 |
area and in a beautiful little glen, surrounded by mountains and hills. The day was hot, but sunny and perfect for an outdoor event and shade trees provided a great deal of comfort. The Museum offers free entrance on Twilight cruise days as a way to thank the public for their continued support, especially from the Cal-Rods Club, who so graciously assist the museum with the cruise and so many other events. The Museum sends out a quarterly bulletin with news on all the events and special exhibits that they are planning. This cruise was held on August 6, 2008 and is one of two Twilight cruises held this month, due to the Los Angeles County Fair, which takes up the entire month of September. Other exhibits and events planned by the Museum include the Trophy Queens exhibit and the NASCAR 60th Anniversary exhibit.
Before going to the Museum, I had a chance to visit with Tom Compton, President of the NHRA. Tom is the third president of this fine group since it formed in 1951. He has led the association through rapid and serious changes in his years at the helm. My brother, David Parks, joined us and we got to see how the leader of the NHRA thinks and feels about the sport of drag racing. Compton told us about growing up in Northern California, then attending UCLA and his jobs after graduation. There were a lot of things that we had in common. Being the president of the NHRA is a dream job and he takes his role very seriously. He spoke about the changes that have been made to enhance safety and the continued effort to find ways to make the sport safer and at the same time, just as entertaining to the fans and safe for the racers. The NHRA is investigating procedures to save engines and parts from the frightful toll of the very power that the engines produce. NHRA is working with a number of outside entities towards finding recommendations to the safety initiatives recently announced. In addition, they are hiring new employees to work with the youth of America in getting them to race on safe and sanctioned tracks and not on the streets. The NHRA works very well with the PRO Racers and listens to their concerns. It is a shared effort in leading this sport of drag racing into a new age. Compton said that he is very proud about the increase in TV viewership, which is an indicator of the strength of the sport. The higher gasoline prices have hurt attendance at every sporting event, but the NHRA races and reunions are holding their own.
It is always a pleasure to see people who find and restore our old race cars. One such man is Sparky Horaczko, who purchased the old J&J Muffler altered car, though at the time, he didn’t know that. The original J&J Muffler car was owned by Mike Soskin and the muffler shop was located in Inglewood, California. Bones Balogh drove the altered from 1962 through 1964, according to Sparky, then he drove the J&J Muffler Bantam and the J&J Corvette. Bones also drove the ‘40’s Willys coupe for the Mallicote Brothers, which became the J&J Muffler Coupe. Soskin sold the car to Bob Lundsford in Alaska, who renamed it the Alaskan Bear and crashed the car twice and changed the front end. Ken Gentry made an effort to find the car, since after Lundsford owned the car it disappeared from the public eye. Sparky said that a man in Morgan Hill, California owned the car and then sold it to the Rizzo Brothers who raced the car as the Rizzo Brothers altered and also as the Hard Luck Blues car. The Rizzo Brothers sold the car to D.J. O’Neil, who painted the car a purple color and raced it as the Grape Ape. Sparky bought the car from O’Neil in 2006, but didn’t know the history of the car until Ken Gentry told him. Horaczko races the Fuel Altered in the Nostalgia Eliminator class and the car looks as fast and powerful as the day Balogh was the driver during the heyday of fuel altered racing.
Schiefer Media held a special all day session at the museum for their clients. Paul Schiefer and my father raced at the Southern California Dry Lakes back in the 1930’s. His son Carl formed Schiefer Clutches, then sold the business and created Schiefer Media, which now has 30 major clients, such as Magna Flow, Edelbrock and MSD. Carl’s sons are now in charge of the company. James Schiefer is the CEO and Paul Schiefer works for the firm as well. I spoke to Jan Dwyer and Brittany Bond, who gave me the history of the company. Some of the guests at the Twilight cruise included Blake Bowser, who is the track manager at Auto Club of Southern California Famoso Raceway, just north of Bakersfield, California. The track hosts nostalgia and regular drag racing circuits and is very active. The Museum hosts their annual California Hot Rod Reunion and nostalgia drag racing series at the track every October. It is one of the most famous drag strips still in operation. Steve and Gloria Gibbs were also in attendance. Steve was a long-time track manager and NHRA Field Director, in charge of running the drag races for the National NHRA events. He was nicknamed The Hook by the racers, because if your engine didn’t fire and you were stalled on the track, he “gave you the hook and pulled you off of your lane,” letting your opponent make a solo down the track. Dick Wells came by to say hello. We have Wells’ biography on record at www.hotrodhotline.com. Dick is a long-time NHRA employee, past president of SEMA and a member of the board for both the NHRA and the Museum. He is also a close and dear friend.
