Hello, I recently had the space to write about the slot car center in Long Beach/Los Angeles area back in the early 60s. Stories and articles were in the top magazines back then. It took off all over So Cal. So, the names of the raceways as posted were not drag racing venues like Lion’s Dragstrip or San Gabriel or later on, OCIR. They were names of a brand of hobby shops or stores with actual raceways with circular, winding slot car tracks for sports cars and such. Plus, they may have had the dragstrip set up like the one in my story, at J&J Hobbies in Compton. That place was drag race central. It looked like Lion’s Dragstrip, except in a smaller scale. Pit row with the above wooden slot car boxes, electric outlets for soldering guns and other plug in devices to tune up the small motors for various classes of racing. Note: Johnson’s Raceway is/was named in El Toro that was near OCIR, so it could not have been a real dragstrip. Jnaki So, assuming the wooden box was a popular thing in our own local Bixby Knolls, Long Beach, and into the Compton/Bellflower area of Los Angeles County, those names were probably popular hobby shops in those outside of our own areas. Redlands Raceway store is/was located near the real Riverside Raceway nearby. Excerpt from the last HAMB post: The scene at the big name tracks like J&J had their regulars that looked at you funny when you walked in with a wooden box. It was their turf and you are being watched. When the cars we made came out of the boxes, then people would come up and look at the interesting take on racing. It was like the old, wild western movies, the new guy in town is here to make some noise… actually, these racers made a slight whizzing noise for about a second. We took all of that advice from the top two guys and made our own versions for both types of racing. Our weekly racing took place nearby in a smaller road racing tuning shop, but once a month, we ventured up to J&J to see how well we would do against the hard core racers, We would always come back smiling and would have tales to tell, sometimes with blown up motors and cracked bodies. Pit row was like a row of wooden tool boxes with tons of parts, completed race cars and bodies to change classes for more racing with the same custom built tubing chassis construction. Those were the times…what happened to all of my stuff? Power? Instant power with the shop electricity blasting into the transformers , into the track electrical circuits made for a fast, race. A blink of and eye and you may have missed a rear engine slot car dragster make its run. The full body sporty cars and coupes were a little slower, but at least one could see the work that went into the paint jobs and lettering before they, too, left in a flash... YRMV OK, for those that were not there, how do those fast speedster race cars stopping after an instant time race? A set of down pillows against the wall was cushion enough to absorb the fast moving drag race slot cars when finished.
The Jalopy Journal
