History Putting a Face with a Name: Cars and Drivers in the 1950s

Helen and Bart Root: A Racing Married Couple
Who Flirted With the Big Time One Year
​

In my dozen or so years working as head tech man at the Bonneville Raceways drag strip near Salt Lake City, I recall a couple of times when racers told me that their wives were threatening divorce if they didn’t give up their racing. In their wives’ views, they were getting short shrift. It was as if the guys were married to their cars, not to them. I distinctly remember one racer telling me that his wife had given him an ultimatum. He said, “Well, the old lady said, it’s either her or the car.” I can remember him coming back about six weeks later—without his car. He had lost both her and his race car in divorce court. In his wife’s bitterness, she got her revenge by mandating that the court force him to sell his car in the divorce settlement.

There is both a financial and relationship cost in drag racing if married couples don’t find a way to manage both. In my case, we made it a family thing. My wife enjoyed photography; did her own film developing in a home darkroom. My fifteen-year-old daughter was looking for a job. So, for a couple of years, my wife was the drag strip photographer and my daughter worked in the time shack, taking down times and giving the time slips to the racers. We made it work, made it fun working together.

There are several married couples in drag racing who also made it work for them. Don and Pat Garlits, Bob and Etta Glidden, Shirley and H. L. Shahan, Peggy and C. J. Hart, Carol and Lloyd Cox, to name a few. Those are probably the best-known husband-wife racing couples. But there were also others less well-known who also navigated their love of drag racing jointly. In the 1950s, some of those racing couples included Joanne and Jack Schnepf, Ruth and Mario Saccato, Mary and Dale Rakestraw, Doris and Ralph Heim, Mary and Jack Stewart, Thelma and Hal Ramsey, Jeanie and Ed Southard—and Helen and Bart Root.



The Roots, from Norwalk, California, navigated the challenges of being a drag racing couple in 1954-55. They capped it off by landing on the front cover of the July 1955 issue of Hot Rod. Even their two cute kids, Jodie and Bart, Jr., standing in their street roadster, were happy to being included on the cover photo.


In 1950, Bart and Helen lived in Downey, California. Bart was 22 and Helen was just 19 years old. They married in 1947, and in 1950 already had two children. Bart worked as a painter’s helper in a car dealership. Helen’s widowed mother lived with them. At age 17, Bart had joined the Navy in 1944. He served for 21 months.


By at least 1952, they had moved from Downey to Norwalk. They were listed in the 1953 Norwalk city directory. Bart was working as a car painter at the Lindt-Wilson Ford dealership in South Gate. Bart was a member of the Long Beach Qualifiers car club. With the help of club members, he began building a ’29 Ford Model A roadster. He got Tom Logan, a fellow Qualifiers club member, to assemble a new engine for him. The engine was a ’38 Ford 259-inch flathead V8 engine, Merc crank, Sharp heads, with three Stromberg 97 carbs on an Evans manifold. In the first year of racing, Bart didn’t win a single round. “Too many fellas start with a small engine, then toss in the towel when they don’t clean house their first time out,” said Bart. “Instead of making the little job run, they grab for the boring bar in a search for more inches. None of that for the wife and me—we’re havin’ too much fun with this little bomb.”


Bart won his first trophy in the D/SR class at Pomona on May 17, 1953, with a speed of 88.64 mph. After that, periodically he let Helen get her feet wet, driving the car during time trials. But when it came for the eliminations, Bart took over. She kept improving, so Bart started letting her run during the eliminations.


Helen won her first trophy at Pomona on May 16, 1954, turning 95.62 mph in C/SR. They drove to Madera to run in the 2-day California State Drag Championships at the airport strip on October 9-10, 1954. Helen won the C/SR class with a strip record time of 89.85 mph. Bart won the street roadster eliminations. Bart and Helen traded off driving the car in 1954 and 1955. Bart won the C/SR class at Paradise Mesa on March 13 with 93.76 mph.


The NHRA regional was held on May 15 at Colton. After she took a class win and set a record with a speed of 88.84 mph, Bart let her do a lot more of the driving from then on.


Probably their toughest competition in their class in Southern California was the 220-inch Chevy 6-cylinder-engined roadster of Safford and Shores. They could be a handful.


The Hot Rod issue with the Root family on the cover, came out in July 1955. On July 23, Bart set a new strip record at Colton with 92.14 mph.


After doing well in 1955 on a state level, the Roots decided to make the long trip to Great Bend, Kansas, for NHRA’s first Nationals. The Hot Rod article had noted their intentions to go to Kansas. “Fourteen-hundred miles is a long way to go to a drag meet,” the article stated. Helen was a novelty at the Kansas meet. The press and media sought her out for interviews. This photo was published in the Kansas City Times (9/29/55), staging her as being capable of tuning the car. It played up that she was a 25-year-old mother of two children.


In this photo, she is giving a radio interview.


While the press played up her mechanical know-how, it was husband Bart who did the tuning.


She did well at Great Bend. The smile on her face tells us that she was pleased with how well she was doing.


When the C/SR class eliminations were underway, she got all the way to the final round.


In the final round, she went up against Dale Ham, running his Dodge-engined roadster from Amarillo. He took the class win with 91.64 mph. She put up a good fight. This photo appeared in the December 1955 issue of Hot Rod. In Kansas, the Roots flirted with national recognition but came up on the short end.


It had been a heady time for Helen, but they needed to return home. Helen was a homemaker at heart. Raising children was her primary interest. Drag racing was just an exciting, but fleeting pastime that she put in the rear-view mirror. Still having the itch to compete, she entered a Mrs. California contest in March 1956, where she was judged for her baking and homemaking skills. She entered and gave it her best but came short of winning. Kind of like what happened in Great Bend, Kansas.

Bart drove it a few more times at Pomona upon their return, winning a couple of trophies in late 1955 and early 1956. He also won once at Colton in February. But the writing was on the wall. Safford and Shores beat his old strip record at Pomona by a whopping four miles an hour. And Bruce Safford and Jim Shores had their roadster really humming as they kept upping their record week after week. So, if Bart kept racing, he wasn’t likely going to win, but just race for fun. Maybe grab a few groceries in it and tool around their Norwalk neighborhood.


The Roots rented out their roadster for an appearance on the “Life of Riley” TV program, which aired on November 2, 1956. It was entitled “Juvenile Delinquent.” Chester Riley got worried when his son, Junior, traded his car for a hot rod. He thought Junior was on the fast road to hoodlumism and a life of crime. Really, Junior and his friends just wanted a safe place to race. As usual in the show, Riley muddled in other’s affairs and screwed things up. He never learns. I used to watch this show every week on our black and white TV. I was only ten years old when this episode aired. In this still frame from the show, Gillis, his good friend, next-door neighbor, and co-worker, is coming over to Riley’s driveway to see what Riley has gone and done now. In the brief appearance in the show, you see Riley driving down the road in the Root’s roadster and pulling into his driveway.


In this still frame from the show, you get a nice view of the bald spot on the back of Riley’s head and Gillis grilling Riley about what “revolting development” he’s done now. Those people of my generation will remember Riley saying, “What a revolting development,” in every episode.


Bart Root passed away in 1992 at age 64. Helen and Bart divorced in 1967. Bart remarried in 1971. I don’t know what happened to Helen after her 1967 divorce.

 

Creighton Hunter: A Hot Rodder at Heart​

By his own count, Creighton Hunter built close to fifty hot rods. “I got my first car in 1936,” he said. His parents bought him a ’32 Model B Ford for $100 while he was still a student in Santa Ana High School. As life unfolded, he dabbled in street racing before there was a legal venue where he could race his hot rods. He raced at the dry lakes. Then an opportunity fell into place where he became one of the co-founders of the very first commercial drag strips in the country. But, before we get into all that, let’s take it from the beginning. That’s always a good place to start.

He was born in Santa Ana in 1920. He lived there, and later in life, in nearby Tustin, his entire life. He went to McKinley Elementary School. He was eight years old the first time he got his name in the newspaper. He was one of just two in his class who got a perfect 100% score in a music memory contest. In 1935 he graduated from the Frances Willard Junior High School in Santa Ana.

He was a husky lad. The Santa Ana High School football coach was pleased when he showed up to try out for the Saints team as a sophomore. He showed real promise, and the coach slotted him into the tackle spot. He enjoyed sports. When he was a junior, he broke his right leg while playing baseball at the high school. That put him out of commission in sports for a couple of months, finishing his junior year hobbling around on crutches.



But he was outgoing and took part in school plays, DeMolay organization, and a school-affiliated Sea Scouts group open to young men looking for adventure onboard sea-going ships. This photo shows him with other boys in the Sea Scout program at the high school.


He graduated from Santa Ana High School in 1938. This senior photo appeared in the school yearbook.

Cars were a big part of his life. “I just love cars,” he said. He joined in with others who raced on Harbor Boulevard, Baker Street, and Golden West Avenue in Huntington Beach. He got his share of tickets. On occasion, he got his name in the newspaper for getting speeding tickets. But in the pre-war years, it wasn’t deemed to be such a public menace or fraught with potential danger. The police were pretty nice about it. “They’d stop you and say, ‘Don’t do it again,’” recalled Creighton, “and we’d just say that we wouldn’t.”

After graduating from Santa Ana Junior College, he went into business with his father, Tom “Dode” Hunter. He worked as a salesman for Hunter Oil Company, an oil distributor in Santa Ana, established by his father in 1922. He was twenty years old in 1940 when he got married.


He registered for the draft in 1941.

In 1942, he joined the Coast Guard, being stationed at Pacific City, on the Oregon coast. After three years, he was discharged and returned home, taking up with his father in the oil distribution business again.

C. J. and Peggy Hart ran a service garage on First and Harbor Boulevard. Creighton claimed that he had stopped street racing, but that C. J. was still tearing up the streets at night. “C. J. was always a bad racer,” said Creighton. “He was a street racer. And I happened to meet him. I wasn’t illegal, but he was.” The police really began clamping down on the street racing scene in about 1949. Don Tuttle, who became the announcer at the Santa Ana Drags in 1952 after he got out of the Navy, wrote about this in the Santa Ana Register (6/24/56). By the way, Tuttle passed away from cancer in 2003. He tried his best to document the history of Santa Ana Drags with little books and videos.

Street racers would congregate on Harbor Boulevard at 1 AM. “The California Highway Patrol soon got wise,” Tuttle wrote, “and began showing up in time to send the contestants scurrying in all directions—down riverbeds or across bean fields.”


By his own account, Creighton wasn’t street racing at this time. He was working for his father. He had a wife and growing family. He needed to keep his record clean. So, street racing was out. Instead, Creighton built a ’24 T roadster that he raced at the dry lakes. He was a member of the Hutters club of the Russetta Timing Association. In that regard, he was trying to be respectable and only race legally at the dry lakes.


Here is another photo of his T roadster at the lakes. It started out as a track roadster at the lakes in the 40s before Creighton bought it.


Creighton also raced at El Mirage. This and the following photo show his T roadster at El Mirage in 1949.


Creighton’s T roadster at El Mirage. Photo taken on September 18, 1949. He raced it at the lakes until mid-1953, when he sold the car to Hildardo “Hill” Alcala.


This photo shows Hill Alcala racing against the ex-Dick Kraft T roadster at Pomona. The Kraft T was likely owned by Richard and Gary Seiden. If you look closely, you can see the Moon Eyes painted on the body near the rear tire. More on that later because I’m getting ahead of myself.


I want to return to the story of how the Santa Ana Drags started. There are several different versions. Being a retired historian, I’ve tried to sift fact from fiction using primary documents, interviews, and other trusted sources, to come up with an accurate account. I contend that the truth is in the details, so this account will hopefully stand on its own because of the little details. The above photo appeared in the cover story in Life Magazine (4/29/57) about Santa Ana Drags.

