Folks Of Interest C9... The story tellers...

Thank you so much for bringing Jay's stories back to the top.
This time two years I was on vacation in Arizona and Las Vegas and briefly spoke to him before I left.
The shock of learning of his death shortly after arriving home much later was indescribable.
The loss of Jay was a great loss to his family and everyone on the board.
It's great that we can honor and remember Jay by reviewing his writing's once again.

Thank you Jay for being such a great friend to all of us!

 

Jay was a great yarn spinner. I always looked forward to reading his work. He was one of the HAMBers that I really wanted to meet in person, but I missed the chance.

RIP Jay C9

 

Between Jay's stories and Roger's Friday night reads there used to be a lot of good stories on the old HAMB.

 

Thanks for posting this. Brings back good memories.

 

C9 was really a gentleman. Thanks for the reminder. RIP.

 

RIP Jay


your missed






.

 

Nice commemorative post. I miss Jay. His low keyed tech posts for simple, well made parts always inspired me to do better. I still love to read some of his stories that I printed out 10-12years ago.

RIP Jay.

Charlie

 

That's what instigated compiling his writing on this thread... my hard copies were destroyed from impromptu moves plus I don't have the space anymore!

 

Man I miss that Guy. He had the patients for a FNG at the time that i will never forget.
I read those storys yearly. thanks for posting this!

 

C9 started the Writers Board Social Group and posted many of his stories there too. Well worth the visit. I'm proud to be able to have called him a friend.

 

I miss C9, didn't realize it was 11-15 he passed.
RIP Jay.

 

Wingnutz, I don't consider myself a writer by any means, I have read most of C9's stories over the last couple of days and just wanted to say thank you for posting them, I'm one of those guys that normally likes to look at all the pretty pictures. He truely did have a way with words, and I have really enjoyed reading them.

 

Good job wing man, a suitable memorial.

Jay and I had some fun discussions on another forum. We used to run at San Fernando back in the '60s though we didn't know each other then. But it was entertaining to compare similar memories of the place some 40 years on.

The most memorable discussion showed the versatility of the man. We had a back and forth on the pros and cons of UHMW......................I imagined that the other readers were wondering about two old farts going on about plastic.

 

I know I miss Him. Theres always people whos posts You read if it interests You or not.
C9s posts were one of very few I ALWAYS opened. RIP My Friend. FEDER

 

Yep, he's one the HAMBers whom I learned stuff from. I fondly remember the stories when he'd post them...

 

God Ol' C9, what a great person and writer. I'll tip a glass back in honor of him.

 

I didn't realize that when I posted this thread that it would be around his anniversary...

Pretty fitting way to remember him!

 

Thought I'd bring one of them to this post in it's entirety enjoy...

An Old Fuel Driver and God

Amen . . . a word not spoken often by fuel drivers, most times the request started with, “Oh God.”

It's not always the old-timers. Sometimes, hangin’ out with a guy your own age who's done a lot of stuff that you didn't can make for quite an afternoon.

A few years back, I spent an afternoon at the Visalia, California downtown A&W, roadster parked in the lot and me sitting on a bench in the shade of some tall trees on a hot summer day listening to a not so old fuel driver/engine builder/machinist/teller of tales and who knows what else. Some of the tales, within reason and some almost beyond belief. The true tales were either obviously true or the truth came along later. What seemed to be tall tales, the truth came along later on these as well and they always turned out to be true.

Sometimes the tales bordered on the edge of fantastic and other times they fell right into the realm of beyond most anything you thought you could ever believe. Making me, not a checker-upper on what seemed to be tall tales, but it's interesting to hear others talk about this guy and in a round-a-bout way verify his stories.

Like that old saw, truth is stranger than fiction. If it were not so, there would be no fiction written because the best fiction springs from truth. He'd been there, done it all it seems and has the photos to prove it.
He's wanting me to write his life story, but he's so doggoned busy most times that he doesn't hardly have the time to talk. When he does have time he wants to talk about present day hot rodding, what's happening at the tracks, what’s going on locally and if you keep quiet and listen . . . eventually he'll drift back in time. All you gotta do is half-way close your eyes, shut out the world, and most of all, pay attention.

I swear . . . after a bit, you can feel the brightness and clarity of the sun on a crisp summer morning at the dragstrip, sniff the yeasty smell of the fuel, hear the cackle of fuelers turning in for the line-up and a run, then be waiting breathlessly for what's gonna happen next.

