For the next three weeks, Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com will conduct its inaugural War Stories Showdown presented by Mach Series Accelerator. 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 and 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, so with that said we’re hoping that we don’t get letters of legal action and a black Crown Victoria in our office parking lot, the latter being directed at Pat Musi and Roy Hill.

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.

December 17, 2007

#1 Qualifier – John “Brute” Force
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once believed real pigs were used in oil pipelines.

MAC TOOLS STAND THEIR GROUND

 This was the week before the 2000 Gatornationals and it was unbelievable. I had a bad week. I had probably one of the worst weeks of my life.

It started when I was at the labor commission with an employee. Then I got a bad haircut -- they ruined it. My head got mowed. I looked like a punk rocker -- not that there's anything wrong with those guys. I looked like a mini Jerry To liver -- a mini me. I looked like him except I'm much cuter

I got a brand new Jag and then it got T-boned. My parts didn't fit in my new trailer so it had to go back. I pick up the newspaper and read that Castrol got bought out and then a guy on the flight into Gainesville got sick.

The guy getting sick … well, that was the one thing that went right for me.

I was on the flight with the Grand Marshall of the Gainesville race in 2000, Kevin Smith of Mac Tools. We were on a shuttle flight from Atlanta.

I hate small planes and they warned us that it was going to be a bumpy ride. I'm afraid of flying. When I was getting on the plane I realized that he had taken my seat. I didn't bother him because he was the boss and I found another seat and just sat down in it on the other side (of the aisle).

The plane takes off and the kid beside him gets sick. I mean – awww -- it was bad. I felt bad. Oh God. It was awful.

This guy was sick as hell and we were all shipping him bags as fast as we could pass them. I didn't know the sick guy's name, but that dude was holding his own. Kevin was sitting right there and never flinched.

I leaned over to him and said, "Mac Tools…they always stand their ground."

I thought for a minute that since they were paying me all of this money I should offer to trade seats (then) I said to myself, “No f&$#*$& way.”

WINNER!

#16 Qualifier – Aaron “I’m the President” Polburn
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once took the wrong the person to the hospital after an accident

HE’S DEAD, HE’D DEAD, I KNOW HE’S DEAD

I can tell you, this is the mildest of my stories and when you are a track promoter, you get some doozies. When those stories include motorcycle groups, you really have disaster.

This one dates back to my days as the promoter at Thompson Dragway.

Just to set the tone, the shutdown area at Thompson Dragway is angled so that once you pass the finish line, it drops off and you can not see the shutdown from the start. On the same token, you can’t see the start from the shutdown.

We’re running a motorcycle event and this guy makes a run. Just shy of the finish line this guy’s bike goes into a speed wobble and while it looks like he is going to lay it down, we didn’t know for sure. Sure enough, he laid it down and slid off of the side of the track into the adjacent grassy area.

I make the ride down to the shutdown area and sure enough, he’d wrecked. You could tell he was a bit tattered, but okay. He was standing up and had the bike stood up, surveying the damage. That was as sane as this story would get.

We walked up to the guy and asked him if he was okay and he nodded yes. Then we told him that it is our standard procedure to take someone who has been in an accident to the hospital to be checked out. He adamantly said, “I’m not getting into that ambulance and I’m not going to the hospital. I’m not going.”

We shrugged our shoulders and said, “Ooooookaaaayyyyy.”

Then we heard the sound and the situation just degenerated from that point.

Mmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmm – you hear this car coming down the track and this is definitely no Pinto or Vega. It’s a big, 5000-pound four-door hooptie Cadillac.

It is this guy’s wife and she’s yelling as loud as a person can yell.

She’s screaming, “He’s dead. He’s dead. I know he’s dead.”

At this point, she pulls over into the grass at 80 mph. The car goes into a spin as she loses control. We ran away. Even the rider abandoned the bike and took off running; he barely gets out of the way.

About that time, she nails the bike and blasts it into about 4,000 pieces.

The car finally comes to a stop and this guy, without a word said, strolls over to the car, yanks her out and cold cocks her.