“Driven off Harbor Blvd., the hot rodders began meeting on an abandoned Marine Corps landing strip known as Mile Square,” said Don Tuttle. Mile Square referred to a square mile plot of agricultural land that the Navy purchased in the early years of WWII. That plot of land is in today’s city of Fountain Valley. Inside that square mile plot of land, the Navy built three landing fields to serve as training fields for pilots. Each field was about 2,200 feet in length. “The strip was so wide we could run up to eight cars abreast,” said C. J. Hart, “so you always had a good chance of beating somebody.” The landing fields were even used after the war for military training fields for the nearby El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and Santa Ana Marine Corps Air Base. “Mile Square had runways about 50 yards across and three-eighths of a mile long,” Tuttle said. “The Marine pilots would come down, touch down and then take off. It was just kind of a touch and go landing. Some of the fellows caught up on that and they would go up and they would start racing out there. It really became more and more popular. Pretty soon they were drawing crowds out there of four or five hundred people. And some of the top cars that later became dragster drivers were racing their cars out there. The Marines came in one time out there, they had some planes that wanted to use the touch and go area and there were so many people there, they couldn’t do it. So, they called the MPs back at El Toro. The MPs came out and the MPs came in one end of the area, and everybody left from the other end of the area, from the other way.”


“One of my very good friends, Melvin Dodd—forgive me Melvin—but Melvin got all the way home, his ’40 Ford all the way home and when he got home, he realized he’d left his fiancé, Yvonne, standing out there,” said Tuttle. “I don’t think Mel still knows how Yvonne got home. She did OK. But true love, it came through. They got married and lived happily ever after. I asked Yvonne about that one time, and she said, ‘You know, oh, yeah. He used to drop me out there. So, you know how I stand.’” This photo shows Melvin Dodd beside his roadster in 1955.

With the plug getting pulled with racing at the Square Mile, hot rodders had no place to race for a few months. “But it wasn’t long until half a dozen enthusiasts got permission from Bill Nichols, manager of the Orange County Airport,” said Tuttle, “to sweep clean a circular road on the landing field and try it for drag racing. The next Sunday more than 20 cars showed up, and this posed a problem for Nichols as to the county’s liability. He contacted Henry Mechan, then captain of the Highway Patrol here, who referred him to Ex Ehrhardt and Chuck Pollard, officers assigned to the CHP’s safety education department. Nichols was informed that in event of a mishap on the strip he might be held liable. Nichols did not feel that he personally should assume this responsibility and also was dubious if the county would accept the responsibility. However, Nichols knew that if these boys did not have a place to try out their cars, they would resume street racing. So, between Nichols and Officer Pollard a conference with the Orange County Board of Supervisors was arranged. As a result of the conference permission was granted to use this strip but no liability or responsibility would be assumed by the county of Orane, the airport or Nichols. But if a group would take out insurance they would be allowed to make use of this strip. Several established timing associations were contacted but the length of the strip (being ¼ mile long) was frowned on or rejected.”

Lou Baney and Ak Miller may have been in one of those timing associations that was initially approached about running drag races at the old airport. Baney, in a 1973 interview published in the 1973 issue of Hot Rod recalled it this way: Ak Miller and I got together and got a contract with the people who owned the Santa Ana Airport so that we could come in one day a weekend and run drag races there. Well, Ak had his shop going pretty good and I had my shop going, and we put it off and put it off.” The airport kept waiting to hear from Baney and Miller. Baney said, “The guy [Nichols] from the airport called me up and said, ‘Look, Lou, I’ve got this guy here named C. J. Hart and he wants to make a drag strip out here at the airport, but I told him that I already had a contract with you and Ak. He’s really hot to do this, so I told him I’d call you guys and see what the story is.’ So I called Ak and we discussed it for awhile, and we figured we both just didn’t have time for it right now, so I called the guy back and told him to let that Hart guy go ahead and set up the drag strip out there. And so ol’ C. J. Hart went and set up the nation’s first organized drag strip out there at Santa Ana.”

In Tuttle’s recollection, the driving force in getting the strip going was Stillwell, not C. J. “However, Frank Stillwell,” Tuttle said, “after being contacted by Pollard, was pep-talked into opening the strip with the cooperation of C. J. Hart and Creighton Hunter.” But, whether it was Stillwell or C.J., who got the others to join in with about $1,000 total seed money to get the strip started, is a minor discrepancy in the story. They pooled their money and the strip opened on opened for racing on July 2, 1950. With that start-up money, they bought timing clocks, built a concession stand, restrooms, and telephone poles to act as barriers between the spectators and the racing. As far as I can tell, that early history of the establishment of the Santa Ana Drags has never been told before.


This article in the Anaheim Bulletin (7/5/50) reported the results of that very first race. Stillwell owned a motorcycle shop in Anaheim, where he also sold used cars. “Frank [Stillwell] had the connections for insurance,” remembered Creighton, “and C. J. had the connections for mechanical, and I was fortunate and had the connections for politics and whatever.” It was undoubtedly Creighton’s father who had those political connections. C. J. remembered, “Stillwell had the insurance, and Creighton had a lot of know-how. We started one Sunday. I think we charged a half a dollar, if I remember right. We finally got up to 90 cents and we went to a dollar when they took the tax off. And then it just kept blossoming on. It just kept on going. Creighton, he quit some while. I don’t know why, but he did.” Hot Rod editor Dave Wallace interviewed C. J. in 1979 about why Creighton only lasted less than a month in the drag strip endeavor. C. J. told Wallace, “He [Creighton] only lasted a couple of weeks. We asked him what he wanted to get out. He said $1,000, and we paid it.”


I’m just speculating about why Creighton opted out of the drag strip deal after less than a month, but I think his heart was more in racing hot rods than in running a drag strip. He had his ’24 T roadster that he raced at the lakes and began racing at drag strips. This is a ’51 photo of Creighton’s channeled 5-window coupe that he used for a street rod. He was just a hot rodder at heart. Running a drag strip would have put a crimp in his enjoyment of just being a hot rodder.


This is the photo of the ’24 T roadster run by Creighton at drag strips. If I were to guess, it looks like maybe it was at Pomona. Dean Moon liked the way that Creighton had painted “eyes” in the double zeros. He used that for inspiration behind the Mooneyes logo.


Creighton and Andy Park ran this roadster, winning trophies in the C/R class at Santa Ana in 1952-53. Its best time was 128.20 mph on a strip and 150 mph at the lakes. Park managed a malt shop in Santa Ana. Don Tuttle always plugged Andy’s ice cream shop before the end of a race. “We always used to announce on the P.A. system to stop at his shop on the way home,” said Tuttle. This photo was taken at Santa Ana. In the background is the refreshment stand.


Don Tuttle’s wife, Punky (left), and C. J. and Peggy Hart’s daughter, Joanie (right), worked in the refreshment stand at Santa Ana Drags.


This photo was taken in 1957, about the time that Frank Stillwell left the drag strip ownership. Although C. J. was loath to talk about it, there seems to be enough solid documentation to believe that Frank Stillwell left the drag strip ownership under a cloud of suspicion. By 1957, C. J. started noticing that the take was thinning even though the crowds were getting bigger. Peggy Hart noticed it, too. They suspected that Frank Stillwell was skimming from the gate receipts. Without C. J.’s knowledge, Peggy hired a private investigator. The investigator’s evidence showed that their suspicions were well founded. The investigator caught Stillwater stealing gate receipts at several races in 1957. Stillwater, angry at being caught red-handed and being deprived of his golden honey pot, went about getting revenge. He used his connections to have the strip shut down way earlier than it needed to be. The airport manager closed the drag strip down without explanation in 1959. It was several years before the construction of the John Wayne Airport would have mandated its closure.


In about 1955, Creighton began building a radical new, very unique, engineering marvel of a dragster. Given its shape, he called it “Slice of Pie.”


The engine was a sideways-mounted Mercury flathead with direct chain drive to the live rear axle. There was no clutch. There were casters mounted under the rear of the car that he could lower with a lever. It featured center steering.


On August 4, 1956, the “Slice of Pie” dragster was debuted at Lions Drag Strip. It was very novel and created a sensation on every run. Richard Roberts, a columnist in the Wilmington Press Journal (8/7/56) described the reaction of the crowd. “Eyes popped and necks craned whenever Hunter rolled his amazing creation to the starting line,” Roberts wrote. “The drag fans had never seen anything like it.” Creighton was disappointed that its top speed of 134.35 mph hadn’t been higher. He also towed it out to Colton to run at its night race on August 4, turning 133 mph.


Don Tuttle took a movie of it in one of its appearances at Santa Ana. This is a still frame clip from that movie. ““This car run by Creighton Hunter had a side-mounted flathead on it,” said Tuttle. “As long as the engine ran, the rear wheels turned. He pulled a lever and lifted the rear wheels off of the ground. They lined him up and get him pointed in a straight line. He dropped the lever and the rear wheels would go down and the car just literally screamed off the starting line.”


“It was a pretty unique design,” Tuttle said. “The engine was mounted sideways and drove the rear wheels direct with a chain. The rear wheels were connected direct to the engine and as long as the engine ran, so did they.”


“When Creighton was on the starting line, waiting for the starter’s flag,” said Tuttle, Creighton pulled the levers and raised the spinning rear wheels off the ground. When the starter prepared the cars for the start, Creighton would rev the engine, and of course the rear wheels would rev at the same time. When the flag was dropped, he would give the lever a nudge with his elbow, the spinning wheels would drop to the pavement and good-bye starting line.”


On August 26, 1956, at Santa Ana, things went terribly awry on a run. He was nearing the timing traps, going about 130 mph when the car suddenly veered left. Don Tuttle watched it from his announcer seat in the tower. “This car was very fast, but quite squirrelly at the top end. On his last fatal run at the drag strip, for some unknown reason, the car made a hard left turn about halfway down the drag strip. Creighton suffered six broken ribs, thirteen broken bones in one hand, and was unconscious for two weeks before coming out of it. The crash totally demolished the car and was never rebuilt. And, I think the fact that it never was rebuilt, his wife had a lot to say about it.” He narrowly escaped death.


This is a still clip from an old movie film showing Creighton and C. J. at Santa Ana, probably closer to the time of the strip closing down in 1959. Creighton was on the sidelines, but still very much interested in drag racing and hot rods.


In about 1985-86, Creighton began organizing Santa Ana Drags reunions. In the latter years of his life, he was recognized for the brief part he played in founding the drag strip. This photo appeared in the Tustin News (2/25/88).


Holding his old racing helmet, Creighton thinks back upon the beginning days of drag racing at Santa Ana.


Creighton, age 83, is reflected in the rear-view mirror of his ’33 Ford roadster. A nice touch is the surfboard strapped onto the top of the car. And that wasn’t just decoration. He liked to surf at San Onofre. Hot rodding kept him young at heart.


Creighton lived a full life and had much enjoyment as a hot rodder to look back upon. He died in 2006 at age 86. His obituary aptly summed up how he viewed life in his later years: “Creighton didn’t live in the past, but he did love reliving his past.”

 

This is the first time I've seen Frank Stillwell referenced as an actual, recent era person. Its interesting that he owned a bike shop.

Previously I have seen that name involved with the early issues of Easyriders magazine - but I assumed it was a pseudonym as many of the names involved obviously were. Historically Frank Stillwell was an old west outlaw, allegedly a member of the "Cowboys" gang - think Wyatt Earp and the Shootout at the OK Corral.

Whether some of the magazine pseudonyms were for only one or a few individuals (to inflate the staffing count or possibly hide the fact that the magazine was actually produced by a very few individuals or for some other reasons) I don't know.

What I have come to know was that some of the staffers were members of the Hells Angels, and some of the featured bikes' owners were not identified as Angels, so the magazine obviously hid those details, and perhaps those staff members might have used pseudonyms.

