Cordova (Ill.) Dragway Park’s Scott Gardner would seem to belong in this elite company. On opening day this year, his loyal racers were greeted with temperatures in the upper 30s and snow on the ground. Rather than ruin everyone’s New Year’s Day by shutting
down, Gardner dispatched bulldozers to remove the snow, then ran cars for five hours — in Illinois, in January! While that was going on, grateful family members built a snowman on the starting line (as documented in the March issue of Todd and Laurie Silvey’s excellent Drag News magazine).
Another example worthy of honorable mention is the 1994 Jim Davis Memorial at Sears Point. After losing all of Saturday to rain, Goodguys ran one-shot qualifying Sunday morning, then completed eliminations that very afternoon! True, fewer than half as many racers participated in those early days. Still, it seemed unbelievable that, reacting to unfavorable March Meet weather forecasts, the same organization would prematurely pull the plug on a sunny, 60-degree Thursday (one day too late for racers already on the road, and for distant fans already flying towards California). Instead of attempting to run during that first, dry-but-cold weekend, Goodguys kept the gates locked and forced everyone to come back in a week — only to lose all of Friday and most of Saturday to rain, then pull the plug when Famoso Raceway started “weeping” on a sunny Sunday.
Sometimes, even smart promoters do silly things on rainy days. My favorite example came courtesy of Tice, the late AHRA president and the guy who paid my rent in 1973-74. As a successful insurance agent in his prior career, he understood the long odds against collecting rain insurance better than anybody. Anyone who purchased rain insurance was betting not only that water would fall, but that enough would accumulate in a rain gauge to meet the minimum requirement stipulated by his policy.
Spectators were kept in the dark right up to the announcement that the event would be cancelled, with no refunds. Some late arrivals reacted poorly outside the tower. Physical harm to Goodguys officials was possibly prevented by the timely arrival of Kern County sheriffs, called in by the track. (HotRodNostalgia.com Photo By Dave Wallace, ©2006) |
Along with that policy comes the issuing company’s agent. At OCIR on a wintry Saturday, this gent was shown to the roof of the tower, where he placed his gauge. Although persistent afternoon showers made it increasingly unlikely that a night race would be run, Tice’s spies advised that the rain in the gauge was well below the level at which the insurance would kick in. So, when the agent left his post for a bathroom break, someone climbed up to the roof and added just enough tap water to do the job.
What no one knew was that a second rain gauge had secretly been situated elsewhere on the property. I’ll never forget the look on Tice’s face when the agent walked into my office (on the ground floor of OCIR’s tower) with rain gauges in both hands. A heated discussion ensued, to no avail; on top of the usual revenue lost to a rainout, Tice was also down several thousand dollars of prepaid premium.
The moral of the story is that rainy days not only cost promoters dearly, but also serve to separate the men from the boys. However large his family fortune might be, no beginner who chooses to ignore both history and the wisdom of experienced advisors is likely to survive, let alone succeed. Not even Billy Meyer, as IHRA owner, had the wallet to withstand a fatal combination of pissy weather and pissed-off customers. 
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