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He pressed on. He got Chrysler-Plymouth mouth Buddy Martin to help. The two lobbied hard for the new Pro Stock movement throughout the 1968-69 seasons, but NHRA wouldn’t even spit in their direction. Bill remained optimistic. He also remained the consummate scootch, putting a piece of tape where none should be, scribbling notes on same; flat black paint was everywhere; look, there’s a piece of metal growing from a place it shouldn’t. All of it was there to make you stop and think or throw you off balance or just to flip you off. He wore sun glasses almost all of the time outdoors, so you couldn’t tell how he was looking at you, if at all.
Jenkins Competition continued to flourish and in late ’68 moved to a “modern” light industrial enclave in the hills of Malvern, PA, not very far from the Route 30 umbilical. Building customer engines was the name of the game here. At the turn of the decade, Jenkins was 40. He’d gone from thrashing motors together on the floor of his shop, without an engine stand--Bill is a skinflint--to being the fuehrer of the most prolific Stock and Super Stocker force in history. Now, nice guy Bill would never have wanted to be part of something this elaborate and impersonal, would he? Musta been The Grump pushed him into it.