George Calloway Interview Part III
By noderel:
Hot Rod Hotline had the pleasure of spending time with George Callaway at the Performance Racing Industry Show in Indianapolis the second week in December. Calloway is the Major of El Mirage, Calif., a city that is one of the cradles of hot rodding. Calloway, 83, became a hot rodder in the early 1950s and started racing at Bonneville in 1953. We talked to George for about 22 minutes. Part 3 of the interview covers about eight minutes of hot rod history.
HRHL: We remember 1959 when Mickey Thompson and a bunch of other racers were going to Bonneville to try to set records and outdo each other. Wasn’t that an exciting time for land speed racing?
GC: Yes. I remember that and them I got involved with Art Afrons. I was working with Jimmy Deist on safety equipment and parachutes. I packed the parachutes for Art’s “Green Monster” and for Bill Fredricks’ “Blue Flame.” It was a big thing between (Craig) Breedlove and Afrons. One of them would go out and set the record, then the other would break it and the first guy would go break it again. You see, back then they were all rubber tired and, of course, they were thrust vehicles - you, know, they were jets. The wheel driven record with a rubber-tired car is held by Don Vesco at about 460 mph, I think it is. That’s the fastest wheel driven; and that was with a turbine engine. It wasn’t a piston engine car, but it still drove through the wheels. So, they qualified as a wheel driven thing.
HRHL: Did you know the Summers Brothers? We met them when they had the car in a car show in Germany the mid-1980s and Lord Montagu was trying to buy the Goldenrod.
GC: Yeah, I knew the Summers Brothers. Mike Cook restored their car. See what happened is they lived in Pomona and they came back and parked the damned thing under a walnut tree and all the leaves and the moisture came down in there. The bulkheads were made of magnesium. And between the leaves mulching and the water, Cook had to replace most of the bulkheads in the car. And it turned out funny. The car has four Chrysler engines and it wound up in the Henry Ford museum.
HRHL: What about Art Afron’s Green Monster?
GC: Art crashed the original car and then he built a second car. It’s up in Santa Barbara. Golly, I can’t remember the guy’s name (who has it). But, the neat thing about Art is that he built the whole car himself and drove the darned thing, too.
HRHL: When our Fox Valley Technical College team raced at Bonneville in 2012, they had an old streamliner called Spirit of Salt Lake City there. Do you know that car?
GC: Yes. Athol Graham built that car. He lived near the Salt Flats and thought he could go there early and hold the record for a week. He didn’t have the backing that guys like Thompson did and his tires were not good. One came apart and the car got wrecked and killed Athol. His wife saved the car and his son Butch finally restored it. Butch lived in Salt Lake City, but I don’t know if he’s still there.
HRHL: What do you do at Bonneville these days?
GC: I work when I go to Bonneville and I’m so busy I don’t know everything that goes on. People say, “You weren’t there.” And I tell them if they come to the starting line at Course 1, I’ll be there. I run the Course 1 starting line, but I don’t get around. I have friends who come and they don’t see me, but they see my wife because she works in the sales trailer. Like I say, I’ve been doing this—I can’t remember how many years—but, I’m still doing it.
HRHL: What cars do you have today??
GC: I’ve got three ’29 (Ford) roadsters and a ’34 roadster. The ’34 roadster has a blown Honda in it. The yellow roadster-the ’29 roadster-just has an injected Honda in it. Then, we have another ’29 roadster with a big block blown Chevrolet in it. It set the record at Bonneville in September at 221 mph. The record had stood for 29 years before that. And we have another ’29 roadster with a D/FX Cosworth in it; it’s a turbocharged D/FX car.
HRHL: Our favorite Bonneville car is a flathead Pontiac powered streamliner that was on the cover of Hot Rod magazine. Do you know it?
GC: Oh, Don Ferguson restored it and it’s really neat. It was a Class B Lakester Streamliner built by Eddie Miller, Jr., who was just 20 years old when he built it. His dad. Jim Miller. He’s still a good friend. It went 146 mph in 1950 and was on the cover in August of that year. It went 156 mph in 1952. It took first in the first Hot Rod class at Pebble Beach.
HRHL: Do you think the old Bonneville memorabilia is getting valuable?
GC: Yes. Where I really screwed up is we have the Hall of Fame, which I’m deeply involved in. And there was a guy there who did a rendering of Wally Park’s Drop-Tank Car. The car belonged to Bill Burke and the engine belonged to Don Francisco and Wally did the driving. I could have bought the rendering for 60 bucks and all of them were there to sign it and I didn’t do it.
HRHL: Are there a lot of collectors?
GC: Well, nostalgia is a big thing. I did photography for years and all of my Bonneville photos were from the late-‘60s to the ‘70s and “Land Speed” Louise Noeth has it now. She was always after me to give her the Bonneville stuff for her book, so I gave her a 24 x 24 x 30 inch box of stuff and I said, “Here, take it.” And I gave my drag racing stuff to Bob McClurg. As a matter of fact, I just got a $50 check from him the other day for one of my photos. He lives in Hawaii now and I always give him a hard time about that.