Anyway - my memory is that Frank Stillwell was also involved in starting and running Easyriders magazine 1970-1971-ish.

Edit in: I wonder if Frank Stillwell was related to Steve Stillwell, a staffer at Street Rodder magazine...

 

I can't find any genealogical information about Frank Stillwell, but he was living in Anaheim at least as early as 1947. He was born in about 1920. He operated his motorcycle shop in 1947 in Anaheim. In 1947, he was going to race at Daytona Beach. He had been racing motorcycles for 9 years.


This article was published in the Anaheim Bulletin (12/29/49).


He still operated his motorcycle shop in 1953, when he was involved in the Santa Ana Drags.


In about 1959-60, he was a Studebaker dealer.


In 1963, he was a Sunbeam and Hilman dealer in Anaheim.


He also became a Mercedes-Benz dealer in 1963.


In 1973, his dealership was called Stillwell Sports Car City. It was at the same address in Anaheim. He was doing well and may have been living on Balboa Island. I don't find much after 1973.

 

Absolute bitchn' thread. Hot rod history at it's finest. Should be Hamb "required reading"..... and should have 100K views.

 

Throttle Queens: Girl Power Hot Rod Club​

In March 1956, Pat Field, a North Hollywood housewife and mother of three, came up with, what she thought, was a dazzling idea. She thought it would be fun to organize a drag racing car club just for women. Her husband, Harry, had left her home to take his car to the drag races every weekend. She had understandably gotten tired of it. So, she rounded up some of her gal pals in the neighborhood who thought it would be fun, too. The oldest was a 37-year-old real estate saleswoman. Soon, a couple of teenage girls got wind of what the moms were doing and wanted in on the fun. There were ten women at the first meeting. They decided that they wanted to build a race car and give the men a run for their money. “This is not in any sense a social club,” said Pat. “It’s strictly for drag racing competition.” The Throttle Queens club joined the Valley Timing Association as a recognized hot rod club. There were nine car clubs that competed against each other at San Fernando Raceway.

Pat was elected the president of the club. The gals pooled together their money, totaling about $2,000 to build a race car. They had the help of their husbands in the project. But we need to make it clear, that the husbands didn’t just build it for them. Except for some of the things that required more muscle, their husbands taught and directed the ladies, so the women could learn and feel a real sense of accomplishment. “Tell ‘em to hand you a wrench,” recalled Harry, “and they’d say, ‘Which tool is that?’”

The end result, seen in the above photo, was really something. And the car did pretty well, too. Pat Field is in the driver’s seat. The other ladies, from left are Wilma Brown, Pat Marian, and June Minnich.

It’s too bad the ladies didn’t wear their club outfits for this photo. Their club uniforms were lavender pedal-pushers, lavender embroidered white blouses, and coolie hats decorated with tiny purple cars. Harry painted the car a lady-like lavender to match their club uniforms. In the spirit of things and to please the ladies, Harry on occasion sported a lavender shirt to match the ladies. Being a rooter for these ladies was just all-around fun. They had a following of similarly matched lavender-shirted men (3 of them) and a bevy of husband and boyfriend rooters.

Pat and Harry brought their three kids to the races, too. Their little daughter, Mary Ann, played in her playpen in the shade of a car. That was Sunday afternoon at the drag races for the Field family.


Although the ladies did most of their racing at San Fernando, they raced with success at other tracks, too. This photo shows Pat driving the car at Santa Ana. It’s a frame from a movie clip about racing in the 1950s at Santa Ana. They also raced at Bakersfield, Colton, and Inyokern. They set strip records at Colton and Inyokern. Their fastest speed was 101.30 mph at Bakersfield on November 4, 1956, at the Grand National Challenge 2-day event.

To give context, the Throttle Queens’ car ran at most drag strips in the C/G class. That was the same class that Doug Cook and Eddie Thompson ran in. Those two did most of their racing at Lions. That could be one of the reasons why the ladies didn’t race at Lions. Cook and Thompson would have been a real handful.


But as Dick Harryman (in photo) once said, “It’s better to be a big fish in a little pond, than a little fish in a big pond.” That’s what Harryman said when asked why he raced at San Fernando instead of other tracks like Lions or Pomona. And that’s how San Fernando ended up being called “The Pond.” It was like a little “pond” compared to the bigger, more competitive “ponds” like Lions or Pomona.


There were other reasons why racing at San Fernando would have appealed to these ladies, too. In an interview, Harry Hibler (in photo), former San Fernando Raceway track manager, offered a few reasons why racers liked to race at “The Pond.” “We didn’t pay a lot of money like some of the other tracks,” Hibler said, “but a lot of the drivers that have gone on to become well known actually learned to drive at San Fernando because it was a day track. It wasn’t under a microscope with a whole bunch of spectators. It was easy to get there.” The smaller crowds would have appealed to the ladies.

I know this firsthand. For many years, I have officiated in the long and triple jumps at high school track meets. Young girls are always reticent to try those field events for the first time if there too many spectators. If they’ve never done it before, they don’t want to “look stupid.” I can imagine that the Throttle Queens were beset by those feelings when they went out onto the track to compete in, what had essentially been, a venue for men only.


In this photo from the Santa Ana 1950s YouTube movie, Pat’s husband, Harry Field looks down the drag strip at a car racing down the track. Don Tuttle, the former Santa Ana announcer, who was providing narrative in the movie, said, “Harry weighed about 100 pounds more than his wife, so he let her do most of the driving.” Don apparently didn’t know the background of the Throttle Queens car. Harry was just there to support his wife, who was driving the car that was built/owned by the ladies’ car club.


This grainy, dark newspaper photo shows a younger (and slimmer) Harry Fields, showing the finer points of engine tuning on the Throttle Queens gasser to his infant daughter, Mary Ann Fields. Harry made his living, owner of a cement truck business in the San Fernando Valley. He took a lot of good-natured ribbing at the drag strip for his association with the Throttle Queens car. He was called “Queenie” a lot. But he was justifiably proud of the ladies. He had helped them get started, was their mentor, and chief mechanic. “Many’s the night he’s stayed out in the garage until 4 a.m. working on the car the night before a race,” said Pat. He didn’t mind being their general go-fer flunky. Without question, he was their top booster.

Women in the sport are common now, but they were generally relegated to powder puff racing back in the 1950s. The ladies faced an uphill battle for acceptance in what was generally thought to be a men-only sport. In those old days, a man might face genuine ridicule if he was beaten by a woman. And the Throttle Queens were collecting trophies right and left. “I’m beginning to have a horrible suspicion that the girls drive better than men,” Harry said. “They’ve shut the guys out on a number of occasions. That really hurts.”


Wilma Brown was one of the ladies that Pat Fields approached first to join their club. Wilma’s husband, Don, was the president of the Valley Timing Association. He was also the auto shop teacher at San Fernando High School. So, Wilma was enthusiastic to join from the get-go. In fact, she and her husband built a race car, the “Rocker Rocket,” that she raced with a bit of success. She snagged a couple of trophies in February 1957 with the car running in J/S.


Since her husband was president of the VTA, he enlisted Wilma’s help in tasks around the track. She was happy to help. In this photo, she is lettering the class letter designation at San Fernando on the back of Maurice Richer’s “Nesbitt’s Special” dragster.


Harry Hibler recognized that the Throttle Queens could help bring spectators to watch a battle of the sexes race. This newspaper ad promoted a race on June 3, 1956, featuring “glamorous Throttle Queens challenge the men.” At that point, the Throttle Queens were in sixth place in the car club team competition among the nine teams. The Valley News (7/1/56) reported that the “comely” Throttle Queens “have been giving the boys fits lately in snaring points in speed contests.”


On July 22, 1956, San Fernando held their big California State Championships event. During the noon break, Pat Fields rode in a new Dodge convertible with Ernie Hashim and the event’s trophy queen, waving to close to 20,000 people at the event. To publicize the race, this photo appeared in the Van Nuys News (7/22/56). Members of the “comely” Throttle Queens appeared in the photo with a dragster that was to appear at the race. Phyllis Lee sat in the dragster cockpit. The ladies from left were Kathy Sellers (event trophy queen), Pat Fields, and Linda Huntley, club secretary.


Fran Woerner started racing her ’56 Corvette after her husband, Harry, started racing his ’53 Studebaker at Lions and San Fernando in mid-1956. He was having fun, and she wanted to join in on the fun, too. Heck, why not? She won her first trophy at San Fernando on October 14, 1956, in the F.P./S class (whatever that means). They had some unique class designations at “The Pond.” She was very friendly with the racers, very outgoing. When she became the Throttle Queens club president in 1957, the racers started calling her “Queenie.” With her friendliness and on-the-strip successes, she had gained their respect.


After becoming the Throttle Queens president, she thought it wise to incorporate the club and its name. This notice of incorporation appeared in newspapers in September 1957. Fran had business acumen. She didn’t know if the Throttle Queens would eventually become anything more than a big fish (of sorts) in a little pond, but if it did, she wanted the name protected. While the Throttle Queens were active as a club through about 1959, Fran kept racing with her husband, Harry.


Fran started racing a ’58 Plymouth, with good success, in 1958 at San Fernando in the H/S class. “My hobby is a little unusual for women,” Fran said in a newspaper interview, “but I enjoy it thoroughly. I found it could be fun, and I wanted to prove that I could drive a race as well as men. You know, men always make remarks about women drivers, so I accepted their challenge and started racing with them. At first, I had to take a lot of kidding from my male racing opponents. But now there’s not so much joking. I’ve beaten many, many men on the racetrack.”

In about 1960, Fran and Harry began racing at El Mirage during the summer and at the drag races at Riverside in the winter. Fran raced a ’27 Ford Model T with a blown Chrysler engine. Her best speed on the dry lakes was 187.24 mph. “I can beat my husband in the quarter mile,” said Fran, “but he beats me in the mile.” She was the only woman member of the Sidewinders club and in the SCTA. “I’ve been the only female member of the association for the last seven years—and I’ll be the last,” she said in 1962. “Now they’ve passed a resolution that no other women will be taken into the club. Not because I cause them any trouble, but because of the danger involved in getting the experience to qualify for top speed races.” Harry, an engineer by profession, was president of the Bonneville Nationals Speed Week in 1961. He was justifiably proud of his wife’s accomplishments. “She does her own tune-ups,” he said. “She’s as good as any man at changing spark plugs, adjusting points and timing and doing carburetor jetting.” Fran took pride in doing basic automotive tasks. “I’ve proved I’m as professional a driver as many men,” she said. “But when it comes to doing heavy mechanical work, it’s sure nice to have a man around.” She knew her limitations.

For a brief couple of years, the Throttle Queens added fun and enjoyment to the drag racing scene in Southern California. They also helped pave the way to more widespread acceptance of women in drag racing.

 

Interesting that the pic shows Fran Woerner at the wheel of an Arnolt Bristol with a trophy next to her.

 

Hello,

In early hot rod history, Joe Mailliard and Joe Reath worked together at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach. But, in their backyard garage, they were already building hot rods and race cars. Finally, the were partners and opened up the small speed shop on the corner of 10th street and Cherry Avenue in Long Beach. After a few years, they split up and Joe Malliard moved to an industrial area near our old house in the Westside of Long Beach.

Back in 1958-59, a sleek race car showed up at Lion’s Dragstrip. Everyone was excited as it sounded loud, whistling and a slight chain rotating sound. But, it was the sleek aluminum body with the motor in the back. Sideways, no doubt. So, it was called "The Sidewinder.”

At the time, Joe Mailliard’s Shop was a few blocks from our house. So, it was a place to go for parts, advice and to see the latest race car being built. Plus, it was around the corner from our favorite Italian Deli and take out place. All of the racers and builders around the area, either ate lunch here or down the street at the first char-broiled burger place.

