Eliminations are underway for the second annual CompetitionPlus.com War Stories Showdown, a competition which places sixteen of drag racing's personalities head-to-head in storytelling competition. Over the next four days, you will be presented with the first round strories of each respective contestants. They are paired on an NHRA eliminations ladder seeded by reader vote last week.

Today's competition features the #4 qualifier Gary Scelzi versus #13 Steve Earwood as well as #5 Bob & Etta Glidden versus #12 Chris Kaufmann. Voting concludes on December 25th at 5 PM.

For the next four weeks, CompetitionPlus.com will conduct its second annual War Stories Showdown. The veterans of yarn spinning are paired for what promises to be a series destined to produce the finest behind-the-scenes stories.

Here are the rules –

The field was seeded by reader vote. The participants are paired on the standard NHRA professional eliminations ladder. Each story represents an elimination run for the participant. The readers will judge each war story on the merits of (A) believability and (B) entertainment value. Please do not vote based on popularity. You are the judge and jury, so vote accordingly.

Voting lasts for three days per elimination match. Once a driver advances to the next round, they must submit a new war story.

This is an event based on fun and entertainment value, and the rules are simple. The stories cannot describe any felonious acts (unprosecuted, that is) and you can't use a story about your opponent, against them. That happened last year and wasn't pretty at all. There is a one event win rule.

This is drag racing with no red-lights, disqualifications and plenty of oil downs minus the clean-ups. Please enjoy as each of our competitors tell their own stories.

WINNER - defeated Steve Earwood, 59.86% - 40.14%

#4 – Gary “Wild Thing” Scelzi

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Did Donuts in a farmer’s yard with a Motorhome

AND YOU THINK YOU HAD A BAD WEEK?

You guys will never know just how hard it is to come up with a war story that doesn’t include bodily functions or fighting. But I

came up with something kind of close because during this particular time in my life there were plenty of instances of both.

This one dates back to 1985 when I was a starving quarter-mile artist. Starving quarter-mile artist = Top Alcohol Dragster racer.

I had used up all the money I had, called in favors and did everything short of selling my body to get a Brad Anderson engine. If you wanted to win in TAD, you had to have a Brad motor. Prior to that, I used a worn out Donovan engine to race.

Bob Devour, then with Centerline wheels and Bob Wyman, then with Mallory ignition, and Tommy Begosian from Fresno, Ca. (my agent and engine builder) helped me to put this Brad Anderson motor together. We had no money to race on.

We raced the engine once – we reached the semi-finals and blew it up. At this point, I owed Brad Anderson about $15,000.

This was about as sane as the story would get and from this point things went downhill for me.

Brad told me not to worry about it, but to make plans to race Pomona because he believed we could win. My dad would have killed me if he knew I was racing on borrowed parts or money.

We went to the World Finals in Pomona and won the race. I signed the check over to Brad and at that point I was dead broke. For some odd reason we went to the Winternationals and won that race too.

After that race a guy named Jerry Moreland wanted us to chase the world championship and asked what it would take. I told him a new crew cab truck, a spare engine and a credit card for fuel.

We ran really well, in the top three or four but the money thing caught up with us halfway through the season.

Devour gets this idea that we need to go back east and race Don Woosley and Bill Walsh.

I asked him how we were going to do this and his famous words were, “We’ll figure it out.”

How many times have you ever been roped into a bad situation by a similar statement?

I did have some friends pitch in some money to help us out and Larry Nockman who owned Delta Fab gave us some cash and loaned me his crewman Brad Fornes.

In the meantime, Devour arranged a deal with National DRAGSTER where we would transport pallets of the magazine to Brainerd. There was a race in Brainerd, Minn., that we were going to catch on the way to Indy.

I didn’t have any money to race Brainerd but the DRAGSTER gig paid a couple hundred bucks. I was 26 years old at the time and the furthest I had ever driven was Seattle, WA.

Fornes helped me to drive and my girlfriend at the time, Julie, who is now my wife, ran a trucking company and was going to be able to keep up with us through the trip.

I drove the first six hours and told Brad I was tired and time for him to drive. Well he did his time, longer driving than I did and it was about 1 AM. He put in a good hard day’s drive.

