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My Indy Remembrances By Dale “Old Man Yeow-eee!” Wilson
8/24/04
GARLITS GETS ACCOLADES IN THE STRANGEST OF
PLACES
The year had to be 1986, according to my wife,
Fran. That was her first trip to Indy, and
she was thrilled. It also marked the third
time that “Big Daddy” Don Garlits
won Indy Top Fuel in a row, with help from
old partner Art Malone. We were at Shoney’s
on Crawfordsville Road Tuesday morning eating
breakfast when Garlits, wife Pat, and his late
crew chief, Herb Parks, came in. Fran and I
stood up and clapped, and then everyone else
in the restaurant did too—about 10 people
in all. Then we all sat back down and finished
our eggs. Garlits is still the greatest drag
racer ever, even 20 years later, even 40 years
later. He was humbled by that experience at
Shoney’s.
JACK CHRISMAN GIVES BIRTH TO THE FUNNY CAR
I had only heard fuelers cackle at my local
drag strips, Lassiter Mountain and Helena,
in Birmingham, Alabama. But at Indy 1964, there
were plenty—Garlits, Bobby “the
Scorpion” Langley, Crossley-Williams-Swan,
Joe Shubeck, Connie Kalitta, others. By Sunday,
sitting in the stands, I could recognize the
sound of a fueler instantly. Here comes one
now—“bop-bop-bop,” from around
the old IRP “oil” tower. Everybody
stood as one. It was Jack Chrisman and a white “Sachs
and Sons” ’64 Comet with a blown/injected
nitro motor. He staged and left, then smoked
the whole IRP quarter-mile, hitting 9 seconds
at 150 mph in B/Fuel Dragster trim. NHRA didn’t
know what it was. B/Fuel Dragster?
What it was, was the first blown Funny Car
I and many others had ever seen, and within
five years, Funny Car was its own eliminator.
I believe that was the first Funny Car run
seen by a mass audience at an NHRA race. Congrats,
Jack, on the birth of a new eliminator, and
a new kind of car.
Okay, this isn’t the same car, but it’s
close. (DRO file photo)
BUT IS GENE SNOW REALLY ITS FATHER?
Still not sure of what they had on their hands,
NHRA officials in 1966 stick Gene “the
Snowman” Snow’s “Rambunctious” full-bodied,
lightened-and-maybe-lengthened Dart in C/Fuel
Dragster and not Factory Experimental, for
Competition Eliminator. He goes up there and
wins the whole thing, beating somebody named
Greg Gibsob (Gibson?) in the final. The way
I figure it, that was the first time a real
Funny Car won Indy, leading many of us yard
birds to give HIM credit for being its papa.
Funny Car would first be contested as an eliminator
in 1969; Danny Ongais won it in a ’69
Mustang.
REHER-MORRISON FACES BUSTER
I was atop the Parks Tower at Indy some time
in the late 1980s or early 1990s. They were
running Pro Stock at the time. Bruce Allen
of Reher-Morrison was lined up against somebody,
maybe it was Jerry Eckman, who knows. The late
Buster Couch was starter. Both drivers pre-staged,
then sat there. Buster got mad. He backed both
off the line, then came up to each and gave
them a lecture. Meanwhile, the late Buddy Morrison
got madder. He gave a “salute” to
Buster, and the next thing you know, Buster
throws down his popcorn bag and runs over to
Buddy and lectures him too. Really gets in
his face. Everybody on top of the tower was
talking about it, and this guy next to me says, “What’s
going on?” I say, “Didn’t
you see Buster and what he just did?” The
guy says, “Who’s Buster?” I
let it go. I figured if he didn’t know
who Buster Couch was, why bother with explaining
the rest of the stuff.
“OHIO GEORGE” OVER S-W-C
The Nationals, 1966, Sunday afternoon, late.
Maybe the last run of the day for class. THIS
class was, to me, the greatest of them all,
A/Gas Supercharged. In the left lane, “Ohio
George” Montgomery, the undisputed king
of the Ohio gassers, in his robin’s egg
blue ’33 Willys. Right lane, Doug “Cookie” Cook
in the Stone-Woods-Cook ’40 Willys from
California, all bright and shiny and chromed—all
of which was not lost on the mostly-east-of-the-Mississippi
crowd. Montgomery was the favorite to this
by-now standing-in-their-seats crowd. A green
light, and Montgomery leads at 60 feet and
all the way through, and the crowd goes crazy.
Cheers for maybe 10 minutes. Ask “Ohio
George” if he remembers it all today
and he’ll say, “Yeah, I beat those
boys.” Yep, he did. That was no doubt
the best drag race I’ve ever seen, even
to this day.
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