There are multiple types of stories in drag racing. Those you can tell, and those you shouldn’t. Then there are those you tell to win a trophy.
For almost a decade, some of drag racing’s greatest storytellers came together for a good old-fashioned yarn-spinning competition where the first liar almost always took the prize. The scary part about it was that the stories were accurate with some embellishments.
Over the next couple of weeks, we plan to bring you the best of these stories, some in word and some in video. – Editor
GARY SCELZI: GET OFF MY GRASS, YOU NAKED PUNK – You’d think I would have learned my lesson about motorhomes after covering myself with poop and the blue stuff.
This tale comes from later in the same season. This time I had my family with me. It wasn’t a particularly good weekend in Indy because I lost the first round. At the time, Dominick was two years old, and I had to be in St. Louis the next day for an appearance.
It was 7:30 at night, and I was getting ready to get out of there, and I went to bring in one of the slide-outs. The motor would run, but the slide out wouldn’t move.
I thought to myself, “What am I going to do now?”
I got three or four guys together, and we pushed in the sides, so we figured it should be all fine from there. Wrong. That slide-out had a couch on it, the same place Julie put Dominick on, all bundled up and sleeping. So we pull off Crawfordsville Road and onto the freeway, and Julie starts screaming.
“The slide-out is coming out. The slide out is coming out.” She screamed.”
I said, “What the hell?”
The slide was coming out while we went down the freeway in traffic. I envisioned someone taking the slide out off the side and my son was going with it.
I got off to the shoulder of the road. It’s obvious something is broken. The motorhome is leaning to the side, and there we are, she and I, on the side of the freeway, trying to push this side back in. Semis are passing us, going 60 mph. We got it back in, and I jammed my briefcase and a chair in there, and it kept it at bay for the moment.
I was so pissed about losing, then this slide-out acted up, and I’ve had it. I’m so wound up that I am fueling up and driving straight to St. Louis.
I had it all planned. I’d get coffee. Get fuel. Get a good old country tape, then head off my way and pull an all-nighter. I ended up buying an old Merle Haggard tape, and instead of it being a get-it-on one, it was a slow-motion put-you-to-sleep kind of tape.
I drove for about 90 minutes and was so sleepy. I saw a campground sign; I decided to get off, and it was darker than hell down this road. I’m just about to turn around and see this KOA campground sign. They’re closed.
The typical procedure is to put a credit card number down, sign the paperwork, and go inside. You pull into the stall. I had it all planned out. I’d park and then go back and write in the stall number. So I’m pulling in on this dirt road with trees all around. Motor homes are not friends of trees because the air conditioning units are usually roof-mounted.
I’m driving, and it is pitch black. This rig is 45 feet long, and there’s no place to park. I see a spot, and I go for it. I shut it down and decided to go back later to write down the stall number. I leave the generator running, which I find out later is a big no-no.
I take my clothes off, and Dominick is sleeping on the couch. I fall asleep, in a deep sleep, and someone comes over and starts beating on the side of the motor home. I mean, they are beating on it hard.
I get up, sling the door open, and scream, “What in the f^%$ do you want?”
It’s some old man I later found out owned the campground, and he’s yelling at me, saying I ruined his grass. He’s calling me all kinds of things – a heathen, sinner, and everything associated.
Meanwhile, I’m standing there buck-naked. He then notices I’m naked, and he yells even more.
I finally had enough and said, “Will you shut up? I have a baby here sleeping. Let me get some clothes on, and I will pay you for whatever damage was done.”
I shut the door, and meanwhile, my wife and kid slept through this all. I get my clothes on and go outside. He’s still screaming.
“I already told you I would fix it,” I said.
I only ruined about six feet of his grass. My new wheels sunk into the grass. I offered $100. This guy won’t quit. He wants me out of there because my generator’s running and the motor home is too big. He’s going off on me, and I’m trying to put my shoes on.
Finally, I had enough.
“I’m gonna whip your ass if you don’t shut up,” I told them, man.
He threatens to call the cops, and I tell him to go ahead. I also told him to call a tow truck because I was not moving.
A little while later, I hear another knock, and it is the cops. I came out and tried to explain to them what had happened. I go through the whole story. The officers are laughing because they understand this guy is a nut case. They tell me I have to leave because that’s the only way they will shut him up.
The old man then pipes up and yells that I will have to back up this quarter-mile and winding driveway. I was determined that wasn’t happening and refused. I explained to them I couldn’t see and it would take two days to back out.
The cops said, “whatever.”
I put this thing in drive, and he jumps in front and tells me that I am backing out. This guy starts up again and gets me fired up.
“Let me tell you something, you old s.o.b., this motor home weighs about 50,000 pounds. If you think you can stop it, then you can knock yourself out.”