He woke me up and I was prepared to drive. We stopped at a truck stop and I filled up on No-Doz, got a Pepsi and a Ronnie Milsap tape.

That only made me sleepy, so 30 minutes into my shift I was driving asleep. So, I manipulated the digital clock to appear that I had been driving for a while. Woke Brad up, who then said it felt like he had just fallen asleep.

I played it off well and got good and asleep when Brad started listening to the radio and figured he had been duped. He woke me up and made me start driving – well, after he blessed me out.

I drove and we hit Nebraska and ran into the worst rain and hail storm you could imagine. Somehow we made it through and reached a rest area so we could check on the car in the trailer.

Car was fine except it was covered in National DRAGSTERS. The pallet had come loose and strewn them all over the trailer. Those magazines were in pretty bad shape by the time they got to the race considering we used cardboard and duct tape to repackage them.

We got to Brained and were sleeping six to a room at some lodge. Somehow or another we get to drinking.

You knew that one was coming.

Julie was flying into Brainerd, and everyone knows that’s not too big of an airport – maybe three flights tops daily.

I had gotten liquored up and totally forgotten about her coming in that night. I knew I was too drunk to drive, so I found someone to drive to the airport. We found some kid in the parking lot and basically told him he was driving us to the airport.

We get there and someone at the airport tells us her flight is canceled. They didn’t know when the next flight was and cell phones weren’t the big thing back then.

We made the most logical decision we could based on the facts we had – go back to the bar for some more drinking.

Things got ugly from there – shots, Wild Turkey and the situation got way out of hand.

Got back to the room and Brad, mind you that he’s a big boy – bout 6-2 and nearly 300 or so, and things got ugly. We got into a scrap and I’m all but passed out and he takes the bed and dumps it on top of me. I’m trapped and too drunk to move, so I just lay there.

That’s when I woke up to the sound of someone beating on the door.

“You $%^&&^ … how dare you not come to get me at the airport,” the obviously female voice outside of the door was screaming.

It couldn’t have been her. Come to find out her flight wasn’t canceled, but delayed.

Brad answered the door because I was still trapped and when she asked where the S.O.B. was, he just pointed to where I was – under the bed. I got an earful.

We ended up qualifying in the top half of the field, this after two days of hearing about how bad I was.

I hope I still have your attention.

We ended up burning up the engine in the first round and I race Bill Walsh in the second round, the guy I was battling for the championship. We rushed through the repair and halfway did everything. The car and engine is shaking so bad, keeping my foot on the pedal was a battle.

I had a .430 light and then the motor just turns off.

With me dumping in oil on the guy below, he forgot to torque one of the rods and there are intake valves and everything coming out the pipes when I bring up the rpms.

We’re down to one engine and we still haven’t made it to Indy.

We ended up with two engines for Indy thanks to Brad again. In one last ditch attempt to put Brainerd behind us, we fly back home with the wounded engine parts in the suitcases.

I didn’t wash the parts or oil pan out, we wanted to save the money from shipping – so we put everything in there. That oil left in the oilpan would come back to get us.

Not only were my bags drenched in oil, but Julie’s and everyone else on the plane.

Do I really need to go on from here?

#13 – Steve “I’m Not James Taylor” Earwood

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Worked With Norman “Moose” Pearah …

 
THE SOUTHERN PRO STOCK CIRCUIT

Back in the early 70’s I worked with Lamar Walden in Doraville, Ga., attempting to help with marketing, an unknown term at
 
the time, press and publicity. As a supplement to my rather meager income I gathered up a group of southern-based Pro Stock racers, some obscure, some well known and all self proclaimed super stars to form the original Southern Pro Stock Circuit.

I would book the group into tracks located in Warner Robins, Ga., Independence, Va., Courtland, Ala., New Bern, N.C., Albany, Ga., and about every goat pasture drag strip existing at the time in Dixie.

The competitors were quite an assortment of characters. Roy Hill, Hubert Platt, Reid Whisnant, Sam Carroll, Oscar Robertson, Max Smith (driving Wally Booth’s AMC Gremlin), Ellis Milner (once caught cheating by exactly 100 cubic inches), Nelson Des Champs, Lamar Walden (in the John Buttera-built Barry Setzer Vega), among others.

