Not to digress, but my point is that we lived really close to the track. Every Sunday almost fifty years ago, as early as age four I heard drag-strip superstars like Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen, “Stormin’” Norm Weekly, “Wild” Bill Alexander, “TV” Tommy Ivo, Neil Leffler, Mike “the Snipe” Sorokin and a bunch of others driving the shit out of their AA/Fuel Dragsters out at San Fernando, on the east side of the Pacoima wash. I just can’t tell you exactly when I saw them.

The first drag race that I actually saw might’ve been after the Beatles concert at Dodger Stadium and before Johnny Whitaker got traumatized at Gridley Street. Or it might’ve been after I changed schools, when my family moved from San Fernando to Arleta, on Arleta Street, adjacent to the Osborne Street exit off the 5 freeway. It was made clear to us kids that we lived in Arleta and not Pacoima. Really, both places are just concrete and stucco shithole barrio suburbs, but at the time, the distinction seemed important to my family.

When we lived on Arleta Street, my dad’s younger brother, Uncle Phil, lived with my Granny, next door to us in Arleta-not-Pacoima. Uncle Phil worked at Milodon Engineering and bought a railjob from a Top Gas racer, Roger Gates. That dragster became the Connelly & Coonce “Rat Patrol” Junior Gas dragster. It had a small-block Chevy and sported a two-tone green paint job, just like the Beebe & Mulligan record-setting “Fighting Irish” Top Fuel dragster out of Orange County. They kept the dragster in my Granny’s garage. I can still smell the Meguiar’s wax polish.