I put it drive, he jumped out of the way, and I never saw him after that. I ended up driving another 90 minutes before I stopped. He’s probably still out there fussing over someone messing up six feet of his grass.
SCOTTY CANNON: IT’S ME AGAIN MARGARET – This tale dates back to the last race I ever ran during my Pro Modified championship years.
You’re always going to have your critics, but this time a crew member on another team took it just a step too far. I will not call any names because they’ve been embarrassed enough. They know who they are and so do a few other people.
In this world, critics aren’t always kind. Sometimes they hit down to the bone. Sometimes they become annoying. On one particular occasion, this one pushed it too far.
I’ll give you an idea. After the team he worked on beat me out for the championship, he’d crank call me regularly. It was like clockwork that you could count on him calling.
I’d answer the phone, and it was this person on the other end of the phone saying they were going to kick my ass and all of that stuff. They played it smart. They made sure the caller ID was blocked, so I couldn’t find out who it was.
Some of the things he said, I can’t even repeat here. To give you an idea of how relentless it was, this went on for about three years – off and on. Sometimes he’d take a three-month break, and then the dumb-ass would get back at it again.
I started telling my buddies about it and how this person blocked their number. It got so bad for a while that I seriously considered getting the phone company involved.
He had an art to him, he could say the right things, and it would piss me off. If anyone had ever beaten me on the track, he knew just the right words to say to me.
The long and short of it is that I had just finished a divorce, and he knew all the details. You would have thought he was a politician with all the mud he knew how to sling.
Then he messed up. The peckerhead called when I was sitting around, having a whiskey or two, maybe three – talking junk at about midnight one night. This time his phone number was on my caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number – but I let him talk. He went through his typical spiel, and the longer he went, the more I laughed. I knew I had him.
Instead of flying off the handle mad and being the peckerhead I knew I could be, I just took it all in. I let him hang himself.
He hung up, and I hit *69. This time a lady picked up.
“Who’s number is this?” I asked.
“Who is this?” she asked.
She told me the name and said, you must want to talk to my brother. I asked her who he was, and she told me who he was and who he worked for.
He’s the one that revved me up. I’m not a hot head, and I’m from the old school – an old redneck from the south – and I’ve always felt that you don’t disrespect someone or call them out unless you are ready to go out back and settle it like men.
Well, I got her to put him on the phone. I simply said, “I’m going to get you. There are two things in life that I never do. I try not to make a promise I can’t keep, and I’ve never threatened to whip someone unless one of us got whipped in the end. You’re getting both of them.”
That was back in 1996.
I’d see him at the races, and he’d give me glances and antagonize the situation – he’d flip me off, laugh at me, and it was all because he knew my hands were tied. After all, I was looking at a one-year suspension if I fought.
He just took advantage of the situation and antagonized me.
What he and everyone else didn’t know when we got to the Shreveport event in 1998 is that I wasn’t coming back because I was going nitro racing in 1999 with Oakley and Jim Jannard.
I had qualified number one and already clinched the title. I had just left a friend’s trailer after doing a bit of gambling. It was well past midnight, and I was on my golf cart and headed back to my pits. Guess who I passed? It was Mr. Antagonist himself. He had a few other people on the cart with him.
I turned around and started chasing him. I pulled up beside him and grazed his eye as we were driving. As it turned out, I pulled him off the cart, and I jumped off as well.
We ended up going through a hospitality tent, and you talk about running over some chairs; man, we went through them. I got a few licks in and managed to swell his head up pretty well.
Well, I went back to my motor home and figured it was done and over with. Then I heard a knock. I looked out the window, and there were a lot of blue lights flashing.
That’s when I said, “Oh, Goodness.’ I knew I was headed to jail.
The way I explained it is that we fell off the golf cart, although I never admitted I hit him. I told the police that it looked like he fell off and got hurt.
Long story short – he served a warrant and had me locked up.
Well, I got out in the morning and returned to the track just in time for another meeting. This time it was Bill Bader, myself, and Mr. Raccoon with the blackened eyes. We didn’t deny a confrontation, but we did stretch the truth a bit.
It was suggested that I should have to forfeit all of my points, and I only had one question, “Why should I have to forfeit my points because a man gets his ass whipped?”
If this was January, then I could understand what I told them.
Then it came up, “I think he deserves a one-year suspension.”
I said, “You know what? I think that would be a good idea. You should have suspended me at the start of the season so you boys could win a championship.”
I never heard anything about the suspension from that point; I walked away. When I fired up that nitro car at Pomona in 1999, I began serving it.
JOHN FORCE: OF PIGS AND PIPELINES … – This is a true story, and I won’t swear to God because you’ll think I’m lying then.
Please don’t think I’m stupid; I just wasn’t thinking.