Corralling this group and getting them to the races on time was quite the challenge. Maintaining harmony was unachievable. Everybody wanted a special money deal, a special weight break, and the first round bye-run.

I, too, wasn’t completely without stain. I would charge the track a fee – allegedly all to go into the purse and charge each racer 10 per cent of their earnings. Of course I would skim off what the track paid us and add my cut to the percentage. I think the term is “double dipping”. No harm as long no one knew.

Some of the more memorable events included one of Hubert Platt’s infamous burn outs, taking place at Independence,Va.. Hubert would make a big production of opening his door after the burnout, leaning way out of the car and backing himself up. This was before crewmen backed up Pro Stockers. Hubert, known to be awfully fond of the taste of liquor, had been imbibing a bit with some fans before first round and actually fell out of his Ford Pinto while backing up after burning out through the rosin. We had to park him for the day.

Roy was always accused of cheating which was the case when anybody was winning. He did have one fire jacket with a small bottle of nitrous hidden with a quick disconnect, when he climbed out of the car the bottle went with him, but, what the heck? He was running out of the Petty shop and was our biggest name at the time.

Once, while “caravanning” to Lakeland, Fla., we were following Roy and were somewhere south of Ocala on I-75. Roy pulled over to pick up a hippie-type female hitchhiker -- hitchhiking was an accepted form of transportation at the time. Anyway, this gal jumps in Roy’s truck and they pull back into traffic. We go maybe half a mile and Roy locks up the brakes, pulls over, the babe jumps out, slams the passenger door and displays a rather graphic hand gesture. Guess Roy had requested for some form of fare.

I hate to pick my old friend, but Roy did create a lot of memories, several which I can’t mention here. One of the memorable nights at the digs took place at Elk Creek, Va. Roy was in the final round and was to race Fred Turner. Elk Creek at the time literally ran parallel to a creek with nothing separating the two, no guard rail, no chain, nothing. Nothing except the fog late at night, particularly in the Fall, the fog sets in the mountains of Va. The race paid a whopping $800 to win and I approached Roy with the idea of splitting the money down the middle as the fog was getting as thick as bank lawyers jockeying for TARP money.

Roy says he ain’t splitting nothing and later told me he had less than three dollars on him and had to head to Bristol that night to enter the IHRA Fall Nationals. Turner agreed to run for it. Now the fog had heavily moved in and you couldn’t see the finish line, located a long eighth of a mile away. We took tow trucks to the finish line and turned on headlights so at least Roy and Fred would know when the race was over. I stood on the starting line and the cars actually disappeared into the fog on their burnouts. I just knew each was bluffing and there was no way they would run much past the starting line.

The bulbs on the tree were just a glow, they both leave and you couldn’t see them past the tree but you sure could hear them. Roy set low e.t. of the event, winning handily. He said he couldn’t see past the hood scoop. That boy had more guts than a pickup load of chitlings.

As mentioned above, I really can’t relay all the stories of the Southern Pro Stock Circuit, but men were really men in those days and Pro Stock racers were as tough as they come. Nobody looked at weather forecasts before they left home nor did they fuss about sleeping in the truck, driving all night between races or blame engine builders. Those were the pioneering days of Pro Stock. One thing they do share with today’s racers, they were awfully hard on the poor promoter.

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#5 – Bob & Etta Glidden

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – How they won ten world championships without killing one another …

DRIVING MISS ETTA …


Etta and I did a little bit of everything, and most of the time she didn’t get the good end of the situation.

Somehow she lived to tell about it. We ended up in some tough situations because we just had to do what we had to do to survive.

She got over most of it, except that time I was hammering the clutch outside the shop and she opened up the door to yell at me and the hammer head flew off striking her between the eyes.

Yeah, she didn’t laugh about that one too much.

She didn’t laugh about the time I had her in the back of our duallie when the fuel pump quit on us on the way to Dallas. I had Etta standing up in the bed of the truck, where the gas tank was, with a radiator tester pumping pressure into the tank while I drove. Cars and everyone were honking at her. That had to have been embarrassing for her.

