"Memories of Drag Racing"
"From Those Who Were There"

Famoso, Hot Rods And Hot Potatoes

"Lets have a 'Coney Island', George", dad yelled as he pulled our old Model A Ford off 99 Highway at the little business corner called Famoso. "Whats a Coney Island?", I questioned. Then I saw the big sign at the orange drink stand, "Coney Island Hot Dogs". I had never eaten a hot dog filled with hot chili and that one was delicious. Dad and I were on our way to gather some free potatoes at a Government auxiliary airstrip East of Famoso Corners.

It was June, 1945 and the hot sun was unbearable as it radiated off that asphalt landing field. I had never seen so many potatoes. They were piled in dozens of wind rows that seemed a mile long. The County potato farmers used the 80 acre auxiliary landing airfield to pile culls and surplus potatoes which the Government used to make industrial alcohol for the war effort. This Famoso airstrip was one of 9 auxiliary landing strips serving Minter Field during WW2,  it was used for emergencies as well as practice landings and take offs. The smell of the hot, rotting potatoes was overpowering and swarms of flies filled the air. A truck driver was dumping a load of spuds and dad asked if we could take a few to eat. He said it would be OK to glean a few for our families use. We located some that had been freshly dumped and within a few minutes had filled the back seat of the Ford, then we sped out of there to get away from the flies and breathe fresh air again. All that work and heat forced us to stop again at that orange juice stand for another "Coney Island" and a big orange drink on the way home.

Most of the local hot rodders were in the armed services during WW2 and after returning to civilian life in 1946 they resumed their beloved hobby of building and racing hot rods. Organized drag racing hadn't begun locally so the rural streets and highways were used to find out who had the fastest cars. I was in high school at this period and believe me by Friday everyone knew where the street drag races would take place that weekend. Or you could drive into 'Mooney's' or 'Michener's Drive In' for the latest update. Common places where illegal street drags took place were; Porterville Cutoff Highway, North Union Ave., East Brundage Lane and Enis Lane. Car clubs were the rage during this period and Bakersfield had scores of them. Torquers, Dukes, Chokers, Pushrods, Pistons Pushers, the club members all proudly displayed their club name on an aluminum plaque in the rear window of their cars which was an inducement to other clubs members to a street drag race. The charter Smokers Club members realized the dangers of street racing to the young drivers and the public. This dilemma prompted them to begin planning a system of local organized drag racing.

At this period hot rods and drag racing were gaining a bad reputation by the general public because of the illegal street racing, negative newspaper articles and the low budget, corny, movies being shown at the drive-in theaters, such as "Hot Rods to Hell", "Dragstrip Riot"and "Hot Rod Girls". A solution to our local problem was a drag strip where these cars could be raced legally under safe supervision.

Safe, organized, drag racing began in Los Angeles in the late 40's and the Bakersfield group of a half dozen or so, who had been racing their hot rods at Muroc, Rosamond or El Mirage dry lakes, decided to change the name of their car club from "The Bakersfield Coupe And Roadster Club" to "The Smokers", a name referring to the tire smoke of a drag racer. These guys were accustomed to racing a mile or more on the dry lakes but the shorter quarter mile racing was the perfect distance for the abandoned WW2 airstrips scattered through Kern County. A few "trial" Smokers drag races were held at the "La Cresta Airpark" near the Bluffs but didn't work out due to nearby housing tracts being built.

The newly formed 'Smokers' Car Club held its lively monthly meetings at the "Bomb Shelter" tavern on Union Avenue. Most of these founding members such as, Ernie Hashim, Hut Watkins, Jack Delaney, Howard and Bob Hylton and Buck Smith, were veterans of racing the desert dry lakes. At a 1951 meeting they voted to promote Smokers Club sanctioned drag races at an abandoned Gardner Field airstrip 7 miles West of 99 highway on Maricopa Road. The Club sanctioned these monthly races over the next four years and during this period they learned how to make all their equipment needed to stage a racing program, 'portable'. These drag races started out with a flagman starting two cars and whoever crossed the finish line first was the winner. As the club gained assets from admission receipts, they bought Chrondek electronic timing equipment which recorded the cars top speed at the end of the quarter mile run. The club identified all their equipment and vehicles with a purple paint job, "if its purple, it belongs to the Smokers" was the slogan.

In 1954 Cecil Meadows was Kern County Airport Commissioner and  in charge of all airstrips within Kern County. Kenny Loewen and Hut Watkins, early Smokers Club presidents, practically camped out at Mr. Meadow's office in their efforts to gain the Smokers a lease at Famoso Airstrip. The 80 acre site was desirable because of it's remoteness, long landing strip and close proximity to Bakersfield. After many months, their persistence paid off and the Club was granted a lease and began promoting monthly drag races at the airfield in 1954.

