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"Memories of Drag Racing" |
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©2005 Bill Ott Friday July 9 York County Fairgrounds Structural Integrity
*The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense Take what you have gathered from coincidence*
Webster defines coincidence as "an incidental occurance; accident; fluke; eventuality" and a whole lot of other words no one really cares to hear about right now. But in the above words, Dylan defined coincidence as some sort of a learning process. Maybe he even had in mind learning something in spite of yourself? Which is a place all of us have been at one time or another. Traveling down the highway of our chosen path... be it musician, or tool and die maker, truck driver, writer, whatever... someone, somewhere went to the trouble to make it damn clear to you what you really needed to know to survive. And made damn sure you understood exactly what it was... whether you wanted to or not. Now a few days ago, NitroGeezers website bossman George Crittenden mentioned something about the nameless, faceless, ‘behind the scene’ figures in drag racing. You know... some guy that gave a green racer a nudge in the right direction, maybe shared a speed secret or two with them, or possibly kept them from killing themselves. George’s comments brought to mind a Friday afternoon I spent at the York Fairgrounds just a few short months ago. And what an afternoon that was. Darwin Doll and Bill Stiles were busy outdoing themselves with the 2004 version of "A trip down Memory Lane" - A.K.A. - The Third Annual York U.S. 30 Musclecar Madness event: see www.yorkus30.com when somehow I found myself sitting in the lap of luxury... courtesy of Sy Sidebotham. Sy was gracious enought to invite Joe Jacono and myself into his plush motor home to escape the overwhelming central Pennsyltucky heat and a rapidly growing crowd. Seems someone had inadvertently booked an appearance by President Bush on the same Friday as the Reunion. And I might add... it was very poor planning on that someone’s part. The President and his entourage’s arrival completely disrupted the activities of the Reunion. How gauche. But hell... who cares about mere Presidential Politics at a time like this? I’ve got Joe sitting across the table from me, the tape recorder running, and a fridge full of cold brews. I suspect we’ll be hearing some interesting stuff right about now. No doubt more interesting than what that guy on the other side of the Fairgrounds has to say. Turns out some of the stuff Jacono passed along to me that afternoon falls right into that nameless hero category George mentioned. We were discussing Joe’s building his first dragster, when he said ................................... "In ‘52 or ‘53 I had a ‘49 Oldsmobile with a Cadillac motor in it. My father had a big service garage, and in the garage worked a Stock Car guy named Jack Hart and he helped me when I put the first car together. Jack gave me some ideas for welding the tubing. Hell... all we had was two inch pipe! And it was heavy! It was a truck!" " And I had this Cadillac motor that was in the Oldsmobile. So I put it in the dragster. And again.. it was heavy… but it worked out good. Because it was like 460, 470 cubic inches, and had six carburetors on it… no injection stuff yet. And that thing ran good! I built the dragsters... but I didn’t really know what I was doing, I just built the car the way I thought it should have been built." So let’s hold it right there... "A Stock Car guy named Jack Hart helped me when I put the first car together,"... eh? I passed the name Jack Hart along to my good friend and personal private eye Jim Amole (who probably has the most complete library of early racing books and magazines in the North East) and did it ever set off some bells and whistles! Turns out that "Stock Car guy named Jack Hart" (1924 - 1980) was by 1955 a five time New Jersey State NASCAR Sportsman Stock Car Champion. He also won twenty seven (27!) individual Track Championships. During the 1956 season Jack placed third in the overall NASCAR National Sportsman Stock Car Championship behind Ralph Earnhardt (!) and Ned Jarret (!). In 1958 he finished Number 2 in the same circuit, again finishing behind Ned Jarrett. Like a lot of racers of that era Jack started from humble beginings, achieved quite a name for himself and eventually retired under those same humble circumstances in 1968. But, he went on to become quite a successful small businessman in the Chester, Pa. area... once winning the Chester County Chamber of Commerce ‘Small Businessman Of The Year Award’ RIP, Jack Hart... "Stock Car Guy."