Then she got mad at me because I wouldn’t sleep and I was a bit grumpy, you know I’ve been known to be grumpy a time or two. She and the boys gave me some sleeping pills and kept me knocked out in the back of the truck for days while they went to the beach.

Etta and I had never done anything but work at the races and little if anything else. We first started going to Brainerd and Etta talked me into going fishing and even then we ended up getting picked up by the game warden for fishing with no license. We didn’t even get 50 yards from the dock. That one cost me $48.

Etta was a real trooper and there wasn’t much she wouldn’t try to tackle – even driving an eighteen wheeler.

We had just gotten our first tractor and trailer, the year escapes me. The tractor had a Detroit diesel in it with a blower. If you didn’t know how to drive it, it was pretty difficult. The minute you pushed the clutch in – the engine would come back to idle.

You have to have a special license for the rigs for a reason.

We were headed down to Gainesville and I hadn’t slept in a few nights. I had already logged about 300 miles. We were in Nashville, about to go up Mt. Eagle. I told Etta she could drive but not to down shift because that would be hard.

I was so tired I wasn’t thinking about her getting into the mountain.

I’m in the sleeper, been asleep for a while and the tractor starts going, chug, chug, chug.

When your tractor goes chug, chug, chug – that’s usually not a good thing.

Etta had gone up the mountain and right in the middle of the highway, the truck died.

She didn’t give up on her driving, although all the cars on the highway were passing us and giving some ugly and strange looks.

I guess about two years later was her toughest experience.

We were leaving Seattle and headed to Pomona. She was driving down the mountain.

She did really well on the flat land but those mountains gave her a fit.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson after the first time, but I got sleepy and was asleep in the hauler. I felt the truck stopping and we were pulling into the weigh station north of Los Angeles.

We kept smelling something like it was burning and I knew we had used the brakes a few times, but everyone was looking at us as if they were about to come running.

I looked in the mirrors and everywhere I looked there were fires but these fires were under the truck!

Yeah, that will wake you up.

I had forgotten to tell her to use the Jake Brake.

She was using the brakes all the way down the mountain and had burned up the seals on the trailer and all four wheels were on fire under the trailer.

I can’t remember what I said when I got out of the truck, but you can’t print it here.

She drove those years without a license I guess but in the end she ended up becoming a pretty good driver, and I ended up being able to sleep eventually.

WINNER - defeated Bob & Etta Glidden, 57.14% - 42.86%

#14 – Chris “The Smoking Gun” Kaufmann

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Knows Where the Nitrous Bottles Were Hidden

THE WORST START TO A NEW YEAR

My background in racing has exposed me to over forty years of insanity. I think every race has a story and a lot of them are not very pretty. Many people have asked me to tell stories about Glidden, Roush, Gentilozzi or Bernstein and Nitrous or some kind of rule bending, but I think I will save those just in case I go a lap or two in this deal.

The year was 1986. I was working with my friend Frank Iaconio on the Kenny Bernstein Ford Super Team. After the ‘85 World Finals in Pomona we pulled the engine out of the Don Ness-built Thunderbird and I stored the Budweiser truck, trailer and race car at my shop in Downey, California for the winter. Frank headed back to his home and race shop in New Jersey.

Pro Stock Racing was a lot different in those days. Some say it was the golden years of racing with so many colorful characters and cars even looked like the cars people could buy. It was not uncommon for a Pro Stock race team to consist of only two or three people, total. They built, developed, tested and maintained the engines. They tuned the car at the track, drove the truck and trailer to all the national events, match races and sponsor outings. Most of the team owners were drivers and engine builders. One hundred-plus hour work weeks were the norm and most everyone just laughed at the insane schedule saying: we could rest when we were dead. One thing we all knew, when we keeled over after a half dozen 20 hour days in a row, was that Bob Glidden was still up and still working.

Anyway, as Frank was getting ready to leave to go back to New Jersey he had mentioned how he was a little uncomfortable about some racers who had been robbed and one was even killed in his motel room. I had just won a new pistol at a police pistol match and decided in a moment of idiotic benevolence to give it to Frank. A move we would both regret down the road.