The Smokers lease privileges were shared with the endless piles of rotting potatoes on the Eastern portion of the Famoso airfield. The piles of spuds were always there, drying, during the summer but participants and spectators grew used to the smell and the flies, accepting it as part of "racing at Famoso". When Famoso drags began it became one of the few California drag strips that allowed car owners to use nitromethane fuel. Many of Southern California's other strips were so short in length, the faster nitro burning cars occasionally couldn't stop after finishing a run, resulting in accidents. "Run What You Brung" was the Famoso logo and in a short while the whole West Coast racing clan was coming to Famoso where the extra long track allowed any cars to run safely. They even had a narrow extension road at the South end of the shut down area which became known as the "shutdown finger". After a car finished a run, his crew was supposed to quickly remove the car from the "Finger" for the next car to use the extended shutdown road. I can still remember the congenial Smokers announcer, "The Voice of Famoso", "Bernie Mather", repeating a hundred times each race day, "please don't linger in the finger". These mid-50's race meets drew a mixture of every kind of automobile or cycle, each driver striving to win a small trophy for winning his class. The majority of cars entered were the families sedan with dad or mom driving, after all the cost was only 75 cents to find out how fast the old bus would run.

These monthly drag races were hard work for the Smoker's club members because throughout the days preceding the Sunday meet, all the equipment necessary to stage a race had to be transported from town and set up on the airstrip. Smokers wives, daughters and girl friends were called, "The Smokerettes", these hard working women were always right in there along with the men at every race, doing their assigned jobs as ticket sales, registration and inspection, timing stand helpers, food and drink sales and assisting with setting up the equipment. Wooden saw horses with a rope "crowd barrier" was set up along the sides of the drag strip. The timing lights and tower, public address systems, concession stands, porta -potties and truck loads of equipment were transported each meet. Just like a traveling circus, after the race was over, it all had to be removed from the property and 40 acres of  pop and beer cans had to be swept up and hauled away.  Grandstands were not installed for years, the spectators stood along the sidelines or sat in or on their cars to watch the competition.

The Smokers membership voted to incorporate their Club, then presented their first Famoso two day meet in March 1954. It was advertised as "The West Coast Championships". Eight to ten thousand fans attended the big meet and most of the fastest cars on the Pacific Coast were competing. After this race, the Smokers group realized they had become "THE drag strip of the West Coast". Tony Waters of the Smokers Club was the top eliminator of that show. Waters, in his 6 cylinder, GMC, track roadster, ran against "Jazzy" Nelson driving a nitro fueled flat head ford, winning speed was 127 mph. Tony Waters removed all doubt he was West Coast Champion by winning the next 5 monthly Famoso Drags with his consistent and reliable GMC roadster. During this meet, I rode my single cylinder Matchless motorcycle to see what speed it would time on nitromethane fuel. The speed was in the 90 MPH area but on the second run the engine expired which ended my brief motorcycle drag racing experience.

As the years rolled by, the Smokers modernized their racing events with the latest speed timing appliances and safety improvements. Dragster speeds had increased due to the use of improved racing tires,exotic fuels and superchargers, everyone agreed, Famoso had become the home of the fastest cars in the Nation. Speeds of 180 MPH and faster were being bragged about by a new guy from Florida named Don Garlits and others all over the United States were also claiming fabulous speeds in the standing quarter mile. The Smokers realized the opportunity to stage a showdown race at Famoso. The Smokers Club paid Don Garlits to attend a two day race they had put together and named "First Annual United States Fuel & Gas Championship" to reveal just who had the fastest car in America. This was the beginning of the legendary "United States Fuel & Gas Championship". A race which took place on Saturday February 28 and Sunday March 1, 1959.

I had been working since 1957 as mechanic for Bill Lord, owner of "Lords Speed Shop", 401 California Ave.. The shop catered to all the hot rodders in the area because we stocked most of the speed equipment, parts and racing fuels they needed to build and race their cars. I was acquainted with many Smoker Club members who bought their supplies at the shop. Two regular customers were, Roger Coburn and James Warren who at that time, along with me, were racing stock cars at Bakersfield Speedway and running a dragster at Famoso also. Roger and James had an illustrious 30 year career in racing being known world wide as "The Ridge Route Terrors". The pair were inducted into the "Drag Racing Hall Of Fame"in 1992 for their scores of National records and titles. When I was informed of the planned Smokers first big 1959 March Meet, I suspected it would turn out to be a very big affair and made plans to attend the race and take the Company shop truck loaded with spare parts and fuels to sell to the contestants during the two day affair.

Never before had there been a drag race of this magnitude presented in America. It wasn't expected to be this big and the Smokers soon realized what a great task it was going to be to try to accommodate such an endless procession of race cars and the thousands upon thousands of spectators arriving from all over America to witness this biggest drag race in history.