Sometimes a tire burning goin’ sideways spittin’ out the oil and aluminum pieces adventure and other times a straight and true run through and out of the smoke carding a high 7 at over 200 mph.
Then it's back to the pits so you can lie in the dirt, pull the pan, get hot oil dripping on your face and see if the bearings are gonna last for one more run.


I bet God used to wonder how come all the prayers over a small and unimportant piece of aluminum.
Unimportant to the world at large, but important to a particular individual in a particular place at a particular time. I'd further bet, more than a few of these prayers over a set of aluminum backed inserts were answered.

Fuel drivers talk to God. At both ends of the strip and sometimes in the middle. The end of the strip? Frenetic seems to be the applicable word here. Too many things happening too fast and all you can do is run the shut-down drill, toss out the chute, get on the brakes, wonder if you’re on fire . . . again, kicked out the rods . . . again, hang on and pray.

Those were the days of real hot rods. Not any more real than today or the days that came before and the real part of it came from the total immersion of self into the mechanical marvels we know as hot rods. Fuel or gasoline, makes no difference. There's a little bit of each of us in the cars we build and for those who truly love the sport/hobby/life interest or whatever the heck you want to call it, the next car, roadster, coupe or fueler will be better than the last. Faster too.

Who knew where it would end? And when? There were times when we wondered where it would all go and times where it didn’t make any difference. Our love for anything hot rod - and I include customs in the hot rod category cuz, simply put, many of these low and smooth cars could really haul the freight and more than one hot rod coupe running late at night ended up staring at the taillights of a low-slung custom.

Seems like someone forgot to tell the L.A. guys that customs didn’t have to be such hard runners, they only had to look good and sound mellow when cruising by.

Many of these cars had some serious engines and few of them were flatheads. Look under the hood of a 49-50 Merc custom and you’d see a swapped in Rocket, Nailhead or best of all, the fabled Chrysler Hemi.

Running a swapped in OHV engine didn’t mean a whole lot sometimes. I saw several Hemi powered 49-51 Ford Shoebox coupes at Southern California’s San Fernando dragstrip. Strange part was, all of them looked and sounded stock. They probably did ok on the street, it didn’t take much to beat a Shoebox with a stock flatmotor, but when it came to drag racing, it was more of an exercise in curiosity than a particular desire for speed. Or, put another way, they were one of the first cars eliminated.

It wasn’t enough to simply swap in an overhead and figure you were in Fat City. If you didn’t toss in some of the good stuff made by Offy, Isky, Engle et al, you were doomed to go out on the first round. Especially so if you ran C or D/Gas which were a couple of tough classes and where most of the Shoeboxes and Tri-Five Chevys ended up. Eye Candy in the form of chrome plated Hemi rocker covers, or Rocket, or Nailhead simply was . . . not enough.

In a way, the same was true for the Fuelers of the era, local or otherwise. Tipping the can a little more, popping in a smaller pill and jacking up the timing could gain enough extra horsepower that many times you could compete with the big boys. Trouble there was, the top runners had already tipped the can and for the smaller operations, their excess money - which is a phrase not used much in any top fuel camp - went toward were components that promised more longevity in a seriously over-stressed bottom end.

The thinking went both ways from what the old fuel driver told me, some of the fuel crews didn’t only tip the can, they threw in label and all. Other crews were running 80-90% and both groups were hoping for the best.

Some of the crews, almost always running a budget, were believers in economy bottom ends.
That meant engines right out of the junkyard fitted with the usual new stuff, aftermarket forged pistons, stronger rods, stock crank, balanced and a good pair of heads with a many times considerably overdriven blower. Their theories seemed to be as good as any other. Granted, they suffered some serious blowups, but so did the guys with the high dollar stuff. Proving to one and all that running a fueler is a whole other ball game. The learning curve was steep and the steps were paved with gold.

What was interesting was finding that my own experiences driving a fuel flathead dragster was in a small way much the same as running the seriously fast cars. Granted, way slower. No way you can compare 12 seconds @ 112 mph with a fast for the time top fueler running low 7's and 220 mph.

The similarities, at least for me was likening the run with watching a movie. Get strapped in, push start, keep it running with some well done loud pedal maneuvers until the heads got some heat in them, coast along the fire up road, make the turn to your lane and get lined up.