Fast forward to 6 days before Pomona and the ’86 NHRA Winternationals. I had just gone to the airport to pick up the fresh engines Frank had shipped back after spending all winter adding some Iaconio horsepower. I was there to pick Frank up at the airport. It was before cell phones and I kept circling the airport as I didn’t want to park an open duallie with two Pro Stock engines in the back. Finally I got paged on my beeper with a New York phone number. I parked nearby and called the number from a pay phone. Not knowing who it was in New York and I guess the person who answered was as confused as I was. So after we figured it was a wrong number and hanging up, I called Betty Lamb to see if they had heard from Frank. Yes, she exclaimed, he was arrested at the airport for carrying a gun. Needless to say, that day didn’t go too well. Somehow Frank managed to eventually escape from New York, minus the .357 magnum revolver and with a court date in his future. He arrived the next day. We had a good laugh, then rolled up our sleeves and started work. Over the years it has always amazed me at the incredible, albeit warped, sense of humor racers manage.

After installing the engine, Frank, Tom and Ray were off to Bakersfield to test everything. Late that night Frank was driving down the grapevine “slightly” exceeding the posted speed limit when two CHP highway patrolmen apparently perturbed at a fifth wheel truck and trailer hitting triple digits, managed a felony car pull over. For the second time in 3 days Frank found himself trying to talk himself out of the Grey-bar Inn. Somehow he once again escaped and when I hooked up with them everyone was pleased with the race car’s performance and the crazy night running from the law. Frank asked me to “take care” of the ticket. A few weeks later I paid it, as unlike New Jersey, LAPD had no way of “taking care” of tickets.

So qualifications start at Pomona and we kind of stunk the place up. Then on the final run we get it all together. Frank raced Butch Leal (I think) and they had almost identical reaction times, but Frank won the race. When the time flashes up it shows Frank with a slower time by a 1/10 of a second. The time Butch ran was good enough for 12th spot. As we are towing back I keep saying this is wrong. At the pit Frank says, “Whatever, bottom line is we didn’t qualify”, mumbles something about NHRA and sits down in the trailer looking for a Budweiser. I said I was going to the tower and Frank says, “Knock yourself out.”

When I get to the tower I have to use every trick I know just to get to the base of the tower. Pro Stock is almost over and the crowd is going nuts. I see my friend Jim McFarland coming out of the tower. As fast as I can, I tell him the story and he takes me to the NHRA suite then goes inside and a minute later comes out with Steve Gibbs. Steve was the director of Competition and one of the best guys NHRA ever employed. I tell Steve the situation and tell him I know there are back up clocks. Steve doesn’t comment. I ask him to see if both clocks say the same thing. Now the problem with reversing any run like this is that it opens Pandora’s Box. If you let one dispute in, you have to let in 50. Steve goes in the suite. Finally as the first Funny Car pair is running down the track, Steve comes out and says there is a discrepancy, but he cannot use the time on the back-up clocks. As I am about to hit the Rev chip he says here is what we can do. If you can get back here between Funny Car and Top Fuel, we will give you another run. Little did I know, the fun was only about to begin.

I get back to the race car almost crashing twice on the scooter, only to find out Frank is MIA. I tell the guys to get the car ready and find Frank. We have 5 minutes to get it to the starting line for a re-run. After some protests, they jump in and try to cool it off and I start packing the chute. Someone finds Frank and he starts yelling at me for sending everyone on a wild goose chase…those might not have been his exact words. He is convinced that I am playing a joke on everyone and everyone is exhausted. The hardest argument I had that entire day was convincing Frank Iaconio, the Flanders Flash, that NHRA was allowing him another qualification pass. So with no time to cool or even check the clutch we run some water through the engine, add gas and Frank drives it to the line. There are two pairs of Funny Cars left. While there is some chaos and tons of strange looks from the Top Fuel guys, we all seemed pretty calm. I guess we felt like we were playing with house money. Anyway Frank made a decent hit and qualified 12th.

Sunday was like most Race Sundays, except on that Sunday, despite the craziest of odds, Frank Iaconio became the only racer, other than Bob Glidden, to pilot a big block Ford into the winner’s circle in the NHRA Pro Stock class. For on that day he beat first, the then world Champion Glidden, then later Warren Johnson, in the finals to win the 1986 Winternationals.

Like I said, every race has its own story…

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