Staring out the smoked glass window at the huge mass of people that were filling up the Fairgrounds, Jose continued................. "I went to Florida with this car… with the Cadillac in it, with all the carburetors on it, and I learned about… I had help (we’re talking about 1959 here - B.). I ran into this Stock Car guy named Red Vogt, he had a shop out in the woods right outside of Daytona. He was at the race track one night when we were running. I made a run, the car was going crazy, it would’t handle, and he said to me (him and Smokey Yunick were together)... he said to me "You’re gonna get hurt in that car, boy... cause that Pitman arm is way too long. You need to shorten it up." "Well… I knew everything and didn’t want to listen to nobody, and I sure as hell didn’t want to listen to him." He said "Now I’m down here in the woods and I got one of these things in my shop. And if you put it on, the car’s gonna steer better. And one more thing… the engine’s too damn rich!" He asked me "What jets do you have in those carburetors?" "I said, I don’t know… I just put ’em on there however they came out of the box, and he started laughing at me! ‘What?’ he said. ‘Then they’re all #52 jets in there?’ (Or whatever the number was). "I said, I thought that was it… if that’s how they came." "Man, you’re way off! We’re gonna change those jets too. Come on out to the shop. When you get the arm, we’ll open those carbs up, see what’s in there, then maybe I’ll help ya." " So I go to his shop. He gives me the new Pitman arm with three holes in it. He said ‘Put that thing in that middle hole, right in there, that’ll probably do it.’ Then he said ‘Take the top off that carb.’ So I took the top off and he saw the jet. He saw the jet and said ‘Pheeew... no wonder this car don’t run!’ I said " What do you mean it don’t run? It’s running 125 in the quarter! " He said "It won’t run, it won’t steer... it won’t go! I don’t know how you don’t get hurt in this car! Look… here’s what we’re gonna do, we’ll change all the jets." I told him, "I ain’t got no jets!!" "Hell, I got stuff," he said. And he opened up a drawer full of jets. Must have been 500 of em in there! And he’s got three of four different drawers that all got different numbers on em." He said "Take these #46’s and put them in all the carburetors. Then I’m gonna give you these #42’s... so to speak. At least I think that’s what the numbers were." "Put these in there and see what happens. I can’t come out to the race track tonight (we were running every night for five nights), you come back tomorrow and let me know how you did" "So I go to the track and make the first run with the car. Not only did it go straight down the track... it went 144 mph! On the very first run!! And it kinda got my attention. I don’t mean it scared me... it just got my attention, because all of a sudden, it ain’t laying down no more… it’s keeping right on running!" "So I went back to him the next day and said ‘Man, these 46’s are good, I’ll bet the 42’s will really be good!’ But then he got to thinking "Man, let’s don’t do this all at once… just change the center ones to the smaller jets on the next move." "So I took the center jets out, and put the new ones in. That night... it almost went 150mph!" " I wound up winning a couple or two or three nights, and I was tickled to death. I came back to Vineland, N.J. and it got easy all of a sudden. I wound up winning 11 Top Eliminators in a row!" .................................................................................................................................................
So once again... Joe gets some advice from another ‘Stock Car guy’. And you know what? This one’s got a little history behind him too. Ever hear of NASCAR? Well... Louis "Red" Vogt (1904 - 1991) named it! Sometime back in the 1920's he opened the soon to be famous Red Vogt Garage in Atlanta, Ga. After teaming up with car owner Raymond Parks his reputation as an engine builder/tuner took off. In December of 1947 Red brought a group of car owners and drivers to Daytona for a meeting with Bill France (the soon to be President of NASCAR). The Result? The forming (and naming) of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. Red Byron won the Innaugural NASCAR Race in Feburary of 1948 using Vogt power. Vogt went on to build engines for a very impressive list of clientele, including (among many others) Bob and Fonty Flock, Bill France, Banjo Matthews, Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, and Curtis Turner. He also built the powerplants for a few Indy cars. Red was awarded a lifetime membership in NASCAR (What? No dues! Wonder if that meant he also got a rulebook, patch, and pin every year?), inducted into the National Motorsports Press Association Hall Of Fame as well as the TRW/NASCAR Mechanics Hall Of Fame at their first awards banquet. Methinks Mr. Jacono owes a lot to these ‘Stock Car guys’, no? Then again... so does all of motorsports... thanks guys.
Now if you recall, Joe got some advice on welding from Jack Hart... but following these exchanges, one has to wonder exactly how much he absorbed....................
