Anyway, he wrote to ask me if I had any photos of some of the crazy stuff that I used to do at the Division One awards banquets held at the end of the season.  Darwin Doll was the Division Director at the time and one thing Darwin and I always did was put together a few gag awards for the unusual stuff that happened during the year on the divisional trail.  "Humble" Bob Donnelly, the announcer from Maple Grove at the time, was the MC of the banquets and I did something goofy every year as the gag awards presenter. 

The year was 1975, it was the first year that Winston signed on as the title-rights sponsor of the NHRA series.  Back then I worked at Englishtown and got to know all of the Winston folks pretty well when they came into town for the Summernationals.  I found out that Richard Dilworth, the head muckety-muck of Winston Drag Racing, was going to be in attendance but sadly Miss Winston, (Mitzi Gaynor at the time) couldn't make it.

What's a racing banquet without a trophy girl to give out awards?  Answer: boring.  So I decided to take matters into my own hands and that I'd become Miss Winston, if only for a night.

I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember the cigarette commercials that played on TV back in the 50s & 60s but one I remembered had a hot girl in a cigarette pack costume that made a lasting impression on a young boy like me.  

So I went to work building a custom-made Winston cigarette box that I would wear to give out the gag awards and after a few days it was ready. I built the box my self using a bunch of cardboard and tape and painted it with Winston red and white paint that they supplied to all the race tracks back then.  After getting it lettered by a local sign painter (Thanks Cos) I was all set.

So here's Dilworth sitting at a table right up front, top dead center and Donnelly announces "Here to present the gag awards is the lovely Miss Winston!"  Richard turns around with a look of surprise on his face and sees yours truly walking in dressed in my costume. 

Needless to say the crowd went nuts and Dilworth burst into uncontrollable laughter.  After having a lot of fun with the gag awards I asked Richard to pose with me for photos and here we are courtesy of Norman Blake.  Dig Richard's pants, pretty cool, huh?  Believe it or not they were in style back then.

As I was typing this it got me to thinking, this was almost 34 years ago!  Probably before a lot of you were born huh?

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.

BB