I was probably about 12 when I caught the bug. I collected hotrod cards: just like baseball cards but with pictures and statistics about dragsters. I was just outgrowing MatchBox and Hot Wheels, replacing them with building plastic models. With the models, I was able to build the cars I dreamed of owning one day when I was old enough to drive. Of course, I only built models of hotrods.
While building the models, the Bakelite AM radio on the wall behind me played the latest hits, such as Roundabout and Lola, interrupted by occasional commercials. In the case of one such commercial, a pair of pitchmen went into a fevered steroidal ranting that made it quite clear the only place to be Memorial Day was Great Lakes Dragaway, Union Grove: “Bring the family for a day of thrills in beautiful Southeast Wisconsin” (Here is a link to a Youtube version of the ad from a few years later).
In my case, it was overkill when the pitchmen mentioned that my heroes, such as ‘Big Daddy’ Don Garlits, Don Schumacher and Shirley ‘Cha Cha’ Muldowney, would be there in person with the cars I had only seen on my trading cards. I was hooked from the first suggestion of watching “wild pro stockers, wheel standers, thundering-nitro-burning dragsters” and the verbal promise that it was “the greatest spectacle in drag racing.”
One minute, my father was calmly reading his newspaper, the next he was bombarded with a 12-year-old’s promise that he hadn’t lived yet because he had never seen “earth-shaking, flame-throwing jet” dragsters. That proclamation was followed by desperate pleadings of, “Can we go? Please, can we go?”
Most people pinch their nose, hold their breath and run away from the smell of burning rubber. Me? I love it. The smell, the smoke, the roar of hundreds of horses pounding pistons at redline – it’s one big adrenaline rush. The radio pitchmen hadn’t exaggerated one iota. I absorbed the atmosphere from the stands spellbound as funny cars did bleach burnouts to get their slicks hot and sticky.
When I finally convinced my father it was worth the extra money to go back to the pits, I gained valuable knowledge I could apply to building my next model. I watched the drag racers and their mechanics with awe noting that they spoke to each other like real people. One or two even smiled my way.
Can you imagine Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme looking your way and nodding with a knowing grin? I had made visual contact with one of the NHRA’s best. I was different after that; I had a little bit of hotrod in my veins from that day forward.
Eventually, my vision of drag racing glory went beyond 1/25th-scale plastic. Though raised in a Ford family, I became a Mopar man. For Chrysler, Mopar is a contraction of the words motor and parts. For me, it was a misspelled contraction of “More POweR.”
Fame didn’t follow me onto the quarter-mile dragstrip. In fact, I never advanced beyond a rank amateur who, in his teenage years, somehow thought he inherently knew enough to succeed. But, I loved the experience all the same. It’s part of who I am today even if I haven’t been to Great Lakes Dragaway in more than two or three decades.
I do have thoughts of going back someday – maybe even this year. I might even like to try my hand behind the wheel of another hotrod sometime. If I do it again, however, I’ll have enough sense to look for help from people who truly know the sport.
One such person, and someone I will rely on heavily, when the time comes, is Denny Norton and the team at Performance Unlimited. While Norton is well known for keeping the family car safely and reliably on the road, he and his shop are also renowned as experts in building, tuning and maintaining high performance automobiles.
With Performance Unlimited on my team, I know the only thing that would hold me back is the level of my skill as a driver or, as I like to put it, as a fuel-injected, drag-racing maniac.
If you’re ready to hit the dragstrip, or even an oval track or some other version of auto racing, you can turn to Performance Unlimited, too. For more information, call 815-728-0343 or visit: www.4performanceunlimited.com.
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