" In ‘57 I was putting dragsters together, but I was building trailers more than anything. I was making car trailers. I made trailers for everybody. You supply the plate and I’ll weld the rest. Hell, I even put brakes on ‘em!"
About two years after Joe went into the ‘trailer’ business he went into the ‘race car wheel’ business with Pat Bilbow of Lynwood Welding (but that’s a whole different story for another time). Eventually Joe wound up with seven (7) complete Lynwood chassis’ in his shop! Occasionally, folks who knew Joe back in those earlier days would drop by. Let’s hear Joe tell it.............
Jacono (L) leaves on Don Bauman’s digger. This is the Cad powered car mentioned in this story. Photo taken at Vineland Speedway
"First car from Bilbow... here it comes! Let me tell you something, it was a piece! Man, it wasn’t like that crap that I was building! And buying a car from him was nice because, you knew it was straight, you knew it was safe, the rear housing was in it, you got peace of mind. Not that I ever feared nothing, which was the thing for me that was gonna be my downfall. Or so I thought. But it really wasn’t. Hell… I would drive the stuff that I built, and I couldn’t weld! But Pat came down with welds that were beautiful, man. They were beautiful!" "So one day I had one of his cars sitting in my shop, and someone came in and said ‘Hey… who built this car?’ I told him I did. He said ‘Man, you got awful good didn’t ya?’ I said ‘Yeah, and look how many I’ve made. And I pointed up to the roof. See I had so many of them, they were hanging from the rafters! The guy said to his friend ‘Man, look at this weld!’ And the other guy said "Jesus Christ, man... I need some help, will you give me a hand?" "And I told him ‘Na... I’m strictly a dragster guy… these are the only things I can weld. "Then later another guy dropped by and said ‘Who built this?’ Again, I said "I did." "Man, you sure got good in a hurry, didn’t ya?" "I said ‘yeah… I found this new wire only the Air Force knows about." "What’s it called?" "I ain’t telling’ you." I told him. See, I had an old Sears gas welder over in the corner. He said "You did all of this with THAT?"... and I just nodded my head. He had this big huge welding outfit outside on a truck that had it’s own generator, and all kinds of stuff on it. He started laughing at me and said ‘You son of a bitch… I know you didn’t make this car!" "Three or four years later he saw my name in an ad that Bilbow ran using me in the advertisement. He said "Who did you think you were kidding? I knew you didn’t weld that thing. I saw some of those trailers you used to make. I wouldn’t pull something you made behind my car... let alone ride in it at 150 miles an hour!!"
The tape recorder suddenly shut itself off, indicating that about two hours had passed since we sat down and started this conversation. Joe’s voice was getting tired (honest!), as were the batteries in the tape recorder. A glance outside showed that the President and most of his followers had all headed back to wherever it was they came from and sanity was returning to the Fairgrounds. Hey... it must have been a real circus out there when a few hundred gathered drag racers constitute ‘sanity’.
So Joe and I returned to our respective hangouts over in the Expo Center... but not before promising to spend some more time bench racing in the near future. Perhaps a periodical gathering of gamblers and coincidences awaits down the highway? Check back.
More old B.S. later.
Badco Forward advice, rebuttals, and death threats to badco@comcast.net
* 1965 "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue" Words and Music by Bob Dylan From the Columbia Records/CBS
Release "Bringing It All Back Home"
Released in May of 1965 "Bringing It All Back Hime" was Dylan’s first album that could really be labeled ‘successful’... depending of course on what level you label ‘success’. It reached #6 on Billboard’s Top 40 Album List and remained in the Top 40 for 32 weeks. Or, in other words... it had to be labled successful... it made money. But that ain’t all it did. It also exposed the recording industry to the fact that great performers could play a major role influencing change in accepted modes. ‘Kinda like what the guy from Florida would be doing in a few years when he put himself in front of that NITRO burning Hemi. ‘The times they were ‘a changin’.
Thanks goes out to all of the usual suspects including Joe Jacono, Jim Amole, Sy, Don Bauman, and Tom Molyneaux. Check out Tom’s cool web site at http://www.ecn.homestead.com Thanks also to Soaps By Betty for their continued support, visit http://www.angelfire.com/wizard/soapsbybetty THANKS BUD GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS
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