HISTORY continued
During this time another high school friend, H.C. Miller, and I went to work at Tulsa International Raceway. Earl Rogers was taking care of maintenance of the track and wanted H.C. and I to put up new wood cross rails and corrugated sheet metal on the covers above the spectator grandstands. Wow…that was a lot of work and I never have liked heights but we got it done. H.C. went on to better things but I stayed on at the track and worked with Earl doing maintenance jobs around the track. Earl and his wife Sandy raced a yellow and black Torino called “Mariah”. They were both very special people. I’ll never forget one Tuesday after the AHRA National Challenge event looking out of the tower and seeing all the trash that had to be picked up…and it was my job to get it done. If you haven’t seen the trash left under the grandstands and in the pits after a major event you just can’t even imagine how much there really is. During the major events I was a tech inspector. I still have my TECH book. I also worked the scales during major events and once got in an argument with Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins over him being light during Pro Stock qualifying. I kept telling him he was light and he kept pushing the weight on the scale arm and saying he was OK. He was light…and he was pissed off!
We continued putting everything together starting with putting the body on the frame. Then came new tires and wheels. We used Cragar S/S wheels with Stahl tires on front (remember them?) and 10.0 x 15 M&H Racemaster slicks. We thought these slicks we super wide at the time. And they fit in the stock fenderwells. With the engine mocked up including tunnel ram and carburetors, it still all fit without a need to cut the hood. We also picked up the trick to paint your gas tank white to reflect heat and keep your fuel as cool as possible.
It’s now time to go to the paint shop. We had heard about this guy named Johnny Young in Owasso, Oklahoma and went to his shop to talk about getting the car painted. Anybody who knows Johnny Young knows he’s quite a character. When we went to his shop on Main Street in Owasso he and his workers were having a burnout contest in the door of his shop that faced Main Street. They we doing it because all the tire smoke pissed off the local Police. From that day on Johnny became one of my best friends I have ever had…ever. He would leave a window on the side of his shop open so I could crawl through it and work on the car whenever I wanted to. I spent some time there almost everyday after work.
Johnny brazed up all the holes in the body where the moldings went so we’d end of with a smooth body. There was other minor body work we had to do since the body wasn’t in perfect condition when we bought it.
Once the body work was completed it was time to prime and wet sand. Here’s “Carnie” one of Johnny’s workers doing some wet sanding. We called him “Carnie” because every year at the State Fair he would work the midway with the traveling carnival workers. He and his girlfriend Rocky moved to Jackson Hole Wyoming and I have never heard from him again.