One noticeable thing in most Joe Mailliard rare photos, is that short haircut and a cigarette, one or the other, or both… YRMV

As we watched the sleek race car start winning races, it was exciting that it was built in our own Westside of Long Beach area. So, we associated with the race car and was excited when it won.

It sounds as if you are standing right there next to the race car. Watch it on your large screen tv on the You Tube Channel: J NAKI and of course, TURN UP THE SOUND… THE BEST OF 1959.

Here is the best editing of actual sound of the Sidewinder and my films. The films were taken in the summer of 1959 and the sound was recorded on an LP record in September of 1959 at the Detroit Nationals.


Jnaki

Joe Mailliard’s Shop moved to downtown Long Beach, near our old high school. Then, Mickey Thompson moved into Joe Mailliard’s old shop in the Westside of Long Beach.

Then 58 years later, the sound, up close and personal was seen at the original Lion’s Dragstrip Museum Grand Opening in 2017.

Thanks, Jack...

 

Jnaki,

Love your entry on the two Joes. I've dug deep to try to find some photos of them, but they are elusive. Here are the best ones that I could find--and mostly they aren't that great. But in the spirit of this thread, i.e., putting a face with a name, here are some photos of Joe Mailliard and Joe Reath.


This is a photo of Joe Mailliard doing some last minute detail work on the Sidewinder on the starting line.


Joe Mailliard in his senior years.


Joe Mailliard (in hat) with the Reath-Mailliard coupe at the 1956 U.S. Nationals at Kansas City. Phil Hobbs took this photo and identified Mailliard.


Regarding the '56 Nationals, the exact location of that drag strip has been lost to time. It's location had been completely obliterated by industrial development. I pinpointed the historic strip's exact location on an aerial view of what the site looks like today (see above). I used an old 1957 aerial photo of the strip to determine exactly where the old strip was. I have been trying to pinpoint the exact locations of all these old drag strips that have been lost to time on my Drag Strip List website. You can view the 1957 aerial photo and my historical research on the Kansas City Timing Association Drag Strip on the Missouri drag strip entries on my Drag Strip List website.


This is the best photo that I found of Joe Reath (left). The photo was taken in 1963. He is enjoying a moment visiting with two of the "Dead End Kids," Joe Anahory and Rocky Gambino.


Joe Reath (standing right) at Bakersfield in 1958.


Phil Hobbs took this photo of the Reath & Mailliard coupe at the 1956 U.S. Nationals at Kansas City. Hobbs wrote, "As I remember it, this coupe of Reath & Mailliard was runner up to Mel Heath at the 1956 Kansas City NHRA Nats. Seems like they hurt an engine on the previous round, put in a smaller one so they could run more pop (flatheads of course!). Looks like Joe and Del Reath in the background." Joe is wearing the sunglasses and his wife, Del, is looking at the work progress being done on the car. That certainly looks to me like Joe Mailliard standing in front of them (and between them in the photo). The short buzz butch-style haircut is the identifier.

Hobbs misremembered what happened at the '56 Nats with this coupe. Mel Heath defeated Bob Alsenz, driving Kenny Lindley's "Miss-Fire II" to win top eliminator honors. The B/C coupe in this photo was owned by Harold Dawson, of Santa Ana, and driven by Don Little, of Long Beach. Little beat Homer Matthews of Texas to take the trophy in B/C class with 11.76 at 120.80 mph. It was powered by a '46 Merc flathead. It set a national record with 123.11 mph.

 

This is the best photo that I found of Joe Reath (left). The photo was taken in 1963. He is enjoying a moment visiting with two of the "Dead End Kids," Joe Anahory and Rocky Gambino.



Hey BT,

That is a duplicate copy of the original from the Bakersfield Smokers March Meet.
Joe Reath, Carl Bodonni, Louie Cangelose. (Early 60’s March Meet.)



Jnaki

There are tons of photos floating in the internet and this one needs some clarification.
Unless, of course, it was all in fun...

…two of the "Dead End Kids," Joe Anahory and Rocky Gambino."

But, for safety's sake and the importance of preserving history for some folks reading articles, it was not the Dead End Kids or Rocky Gambino.

 

intersting tie in w/ emmons-only knew about his street car /'dragster'

 

Wow this is my favorite thread!

 

Jnaki,

Thanks for catching that. I was working too quickly and relying on a caption on an Internet photo rather than looking closely at the people in the picture. I certainly know what Lou Cangelose looked like. Thanks for having the eagle eye and putting things right. Carl Bodonni is a new name for me. Who was he?

 

Jim “Jazzy” Nelson: A Solitary Genius​

In drag racing circles, Jim Nelson had the reputation of being reserved, withdrawn, and detached. “What they used to call me was a loner,” said Jim “Jazzy” Nelson. “I went by myself a lot.” He was not so much a quiet introvert, but, as he saw himself, he was competitively focused. When he towed his fuel-burning Fiat coupe to the first NHRA Nationals in Great Bend in 1955, he had one thought in mind—win. “I was pretty serious about it,” Nelson said. “I went there to win. I didn’t go there to have fun. That’s why I was noted as a loner, because I hardly wouldn’t say anything to nobody.”


This is probably the best photo of Jim in his racing days. Tall and lanky, middle-aged, but curly hair still without a lock of gray. His head, like in many of those early race cars, stuck up higher than the roll bar. The roll bar was built to fulfill a requirement, not to protect one’s noggin. The keg of nitro and minimal firewall are vintage ‘50s racing accoutrements. Jazzy recalled the mindset of racers in the fifties. “I was under the impression I’d be all right,” said Jim. “I might as well have had a flame in my lap.” You can see that he jotted down his speeds and the dates they were achieved on the inside of his door. The focus on top speed in the fifties, rather than elapsed time was financially motivated. Drag strips rewarded drivers with savings bonds for breaking strip speed records, not for breaking ET records. But Jazzy may have been one of the first racers to recognize that it was elapsed time, more than speed, that won races.

Not only was he aloof and reticent as a person but trying to find out about him to write this story has probably been made more difficult because of his solitary personality preference. He didn’t talk much about himself. It’s kind of like he was this mad scientist who came out from his laboratory for a few years in the limelight, then returned to his cave for decades of retiring solitude. By his own admission, when he stopped racing, he didn’t talk about his racing past or return to drag racing circles. “I’m not much for talking about these things,” Jim said.


I tried to find out when he was born, when he died, that kind of thing. He was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1996. His entry, giving a brief overview of his racing career, stated that he was born in 1927 and died in 2012. It was puzzling when I couldn’t find verification of either of those dates. So, I did more in-depth research in old newspapers.


In the Fresno Bee (9/27/01) I found a death notice for Jazzy. He did not die in 2012. He died in 2001. With that base point, I was able to find when he was born, got married, all sorts of details about his life.


I wrote to the Drag Racing Hall of Fame, telling them that they had the wrong dates for Jazzy. They needed to change his dates from 1927-2012 to 1916-2001. I told them that if they wanted proof, I’d be happy to supply them with his birth certificate, newspaper death notice, census pages from 1920 thru 1950, and 1940 draft registration.


His given birth name was Lovell James Nelson. However, when he signed his name on his draft registration in 1940, he transposed his given and middle names. He signed it James Lovell Nelson. I’d like to know when and why he got the nickname Jazzy, but I don’t know.

He got married in 1941. Betty stuck with him through thick and thin. She didn’t have much use for all his drag racing trophies. They cluttered up the house and gathered dust. “You know,” Jazzy said, “trophies are a headache to anyone because they get all dirty. So, every time I won trophies, I’d wrap them in newspaper and stick them in a barrel in the garage.” He won a lot of trophies. They filled eight barrels—all three hundred of them.


During the war, he ran his ’27 Ford Model T roadster at the dry lakes. He and his brother, Paul, built the car. Jim raced in the Mojave Timing Association, having clocked a one-way run record of 141.06 mph. He was a member of the Screwdrivers car club while living in Culver City until 1947, when he moved north to Sanger, California, sixteen miles east of Fresno. He worked in the railroad freight car refrigeration pre-cooling industry as a service technician. Jim showed the car at the very first National Roadster Show in Oakland in 1950. A photo of his car appeared on the cover of the show’s official program. Sometime after the show, he sold the car to Chuck Quesnel, a fellow member of the Screwdrivers car club.


He stayed out of the racing game for a year or so, until a neighbor asked him for some help with his race car. “I believe the year was 1952,” Jim recalled, “and this youngster, maybe 16 years old, he came over to my house and asked me to give him a hand in getting ready for the drags. So, I says, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’ So, he brought me that engine and we took it to the drags, and, if I’m not mistaken, he took, out of 111 cars, 13th [place].” Although the car did well, the boy’s father was not thrilled. “When we got back a few days later,” Jim said, “his father comes over and says, ‘That kid is not going to have that car. If you want to have it, you can have it. If you don’t want it, I’m going to scrap it.’ So, I says, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ And that’s how it got started.” This grainy newspaper photo of the car that Jim got from his neighbor was published in the Bakersfield Californian (2/2/54). Jim mounted a ’34 Ford modified sedan on the frame. It didn’t just border on being ugly, it was beyond ugly. You might say, it was hideous. The appearance of Jim’s race car was a far cry from what it would look like when he changed the body to a Fiat. The ’34 Ford version should have been hauled to the crusher while the Fiat version should have been placed on a pedestal.

Jim towed his ’34 Ford to the abandoned air strip near the Famoso cutoff north of Bakersfield for a race on December 6, 1953. It was the first race held there. Kenny Arnold, of Venice, drove Nelson’s modified sedan, winning a trophy in its class with a speed of 119.49 mph. A year later, Kenny would assume the designated driver duties for the Spaghetti Benders Mercury flathead dragster. A month later, Jim returned to Bakersfield to take a class win on January 3, 1954.

After those first successful forays to Bakersfield, Jim started racing closer to home. Drag races were first held at the Fresno Air Terminal at Hammer Field in 1951. He won the Modified Class at Fresno for his first outing there on February 22, 1953, turning 105.26 mph. At the end of the year at an awards dinner held in the Hammer Field Sky Room, he was cited for getting second place in the points standings. By at least September, he had moved from Sanger, south to Venice, but still raced at Fresno, when he could. He also raced in the ’54 season at Kingdon and Salinas. His fastest speed that year was at Salinas on July 5 when he clocked 123.49 mph. He generally won top eliminator or the meet’s fastest speed trophies at Fresno, Kingdon, or Salinas, when he raced there. As far as I know, Jim’s pre-Fiat racing exploits have never been told before. Maybe the ’34 Ford sedan was just too dang ugly.


Jim began switching over to the Fiat bodied fuel competition coupe that he became so known for, during the first eight months of 1954. “I ended up putting a ’54 Fiat body on the frame,” said Jim. He ran with an Edelbrock-equipped ’49 Merc flathead motor. He also ran a large Isky cam. Ed Iskenderian ground a super 505-A cam for Jazzy to get extra lift. They ran the cam without bearings. “I made a 8620 steel billet that had larger bearing sizes,” said Isky, “so I could take the bearings completely out of the block and run it directly against the cast iron. Heck, people have done that for years with Model A’s, no big deal not having bearings. It has a huge lift and a huge duration.” He only finished one for a customer. “I made it for a racer named Jazzy Nelson,” Isky said. The whole engine set-up was complicated, the work of a motor-head genius. Although newspaper reports don’t indicate if he was driving the ‘54 Fiat fuel competition coupe when he took a win in the Modified Coupe class at Santa Ana on September 25, 1954, he very likely was driving it. He was indeed driving it three weeks later at the California State Championships at the Madera Airport on October 9-10. He set a record of 123.05 mph and won the AF/CC class.

