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

READ AND WATCH PART 1
READ AND WATCH PART 2
READ AND WATCH: PART 3
READ AND WATCH, PART 4

 

BOB GLIDDEN: MAN, THAT THING TOOK OFF! - Championships (from the 1970's) didn’t pay a lot back then, but neither did the races. I have to tell you that I was very fortunate that I finished runner-up in my very first Pro Stock event.

Every time we won a race, we’d buy a new machine for our business. That’s how we accumulated all of our equipment. We also did quite a bit of match races as well.

Thanks to Grumpy Jenkins, we afforded to do what we did by match-racing him two or three times a week. That’s how we bought parts and had what we needed to be competitive.

When it came to our three runs, we were fierce competitors. I’ll never forget the first time, I had the chance to run Grumpy. My car was at Hooker Headers and they were making a set of headers. Jenkins walked in and looked at our car and grumbled and said it looked like an erector set. I came out at the next race and finished runner-up.

Over the years, we had all kinds of weird things happen – especially at those match races. I always had the special treat, when we were in our dominating years, of pulling the parachute against him early.

Winning a match race meant more to Jenkins than winning a national event. We were booked into U.S. 30 Dragway one weekend and I caught wind that he was going to bring a big block in that weekend.

I called my buddy Dean Hill, who owned H&H Gas, and told him that Jenkins was bringing in as big motor and I needed something that would make my car run faster.

He promised to mix me up five gallons of something, and gave me the formula on how to mix the stuff up and said, this and that much per gallon.

Who in the heck measures stuff like that?

I used my standard dump it in the tank method. I was free-pouring all the way. I figured everything was measured such that the more I put in, the stronger it will be. In this case, a little dab would have done better.

I looked around and thought to myself, ‘What am I going to do now?”

If you’re a drag racer, you accept the fact that some rides are going to be more exciting than others. I don’t think much could have prepared me for that first run.

I got up there with this thing, cackling and popping and do a burnout. By this time, the crew is telling me that I have fire coming out of the headers.

I just sat there and braced for the green light.

So, I dumped the clutch on this thing and it screams like a banshee and it goes every which way but straight. I’m holding on for dear life with this flame-throwing Ford. That was probably a 1970s impersonation of a Pro Modified because that car went out with the front wheels up, came down, driving it sideways – off the track and back on. There was no way I was lifting. It was like riding a bucking bronco.

I guarantee that crowd at U.S 30 got more than they paid for that night and Jenkins, probably got the $%^# scared out of him.

We went out there on that first run and when I let the clutch out, it absolutely smoked the tires on the car. Somehow or another, I ended up in Jenkins lane. He had to drive around me, get back in his lane and won the round.

But, I’ll promise you one thing, that was the most entertaining round he ever won.

 

 

GARY SCELZI: GARY THE SUDS SPONGE - When you’re a high profile drag racer, you tend to meet some interesting individuals, and for me, that meant you meet guys

like Bubba the Love Sponge.

I met him in Texas and at the time, he was one of the largest disc jockeys in Florida. Clear Channel fired him because he was also the second largest fined deejay in the United States. The first obviously being Howard Stern.

You can already tell how we fit in well together.

I was racing in Florida and he called and asked me to be on his show.

At the time I didn’t know him. He let me know he was on the same channel as Howard Stern. The show was called Bubba the Love Sponge.

I had never heard his show and I had listened to Howard and knew the channel he was on, that you could cuss like a sailor on there.

It’s no holds barred like HBO. That’s right up my alley.

I flew out to Gainesville and their studio is in Tampa. I’m in the rental car hauling ass to the studio and when I was almost there he talked me into the place. Remember, I had never heard his show before so I had no idea what to expect.

I didn’t know they had a black kid on the show who answers to the name Twenty-five cent.

They brought me to the green room and they prep you there before you go on the air. I walk into the green room and there’s Twenty-Five Cent with headphones that have an antenna sticking out.

I don’t see any wires and immediately assume that he’s one of the comedian guys on the show. I have no idea what this guy does.

Twenty-Five Cent looks at me and asks, “Are you Gary Scelzi? Do you race?”

