaw on his strong-running nitro Funny Cars in the 1990s.

"We used the name Foolish Pleasure, which was the name of a famous race horse in the news in those years," Mark explained.

OK, race fans, that's another healthy dose of fan-tastic fotos. Thanks to Mark for playing; he'll receive the home version of our game (well, not really) and our undying thanks (really). I've really been overwhelmed by the response from y'all (keeping in the Texas theme of today's column), and I have plenty more where these came from. I've mentioned it before, but these types of photos, locked away in attics and dusty old photo albums for decades, might well be the last treasure trove from those golden days of racing, and I can tell you that the faithful out here would love to see yours.

See ya later this week.