Sunday’s wake-up call gets me up and out to the track bright and surley at 5:55, only to hear that the gates don’t open till 8, showing the value of intel gathered while standing around on the shoulder of the highway. By 6:20 a.m. I was parked and heading for the pits, scribbling away the whole time.

A beautiful cloudless day was spent rooting for favorites, some doing well, some not so much. The Mongoo$e is in the field, but not by a great margin, and the Snake? He peels off a 6.05 in the late afternoon heat, just like it was nothing. Gary Beck moved past Richard Tharp in the Top Fuel realm, but based on the journal entries,

I was hanging on the every move of Dandy Dick Landy. You know the ol’ line about bringing a knife to a gun-fight? Running a large Mopar ANYTHING in Pro Stock in the mid-‘70s was like bringing a water-balloon to a gunfight. Early in the a.m., the bump was already a 9-flat; shortly before lunch he runs a 9.18; and his 9.03 at 3:30 p.m. punched his ticket home, in a car I did not know at the time began the year in Larry Huff’s hands. 

Thrown in for good measure was Johnny White and the “Houston Hustler,” who, in a maneuver that would be replicated by Ed McCulloch in 1989, made a lousy pass and then proceeded to drive back up the return road to the pits, almost running me over in the process. 

Sunday concluded with some “strategic stra-tee-ger-ee” as I by-passed the gridlock heading out to Crawfordsville Road and instead exited through the Top Fuel pits. Although not as “robust” as the ‘Gas-House-Gang’ the night before, the price for this exploit was having to run a gauntlet of party-monsters and  “compete” in an impromptu burnout contest on the access road. Although my lackluster effort had BOOOOs raining down on my head upon leaving (not wanting to blow Dad’s car up had MUCH to do with my “light” throttle application,) but it was still pretty cool to be motioned forward into the “bleach-box”, have water poured and multiple dudes pushing on the rear-fenders, as was the style with doorslammer burnouts at the time.