I responded yes, that I was here to race at the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville.

“How fast does your car go?” he asked.

“330 miles per hour,” I responded.

“Are you $%^&%$$ me?” He responded.

“Do you know Tony Stewart?” he asked.

I responded, “Yes, he’s a good friend of mine.”

Then he looked at me and said something that floored me.

“What Tony does is a man’s game. What you do is for sissies.”

I kind of laughed and played it off.

I thought to myself that obviously this guy didn’t know anything and was just messing with me. When he said that, I heard some laughter in the other room.

It didn’t dawn on me what was going on.

One the show’s sponsors is Miller Lite, so he offers me one.

I’m a little bit nervous, so I take the beer. This kid keeps asking me questions and then asks me, “Well how far do you race?”

I told him a quarter-mile and we cover that distance in 4.6 to 4.7 seconds at 330 miles per hour.

“It’s unbelievable,” I added.

He asked me how much horsepower my car had and I responded 8,000 horsepower.

He turned around and said, “Bull%$#&.”

“Ain’t nothing makes 8,000 horsepower,” he said.

This guy started getting cocky and was irritating me.

Every time he says something, I hear laughter in the next room.

It’s not dawning on me what is going on.

This guy is giving me a bad time saying that drag racers are a bunch of wimps. He’s saying that Tony Stewart is the man and NASCAR is the deal.

We had a few more beers and I had gotten enough of his lip and fired back.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, as he made some racial gestures at me.

“Why don’t you drag your black ass down to Gainesville and I’ll put you between two of these 8,000 horsepower cars and I’ll guarantee you that you’ll $^&$ your pants.”

As soon as I said that I heard all of this laughter.

Then he smiled and said, “Okay, they are ready for you now.”

We walked into the radio room and those guys were cracking up.

Unbeknownst to me, Bubba was telling him in his ear what to say and they were broadcasting live our conversation.

I was cussing like a sailor but that’s no big deal because that’s what this show is based on.

It’s a pretty raunchy show and about as close to X-rated as you can get.

We sit down and I’m still drinking and we’re on the air.

I was only supposed to be on there for 40 minutes and then there were strippers supposed to be on after that. I never really understood the concept of strippers on a radio show.

I get on the air and Bubba is asking me all kinds of drag racing questions and people are calling in. We’re having a good time.

I can cuss so I feel at home and I’m dropping f-bombs and s-bombs every chance I get. It’s like a bunch of foul mouthed men giving the state of the union behind their trailers.

The phone lines are lit up with people calling and they don’t know anything about drag racing.

They can’t believe a guy who was sponsored was on the show and talking like that. Tony Stewart was on there before but many of the other drivers, even though they wouldn’t cuss, wouldn’t allow them on the show.

I never told anyone I was going to be on the show.

Mopar had sponsored Bubba before at PRI; he just had to clean up his act for that episode.

We’re doing the show and what empty Miller Lite cans aren’t stacked up, are flying through the air. Bear in mind, we’ve been on the air for nearly 90 minutes by this time.

Abruptly, Bubba stands up and proclaims, “Geez, Scelzi you look like you are at a fraternity with all of those cans built up like a castle.”

People are calling in and things are getting out of hand.

The strippers show up and we’re three hours into the show. I’m taking all of the calls.

You’ve got guys with their windows down on cell phones and I’m answering, “Suicide hotline.”

Of course my advice was, “Go ahead and jump.”

Then I resort to hanging up on them.

The drunker I got, the more calls we got.

I’m hammered by the end of the show. It was politically incorrect at its finest.

At the end of the show, Bubba let me know that my show was the highest rated to that point in the history of the show.

I had people telling me they had never watched drag racing but were going to start now. All because of that one show.

What turned into a 40-minute segment, turned into a 210-minute drunkfest – for those of you who are still sober by the end of the story – that’s three-and-a-half hours.

I learned a valuable lesson that day.

If you need to introduce new people to drag racing, then get Scelzi.

If you have a show that cusses a lot, get Scelzi.

Most importantly if you need a host who can sock down the beers and answer the phone, I am your man.