I got on a plane some years ago, and I was dead tired. I had been doing that reality show, the Driving Force, on A&E, and I had caught a ration of $%&* because of an incident with the family cat.
I had dropped the thing two feet without thinking. Yep, it landed on its feet.
Well, I sat beside this guy on the plane, and he’s staring at me as if he knows me from somewhere.
Then he told me, “yeah, I watch your show. I saw where you dropped that cat.”
I cut him off quickly and let him know you can drop a cat 40 feet, and he’ll still land on his feet.
About this time, this guy wonders why I am so defensive about it. But, what everyone didn’t know the week before was that we got all kinds of letters from animal activists.
They were serious. They said, “Don’t drop your cats anymore.”
It was a big deal. A&E was looking at the reruns to cut that part out.
I tuned the guy out, picked up the USA Today, and began reading it.
Headline read BP/Castrol Pipeline breaks. The article said they were going to address it. The article said they were running pigs through the pipes to the end.
I pictured it in my mind; this pipe is three or four feet wide and tall, so I could see that happening.
I looked at this guy and said, “Can you believe this $&%^? I drop a cat two feet, and they run a pig 3,000 miles through a pipeline, and nobody bitches?”
I went back to reading my paper.
The plane lands, and we go to get off and the guy looks at me and says, “You were kidding, right?”
I said, “No, I’m not kidding. Right here in the newspaper.”
Yeah, well, I found out later the pig was electronic, but they never said it in the article.
In my brain, I’m tired, and it is up there with the Eskimos – no one wants to crawl through 3,000 miles of pipe, so they send in the pig. Nothing is plugging it up if the critter comes out the other end.
I wondered why that guy walked away looking at me real weird.
So, I get to my meeting with my boss at Castrol. I just happened to bring it up again.
“I can’t believe that pipeline deal, and they get away with it,” I said.
He looked at me and said, “Force, that’s an electronic pig that takes pictures on the inside.”
Austin Coil was there and laughed so hard he almost puked.
“Tell me you’re joking,” he said.
“No, I’m just not thinking, that’s all,” I told him.
But you know, think about it, and things were primitive in the old days.
They could have run a pig in the old days. We run a roto rooter in the toilet. Why not a real pig in the pipeline?
When you eat a pig, it’s greasy anyway? What’s the difference?
BOB GLIDDEN: 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 challenging 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.
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. It was pretty tricky if you didn’t know how to drive it. The minute you pushed the clutch in – the engine would return 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 downshift 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 the truck died right in the middle of the highway.
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.
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 stop, 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.
JIM “SUPERMAN” NICOLL – IN HONOR OF THE MAD BOMBER – We never did learn the consequences of playing with M-80s or explosive devices back in the 1970s. We were drag racers by trade, and blowing up stuff on the race cars was not acceptable. Outside of the car, we wanted to blow up as much stuff as we could find. The more creative we could get with the explosions, the better.
I loved blowing up stuff. It fit my hillbilly redneck persona.
My partner in this lifestyle was Bob Creitz.
Creitz, who lived in Tulsa, always made our visits entertaining. I’m telling this story in memory of Creitz, who passed away. He always made sure those who he befriended never forgot him for one reason or another.
Creitz taught us the value of being a good M-80 thrower. Once upon a time, it was me, John “Zookeeper” Mulligan, and Leroy Goldstein who blew the tire off of Don “Mad Dog” Cook’s trailer with a carefully tossed M-80. Later on, John would swear off M-80s when he threw one, and it bounced off the target and returned back to the car. The M-80 went off in his hand, seriously wounding it as he was trying to throw it a second time. The rest of us… there was no way we were giving up the M-80s.
Visiting Creitz’s place was always a blast… no pun intended. Creitz’s shop in Tulsa was to the southwest. Creitz’s shop always attracted the best of the best.
Having a shop with colorful drag racers and an abundance of idle time was always a recipe for disaster. The tour headed to Tulsa for an AHRA event promoted by Jim Tice, and for a few days, we had plenty of spare time. It was me and Mad Dog who had time to spare, and we headed to Creitz’s shop.
Our favorite pastime was looking through the paper in search of used 1957 or 1958 Chryslers for sale. On one particular weekday, a major ego-filled one-upmanship competition would spin out of control and eventually get someone in a lot of trouble.
The lure of these cars was the 392 engines, and the cars… well, we could have cared less. On this particular day, we came across a 1958 Chrysler New Yorker and called the seller. He was all too happy to bring the car over to the shop.
Now this man had an affection for this car which made me wonder why he wanted to sell it in the first place. He brought the car over to Creitz’s shop and spent most of the time telling us about how he bought the car brand new and loved it so much. If he was selling his baby, he wanted to know if it was going to a good home. The car was like his child, and wanted to make sure the new owners would baby it as he did.
