11/24/2024
Sunday Story Time. 2024 Edition. Part 18.
So now we've been racing Jr. Dragsters for a while and we always did this as a Family.
Our first born, Holly always went with us but generally stayed back at the pit and worked on her crafts. She was a 4-H Girl and could do all kinds of old school needlework and loved raising her rabbits.
We did the Brownie through Girl Scouts and Cub through Boy Scouts thing. Both Shannon and I were leaders and enjoyed that time with our kids.
Once we started the Jr. Dragster thing we actually got the 4-H to allow us to start a 4-H Small Engines club but instead of working on Lawn Mowers, we worked on Jr. Dragsters.
The club was called “Students of Speed”. How cool was that!
One day at the track, Shannon wasn't feeling well so I asked Holly to come to the staging lanes and help me get the 4 cars/drivers ready and down the track.
I don't know what Holly saw or felt that day, but she took an interest in what we were doing and wanted to join in on the fun!
Now all 5 of our kids would be racing at the same time! It was a dream come true.
We set her up in the original green car and she kicked butt! That car wasn't the fastest but Holly cut good lights and won the track championship two years in a row.
These Kids were collecting trophies like crazy and we would travel all over the West to race for the coveted "Wally". These were the trophies named after Wally Parks, founder of the NHRA. All the Pros were getting these on TV and when NHRA decided to make them available for Junior racers it was game on!
Holly is holding a Wally she won in that first picture.
Moving these Juniors around was always fun. If you only had one, you could strap it down in the bed of your truck and hang a red flag on the front. With multiple Juniors it was more of a challenge.
We started with a little open single axle trailer that we got with the first junior. While a customer at Siskiyou RV was signing papers in my office he saw the pictures I had of the Kids and mentioned he had an old trailer we would give us. Cool, now we could haul three at a time!
Next, I found a "Stacker" trailer in So Cal of course, on eBay. We made a deal and off we went to Huntington Beach to pick it up.
I asked him what he pulled it with and he said his 6 cylinder Jeep Cherokee pulls it just fine. Good deal, my GMC van with it's mighty 350 V8 should have no trouble with that.
We get to Huntington Beach and this thing is bigger than I thought. I bought an 6 inch drop down hitch and flipped it upside down so it was actually 6 inches higher. The trailer was still too low in the front.
The tires on the trailer held air but that was about it so I drug it around the corner to a tire store and put 6 new tires on it. Thank goodness for American Express!
Anyway, that trailer with the van pulling it would swerve all over the place if I went past 45 MPH. So the normal 12 hour trip became a bit longer at those speeds. But... we were together and had a cool trailer that could haul all of our Juniors at once and would also be great for selling Royal Purple Oil. Good times.
We bought a pick up to pull the trailer and kept collecting trophies every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday!
Back then you couldn't pay the Jr. Dragster winners any money (even though you charged them just the same to race). Quite different today.
It was definitely not normal to have 5 Kids racing 5 Juniors all at the same time! I really missed the boat not promoting that like Enders did with "Right on Track", but we did get a nice write up in the local newspaper.
Fast forward; Both Holly and Jon were getting their regular Driver's Licenses and would soon be too old for Juniors and ready to make the transition to "Big Cars". That would be any car other than a Junior.
Dad was way ahead of them and had plans to put them in some good "Big Cars", a pair of, what else, Pontiacs!
But that's next weeks story!