In 1954 Terry Buffum & his older brother, Bob, went to California with a few friends in a '40 Ford coupe. Terry shot footage at various tracks like Santa Ana, Saugus and some lesser-known tracks. His film was digitized and can be seen on YouTube under the title “1954 So-Cal Drag Races.” There is a brief segment showing Jazzy’s Fiat in the pits (possibly taken at Santa Ana) starting at the 8:21-minute mark. The above photo is a clip of a frame from that 8mm film. It may have been taken at the September 25 race at Santa Ana, or on December 12, when he took wins in the Modified Coupe class.



Jim went on a winning rampage with his Fiat fuel coupe in 1955. This photo shows his Fiat in the staging lanes at Pomona. See those railroad tracks on the other side of the fence. Like the cheapskate I was, I used to stand on those tracks to peak over the canvas-covered fence to watch the races directly behind the starting line. The cops wouldn’t let us go down to where the pits were to sneak looks, but we had a good view down track and right next to the push-down fire-up lane. There were always about 30-40 of us freeloaders balancing on the rails on Sunday afternoon races. After about an hour, your feet really began to ache. But I didn’t see Jazzy. He was racing there before I started going to the Pomona Drags.

At the NHRA regional race at Colton on May 15, he set an AF/CC record of 126.00 mph. Santa Ana, 7/31/55, At the Drag Racers, Inc. event at Santa Ana on July 31, he turned another blistering, record-breaking run of 135.84 mph. His car had fantastic acceleration. He was setting new track records right and left. About this time, he moved from Venice to nearby Culver City.


I’m not sure when, where, or why Jim had painted “For Sale” on his window, but this photo is in early 1955 trim. He was on the brink of national recognition with his Fiat, but fortunately he stuck with the car and made drag racing history. At San Fernando on August 21, he set a track record in the Modified Coupe class with 132.99 mph. He was also given a trophy for the best appearing car/crew.


It was a long, long way from Southern California to Great Bend, Kansas—but here is Jazzy in Kansas in October 1955. He towed there to participate in NHRA’s very first Nationals. He had done well in California and wanted to test his mettle on a national stage. “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” said Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Not the case for over two hundred racers from all over the country who came together in Kansas for the first running of a national drag racing championship.


Alex Xydias produced and narrated a film of early drag racing called “The Hot Rod Story.” I took this clip of a frame at about the 40:42-minute mark. A portion of the film shows the 1955 U.S. Nationals at Great Bend. The part featuring Jazzy shows he and his crew arriving at the strip, unloading Webb Callahan’s truck, pushing to start, and Jazzy making a straight arrow, smoky run. Alex Xydias’s commentary is entertaining and informative: “The third car that I wanted to show you is this ’53 pick-up, loaded to the hilt with about eight tons of equipment plus Jazzy Nelson’s Fiat coupe.”


In the “Hot Rod Story” at the 40:44-minute mark, you see for a few seconds, Jazzy and another crewman unloading a heavy box from the truck. They are straining at the weight of the box. “The truck, powered by a Cadillac and owned by Webb Callahan,” Alex said, “hauled all this stuff, which took half a day to unload, plus the coupe and trailer, 1,400 miles from L. A. After it was unloaded, it [the truck] became a push car. Incidentally, as far as I can remember, it was the first Fiat coupe to ever run at the drags. And it went quick, with the second-best ET of the meet at 10.90 seconds.”


He turned some heads, made some noise, in other words, he did well. He made seven runs under eleven seconds. He won the AF/CC class with a speed of 130.05 mph. He set a new national record with a run of 132.93 mph.


He was posed to advance in eliminations until Sunday evening. Then the skies opened, and the race came to a screeching halt when the worst rainstorm to hit Great Bend in thirty years forced cancellation of the remainder of the event. Jazzy put his Fiat on a trailer and headed home. The final runoffs in the dragster class and the competition for top eliminator had not been completed. NHRA officials decided to finish those events at the Arizona State Championships and Southwest Regional Championships which were to be held at Perryville on November 19-20. Six dragsters were still in the running—three from Texas and three from California. Jazzy wouldn’t compete in the dragster eliminations, but he still had a chance to be the national champion. The way it worked was, after the dragster class eliminations determined its class winner, that car would automatically be in the top eliminator finals. His opponent would be determined in a jackpot, winner-take-all race between the cars that had won the Open Gas class and the A Competition Coupe class back at Great Bend. Jazzy had qualified by virtue of having won the A/CC coupe class at Great Bend.


As things worked out in Arizona six weeks later, Cal Rice successfully advanced through four rounds to win the dragster class. He patiently waited to see who his opponent would be. Would it be Fritz Voigt or Jazzy Nelson? After one false start, they restaged for a second run. It was a good race, with both cars leaving together, but Fritz Voigt pulled ahead as they neared the finish to beat Jazzy. This photo appeared in the February 1956 issue of Hot Rod. While in Arizona, Jim competed in the A/CC class competition. He took the class win with a new strip record of 129.12 mph.

But let’s back up to something very special that happened between the Kansas and Arizona races on October 9. Jim was racing at San Fernando just after getting back home from Kansas. He was clicking on all cylinders, feeling his oats, when he turned a blistering 9.68 second blast. That and his other sub-ten second run of 9.77 were world record stratosphere-like numbers.


But wait! Jim had more in his pocket. Wonder of wonders, he was at San Fernando again on December 18. I’ll let the Drag News headline convey what happened. What a way to close out a rip-snorting season! In fact, Ed Harding, San Fernando’s track manager, decided that the strip would begin the 1956 season afresh. He was going to wipe the record book slate clean, except for two records that would carry over into 1956—Jazzy’s 9.10 blast and Lloyd Scott’s 152.02 mph mark.


Before we close out the story of Jim’s Fiat in 1956, I want to post one more photo of the car so you can get a good close-up of his drilled ’34 frame rails. Jim was old school. He would have been a teenager when the Great Depression started and well into adulthood during the 1930s. I witnessed the traits of frugality and resourcefulness engendered by living during the Depression in my own father, who was five years younger than Jim. There were no new tools in my dad’s toolbox. Old tools were good enough. It seemed like he used scraps of this and that, that he must have picked up here and there to build our garage. It sufficed. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. That was the motto of those who lived during the Depression. That’s what sings out to me in looking at the Fiat’s frame. It was good enough for Jim. Not pretty, but it got the job done. Not like a Dave Marquez frame by a long shot. I also like this photo for this scene of the little helper, who’s getting a lesson in how to take off a rear wheel. It’s kind of a Norman Rockwell kind of picture.

Jim ran through about October with his Fiat in the ’56 season, but it was nowhere near as special as ’55 had been. He was essentially turning the same numbers, but the near-weekly new track records and top eliminator wins were in the rearview mirror. They were few and far between, if at all. The writing was on the wall. How do you get back to those good old days when it was win, win, win?


This is what brought the smile back to Jim’s face—a new car! It’s hard to explain, but there’s something about this car (and other drag cars from the ‘50s) that is just so cool. Backyard resourcefulness. Ingenuity. Make do with what’s at hand. There’s that no-frills, heavy-duty frame again. The lessons learned from living through the Depression are ever-present in Jim’s twin engine dragster that he debuted and raced in 1957-58.

I like what George Klass wrote that helps shed some light on understanding why these old drag race cars from the ‘50s are so pleasing to look at. Klass was looking at a photo of Jim’s Fiat and a photo of a newer Fiat fuel altered. The newer Fiat fuel altered was “a much better car, better designed, better built, and much quicker and faster.” But it gave Klass more satisfaction to look at the photo of Jazzy’s old Fiat. “I get more satisfaction looking at the photo of Jazzy’s Fiat (and I saw it run numerous times),” Klass wrote. “Being ‘better’ does not by definition mean it is more satisfying. Hiring a company to build a fence around my property may provide for a better fence than I could build myself, but it would be a lot less satisfying for me than building it myself out of used pallets or something.” The satisfaction quotient may be a big part of why so many of us who began our drag racing interest in the pre-Christmas tree days—and those who wished they had--look back on that era with a kind of wistfulness and yearning for the good old days. There was something magical about those times. Nostalgia drag racing, reconstructing old dragsters, and cacklefests are an attempt to recreate that feeling, but they come a bit short. For us old geezers, it’s great to have our memories—until we don’t (crossing my fingers).


Jim built the first dragster that employed a side-by-side twin engine configuration. Among the nineteen known twins documented by Dennis Friend on his Two to Go: Twin Engine Drag Car History website, Jim’s twin was the only dragster employing flathead engines. Jim really did march to the beat of a different drummer. He’s the kind of guy who, if you said to him that something couldn’t be done, it was like throwing the gauntlet down. He would embark on whatever you said couldn’t be done, just to show you that it—by golly—could be done. He called his twin digger, “The Outlaw.”


As with his Fiat, the rollbar was essentially just a decorative item. Either that, or if in a crash, he would need to lean forward to keep his noggin from getting squished. The two ’48 Mercury flathead engines weren’t connected. The rear axle had two Halibrand center sections with a ring and pinion for each engine driving a common axle.


Jim’s timing on bringing out a dual engine dragster in 1957 was poor. Southern California strip operators met and decided to ban the running of dragsters with multiple engines after April 1, 1957. And that was no April Fool’s Joke. There were only two twin engine dragsters in Southern California: Manuel Coelho’s twin in-line Chrysler dragster and Jim’s side-by-side twin. The strips that joined the ban on twin engines included Pomona, Kingdon, Saugus, San Fernando, San Gabriel, Colton, Santa Ana, Lions, and Paradise Mesa. That left Bakersfield, Santa Maria and the Central and Northern California strips as venues where Nelson and Coelho could run.

The ban was short lived as Jim was allowed to race his twin at Lions again starting on May 19 and at Colton beginning on June 9. When strips like Lions or San Fernando only ran gas, he ran the engines on gas. But he ran on fuel at Bakersfield, Colton, Santa Maria, and Half Moon Bay. His best times on gas were 10.35 and 129.31 mph. His fastest times on fuel were 9.11 and 145.37 mph. On July 28, 1957, at Half Moon Bay, he ran with one blown engine on alcohol and the other unblown on nitro.


In 1959, two genius-types teamed up to run a way-before-its-time streamliner. Jocko Johnson was an eccentric, artistic genius. He got Jim Nelson to drive his Jocko’s Porting Service fiberglass streamliner about a half a dozen times. It was powered by a 420-inch blown Chrysler.


The date was May 31, 1959. The existing 1320 ET record was 8.54 set by Chrisman-Cannon. Jim climbed in the Jocko-liner and cranked off an 8.80 run. Whoa, doggies. On his next run, he blasted off the line like never before. Just before he reached the lights, a puff of smoke let everyone know that he’d melted a piston. That was just another day in the office for the piston-melting Jocko-liner. But this time was different. Way different. Jazzy coasted through the lights with an unbelievable 8.35. It would be two years before that strip record would be broken at Riverside.


A month later at Vaca Valley, Jim made just one run before the body came flying off. The track may have been rough, causing some of the fiberglass fasteners to become loosened. Jim was non-plussed. He still turned 9.19 at 174.71 mph. After exiting the car, Jim was still thinking about his run in terms of performance rather than the fiberglass wreckage. “I don’t know much about injectors or fiberglass, but carbs suit me fine,” he said.

After that accident, Jocko returned to Long Beach to build an aluminum version of the liner. Of the Vaca Valley accident, Jocko said that the “liner was run on a very rough strip, resulting in the front wheels bouncing to the point of punching holes in the glass front fenders, which allowed air pressure to lift the body off the chassis.”

Jim Nelson was done with drag racing after that run. The explosion of fiberglass bits, some the size of postage stamps, that rained down after he blasted by the lights, was almost like a fireworks show. Jazzy went out with a bang.

Jim Nelson died in 2001 at age 85.

 

Another great story. Thanks again.

