Stevie "Fast" Jackson was walking around the Texas Motorplex on Wednesday sporting cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Those who know Jackson, the fast-talking and fast-driving doorslammer phenom from Evans, Ga. understand the only thing cowboy about the man who answers to the name Stevie Fast is the way he drives the most volatile of doorslammers down the dragstrip.

Wednesday Night, during the annual Stampede of Speed Shootout, an anything goes doorslammer battle, Jackson showed why there is no doorslammer too tough for him to tame. He figures if Steve Miller can be a Space Cowboy, he can be a Georgia Cowboy. As he sees it, that's no bull.

"Man, I'm a natural-born cowboy, so when I come out here, it's fun," Jackson said. "I feel like I'm at home. If I didn't live in Georgia, I'd live in Texas. I love it out here. I love the folks, like-minded people, good food, and good music. There's nothing bad about it. I love this state, so it's fun. Anytime we can come out here and race, I like it."

It's even better when Jackson can come out to Texas and race a doorslammer where the only rules include it must have four wheels and be piston-driven.

"I just bring a car with doors and come race," Jackson explained. "There's no rules, no weight; just bring a race car and race it. It's kind of cool because it's just a one-race novelty deal.

"Basically, they're just if you've got a Pro Mod race car, come run it. There's all different types of cars. There are stock wheelbase cars, and there are blower cars, nitro cars, I mean nitrous cars. I don't think there are any silly turbo cars out here, but this is a man state, so they don't have any of them. But there are all kinds of cool stuff. I mean stuff that's highly competitive, but people just come out and race really, really fast hot rods."

Jackson steadfastly said he brought out a car that was clearly a "man" car. It's a supercharged 1963 Corvette, which up until last week, was sitting in a garage gathering dust.

"I called up Jim and Annie Whiteley, and I don't have an Outlaw car anymore since we sold The Shadow, and I wanted to come run the Stampede of Speed, so I called up Jim," Jackson said. "His '63 Corvette was sitting in Chuck Ford's shop with dust on it. I ran that thing for him for a couple of years, so I'm really familiar with it and I love it.

"It's one of my favorite cars I've ever driven, favorite cars I've ever tuned. It's the most forgiving chassis I've ever worked on. It will go down a dirt road; it will go fast if you ask it to. So I asked him if I could borrow it."

Jackson took the engine that formerly powered his former Radial vs. The World entry.

"We literally threw it together, built a set of headers, picked it up from the chassis shop a couple of days ago, took it to The House of Hook, and made three runs with it," Jackson said. "None of them were successful, but we were just trying to sort it out, brought it out here, changed a couple of converters in it, and blazed her down through there. So it runs pretty good."

Jackson entered the Wednesday evening shootout as the No. 2 qualified entry with a 3.600 elapsed time at 214.

After posting a convincing first-round victory, Jackson found himself more motivated to make a statement for two reasons. He was going up against longtime doorslammer nemesis Bubba Stanton, with whom he picked his pocket at last year's event in a $140K grudge race, and secondly, Jackson couldn't let his crewman Cort lose a $100 bet against Jim Whiteley.

Whiteley bet Cort that Jackson couldn't run 215 in the second round.,

"I told Cort I was going to get him that $100," Jackson admitted.

If the residents of Ennis, Texas, felt the ground shake underneath them, it was nothing they shouldn't worry. It was Jackson rotating the earth a little more than usual.

Jackson not only beat Stanton but did so by posting low elapsed time of the event with a 3.56 at 215 miles per hour.

"Everybody spun out, started shaking and red lighting, running all over the track, and sometimes you make a good run like that, you can get her knees shaking, and it'll just give it to you," Jackson said.

In the final round, Jackson beat a red-lighting Doug Reisterer, a man he credits for mastering the lightweight nitrous car.

"Doing a one-day race for me, as much as we race seriously, is a really fun, relaxed deal," Jackson said. "They do two rounds of qualifying, run the whole race on one day, and it's a really laid-back deal. So we like doing stuff like that."