Just ask Bubba.

Bubba the Love Sponge.

 

 

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DALE FUNK: YOU JUST CAN'T SHAKE A GOOD MOONIE - This is the story of me, the boys and a Moonie.

For those of you not around in the 1970s, a moonie was one of those kids who followed the Unification Church and its founder Sun Myung Moon.

So we were, in 1973, in Columbus at the NHRA Springnationals when there’s this kid selling paper flowers for the Moonies. I think I bought a flower from him and he went into the races.

Friday at the race was rained out. In the middle of a heavy downpour, Moonie walks up to us and asks if he can sleep in our trailer that night.

“What?!” I asked.

“Can I sleep in your trailer?” He asked. “I don't have any place to sleep.”

I immediately responded, “Nah.”

Moonie pleaded, “I won't steal anything ... you can lock me in there.”

I wasn’t about to lock him in there so I told him he could come back to the hotel with us and we ended up letting him sleep on the floor. He came back the next night and slept on the floor again.

The next day at the races, Robert had experimented with the valves in order to make it run a better mile per hour. The end result was a supercharger explosion and shrapnel taking out the wing and then the tire. The incident damaged the frame so our weekend was done.

Once again, we went back to the hotel and Moonie went with us. Robert, in the middle of the night, hooked up to the trailer and headed home with Moonie’s clothes locked inside.


Meanwhile I pulled out and headed to Pat Dakin’s place with Ed McCulloch to spend Sunday night. Then, in the morning, we head back home to Battletown, Kentucky. By this time, John “Tarzan” Austin had joined us. Little Larry Dixon left after one night because it was too much for them.

Back in those days, we didn’t have a lot of money as drag racing consumed much of what we did and didn’t have. Steaks were a luxury item. So with my proximity to the Ohio River, me and the boys decided to go out on the river to find a cow to shoot.

We figured we could find one large enough and butcher it to where there would be plenty to feed us for a while. I sat out the hunting trip and John Moore, Tarzan and McCullough leave in the boat to go kill a cow. Well, the story is that it was dark and they were drunk so they failed to kill the cow.

Of course the next day, we almost did a few of the legends in.

I had a 16-foot aluminum boat with a five-and-a-half horsepower motor on it and I had an 125 pound bloodhound dog. Me, McCullough and John Allen and the bloodhound's in the boat. Out on the river there were two barges, one coming up the river and the other down.

McCullough suggests, “There's one coming up and one going down, let's go in between them.”

I responded, “This baby ain't making it between them.”

McCulloch countered, “Ah yeah it will.”

Armed with one inner-tube, no life jackets and with that, We had one John Allen grabbed the inner-tube and jumped. The dog jumped out behind him and they went on to shore.

So me and McCullough are in this boat. Sure enough the first wave comes right up over us and the boat sinks right there in the middle of the Ohio River but it did have a floatation device right there in the front. It took us about three hours to swim this boat over to shore and took us a while to get the water dumped out of it and get the motor turning. We almost drowned out in the river but it was a fun.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any more exciting. We added one more guest.

The next day, and I've got a long driveway, we look down there and here comes this kid walking in and it's Moonie!

Now, I'm in Battletown, Kentucky and we left him in Columbus, Ohio. He comes walking down the driveway and he wants to know where all his clothes are at. He left them in the trailer.

I said, “Oh man, the trailer is in Radcliffe, Kentucky and it's 40 miles away from here.”

I said, “How in the world did you find me and know where I'm at?”

Moonie responds, “I asked somebody and they told me and I hitch hiked down here and here I am.”

I offered Moonie, figuring he was a pretty good kid, a place to stay here.

But this was going to be a monster week with myself, Tarzan, McCulloch and a few more here.

It's bad … there's a lot of drinking going on and a lot of everything else going on. We'd hit the bars every night and Moonie would go with us, although he wouldn't drink anything. He'd just go.

There are three or four beer joints in this town I live in and I wasn't allowed to go into two out of three of them after that one week of Tarzan and McCullough being there. I walked into one of them and he just said 'no, don't come in here for a while.' Life goes on.

