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. Multiple votes from the same computer IP address will not be counted.
First round oting lasts for two 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. 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 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. Multiple votes from the same computer IP address will not be counted.
First round oting lasts for two 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. 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 stories.
NO. 3 DALE FUNK (57.46) DEF. NO. 6 TUCCI (42.54)
NO. 3 QUALIFIER –
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – CHANGES THE NAMES OF THE GUILTY TO PROTECT THEIR INNOCENCE
THE STORY OF: 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.
NO. 6 QUALIFIER – AL TUCCI
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – USED TO FIGHT AT THE BIKE RACKS AFTER SCHOOL
THE STORY OF: GOTTA HAVE BALLS TO BE A DAREDEVIL
Many of you know me through the many years of me being in drag racing and during that time, I know how to have a good time and in the process it can get very entertaining.
Let me tell you about the time, early in my career, I never had been more entertaining than an event experience I shared with my good friend Chris Blair who now manages The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I’ll let him serve as my witness.
This was at a monster truck race in Colorado Springs, Co., at the state fair. I believe the group who promoted it was SRO and ironically, had heard my act announcing at a drag strip. They asked, I accepted. I figured announcing is announcing.
The place was like a rodeo arena and I was positioned on a stage 15 feet above the floor. There were monster trucks, quads and a marquee daredevil – who eventually becomes the finest exhibitionist I ever witnessed.
The show didn’t start off on a positive note for me as I made a HUGE blunder.
The show was sponsored, or in this case, presented by the Polumbo Family and their Ford dealership. When you hear the name Polumbo, it kind of already tells you that you are messing with the Italians.
So the promoters hand me a booklet with the event schedule and dignitary names and sponsors and the like. One of the promoter’s seasoned announcers was there with me, teaching me the ropes and helping me to understand the way announcing at a monster truck event is done.
I must say at the onset, when I have the microphone in my hand and let the words fly, I just roll with it and the best way for me to present it the right way is to not be handed the booklet just seconds before the show.
I was watching the show and then I had someone whisper in my ear, “The vehicles from the Ford dealership, the Polumbo Family, are going to come out right away.”
I never heard the word Ford. I looked over and saw these guys with glowing red, cigars in this dirty, dusty bleacher area next to me. There is the family, with mustaches and suits on.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, coming out of Colorado Springs are the brand new lineup of 1993 Chevrolet Blazers.”
Then it clicked. “Oh s*** Al.”
I looked over at them, cigar smoke standing in the air, “Guys I know you’re very serious and I was just giving a little punch for the Chevy fans, but this is a brand new 1993 Ford Bronco. And, you won’t get anyone of them finer than you will at the Polumbo Family dealership. If you want a Chevy, that’s the wrong place to go.”
I was trying awful hard to climb out of the hole I had dug. I eventually turned it around and they were smiling again.
Then the action turned to a battle of the four-wheelers.
These people took this stuff very seriously. The teams were broken down into states and each state represented a team. The indication as to how serious these people took this stuff was whenever I would mis-identify someone, their response was a flurry of beer bottles at the announcing deck.
The promoter came up to me and offered, “Man, you have got to cool it.”
Chris Blair was in his first leadership/management role as a promoter. He was young and fresh out of college. Blair was full of energy and pumped up.
“You gotta calm those four-wheel guys down, and not get them so crazy,” Blair said. “The fans are taking it too seriously and throwing stuff.”
I responded, “You told me it was a race and I was just building it up like it was a battle. Can you just calm it down enough to do the pre-race ceremony with the monster trucks and the daredevil who was going to jump the monster trucks.”
Maybe it’s a blessing I cannot remember the daredevil’s name but there was one aspect of his interview I will never forget and a fitting conclusion to what had been an interesting outing for me.
This guy had an old bus painted like the one the Partridge Family rode around in. it was an old school bus. The kind you never forget.
The last eight rows of seats in the bus had been cut away and replaced with a ramp and a storage area. He lived in the bus and it had all of the amenities. He did give off the impression of a hippie.
Picture this guy with the long and wavy hair … the Partridge Family bus … and then … you get the image of what I saw.
Well, not completely.
This cat rides around on the show floor, doing wheelies and spinning out … racing all over the place. He was doing the best he could to look like the next best thing to Evel Knievel.
He’d ride to the top of the ramp and roll back down.
Then he rolls up to speak to me, with Blair at my side.
“Get an interview with this guy,” Blair said.
I’m waiting on the guy … Daredevil Bob … or whatever his name is to roll back.
I can see like it happened today, not like I want to see it.
Some things you just never forget.
There, straddling his big Suzuki, is Daredevil Bob in his ripped blue jeans. And he comes to a stop between me and Blair.
I walk up to interview him and there it is, the guys whole package … err junk is sitting on the gas tank.
I swear to you. Most people would have turned off the microphone and told him to put his junk up.
But, this was live entertainment and I am Al Tucci.
I look at Chris Blair and pointed to the tank and walk up to Darevil Bob and began the interview.
The first question and Chris Blair turned four different shades of red.
“Daredevil Bob is this going to be a balls-out run?” I asked.
“Yeah, we were going to go all out on this run,” Daredevil Bob responded. “I’m going to go back and get my safety equipment on and then we’re going to do it.”
And in my final crowning moment for what was my first and last monster truck event, I offered sage advice.
“Might want to remember your cup,” I offered.
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