And that accounts for my whereabouts for the past couple of years. Wadding up the 10 commandments and laughing all the way to the ATM. It wasn’t all peaches and cream, though. There were days, probably more often than not, where the good ship Lollipop wound up on the rocks next to a whale carcass.
Waking up sans clothing in a strange motel, false teeth removed, pockets inside out. Hitting the mean gun metal gray morning streets in a motel towel bathrobe shouting at a traffic light… “Where Am I? Where’s My Car?” Nightclubs, overservings at the Studio Suite. Tattooed fat chicks. Giving Larry Craig non-Mexican Alberto Gonzalez’s address. Ohhh … the humanity, such as it was.
In the midst of the clutter, June of 2006, things got terribly complicated. I nearly died, which will hardly be surprising to close friends. I’d let myself run down, in general severe anemia. Given my absolute spinelessness in the face of temptation, giving me 43 G’s is tantamount to giving your eight-year-old and friends a loaded Glock to play with. The prognosis had “oh-shit” written all over it and this led to four days of intravenous feeding, internal bleeding. 600 on the diabetes meter, 3 on a 14 scale of blood count readings, and a couple of late night charges down the third-floor hallway of St. Joseph’s Hospital, tubes and needles falling from my tortured bod, splintering and gyrating on the midnight polished floors, howls of “I gotta get out of here” bouncing off the walls. The all-seeing nuns muttering curses ‘neath their haloed headdresses as they violated protocol and hissed at security…Towers Open Fire!
I finally got free and was deposited like a Skid Row inebriate under the downtown L.A. 1st Street bridge, where I took a couple of deep breaths, zig-zagged home, and spent the following year burning up the money in a fire that matched the best of any Funny Car meltdown. As Mr. Toad’s wild ride decelerated, he skidded to a stop at this address much broker and still dumb as a mud fence…D’OHHHH??? No, DUHHHH!
Anyway, those were the highlights of my summer vacation, but now on to more mundane subjects. Burk told me that Bakersfield turns 50 next year. It does? Not mathematically. The first Bakersfield race was held in March of 1959. Do the math…. 1959 from 2000 is 41, 2008 makes it 49!!! AH – HAHHH!! See, not the only one under the influence. [Editor’s note: While Chris can tell you the ET for every obscure driver from 1970 at every track in the country, he doesn’t know that this is not a subtraction problem. You have to count the first race, and 2008 will indeed be the 50th.]
Well, what the flock? I need the money and why not? I went to my first Bakersfield in 1964, and that and the first UDRA Meet a month previous made me a drag race fanatic until just a few years ago. I don’t like the big-dollar sport as it sits now. None of the cars have any personality at all and the same goes for the drivers with the exception of two or three. There are governors on the performance of these cars making the experience all the more dreary. Let’s face it -- championship drag racing consists of the world’s quickest and fastest billboards and not much else. It didn’t always use to be that way, though.
At the Bakersfield race, in the platitudinous good old days, half the fun was wondering how quick and fast they’d go at this event. That emotion was kissed goodbye years ago. Still, I feel pangs of compassion for that overexposed event and we’ll mine the subject somewhat. Burk requested something on the 50th Anniversary of Bakersfield a race that’s been dead for 19 years. Whatever. You gotta admit there’s been an awful lot written about the Smoker’s race and I’m not sure who knows what about this seminal event. At 60, I’m probably older than most of the readership, so I might be able to report it from a different perspective. Stranger things have happened.
But I’m not going to wax elegant here, that’ll come next issue where, if I’m still upright, we’ll walk through the first five years, 1959 to 1964. The race’s origins, the background, early heroes, the importance of blowers, Garlits, the only Bakersfield race won by a Top Gasser. As famed Smokers announcer Bernie Mather would say, “the whole enchilada.” Then we’ll pick it up from 1963 to the Winston year (1975), and close it out with the 1988 closer. Should be a kick in the head.
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