Saturday comes and we’re about to head to Bristol and Moonie gets his stuff out of the trailer. We figured this would be the last time we’d see old Moonie, so we said our goodbyes.

We go to the Summernationals drag races the next year up in Englishtown. We go to the hotel, it's about ten o'clock at night, when there’s a knock on the door.

It was our old buddy Moonie.

I'm ask, “What in the heck are you doing here?”

As it turned out, Moonie lived down the road from the strip.

Just like I had asked back home, I asked again.

“How in the heck do you know where we're at and what hotel we're staying in?”

Moonie responded, “Oh, I asked around and the desk clerk told me where you were.”

We were extremely hungry and figuring Moonie knew the neighborhood. We were hungry and asked for the best place to get something to eat this time of the night.

Moonie then offered, ”I’ve got a lot of money from those flowers I been selling.”

Well we went to the grocery store and loaded up, I mean we ate good that week. We took Moonie back to his parent’s house, and it's raining that night.

We pull in this house and I mean it's a $1.5 million dollar estate. I thought he was lying to us to make himself look pretty good. We pull in the driveway and he wanted us to come in and meet his parents and they were thanking us for taking care of him.

I’d like to thank we contributed a few of life’s lessons to Moonie.

The sad part is that we haven’t seen Moonie since but every once in a while I will look out my driveway to see if he’s coming out to go to the races again.

 

 

DON PRUDHOMME AND THE WASCALLY WABBIT – “We were at Fremont Drag Strip and I was pretty much minding my own business and saw this rabbit come running up the track. Then all of a sudden the thing started running towards me and looked like it was just going to run past me. Its ears were up and I just reached down and grabbed the thing by its ears.

“I picked him up and it was like a lucky catch I guess. It was really funny at the time. I was fairly quick off of the starting line at that time,” Prudhomme recounted with a hearty laugh.

“Don’t tell anyone, but it was a lucky catch. How often can a man catch a rabbit? How many times can a man have a jack-rabbit run right past him? It’s like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. That was fun. It was a lucky shot. There was a photo of it in Super Stock magazine with a lot of the old school guys in it like Don Schumacher.”

Unlike many of Prudhomme’s competitors, the rabbit didn’t get cooked by the “Snake”.

“That was a small little jack-rabbit. We carried him over to the fence and turned him loose.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AARON POLBURN: WHY BEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED AT DRAG STRIPS - Many, many years ago I was involved in both drag racing and circle track racing. I had this bright idea that I would bring in anything for $500.00 per night to entertain people. I cut a deal with the people who handled Victor the Wrestling Bear to come to three different tracks on three successive nights for $1500.00. It was perfect.

Well, not quite.

Night one was at Painesville Speedway. This was a rough little oval with a figure eight track where the fights in the stands and pits were legendary. We had no problem finding a vast array of crimson necked patrons willing to give ole Victor a good fight. So many in fact we had to have a Fight the Bear Lottery.

I don't remember his name, but I do remember the first guy who was chosen was about 135 pounds and wore one of those stylish polka dot caps. When the fight started it was obvious that Victor was not impressed with the cap either and he proceeded to try and strain this little hunk of manliness through the wheel fence that surrounded the track. After that little incident, no one else would come forward. Friday score....Victor 1.....Billy 0.

Saturday we moved the entourage to Thompson Drag Raceway. This was going to be interesting because we had a racer named Irvin Raines. Irvin had a Super Pro Dodge called Voodoo Blue so most of us tagged Irvin with the same nickname. Now Irvin was a huge black man with a shaved head and a smile as wide as he was big. He reminded me of the guy who starred in the movie The Green Mile (no not Tom Hanks).

The Sunday finale was at another oval track called Cloverleaf Speedway. We were all kind of horrified when the first name in the Bear Lottery turned out to be a female. Our fears were somewhat calmed when we found out she probably outweighed Victor by about 50 pounds. The match started and the first thing this lady did was slap Victor in the side of the head. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so Victor reared back and slapped this lady upside the head. She came to about five minutes later.

