Santa Ana Drag Strip & Main Street Malt Reunion
Santa Ana, CASaturday, April 2, 2016
Santa Ana Drag Strip
& Main Street Malt Reunion
Santiago Creek Park
Santa Ana, CA.
April 2, 2016
Story by Richard Parks
Photos by: Roger Rohrdanz
The Spring Santa Ana Drags and Main Street Malt Shop reunions were held on April 2, 2016 amid perfect weather, in the high 60’s with a warming sun and a cooling breeze in the Santiago Creek Park, Santa Ana, California. This event combines the Santa Ana Airport Drag Strip that ran from 1950 to 1959, and the Main Street Malt Shop reunion, where Santa Ana teens used to hang out after the drag races. Bill and Marie Jenks were the original host and hostess for the Malt Shop reunion. Leslie Long took over for Marie and combined her reunion with Creighton Hunter’s Santa Ana Drags reunion which used to be held over at the Elks Club near 1st Street and the Santa Ana Zoo. The original manager and promoter of the Santa Ana Drags Strip was C. J. Hart and he was assisted by Creighton Hunter, Frank Stillwell, and his wife Peggy Hart and their children. The County of Orange rescinded Hart’s lease at the end of the 1959 season and the first professionally run drag strip in the world shut down. By then Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach had attracted crowds and Paradise Mesa in San Diego County was up and running. Hart would take over at Lion’s and later work for the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). But in the early summer of 1950 drag racing as we know it today belonged to the men and women of Santa Ana.
Those in attendance at the April 2016 reunion included; Don Cook, Phil Turgasen, Warren Adams, Rich Casada, Tim Casada, Dick Roseberry, Jerry Hart, Betty Belcourt, Doug Westfall, Nautica Williams, Lee Leonard, Denny Unfried, Jim Murphy, Al Teague, Jim Miller, Gene Ellis, Gary Robinson, Mike Sauer, Norm Stevenson, Gene Mitchell, Richard Parks, Roger Rohrdanz, Gary Kranz, Ron Winship, Ed Iskenderian, Bill Fowler, Harvey Deeter, Roque and Marybel Rios and their children Julian and Nixon Rios, Jon Durham, Leslie Long, Mark and Mireya Zimmerman, Ken Freund, Manuel Flores Sr, Manuel Flores Jr, Eldon Harris, Fred Angelo, Mike Uribe, Johnny Uribe, Chuck Frey, Ron and Susan Whitney, Jim Donoho, Jerry Sackett, David Sackett, Tim Love, Laverne Unser, Carlos Alaniz, Dan Senese, Frank Basich, Michael Corneloup, and David Steele. Jim Miller, David Steele and Jon Durham represented the American Hot Rod Foundation and their website www.ahrf.com. The American Hot Rod Foundation works very hard to find and preserve the history and heritage of the hot rodding culture. They do field research to find and then record biographies, scan photographs and save historical objects from destruction. Miller is also the president of the Society of Land Speed Racing Historians.
Dick Roseberry is the brother of Ron Roseberry, who recreated Dick Kraft’s Bug, a Ford roadster that is now in the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona, California. The original Bug is in the Garlits Drag Racing Museum in Ocala, Florida. Kraft experimented with weight removal and aerodynamics, removing every conceivable part while still keeping the car running. He even removed the radiator and ran the hot water from the engine block through a tube and back into the engine. Jerry Hart is the son of C. J. and Peggy Hart and as a child he worked at the drag strip doing every conceivable job. Jerry keeps a museum of his father’s drag strip at his home and often takes parts of it to various events. Betty Belcourt’s son drives jet dragsters and on this weekend he was running an exhibition race in North Carolina. Jim Murphy raced motorcycles and also was a crew chief on bikes and cars. Al Teague set a land speed record at Bonneville that was over 409 miles per hour and lasted nearly two decades before it was broken. Gene Ellis has raced all kinds of cars, but is best known for driving sprint cars. He was honored by Walt James at the CRA Reunion in Buena Park for his exploits in oval track roadster racing.
Gene Mitchell is one of Leslie’s assistants on the reunion. Gene brings tents, chairs, food and drinks, which he offers to the guests free of charge. His generous support of the reunion makes it possible to continue to hold these events twice a year. Otherwise we would have to scale down the reunion and hold them less frequently and that’s a big problem when our guests are often in their eighties and nineties. Roger is our reunion photographer and sees to it that photographs are taken and captioned and made available to those requesting copies, all free of charge. He also takes flyers to various car shows and helps to promote the event. My job is to email and phone all the members and let them know when the next reunion is scheduled, which is sometime in early April and again in early October of each year. Ed Iskenderian started making cams for racers back in the 1940’s and is affectionately called the “Camfather,” a name given to him by famed cartoonist Pete Millar. Leslie Long is the leader of both the Santa Ana Airport Drag Strip and Main Street Malt Shop reunions. He took it over from others who could no longer run these events and to Leslie we owe a debt of gratitude.
The Bean Bandits, originally the San Diego Cam Pounders, were represented by Mike and Johnny Uribe and Fred Angelo. The Bean Bandits often raced at Santa Ana until they developed their own drag strip, the famous Paradise Mesa drag strip in San Diego. I always enjoyed meeting the Bean Bandits and their leader Joaquin Arnett at various events and races. I went with them to Bonneville one year and experienced how they did it back in the 1950’s. They rode up in a bus, camped out on the ground and roughed it; I had a blast. For many years we drove down to San Diego to attend the Bean Bandits reunion and banquet. Meals were beans (what else would the Bean Bandits eat?), barbecued beef, salad and homemade bread. They charged $5 and when I asked why it wasn’t more they said, “Why should it be more than that?” Dave Marquez of the Motor Monarchs and Jack Mendenhall of the Gold Coast Roadster and Racing clubs would drive down for these reunions in San Diego. The kidding and teasing would go on for hours. This is how the real hot rodders lived long ago; simply and with zest.
Susan Whitney notified me that her mother Rose Hartelt had passed away. Rose and Doug Hartelt were longtime guests of the reunion. Hartelt, Mel Dodd, Otto Ryssman and Ollie “White Owl” Morris were well-known early drag racers who have now passed away and we miss them. Art Chrisman sent his regrets and he was another famous early drag racer, whose son Mike is still drag racing. The reunion is one of my favorites. It is a picnic in the park the way it always was in the distant past. Under the shade of the tents or tall trees we reminisce about the past and catch up on what we have been doing for the last 60 years. Gene Mitchell prepares a fine feast for us; cold cut sandwiches, soft drinks, potato and macaroni salads, chips, cookies, olives, condiments, etc. Our guests bring their albums and photographs, interesting objects to show and the time flies by. Then Roger calls us together for a group photograph and we all try to get into a tight formation for the photo shoot. Then it is over except for those who linger longer. We hope to see you at the next reunion at the park in October, 2016.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].