The Twilight cruise sponsor, Prolong’s George Hayward, came by to say hello. George is outgoing, friendly and enthusiastic about everything, especially his oil care products. Hayward knows everybody and if he doesn’t know you, he will make every effort to introduce himself to you and to make you feel welcome. He said that his oil products are booming in this country and overseas. “My main problem,” he told me, “is that I can’t get enough shipping containers to export our products overseas. The weaker dollar and the increase in trade have increased my business. It used to be that ships came from Asia with their cargo containers full of merchandise and went back from America empty. The shippers sold off the shipping containers to people for storage units and now it’s so hard to find enough to get your products sent overseas. My business is booming.” I spoke to Dick Martin, who writes as a freelancer for many magazines and does excellent historical biographies and stories on racers. Randy Fish came by in his typical Museum woven hat and white Zoom.com shirt and we just had to tease him. “Where’s your Drag Racer Magazine shirt,” we asked him. The editor of the popular Drag Racer Magazine exclaimed that the temperature outside was 90 degrees and that shirt is all black. Randy also owns Zoom.com and came in his nostalgic roadster. A new employee of the Museum is Rose and she is the assistant for Rose Dickinson, in the event coordinator’s department. She was arranging a cub and Boy Scout tour of the Museum. The Museum is revamping its youth program and seeking to increase the use of the Museum by the local community.
Embo Bowland, one of the more energetic cruisers bought his photo album to share with us. He has photos of Linda Vaughn, Dave McClelland and many other drag racing celebrities. Suddenly our attention was distracted by three men with accents that just had to be Australian. “Where do you guys hail from,” we asked. They were Michael and Chris Palazzo and Mario Colalillo and they came all the way from Sydney, Australia to see the Louisville Street Rod Nationals, and then visit Southern California to see where hot rodding was born. “We visited Gene Winfield while we were here and then came to see the Museum and the cruise,” they said. They had to fly home the next day, but we told them to say hello to our good friends Rod and Carol Hadfield, in Castlemaine, when they got back. Aussies and Kiwis from Down Under are some of the best hot rodders in the world and we have yet to find one that we didn’t like. “Hurry back and visit us again,” we told them. They are nostalgia drag racers and build customs and hot rods for the Australian market and the Palazzos also represent Rocket Industries, the biggest supplier of speed equipment in Australia. Chris Krueger represented NASCAR Street Car Tour, which goes all over the United States, taking the Stock Car racing circuit to events such as the Twilight cruise. Interactive games can be played and young people lined up to play the games. They do over 100 events a year and your car show can put in a request to have them show up. With Chris were his assistants; Kado Gorman, Kim Krueger and Jewel Delegall. Chris told me that they can be seen at the Los Angeles Clippers Basketball games, the soccer games at the Home Depot Center, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Inland Empire 66ers and the Lake Elsinore Storm, all minor league baseball teams in Southern California. Chris got his start at the University of Colorado for Fox Sports, and then went on to work for Gatorade before joining NASCAR Street Car Tour.
Bobbie Colgrove came by and said hello. She is a first class racing photographer and a member of AARWBA for many years. She and Dusty Brandel were some of the first women to break the gender barrier in motorsports racing journalism. They have enough stories to write two books and we hope they do someday. Bobbie volunteers to help out at the Museum functions. I sat down and interviewed Monique Valadez, a brand-new employee of the Museum. “I’ve only been on the job for three days and Bill Groak is still training me,” she exclaimed. “I’m the Education and PR person for the Museum and my job is to help fill up the Museum and bring the local community into the Museum’s activities,” she said. Monique graduated from Cal Poly Pomona in journalism, and then went to work for the City of Pomona, so she will be an asset to the Museum in increasing their outreach to the surrounding towns and cities. The Museum needs to be relevant to the community and attract racers, fans of racing and local people. “My goals are to create an overall knowledge of the Museum in the local area and bring in a younger generation into the Museum’s activities. I also do the public relations work for the Museum. I’ve just been on the job for a few days, soaking up all the information, learning, listening and observing. My father, Isaac Valadez, works for Lee Jennings who has a funny car. He loves drag racing. A big part of my job will to get the word out about the reunions and events sponsored by the Museum,” she concluded.
Jimmy Crickon told me that Phil Braybrook passed away on July 31 and he went to the Memorial. “There were lots of old cars and hot rods and about 250 people at his services,” Crickon told me. He owned J&M Speed Center in Riverside and was a proud hot rodder. Crickon’s hair styles set him apart, almost as much as his quiet and friendly personality. He is one of those dedicated hot rodders that the Twilight cruise is made for. At one time he looked like ‘Elvis,’ and then the ‘Fonz.’ His latest style is strikingly like Jesus and so we call him JC, which is his initials, after all. Having a good nickname is part of the hot rod culture. JC is a hot rodder, but he has led the community struggle in Fontana against changing Cherry Avenue into Speedway Blvd. “The Speedway name change will hurt the local businesses and residents as they will have to change all their stationary and legal documents to reflect their new address. They didn’t ask the community about changing the location of their race track and that has added additional noise and pollution to the surrounding community,” he added. Racing venues and organizations do best when they consider the impact that their activities will have on the public. Trying to work things out and including all the community is a more practical way to insure that our racing and car activities will be accepted by the public and be a success. Bones Noteboom told us about the old days in Bellflower, California, a haven for hot rodders and cruising down the streets. Bones was the owner of the Top Fuel Hydro drag boats; Down and Out, Likade Split and Bottom Dollar. Dwight Bales was his driver and they won several national championships. Bones built a custom ’35 Ford that is a success with cruisers and his cars have been shown at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona. The Twilight cruise was a huge success and the hot rods were parked clear around the Museum. As we left we said goodbye to John Duran, a special friend who is a volunteer at the Museum and for many car events at the Los Angeles County Fairplex. Without his cheerful smile and helping hand, we would have a harder time at finding our stories and getting our pictures.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].
|