With that, my bear hiring days were over but that did not stop me from my $500.00 entertainment theory, including an appearance from Uncle Heavy and the Pork Chop Review. But that is another day and another story.

 

 

PAT MUSI: THE REAL HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS - You’ve seen the movie “The Hollywood Knights” and how those guys messed with the cops who were trying to stop them from drag racing on the streets in the 1960s. Well I can tell you where they got their inspiration.

This story goes back to 1971 when me and other rowdy teenagers were running the streets of Carteret, New Jersey.

I read that John Force story in the first round where the animal activists were giving him a hard time about dropping that cat on television; well he can rest now because they’ll be after me after this story and forget all about him.

But, you go back to that time and we were all 18 years old, on the verge of having to go to Vietnam and we had a good thing going on with our version of “Paradise Road” like they had in American Graffiti, except our street racing place was called Blair Road.

We’d settle our differences out on Blair Road.

Well we got this new mayor in Carteret and he was on a mission to cut down on the hot rodders in town. We knew most of the cops and they were really cool, but even we knew their hands were tied. They were content to leave us be, but the mayor was just busting their chops about cracking down on us.

No matter what we did, the mayor had the cops on us. If we moved to another road, they’d shut us down.

Now I had this buddy named Zoobie. I know you’re already thinking, having a friend named Zoobie has trouble written all over it.

Zoobie was the equivalent of John Belushi in that movie Animal House.

Zoobie was always in trouble with the law, I remember going to this hamburger joint in town and seeing what looked like every cop car in town there with their lights flashing and dust flying in the air.

Zoobie had a ’56 Desoto and all I could see hanging out of the kitchen of this joint was the taillights of this Desoto. He was inside of the place ordering a hamburger. He put the drive-in in a drive-in restaurant, if you know what I mean. 

Zoobie calls me one day and he’s come up with this idea of how to get the mayor off of our backs so we could go back to racing. He explained this elaborate plan of how we would go to the dog pound, get this junkyard dog; which turned out to be a German shepherd mutt.

That dog was already halfway mean and hungry. We started filling that dog up with can after can of Ken-L-Ration. This stuff was the canine version of corned beef hash.

We must have fed that dog a case and a half throughout the course of the day. That dog was just swelled up. He was just glad to be eating.

About midnight that night, we got about 6 bars of Ex-Lax. One bar is probably enough of a dosage for six or seven adults. So Zoobie tells me to get the dog because we are going to slim-jim the mayor’s car and put this dog in the car.

We are driving to the mayor’s house and this dog is making sounds I haven’t ever heard from a dog before. His belly is just rolling.

I look over at Zoobie and say, “Zoobie, don’t you let that dog $%^! in my car.”

He tells me to keep driving.

The mayor had a 1970 Impala and we rolled up to it in the wee hours of the morning. It was white with a beige interior.

I slim-jim the door and we put the dog in his car. We locked the door and left.

That morning we wanted to see (the mayor's) reaction and after watching him for a little while, we knew his routine.

We’re parked out of sight, but close enough that we could see him come out to his car. It was still dark outside. He stuck the key in the door and the first thing that happened is the dog pushed the door open and took off running. The dog almost knocked him over and we could hear him yell, “What the …?”

He leans in to get in the car and that’s when the smell hit him and nearly knocked him back out of the car. He gagged a few times after that and stepped back from the car and just looked.

There was crap all in this car – on the seats, in the floor on the windows – everywhere.

He runs in the house and called every cop in town and had them come over there with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

The mayor, who used to be the town photographer, had his big camera snapping pictures and trying to dust for fingerprints.

The car is then towed to a body shop, the one ironically owned by my friend Tony’s father. Tony was the one with me on the People’s Court if you remember my first round story.

Tony tells me the police are looking all over town for the culprits.

In the meantime, the mayor’s car is beyond cleaning or repair. The insurance inspector won’t even look inside the car and they ended up totaling it.

You know the weirdest thing happened after that night. We went racing up on Blair Street and not one cop harassed us. Even more amazing, after the experiences of the previous weeks, we were never bothered again from the police.

Come to think of it; we never did find that dog either.