Mick

 

thanks again(still!)--wonderful histories!

 

Harry Meets Ginger—and Her Tangle With NHRA
for Equal Rights for Women Racers​

“Harry Meets Ginger” sounds like a variation of a movie title (“When Harry Met Sally”). But Harry Hovis and Virginia “Ginger” Watson are real life people. Ginger’s life is so extraordinary, it really could be a movie.


I first ran across Ginger Watson in the process of compiling my website about early women drag racers—“Women Drag Racers: Pioneers of the First Three Decades.” Ginger raced in the decade of the 1960s. I found photos and newspaper articles about her that enabled me to write a brief history of her involvement in drag racing. I included her in the 1960s page along with over forty other women drag racers. Some of the other women who started racing in that decade included Shirley Muldowney, Paula Murphy, Shirley Shahan, Carol Cox, Della Woods, Bunny Burkett, and Judy Lilly.


While doing an Internet search for online information about her mother, Ginger’s daughter, Lynda Watson Mosca, stumbled upon my website. She got in touch with me to express gratitude for including her mother among the early pioneering women drag racers. She also told me that she had several documents about her mother’s racing career and told me additional things about her mother’s life. I was fascinated. With this added information, I was able to write a more complete history on my website. I also included Lynda’s communication on the blog page of the website (see above). Lynda sent me a small treasure trove of papers and photocopied photos relating to her mother’s drag racing activity. I promised that I would write a fuller story about her mother’s drag racing career. I’m here making good on that promise.


Admittedly, Ginger did her drag racing in the 1960s—and this thread focuses on the 1950s. But her racing partner, Harry Hovis, began drag racing in the late 1950s. So, I’m going to ride on Harry’s coattails, so to speak, for Ginger’s story in this ‘50s thread. Lynda Mosca sent me this photocopied photo of Harry Hovis, receiving an award. It is the only photo that I have found of him. Lynda wrote me that Harry was her mother’s “long time ‘Significant Other.’” She also said that he went by the name “George.”

Harry, born in 1929, lived in Wentzville, Missouri. He began drag racing sometime in the 1950s. The first time that I found a newspaper report of him winning a trophy was for a race at Alton on August 31, 1958. He won the A/D class with a speed of 118.4 mph. So, he was driving dragsters at least as early as 1958.


By at least 1960, Harry had built a twin-engine AA/D called “Double Trouble.” It was powered by two supercharged Corvette engines. Being an old tech inspector, I’m looking at the red silicone fuel line on those engines. Yikes! He raced this a couple of times, mostly at Alton, but the weight of the beast was really a bit too much, so he went back to a single motor dragster.


This photo shows Harry running his blown Chevy A/D at Alton in 1963. He was much more successful with this single-engine setup. In fact, he was so successful that he began racing at distant events far from his home. He raced, with good success, in Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and Illinois. He even raced at the NHRA U.S. Nationals where he turned an impressive 9.84, 168.92 mph during time trials.


This is one of the first photos that I found of Ginger in a newspaper, showing her in the cockpit of a dragster in 1965. But we’re getting ahead of the story with this photo. Let’s back up a bit to what events brought her to this point in her life. Born in a houseful of brothers, she admitted to having been something of a tomboy. And being a tomboy, she developed an interest in mechanics. She served in the motor pool during her year and a half in the Marine Corps. After getting out of the service, she started taking flying lessons and got her private pilot’s license.

She married a Texan and they moved to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where they lived for five years. When they lived in Puerto Rico, it was during the days of the revolution against the U.S. in 1950. There were a series of armed uprisings protesting U.S. colonial rule and advocating Puerto Rican independence. Lynda wrote that her mother “opened a bar and, at times, needed a bodyguard due to being an Anglo from the U.S. and considered somewhat of the enemy.” Her husband was a rodeo rider. She went on the rodeo circuit with him for several years. The rodeo life meant lots of traveling, but she was game for it. It wasn’t easy with four children. But she even learned how to bulldog a steer. But after they divorced, she went back to Missouri, and made her home in Ferguson, just on the northern outskirts of St. Louis.


Being a divorced mother of four brought its challenges. “A divorced person is a breed apart who has to try to find a place of her own,” said Ginger. She had taken some college classes after her divorce but left to get a job. In 1962, she got a job as a secretary with a St. Louis public relations firm.


In about 1960, she went to an oval track stock car race with a friend to Lake Hill Speed Way in Valley Park, Missouri. She enjoyed herself very much. Her friend’s husband had a couple of stock cars at the race. At the conclusion of the races, they held a powder puff race. Her friend asked Ginger if she would like to join her in driving one of her husband’s two stock cars in the powder puff race. “She asked why I didn’t drive the other one,” said Ginger. “I thought, ‘Why not?’” They gave her an old dog of a car that was on its last legs. “It was a double-aught Dodge, as far as classification was concerned, about a 1943 model,” said Ginger. “My first thought was, ‘What am I doing here?’ But I won over about 15 other cars and decided it was fun.” More than fun, she was hooked. Every Friday night, she drove in the Powder Puff race. If she won, she’d get $5-10 and the car owner would get the rest of the prize money. She started traveling around to other area oval tracks on the weekends to race the fender benders, i.e., stock cars that still had their fenders. She won eleven straight races. She was at Tri City Speedway in Granite City, Illinois, when she met Harry Hovis.

The car that she was supposed to drive wasn’t ready, so she was sitting on the sidelines instead of racing. That’s when Harry asked her, “Why don’t you try something besides the ovals?” Harry told her about drag racing and that there might be an opportunity for her in that kind of racing. Once again, she thought, “Why not?” Ginger said, “I was getting a little tired of the fender-benders anyway, and that’s how it started.” Ginger went into partnership with Harry in a gas dragster. They raced it all over the country, winning a little here and there. They even raced it at the 1965 Winternationals, where Harry set a new national record in C/GD with 163.63 mph. However, one day Harry flipped the car and crashed. The car was a total wreck, but he climbed out unscathed. “But when he wrecked his half of the dragster,” Ginger wryly said, “he wrecked my half, too.”


To make amends for their loss, Harry put her in the driver’s seat of two of his other dragsters at tracks where women were allowed to drive. One was an AA/D (shown above) and the other was a B/FD. These were competitive cars.


At the ’64 U.S. Nationals, Harry was the class winner in B/FD (but seen here with Ginger in the cockpit), clocking times of 9.40 and 154.90 mph. However, there were limits to where Ginger could race. In 1965, AHRA ruled that women were allowed to drive dragsters. But only a limited number of NHRA strips permitted her to run a dragster. She took to being a bit sneaky to get around those sanctions. On a few occasions, she raced at strips where women were barred from racing by registering under the name of Sam Watson. One of those strips where she used a bit of subterfuge when she first started racing was in Texas. She remembers the announcer saying, “Here comes Sam Watson. Sam Watson is coming through.” Ginger said, “When you have your fire mask on and crawl down in the driver’s seat, no one can tell the difference.” Her daughter, Lynda, also said that she strapped a girdle around her chest to hide her womanly figure. No one was the wiser. From then on, “Sam” became her nickname. “It’s still my nickname. I’m Sam—just one of the boys.”

She started racing under her own name at strips like Springfield-Ozark Raceway because it was AHRA-sanctioned. On September 6, 1965, she took a class win at Springfield in D/FD with 9.95 at 145.86 mph at the Midwest National AHRA Drag Race Championships. Prior to that win, her career best was 9.71 at 152 mph. She was one of a very few, if not the only, woman fuel dragster drivers in the country. “As far as I know,” Ginger said, “I’m the only woman driving a rail job in the country.”

One of her jobs in the pits was to mix the nitro-methanol fuel mixture and pack the chute. But she could do just about anything. “She’s as good a mechanic as she is a driver,” Harry Hovis said, “and she can pull a whole engine and put it back if necessary.”


In her first outing at the wheel of Harry’s fuel dragster at Wentzville, she was admittedly nervous. She was accustomed to driving the gas dragster, but driving the fueler was a different ballgame. “That nitro comes out with a strong blast,” she said, “and you’ve got to put your foot in it without getting squirrelly. Also, you don’t want to sit there in a ball of smoke. You don’t really steer, and you have a quarter of a mile to do what you’re going to do. You point it in the right direction, put your foot in it, and pray.”

In 1966, she crashed in a dragster while doing some testing. The left rear wheel locked, causing her to lose control. The parachute failed to deploy, and the car flipped end over end, landing her “in the grass.” The dragster was destroyed, but she came out of it with a broken nose. That was only time she was in an accident.


This Sears ad appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (4/28/67) offering a free automobile safety check and the appearance of some race cars owned by members of the Midwest Owners and Drivers Association (MODA). Ginger Watson and Harry Hovis would be there with their cars.

Harry was the go-getter in 1966 in getting a group of about five hundred drag racers organized to negotiate better race payouts and racing conditions at Midwest strips. Harry was made president and Ginger was secretary of MODA. “One of the main things that’s been concerning us is the reduction of prize money at certain tracks where most of us compete,” Harry said. “To attract bigger crowds, strip owners usually bring in a few of the nation’s fastest dragsters as headliners. Don’t get me wrong—these cars are great. But the owners are paying them some lush purses just to show and race. And our boys, who are in the vast majority, have been getting the short end of the stick. They’ve cut down our prize money in order to beef up the purses for the top stars. This means that 250 to 300 cars competing in a meet are being penalized at the expense of four or five feature cars. So, we’ve decided to drive only at strips offering what we consider reasonable compensation.” In effect, they band together to boycott strips until they got what they asked for. It didn’t take long for strip owners to sit up and take notice. No cars equaled no spectators. Drag News (7/1/66) reported how MODA influenced Alton to listen to the racers’ demands and make changes. Alton was scheduled to hold the AHRA North Central Divisional Championships on May 27. If they didn’t listen and respond to the MODA demands, they were looking at a bleak turnout of race cars. Drag News reported: “A prominently displayed M.O.D.A. approved sign was proof of the pudding [huge turnout of race cars] as Alton Dragway and the newly formed organization came to terms this week.” The MODA organization was effective in that instance and continued to operate for at least a year to benefit the average drag racer.

Back when she started racing in 1965, Ginger made over fifty runs without an accident and hoped someday that she could qualify to get booked for match races. “I would like to be booked for some exhibitions,” said Ginger, “but I would have to do real well in competition first.”



Those opportunities were slow in coming. It took about two years. On July 4, 1967, at Rockford Dragway, in Illinois, she made a run that got her some of that recognition she was yearning for. She turned a quick 8.90 in the “Wynn’s Storm” B/FD, but the time that got the attention she was hoping for was the speed: 180.34mph. With that nice fat, round 180 number, she had strip operators wanting to book her for match races.


The telephones started ringing. Promoters wanted to book her to appear at their strips. Almost before her engine had cooled down from that 180-mph run, Union Grove booked her in for a match race against Joan Buttera on Saturday night, July 29.


Rockford Dragway was less than one hundred miles southwest of Union Grove. Rockford booked Ginger and Joan to compete the following day, July 30, on Sunday afternoon. The ladies could expect to be paid $400 to $600 each for each of their appearances.


Joan, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was going to drive Jack Ditmar’s “Lil’ Screamer” ’34 Ford altered. The two ladies were described as the “wildest and fastest women drivers in the nation.”


Joan didn’t get her name drawn out of a hat or spring out of a hole in the earth to be selected to be Ginger’s match race competition. Does the Buttera name ring a bell? She was the wife of dragster builder, John Buttera. She started racing in 1966. She helped John build his first dragster in her mother’s garage. It took them eleven months to build. In 1967, John’s dragster building business in Kenosha, R-B Automotive, was cranking out a new dragster every three weeks.