Meanwhile, me and the guy that rode down with me, and the ambulance personnel all looked at one another in shock. What can you say? It is what it is.

We go over to the guy and say, “What are you doing?”

“She destroyed my bike!” He said.

We ended up taking her to the hospital and as far as him, I have no idea what happened with him.

He left the race track and where he went I don’t know. We never saw this guy at the track again.

VOTING COMPETED - (W) Polburn (729) def. Force (288).

WINNER! - Top vote of first round (806)

#8 Qualifier – Gary “Wild Thing” Scelzi
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Posed As A Crash Test Dummy Named Ron Scelzi

THE STORY OF THE GRINNING RENTAL TRUCK

You know Ron Capps and I have history. There’s never a dull moment when you put us together. But I need to set the record straight. I am the one branded as the loudmouth funny guy. But, that quiet Ron Capps is as much a mess as anyone I know. Keep that in mind.

So, here it is in the middle of the summer and we’re headed to Sedalia, Missouri for a charity golf tournament. It’s the Michael Ross Foundation Charity Tournament that Danny Lasoski, a World of Outlaws Racer, puts on every year. He’s racing in the IROC series that year and it’s sponsored by Crown Royal. You can already see where this one is headed.

Anyway, we head to St. Louis and the game plan is to get a rental car and head over to the event.

You know us – we’re messing with the girl at the rental car counter and by the time we’ve finished – this poor old girl doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. We get the car and make sure we get the insurance, keep that detail in mind – it will be important later in the story.

We get the car and start driving, and we’re running behind schedule already, and this thing is not handling good at all. That’s because it has a flat on the right front. So we whip this thing around, and nearly flip it driving it back on the rim to get a new one.

You could see the look on this girl’s face as we returned. She wanted to run.

“This thing is no good, we need something else,” we told her.

She then told us that we she had nothing else, well – except a crew cab Dodge truck. We said, “Perfect, we’ll take it.”

We hop in that truck, put the gas to the mat and haul ass to Sedalia, Missouri. The next morning we get up and head to the tournament.

The whole scenario goes downhill from there. Every golf kart has a bottle of Crown Royal on it. You can see where this is headed and everyone starts spiking one another’s POWERade and coffee and whatever.

Needless to say, after 18 holes this turned into a big bus wreck. People were dropping pants and mooning one another and others were taking pictures. You get the idea. The people who go to these things are top racers on other circuits – big name circuits.

This thing was getting pretty ugly by the time we’d finished 18 holes and we still had a dinner, awards banquet and an auction to raise money for this organization.

One thing led to another and pretty soon none of us were in any shape to crawl back to the hotel, much less drive. I don’t even know that we could get a ride back to the hotel outside of the bus shuttle. The bus was running late and we didn’t feel like waiting.

We could see the hotel from the golf course parking lot. We started to rationalize that it would be okay to drive across the dirt field to the hotel and we’d be fine. After all, it wasn’t against the law to drive across the field to a hotel. How could we go wrong?

There’s about five of us in the truck.

One of the guys who played with us said he would drive, he would show us how to do it. “I’m gonna drive. We can do this,” he said.

I get in the back seat, buckle in, and we take across this field. One guy in the car spoke up and told Capps, “That’s bitchin’ that you guys get to drive 300 miles per hour for a living. What is that like?”

Well Capps, without missing a beat, says, “I’ll show you and puts the thing to the mat. We are hauling ass across this field and stuff is flying all over the truck and we’re holding on for dear life.

There’s always a time in every bad situation that you second guess yourself and at this point, I was having second thoughts.

What we didn’t take into account is that it had rained and this dirt field wasn’t hardened and it wasn’t flat. In fact, where they had begun developing the land, there were some drainage ditches. We didn’t know that and didn’t exactly take that into account before we take off on this adventure.

So, we are flying across this field and boom – this truck goes airborne. There is dead silence and we’re waiting for the impact that doesn’t come immediately.

In fact, there was a good four or five seconds of silence. I knew at that point, there wasn’t going to be a good outcome here. I thought we were going to flip or we had gone over a cliff or something.