Some of the races could be more than interesting whether driving in C/Gas or my pal’s flathead fuel dragster. Both camps were running wrinkle wall slicks and experimenting with burnouts. At the time, burnouts were a very new thing and done by those who brought their own bleach. The thinking was to clean off the tires since the gummed up and sometimes gravel coated tires didn’t grip very well at the start. Along with that, wrinkle wall slicks were just starting to gain popularity, but we were running the good old local copy of an M&H slick and it was a touch hard compared to the wrinkle walls. If the truth were known it probably didn’t bite as well as a genuine M&H either, but we had what we had and determined to make the best of it.

Making the best of it had to do with driving technique and patience. The patience to keep from rolling the throttle on too far too soon after the launch, get the tires spinning and watching the wrinkle wall wonders with their good grip on the pavement slide on by.

A few years down the road, here we are, a bit more experience under our belts, driving cars that are far lighter than the old and muchly loved Shoeboxes and dealing with maybe 50% more horsepower. On the street, on street tires, half-way wishing we could take these hard running little roadsters back in time and see how they’d do against the cars from back in the day.


So far, all those learned reactions with strong engines and hard slicks has stood us well. That and a touch of calmness that comes with experience and maybe even a little bit of it with age has allowed us to compete on a somewhat even level with some of the modern day drag racers. Not that we were beating them, but most times they knew they’d been in a race.


Kinda funny how quite a few of the reputed to be ten second cars had a hard time beating our old 12-13 second wonders back in the day. All about perceptions I suppose and way different from times derived from a wristwatch and a couple of lines on a quiet country road. Things are no different today, except that some of the thought to be 10 second cars are now looking at street-runners that can click off 11's and 12's on street tires without too much effort.

Some things change and some things stay the same.

As for the old fuel driver? He’s still around and he still talks to God. Nowadays though, the conversation is not so frenzied nor behind the wheel of a strong running fueler, but just in his dreams and thoughts.

Some day, he’s gonna get it all together and when he does, you better hang onto your backside cuz if he ever gets behind the drivers wheel again it’s gonna be interesting.

Really, really interesting....



Jay Carnine
Kingman, Arizona
August 2008

All photos by the author

 

^^^^^Awesome story^^^^

 

Check out his and others stories in the "Writers Group"... pretty awesome stuff!

 

Thank you Wingnutz for organizing.

I have always enjoyed reading C9's works.

RIP C9.

 

BTTT for the "Thanksgiving Readers"!

I noticed that a couple of the links aren't working... what am I doing wrong?

 

bump.

i didn't know this thread existed. i was just remembering jay and did a search to find the thread announcing his passing so i could write down the date.

this came up on the search so i read it.

thanx, wingnutz, for posting this...

thanx, jay, for the stories, help, advice, etc., etc.

my condolences to gay & jay's daughter who both spent time with me on the phone the day he died; but most of all to those of you who weren't around when he was here and therefore missed out on knowing him, albeit from a keyboard/screen.

 

Thanks Mark....very interesting.

 

He never would reveal to me the true identity of (Donald) Doofus or (Winstead) Whiny.
Another unsolved mystery .

 

Bttt for the FNG s

Posted using Full box of Crayons on the Kitchen Walls App!

 

Not a fng but man I miss Jay. HRP

 

wonder if its possible to get his avatar restored.

Hate to see his posts with the generic helmet boy at the top, he was far from average generic helmet boy.

RIP Dude, I included you in my thoughts on Memorial Day.

 

I didn't have a chance to get to know him, but I miss him. Funny huh? I feel like I know Jay from his stories and his posts. I've read all of his stories more than once and I also come across his posts on occasion. He was knowledgeable, helpful and a gentleman. Unfortunately, he passed on the month I joined the HAMB.

If you haven't read Jay's stories, take the time to do so. You won't be sorry. You'll enjoy hours of entertainment as well as hot rod history. The great thing about the HAMB is Jay is still here with us. You can still read his own words and his advice is still valid.

RIP Jay (C9) - Member emeritus

 

This is for the newbies of the HAMB.... A little history lesson and wonderful writings of C9.

Jay has been gone a long time now but his legacy has been recorded on the HAMB as well as on the hearts of all the people who've read his books.

So take a little time down memory lane and enjoy some great stories!