As to his wife racing the “Lil’ Screamer” altered, John wasn’t too hep on the idea at first. “John wasn’t very keen on the idea at first,” said Joan. “I wanted a chance to get my fingers into it. I just wanted to get the satisfaction of doing it. Driving at the races doesn’t take any more time than it did before. It gives me something to do while I’m there.” I mean, the lady could sit on the sidelines just so long with her knitting and watching their two kids. John Buttera concurred with what Joan said about his initial reluctance. “I didn’t like the idea of Joan racing at first,” said John, “but I knew the Little Screamer was a safe, sound, well-engineered car. Racing fans will come out to see a woman drive a fast car. This is rare. There are only a half-dozen women in the country driving good cars.”


The Springfield-Ozark Raceway, on the west side of Missouri, was the next track that saw the potential of a high-speed woman drag racer drawing spectators. They billed her as the world’s fastest lady in drag racing. They booked her to appear on August 5, 1967. She was pitted against Wayne Stumpf of Chicago, driving an inline twin Chevy-engined fuel dragster. She took her four children with her when she went racing. “My siblings and I traveled all over the country with her,” Lynda Watson Mosca wrote, “and were known to most the other racing teams down in the pit section of the track as Ginnie’s Rug Rats.”


In 1968, she moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On February 11, 1968, she was booked to race her A/FD “Wynn’s Storm” at Sunshine Speedway in St. Petersburg. She turned 179.80 mph at that event in her Chevy-engined fueler. Her record to this point was very impressive, having lost only three times in hundreds of races. Those losses were to cars that were more powerful than hers.


When she started having some success and getting bookings in mid-1967, NHRA got all huffy and started pressuring sanctioned tracks to not book her. The Miami Herald (5/16/68) wrote: “Slowly but surely, she came to be accepted by the men [racers] who began referring to her as ‘The Lady Leadfoot’ or ‘The Draghag.’ But then the NHRA cracked down, practically putting her out of work." Ginger wrote to the NHRA, pleading to let her be licensed to drive a fuel dragster at their tracks. This is the letter she received from division director, Darrell Zimmerman. Her request was denied. This was a blow to her. “They say that if a woman got hurt in a race it would look bad,” Ginger said. Ginger suspected that there were other factors behind their decision. She suspected that another major factor was that men just didn’t want to race against women.

When this news from the NHRA came, she had to look realistically at the situation. She was beating her head against a wall to try to get their permission for more opportunities to race. NHRA was the big time. They had more racetracks than any of the other sanctioning bodies. “There comes a time to put away the crash helmet and pick up a pencil,” Ginger said. She enrolled in shorthand courses to improve her secretarial skills. “I’m already a good typist,” said Ginger, “but I wanted to learn shorthand, too. If I’m going to be a secretary, I want to be a good one.”

She hadn’t entirely given up racing. She was looking forward to returning to Rockford on July 4 to try to better her 180-mph mark. But two weeks after her interview article in the Miami Herald, something horribly unforeseen happened.


Harry Hovis was murdered, shot to death by three bullet wounds to his chest. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (5/31/68) reported that he was fatally shot in a Southgate, Michigan, motel room. He had driven there to take part in a Memorial Day race at Milan Dragway. He had met a man in a restaurant. He was a stranger to Hovis, but for some reason, Hovis invited him to his motel room after they’d had a few drinks. They purportedly got into an argument over a pair of revolvers in the room. The man who shot him, Norman Hilliker, from Mount Clemens, Michigan, was charged with first degree murder. Lynda Watson Mosca remembered Harry’s death differently. She thought he had been shot by his best friend during a poker game in Las Vegas, but that was not what happened. Harry Hovis was just 39 years old at the time he died.

Ginger Watson lived a life of adventure. She was 90 years old when she died in 2015.

 

Ted Cooper: This Piper Calls the Tune
​

In looking at an old 1950s-60s drag racing movie, I stumbled across a segment showing this altered Fiat sitting on the starting line. It was an A/A with the racing number 593 on its side. I’m familiar enough that I can identify the well-known cars of the ‘50s. But I didn’t know this car. The movie had no narration or sound, so I had no clue who drove it or what year it raced.


In researching old 1950s drag cars, I’ve created a spreadsheet list of car numbers to help me identify cars in photos. To create this research finding aid, I went through all the 1950s issues in Drag News and old newspapers looking for photos with cars that had numbers. I created this spreadsheet with that information. So, when I saw the number 593 on this Fiat, I turned to my “Cars with Numbers” list.


It listed an altered, numbered 593, owned by Ted Cooper, in Drag News (9/10/60). So, I looked in that issue—and sure enough—it was a good match. This is the photo that appeared in that issue. The style of the painted number and placement on the door were an exact match. In my research parlance, I uttered “bingo.”


For example, on a previous story about the Throttle Queens, I was able to identify the photo of the #11 dragster that Wilma Brown was lettering as Maurice Richer’s dragster. The photo that I had found on an Internet resource didn’t identify it, but with the help of my spreadsheet numbers list, I easily matched it to the photo in Drag News (10/19/57). My “Cars with Numbers” list has been invaluable in 1950s drag racing photo research.

So, with the discovery of #593 A/A being a Fiat driven by Ted Cooper, I set out to learn more about him and his car. I had never heard of him before. I set out to find out everything I could about him. What I found was so interesting that I deemed him a good choice to write a story about. Sometimes it is just serendipity, like this instance, that brings me to choose someone to write a story about. I began with a photo of Ted’s car, but if I wasn’t able to find a photo of Ted, I would drop writing a story about him like a hot potato. The central focus of this thread is to put a face with a name. There must be a photo of the man—or woman—or I don’t write about them. I’m on a quest to get to know these people who built these wonderful drag race cars in drag racing’s first decade. In this instance, I found a couple of photos of Ted—so he’s a go.

Ted was born in Oregon in 1932. His full name was Theodore Horatio Cooper. Remember Beaver Cleaver on “Leave It to Beaver?” His given name was Theodore, but that’s no name to go by when you’re an active youngster. So, Theodore Cleaver was just “Beaver.” That’s why Theodore Horatio Cooper was just Ted Cooper.

There are two words in the English language that are always paired together: “young” and “stupid.” On July 30, 1954, Ted, age 23, and his friend, Richard Massera, age 22, picked up a couple of young teenage girls after they had finished their shift, working at a San Diego movie theater. One of the girls, Ann, was 16 and the other girl, Helen, was 18 years old. Right there, we must check the first box in the stupid column. Picking up two underage girls. Put a check mark in the box. The next stupid thing was that Ted had reportedly been drinking and was going to drive the trio out for a late-night ride in his car. Drinking and driving. Put a check mark in box number two. We can all see where this is headed. Ted was reportedly rounding a curve at an estimated speed of 90 mph when he lost control of the car and hit a boulder on Highway 94 east of Jamul. Put a big check mark in box number three. Ted was young and stupid. He’s a poster child for Young and Stupid. Ann, sitting in the front seat beside Ted, was killed in the crash. Ted and Helen were seriously injured. In 1955, the mother of Ann filed a suit against Ted, asking $10,000 in damages. At that time, Ted owned and operated a body shop in Palm City. I don’t know the outcome of the lawsuit.


On December 5, 1954, got a trophy racing in the C Modified Roadster class at Paradise Mesa’s final race of the season. He turned 95.94 mph. He was racing as a member of the Palm City Goobers car club.


The press is silent about Ted for a couple of years. During that time, he was working on something that would land him on the front cover of Hot Rod Magazine in September 1957. It had the Wow Factor in spades. Take a close look at those exhaust pipes. They boggle the mind. Where do they start? Where do they end? I’m transfixed. I saw a photo on the Internet of this HRM cover. I could have used that photo for this story, but the condition of the magazine shown on the Internet was poor. I found an issue being offered for $3 on eBay. My price range. Its condition looked good. And the price was right, so I bought it. This is the scan of the cover of the HRM issue that I bought. What do you think? Have you ever seen anything like it?

How many sleepless nights did it take Ted to come up with this concoction? I mean, he looks sane. But looks can be deceiving, can’t they?

And look at smilin’ Ted. I’m checking out his hair. What grade of hair tonic do you think he’s using? 5W-30? And what’s he got going on the backside of his head? Elvis Presley was big in 1957. Is there a ducktail on the backside? I’m thinking. Could be.


This is the first page of the inside HRM article about Ted and his fantabulous ’30 Ford drag coupe. It is the first page in what HRM called its “Special Rotogravure Section.” Ted is 25 years old. He’s got his work shirt on, pens in his shirt pocket, name patch sewn above his shirt pocket. All ready to get down and get dirty. The 3-page article is entitled “Pipe Dreams.” The subtitle conveyed the issue that Ted faced in putting this dreamboat together: “The problem wasn’t where to put the Lincoln, but how to route the headers.” Uh, yeah. And this was his answer? Notice the names painted on the cowl in front of the windshield. “Ted & Rich.” Was “Rich” his friend, Richard Massera, who was driving in the car with him when he had that terrible crash in 1954? Don’t know.


His body shop was called Palm Avenue Auto Body, located in Imperial Beach. Palm City was a neighborhood contiguous to Imperial Beach, south of San Diego. The engine was a 351-inch ’52 Lincoln. Somewhere hidden among all those pipes are six Stromberg 97s. Can you imagine the nightmare you’d face if you had to remove the valve covers?


All those shiny pipes were chromed by Benton Plating in San Diego. He recognized them for their work on the side of his coupe between the edge of his door and the rear fender.


At the 2nd annual 2-day Drag News Open Invitational at Lions on June 15-16, 1957, he made a showing with his head-turning coupe. Drag News (6/29/57) reported: “Ted Cooper of Palm City added the B Altered trophy to his already won Best Appearing award with a time of 109.09. He bowed to the potent Hildebrandt Mfg. Company’s entry for Top Time as it scorched through at 117.49, before withdrawing with a blown transmission.” There was an accompanying photo in that issue of Drag News showing him receiving his Best Appearing award from the trophy queen.


Although the feature article about Ted’s coupe didn’t appear until September 1957 in Hot Rod, the photos for that issue were taken before he made some serious modifications to the headers.


Heating issues forced Ted to reroute them in a more conventional manner. Gone were the lost-in-a-pipedream, twirly-gig, around-the-world headers. Had to go. Sad to go.


After his cover appearance on HRM, Ted got an offer from a guy in Oklahoma who wanted to buy his car. So, in November he towed his car to deliver it to the buyer. En route, he stopped off to race the car in late November at the South Eubank Dragstrip in Albuquerque, New Mexico.


Ted pulled into the gates at Caddo Mills for the Texas State Championships held on December 1, 1957. Connell Miller was there with his camera. “I was taking photos at the 1957 Texas State Championship drag race,” said Miller, “when suddenly everyone went ‘Wow!’ as Ted Cooper’s gorgeous Lincoln-powered Model-A coupe ‘Pipe Dream’ rolled through the gates at Caddo Mills. It was a west coast car that had been featured in Hot Rod Magazine a couple of months before and here it was, showing up many miles and several states away down at the old World War II military training field in Texas!” Carl Stone won the best appearing car award at that event. If the spectators would have been polled, they might have chosen the car from California to win that award. But, the award was kept in state. Ted was up against a tough car in the A/A class, Jimmy Nix, who took the class win.


Ted built a Chrysler-engined ’37 Fiat Topolino bodied A/A that he called “Pipe Dream II.” He began racing it at drag strips near and far in 1960. It was the car that caught my eye in that old 1950s-60s drag racing movie. Although the car name hearkened back to his first wacky headered Ford coupe, this one sported a conventional upswept header configuration. Ted had gone all conservative on us. He was competing in the same class as the A/A Fiat of Ratican-Jackson-Stearns, a car that I saw run many times at Pomona. Tough competition. The first report that I found of Ted winning a trophy for a A/A class win was at Pomona on August 7, 1960. His times were 12.58 at 121.29 mph. That was nothing to write home about, but I guess it was enough that Ted thought he might venture east for a couple of big races in the Midwest.