Then all of a sudden there was a big crash sound as we hit. Then there was another big crash and that was our golf clubs finally landing in the bed of the truck.

You know when something like that happens, you can’t even speak, much less poop your pants. You just look at one another with your beverage dripping from the roof and your clothes.

We walked through the hotel like we had seen a ghost and got to our rooms and never spoke the rest of the night. Then, at 9:30 the next morning, we get up and head out to the parking lot.

There are no other cars in this parking lot – just this one Dodge truck and it looked like someone had taken it for a ride through a lake. We walked out and began looking this truck over.

It was so bad. The front bumper was bent so bad that it looked like it was smiling at us. There was no mud in the parking lot but only in a circle around this truck. Evidently, when the truck stopped – all the mud fell off right there.

We looked at each other trying to figure out what had happened and then it all came back. We opened the door and that was enough to knock someone down. It was a mess. Then we walked around to the back and every golf club was still in the back. Whatever hang time we had was long enough for every bag to land upside down and collect every flying club. We knew this one wasn’t going to turn out good.

Doug Kalitta saved us. He was at that tournament and was smart enough not to take the journey with us. He was flying back to Michigan and offered to give a ride back to St. Louis.

I thought, okay, this is perfect. We had a friend of Lasoski’s put it on a flat bed tow truck and take it to St. Louis because he was coming to St. Louis that weekend for the racing.

Everything seemed to fall into place and we thought we had gotten away with murder when three weeks later, Capps gets this phone call. Then Capps tells me, “Someone called from the rental car company and wanted to speak to Ron Scelzi.”

He tried to tell them they were speaking to Ron Capps, but they were intent on speaking to Ron Scelzi or Gary Capps. Come to find out, when we were at the rental counter, we had that girl so flustered that she got our names messed up.

This person was calling to find out who was going to pay for the $10,000 dollars in damage to this Dodge truck.

I thought Capps was just yanking my chain and then my phone starting ringing off the hook. I remembered when we did this we took out the insurance policy. I called the company back and finally told them there was Ron Capps and Gary Scelzi and to leave us alone.

I told them that truck was in perfect shape when we returned it. We had a friend of ours that dropped the truck off so someone must have stolen it and taken it for a joy ride. I told them we paid the insurance so leave us alone.

They tried for three more weeks to send us a bill, but I won’t mention any names because I’m afraid they won’t rent me another car.

I know there is one particular company that won’t rent to Ron Scelzi anymore.




#9 Qualifier - Larry “You Can’t Fix Stupid” Morgan
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Appeared Once in the HBO Series The Hitchhiker

THE TOW TRUCK LULLABY



Lack of sleep can be a mother. It will make you lose your judgment.

This one goes back to the Rod Shop days and I had to make a trip to Darlington, SC. I hadn’t slept for two days. I had a round track motor and converted it into a drag race engine. I didn’t have any help and left for Darlington on Friday night. Remember, I hadn’t slept in two days. I was drinking Mountain Dew and trying to keep myself all wound up.

You know you see some really wild things when you haven’t slept in a while.

I got down to Parkersburg, West Virginia after my truck had broken down. I had a brand new truck and trailer but the wiring got crossed at the back of the tailgate. I kept blowing fuses in a rainstorm. So, I got down to Parkersburg, I got fuel, got some more Mountain Dew and started to pull back onto I-77 and there was this guy hitchhiking. He had a suitcase. I pulled over, leaned my head out the window and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Charlotte,” he answered

"Can you drive this truck?” I asked.

For all I know, I could have been dreaming this.

He said he drove trucks for a living and his truck had broken down. I told him to get in the truck and he drove me to Charlotte.

That was when I first started working at the Rod Shop.

He drove my Chaparral trailer and dualee all the way down there. I didn’t care where I ended up -- all I needed was some sleep.

That’s a true story. I look for that S.O.B. to come look me up some day needing something. 

VOTING COMPETED - (W) Scelzi (806) def. Morgan (136). 

TOMORROW'S COMPETITION: Don Prudhomme versus Joe Lepone, Jr.; Scotty Cannon versus Whit Bazemore