I ended up making the deal with the gentleman for the new car, and as he cleaned it out, you could tell he was happy with the deal he’d just made for this car which was in excellent shape.
The man had no sooner said his tearful goodbye and gotten in his new car than a major explosion transpired, blowing out the windshield and the dash. The old man leaped from his car with a look of shock on his face. What had happened?
When it became apparent this was the work of Mad Dog, who had strung together several M-80s, lit, and stuck them in the glove compartment, the old man became so enraged he cussed me out for quite a while. When I said a while, he hung around for hours, cussing me out.
It’s no surprise Mad Dog couldn’t wait just a few more minutes to let the man get down the road.
The old man wasn’t the only one pissed. Someone had gotten the best of Creitz in blowing something up. Creitz took his explosive reputation very seriously.
To top this one, Creitz knew he had to do this at night. His explosion had to be spectacular.
Creitz disappeared and off in a secluded section of his property and concocted a plan which included lots of blow-up stuff, a balloon, and the darkness of the somewhat rural Tulsa nighttime.
Let me tell you a bit about Creitz. If he wasn’t working on his car to make it go faster and not blow up, he was looking for something to blow up… not to hurt anyone, of course.
The man just loved blowing crap up. Anyway, Creitz emerged about 9 pm with his latest creation… an acetylene bomb attached to a balloon with the intention of lighting up the sky.
“Let’s send this baby up!” Creitz proclaimed.
And he did, with the fuse lit.
Shortly after Creitz lit the fuse, he realized there was something really wrong with his plan. There was nothing wrong with the bomb, as it worked like it was supposed to. It flew high into the air with the lengthy fuse trailing it.
Creitz failed to look over his shoulder where there was a Tulsa cop making notes of his escapades. The look on his face when their eyes met was priceless.
Of course, we could only sit there in awe as the bomb went off and lit up the entire Tulsa sky.
Creitz went to jail that night. We finally bailed him out at about 3 am. Several hours later, the newspaper hit the stands with the headline, “LOCAL DRAG RACER FOUND TO BE MAD BOMBER.”
As it turned out, the Mad Bomber title was given to a then-unknown prankster who was sneaking into one particular bar’s parking lot – drilling a hole in the tailpipe, taping an M-80 inside, and as the unsuspecting drunken driver was about to pull away, “The Mad Bomber” would light the fuse. The drunker the driver was, the more entertaining it was.
Oh yeah, about the drag race. Creitz was supposed to do some pre-race TV interview for the event, but he was told he’d already gotten enough publicity.
For the rest of his life, Creitz always blamed me for getting him sent to jail. All I did was buy a used ’58 Chevy; go figure.
One thing is for certain, hanging out with Creitz was a blast, literally.
ANIMAL JIM FEURER: JUST POINT WHERE YOUR CAR IS – Bill Kuhlmann and I were booked in to do a match race deal at Beaver Springs, Pennsylvania. We were running the Super Circuit back then and had been at Maple Grove in Reading, Pennsylvania, the night before. Anyway, Kuhlmann and I are there too because that was in the formative days of Pro Mod, and we were in big demand for match racing.
The track at Beaver Springs was a pristine little place – it was kinda old, you know, but they had it all painted up real nice and everything. Of course, it was surrounded by mountains and forests -being up there in that part of Pennsylvania. The track was really narrow, and right at the end, there was a big bunch of huge trees and thick woods.
Kuhlmann and I made our run, and as we were wrapping up our chutes at the top end, I saw this guy come out of the timber and come walking kinda stiff-legged towards us from the very far end of the track. As he gets closer, I can see he’s a racer from his torn-up fire suit. He’s as white as a ghost, you know, all scratched up and shaking so much he can hardly talk. “Where the hell did you come from, “ I asked him. “He just turned and pointed to the forest out beyond the sand trap.
‘Out there,’ was all he said at first. He took a few deep breaths, looked at Bill and me, and said, “I ran my Super Gas car down through here about half an hour ago, and I couldn’t get stopped at the end of the track. I didn’t want to put it in the sand trap, so I tried to steer around it, hit an embankment, and the car went airborne.’ Seeing that he wasn’t hurt, Bill and I broke out laughing hysterically.
We just about died when we went down to have a look for ourselves a little later, though. There was this Mustang II totally wedged in the trees about head high – the poor guy launched himself up there and couldn’t get out. Nobody missed him, and they sent us down on our pass, not knowing that he was up there, struggling to climb out the window between all the branches.
As far as I know, that car is still wedged up in that stand of trees – I don’t think that guy ever went back to get it – he probably never raced again. His Mustang is probably a condo for crows or something now.