I arrived at the Famoso drag strip at daylight that first Saturday. Later, as I sat on my truck in the pits I could see bumper to bumper cars on Famoso Road stretching out for miles, East and west, waiting to enter the gates where hard working Smokerettes were selling tickets as fast as they could with no end in sight. The Smokerettes laughingly tell how the ticket money at the entrance began accumulating to a point where they couldn't carry it in their apron pockets and were forced to begin throwing it in the bed of the Smokers pickup parked at the gate. Later, as the bed filled with money the Smokers officials began sacking it up in paper bags for safekeeping, the Club was totally unprepared for a crowd of this size.

Attendance was listed as 31,253 but that figure was when they stopped selling  tickets because the facility was full. The total was much larger as people parked outside and walked in uncounted. Spectators got what they came for, the smell of nitro and burning rubber in the air, ear shattering exhausts and the privilege to watch the fastest drag machines in America competing with each other. The two days saw many records broken and was climaxed Sunday night by the final runoff for top eliminator. Darkness had arrived before the final race was prepared to leave the starting line and Famoso had no lighting system but helpful spectators headlights provided illumination for Bakersfield's Tony Waters in the "Waters-Sughrue-Guinn Roadster" against Art Chrisman of Compton in the "Cannon- Chrisman dragster" to smoke down the track for the final race. Art Chrisman was the winner and pronounced "The First National Champion" . This Famoso meet is still recognized among historians and  racing fans as the biggest drag race in history because it was the first East meets West, no holds barred competition ever presented.

Local motels were filled to overflowing as the thousands of fans rolled in from all over the Country for this big event. The largest "budget" motel, "The Rancho" on 99 Highway, had a very large, well lighted parking lot which quickly became the racers Friday and Saturday night "pits"to prep or repair their dragsters for the next days competition. The motel manager complained loudly after discovering one group overhauling their engine inside their motel room at 3 AM.  Many businessmen complained about the influx of racers but when they realized how much money the visitors had spent in Bakersfield the complaints stopped and the racers were welcomed the next year.

The following two years, 1960, 61, The Smokers were somewhat better prepared for their big two day March Meets and had erected safety fencing on the sides of the strip. The crowd was still over 30,000 and the racers speeds increased each year. 1962 and thereafter, the yearly spectacular was extended to a 3 day meet with attendance growing to 60,000. Improvements were made including grandstands, modern "Christmas Tree" timing equipment and permanent structures. Each year thereafter the the crowd count grew, 60,000, 70,000, 80,000 and the speeds grew accordingly, 160, 180, 200 miles per hour.

In March, 1966 the Smokers promoted their eighth and last famous "United States Fuel & Gas Championship" which saw hundreds of drag machines from all over the Nation along with 70,000 spectators to witness the end of a legendary event in the annals of drag racing.  

The years of hard work the Smoker's Club had gone through were beginning to effect the business and family lives of it's members because of all the time and effort now required to stage a drag racing program. The fast growing sport had outgrown the Smokers ability, as part time promoters, to cope with the physical, financial and legal aspects of the mushrooming sport. Their jobs and families were disrupted to the point where they decided it was time to disband the Club and sell "Smoker's Incorporated" and the copyright of "The United States Fuel-Gas Championship" to an Eastern businessman who could handle the immense responsibilities the monthly and yearly races had produced. After the purchase, the event was moved to New York under this new promoter.

From 1967 until 1988 the March Meet at Famoso was at various times promoted by famous local racing greats, Ernie Hashim, Jack Williams, Milton Weller and Marvin Miller. Racing was promoted under the name of Kern County Racing Association Incorporated and the 3 day March event was re-named "Bakersfield March Fuel & Gas Championships". In the years to follow, the once famous Famoso March Meet was slowly being upstaged by numerous other National Championship races all over the Nation.

Race fans yearned to see and hear the tire smoking, pre-1972 style, front engined dragsters from the past which, in 1994, prompted the re-birth of the Famoso March Meet. Now billed as "Vintage Racing", the new Vintage Racing 3 day event filled the 8,000 seat grandstands once again.  Today, Blake and John Bowser of the Kern County Racing Association operate the Auto Club Famoso Raceway and have assembled a full 2007 schedule of drag racing events at the oldest, continuously operated drag strip in the West. The modern grandstands, concrete safety barriers and super smooth racing surface of todays Famoso Raceway are far superior  to the primitive facilities endured by the founding Smokers Club fifty three years ago. This vintage drag racing brings back  memories of the early owners and drivers constantly experimenting, each drag meet at Famoso, to find a way of going just a little faster.

Club members from the original Smokers Car Club are becoming fewer each year but they still manage to get together at a banquet once a year to talk about those Good Old Days when the Smokers "U.S. Fuel & Gas Championship" March Meet was known as "the biggest drag race in the world".

(C) by George Gilbert Lynch Jan. 10, 2007

Nitrogeezers want to extend a special "Thank You" to George for allowing use to use his story in our effort to preserve the history of Drag Racing

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