Life By The Quarter-Mile

The Admission gate opened at 9AM, but we were always there at the front of the line, waiting… waiting.

Saturday morning circa 1969, ready for a full day of drag race spectating at Irwindale Raceway, hard by the 210 freeway in Irwindale, California.

There with me was younger brother Chuck, neighbors Mike P. and Frank R. and sometimes John E. from up the street. Dad dropped us off at around 8:30 in his ’64 Pontiac LeMans, a sweet 326 c.i. 2-door Aqua-on-Aqua ride. 

On subsequent Saturday morning trips to the drags we’d ride our bikes there, no need for the Dad run since it was only 10 miles away. 

Growing up was COOL.

Each of us had $5 for the day… $1.50 for Admission, $1 for a Pit Pass and $2.50 for enough food to keep us well-fed until Dad picked us up at 9PM when the races were over. Hot dogs and Cokes were $.25 each.

Five bucks to cover a twelve-hour day at the drags... best deal in town!

Once the gates opened, we ran… RAN… up to the Grandstands closest to the Starting Line for a bleacher seat as close as possible to the track. From our raised vantage point, we could see the cars lined up in the Staging Lanes, each line of similarly-classed cars side-by-side with other classes of cars, waiting for their turn to make a qualifying run down the quarter-mile.

A through M-Stock… Super Stock… Motorcycles... Gassers… Funny Cars… Dragsters… multi-colored bolides in every shape and size, engines loping with a wild cam profile cadence, open headers blasting our ears, leaded fuel and alcohol and nitro fumes burning our eyes. They’d roll up to the pre-staging lanes, one car in each lane, then do a short bleach-box burnout so the rear tires would be nice and hot for the start. Then a sloooow forward creep to get staged, mind games, the Staging lights glow and then the Christmas Tree sequences down: Yellow Yellow Yellow GREEN and RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH both cars blast off in a cloud of burning rubber and hot exhaust, straining through the gears and fighting to stay straight all the way to the Finish Line to get the Win light.

We'd sit/stand/jump at every qualie run, shouting out who we thought would win.  After a bunch of cars ran, we'd leave the grandstand and make our way to the Pit Entrance Gate, buy a pass and go in. 

How can I describe the delirium of a 12-going-on 13-year-old walking around all those crazy race cars in the pits, with nothing separating us from the cars and drivers and mechanics? Some cars were on trailers, some were on the ground with their engines in pieces being worked on. Some were being warmed up, the mechanic repeatedly pulling on the throttle arm RAMP RAMP RAMP RAMP to make sure the engine was tuned to within an inch of its life.

The names of the cars and their drivers were the stuff of boyhood dreams: King Kong, Tweety Pie, Skipper's Critter, C&O Hydro, Jungle Jim, Pure Hell, Pure Heaven, Ramchargers, Little Red Wagon, Chi-Town Hustler, Bronco Buster, Gas Ronda, 'Dandy' Dick Landy, Arnie 'The Farmer' Beswick, Stone Woods & Cook, The Hawaiian, 'Big John' Mazmanian, Hemi-Under-Glass, Blue Hell, Hayden Proffitt, Candies & Hughes, 'TV' Tommy Ivo, Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Shirley Shahan.

One doesn't forget these things very easily.

After crawling around the pits for what seemed like hours, we'd make our way back towards the Grandstand side of the track via the pit access lane, which ran directly behind the Starting Line. If we were lucky and timed it right, we could stand along the access lane chain-link fence during the first Elimination runs of the top classes.

The gassers, funny cars and dragsters would ROMP ROMP ROMP ROMP their way from the staging lanes to the pre-stage boxes, set up and do burnouts to heat the tires, spewing burnt rubber clouds and unburned fuel directly back at us, standing there at the fence line, covering us in bits of rubber and fuel and choking smoke. And we'd stand there, breathing it all in, run after run after run.

IT WAS AWESOME.

Back to the Grandstand side, in the stands or crowded along the fence for the Eliminations, watching car after car, race after race, matching skills and speed and reflexes, one winner to the next round and one loser on the trailer. Sometimes there'd be a break in the action for one of the specialty wheel-standers like the Little Red Wagon, an Irwindale Raceway regular driven by Bill 'Maverick' Golden. 

He'd stage and get the Green and RAAAAAAAAAAAA would pop a wheelie and hold that thing on the rear wheels all the way down the track, letting the fronts down only once he'd crossed through the Finish lights, turn around and RAAAAAAAAAA wheelie all the way back to where we were, dropping down just in time to stop in front of the crowd who were going wild!

The picture right there, with all those people jammed along the fence watching the Little Red Wagon taking off... I could very well be in that picture, jammed up against the fence, blissed out. Free.

Like all good things that must end, the Final Eliminations would be run and the Winners would be crowned and the Trophies would be awarded and the Trophy girls would be kissed and we'd have to leave, the sounds still ringing in our ears and the smells in our noses and absorbed into our clothes. We'd be waiting outside the Main Entrance Gate for Dad to pick us up, or we'd be making the long bike ride back home.  Funny thing... even in the dark of a Summer Saturday night, that long pedal home was exhilarating, the sense of freedom like a drug.

Every Stop light we came to, we'd line up and someone would yell 'YELLOW YELLOW YELLOW GREEEEEEEN' and we'd take off, pedaling like maniacs to beat each other to the next Stop light, where we'd do it again. All the way home.

We kept going to the track regularly until it became a victim of creeping commercialism, the place razed in 1977 to make way for a Budweiser brewing plant. I remember driving there one day with some friends, parking on the Irwindale Avenue overpass (now long gone) that looked down on the track, watching them tear it up. One of the guys brought a couple of beers and we toasted the track that we'd grown up with.

The end of an era.

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I wrote this essay for two reasons.

The first is because I wanted to coalesce memories of foundational experiences from a bygone age when I was young and life seemed simpler, when we were able to enjoy a kind of freedom that doesn't exist any more. 

The second, and more important reason, is because I wanted to thank my Dad for the lifelong gift of my love for motorsports. Dad is the reason we went to Irwindale Raceway... 605 Speedway... Riverside International Raceway... Ontario Motor Speedway... where I was infected at an early age with a passion for racing that has only grown stronger through the years.

Along with so many other positive influences he brought into my life, I can never thank him enough for allowing me to share his love of racing as a small boy, as a youth, as an adult. Every time I'm at the races or watching them on TV, I feel like he's with me even though he lives a thousand miles away.

Thanks, Dad.

"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -- Ernest Hemingway

All images, Gracias de Ron LeForce and Google open source images; 'Irwindale Raceway 1971' video, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.