He made his first stop at Alton, for the 4-day Midwest Invitational Drag Classic on August 25-28, 1960. He made a good showing, competing against the Hi-Winders club blown Chrysler in the A/A class finals. Both cars used Fiat bodies and Chrysler power. Ted was edged out for the class win by the Hi-Winders. From Alton, he drove west to Kansas City for the AHRA Nationals. It was another 4-day event from September 2-5. Pete Garramone, a Colorado racing photographer who had an eye for well-built, good-looking cars, took several photos of his car at that event. In this Garramone photo, you can see that Ted is giving adequate credit to Benton Plating again for the shiny chrome stuff on his Fiat.


You’ll notice that the nice chrome work even extended inside. I guess for Ted, you couldn’t have enough chrome, but he might want to wear some dark glasses to cut down the glare.


Isn’t that a sweet little cockpit? Looks comfy and spacious enough to fit Ted.


In this last Garramone photo, we see the car’s name painted on the back. Also, check out his nifty ’59 T-Bird tow car. Nice. Drag News (9/10/60) said some nice things about Ted and his car: “Californians were well represented at K.C. and they all impressed us with their friendliness and race ability. Ted Cooper’s ‘Pipe Dream II’ undoubtedly the most beautiful A Altered to lay a wheel on asphalt set up a new class record of 133.91 mph but got sideways in class runoffs and let Nebraskan Jerry Ross through for a win.” Drag News included a photo of Ted’s car in their reporting of the AHRA Nationals.


In this last Garramone photo, we see the car’s name painted on the back. Also, check out his nifty ’59 T-Bird tow car. Nice. Drag News (9/10/60) said some nice things about Ted and his car: “Californians were well represented at K.C. and they all impressed us with their friendliness and race ability. Ted Cooper’s ‘Pipe Dream II’ undoubtedly the most beautiful A Altered to lay a wheel on asphalt set up a new class record of 133.91 mph but got sideways in class runoffs and let Nebraskan Jerry Ross through for a win.” Drag News included a photo of Ted’s car in their reporting of the AHRA Nationals.


The next time I find anything about Ted Cooper and “Pipe Dream II” is not until 1964. Did it take him four years to cool off from his meltdown at the ’60 AHRA Nationals? In this photo from another feature article in Hot Rod’s October 1964 issue, he is running the blown 354-inch ’51 Chrysler Hemi. He has bumped up to AA/A from A/A.


In looking at Ted, seven years after his first Hot Rod cover feature back in September ’57, we see that he is still a handsome looking devil. He has matured, looks all business-like in his white shirt. But, at least he’s not wearing a tie. Whoever invented ties should be strung up. I wore one for forty years when I was a working schmuck. I vowed when I walked out of the door from my workplace for the last time in 2013, that I would never wear a tie ever again. I have remained true to my vow.


I know a little bit about Ted’s personal life. This might be the place to tell about it, so we don’t get so fixated on his cars and forget about the guy who dreamed them all up. He was first married in 1951. That ended in divorce. He got married for a second time in 1964. Same outcome—divorce. Wife number three ended in divorce in 1973. He married Marian on the rebound in 1974. Twenty years later, Ted and Marian were living in Washington, but Ted got divorced for the fourth time. Marriage was more difficult than figuring out how to reroute headers for Ted. But five years later, Ted and Marian patched things up and remarried in 1999. It took a while, but Ted got things figured out in the end.

He died in 2012 at age 79. He was survived by his beloved wife, Marian.

 

Emmett Cull and Ronnie Sterbenk
and the Essence of Hot Rodding​

I’ve got a couple of routes that I take to choose who to write about for this thread. This choosing method is one that I call—when the muse strikes. I saw this photo—and the muse struck. It sings out to me. I freely admit it. I’m caught in the fifties. And this twin-engine dragster has fifties written all over it. Nothing pretty. Nothing fancy. Grease and oil smeared all over it. Kind of quirky. Not kind of—major quirky. Engines fore and aft. Reminiscent of Bustle Bomb or Stan Lomelino (another guy I want to write about). I like the nonchalance of the guy in white coveralls leaning against his car. The back of his coveralls reads “Vic Hubbard Speed Shop, Hayward.” Major cool. I can see some grease on the forearm of his shirt sleeve. I’ll bet he’s got grease under his fingernails. Why do the old mechanics always wear white coveralls? Same reason I guess why house painters wear white coveralls. It’s what they do. Always have, always will.



No reason to drag this out any longer yammering. This is the Cull & Sterbenk dragster. Emmett Cull and Wayne King, from Alameda, built it and had it ready to race in the fall of 1955. Cull & Kerr got a trophy in the dragster class at Kingdon on October 2, 1955. Cull probably drove. The dragster ran high gear only and turned a best speed at that meet of 130.43 mph. He got runner-up in top eliminator competition. Emmett Cull was a member of the Hayward Head Hunters, but Kerr wasn’t. Shortly afterward, Kerr went off on his own on another dragster project.

At Kingdon on March 25, 1956, Cull unloaded it from the trailer as he arrived at Kingdon. On his first warm-up run, he blew the front transmission. He promised to return in two weeks.


In this photo, Emmett is kneeling next to his 220-inch Chevy straight-six motor. This is the front engine in his twin-engined dragster. He was thirty years old at the time of this photo.

Ronnie Sterbenk, another Head Hunter club member from San Leandro, brought out a new rear-engined modified coupe to Kingdon on March 25, 1956. It was a great first outing as he set a strip record on both ends of the A/C class with 10.68 and 123.86 mph.

Cull had been knocking on the door of 140 mph for a couple of weeks but was looking for something to push him past that barrier. Paul Leuschner, of Alameda, had been giving Cull a hand, but they just couldn’t seem to get it over the hump. Leuschner was a fellow Head Hunter, who raced a ’27 Model A roadster. On April 8, Emmett got the meet’s top speed of 133.86 mph, but in trying for 140, the rear engine blew a clutch. Kingdon had a racing jacket hanging on display to be given to the first drag racer who went over 140. Cull wanted that jacket.


Ronnie Sterbenk thought his stout 296-inch Mercury flathead might be just the ticket. He lent Cull his motor to drop into the rear slot. On April 22, Emmett was awarded the coveted jacket for turning 140.80 mph. Traction trouble slowed him at the start, but then this 2,000-pound behemoth started cooking. He clocked a time of 11.87 to go with his new strip speed record. This grainy newspaper photo from the Stockton Record (4/24/56) shows the record-setting set-up with Sterbenk’s motor in back.


This photo was taken at Minter Field in May 1956, where the Cull & Sterbenk twin garnered the meet’s top speed.


Emmett Cull was born in Oklahoma in 1926. He was one of five children. When he was a young boy, his family moved to California, in quest of a better life. California Dreaming. He signed this draft registration card in 1944. He enlisted in the Navy, trained in engine mechanics, and was assigned to serve on an LST. After the war, he got married to Cecelia, and they raised three children. He worked as a truck driver.


Emmett poses with his ’27 Ford in his driveway in 1952. He’d won half a dozen drag racing trophies, proudly lined up on his hood. The newspapers stuffed inside his door probably didn’t muffle the road noise very much, but he tried. His obituary said that he operated with common sense. That’s how he rode.


He began working on this belly tank in 1952, starting with a tank that he bought for $500. For power he chose a 248-inch Chevy six with a Wayne Horning head and home-made intake with five carbs. This feature article about his lakester appeared in the January 1955 issue of Speed Age Magazine.


He towed the belly tank to Bonneville in 1954, but a record of how it performed has not been found. At a tune-up race to Bonneville near Reno, he turned 134 mph.

Emmett died in 2005 at age 79.


I don’t know as much about Ronnie Sterbenk. I do know that he stuck with flathead motors, as seen in this nice-looking FED 1970 dragster. It was being displayed at a car show in Palo Alto in 2011. He raced his rear-engined fuel-burning A/C from 1954-58. At the 1956 National Roadster Show, he won the competition coupe award. In 2017, Don Jensen, past president of the Head Hunters club, wrote me: “In the fall of 1955 after winning VTA’s top club trophy three years running, and more members joining all the time, we voted to do a club display in the world-famous Oakland Roadster Show! Now several of us had had cars in the show before, but not a club effort. It really was a great common goal, with all members working on each other’s car, depending on our individual talents: painting, sheet metal, welding, or loaning parts. We held a week-end scrap drive, raising hundreds of dollars towards the cost. In February 1956, we had sixteen cars entered in the show from four dragsters to a custom 1941 Ford chopped convertible with Olds power. I doubt any club ever had that many cars in a 1950 era show! We had a sign claiming to be ‘The Top Drag Club.’”

Don Jensen said that Ronnie Sterbenk was one of the more vocal members of the Head Hunters. “Club meetings were a wonderful mix of comradery and LOUD arguments,” Don wrote, “usually led by Ronnie Sterbenk on whether the club color was Chrome Yellow or Golden Rod Yellow and whether Iskenderian, Potvin, or Howard ground the best cams and who would beat who at the next race.”

Ronnie died in 2019 at age 88.


This is a youthful Al Hubbard in 1955. He was an active member of the Hayward Head Hunters from 1952 until the club folded in 1960. He started out with a ’32 flathead engine coupe. Then he had a string of dragsters.


In this photo you can see Al Hubbard racing his twin-engine car against Tony Waters at Vacaville in 1959. Does the dragster look familiar? At the beginning of the year, the Stockton Record (1/8/59) reported: “Al Hubbard is reported ready to use Emmett Cull’s old twin engine dragster chassis and put in his and his brothers’ Chevrolet V-8’s. Al was the big winner last week [at Kingdon, on 1/4/59] with his brother’s 351 cubic Chev and with his 300 incher, the new car is a threat for top speed honors.” How about that! This photo may have been taken at the April 12 race. They ran kind of a loose operation at Vacaville. I guess if the day was hot, T-shirts were the norm for dragster drivers. Al is keeping cool with a short-sleeved “safety suit.”


Al Hubbard also raced a super long Chevy-engined dragster (16’6”) in 1959, called the “Flying Bedstead.” I’m going to upload a number of photos of it here because it sure looks a bit like a repurposed Cull & Sterbenk twin turned into a single motor dragster. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But, I think it’s worth showing several photos of the “Bedstead” so that readers can weigh in on what they think. This photo was taken at Half Moon Bay.


You can’t really see it very well, but Al’s head was above the roll bar. That rear section behind the rear tire sure looks like the old section of body underneath the rear motor in the Cull & Sterbenk twin. What say ye?


Look how far back the roll bar is. This photo was taken at Riverside. The driver’s feet were behind the rear end.


The “Bedstead” is racing Hank Vincent’s “Top Banana” at Kingdon in 1959. The photo was published in Drag News (7/4/59). The accompanying report about this race on June 28 between Hank and Al read: “First leg of top eliminator saw Hank Vincent with his Top Banana II back to the drag race wars, pair off against the durable, silent, and always reliable Al Hubbard with the Flying Bedstead. Hank has been having his tuning problems and they still plagued him at the start. He bogged twice coming off the line, but the long, long bedstead went quick and straight as always to be too far in front for Hank to be able to shut the gate.” Hubbard took a C/D class trophy with 9.64 at 147.18 mph.


I’ll finish this series of “Bedstead” photos with this one as it offers a view somewhat like the next photo.


This is Hank Vincent’s first “Top Banana” dragster. It is the best photo (of three) that I have found of his first “Banana” before he built the second, more famous “Top Banana Two.” Dave Sanderson wrote that Hank Vincent sold this car to build his second “Banana” dragster. In fact, Dave called this car “Vincent’s old ‘Flying Bedstead’.”

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