I think I first went out to San Fernando Raceway sometime in 1967, when my Uncle Phil was driving his “Rat Patrol” dragster. “The Pond” was Uncle Phil’s home track, and therefore, by extension, also mine. I went out there a bunch. I was hooked on the sport of drag racing after my first day, as much as I was on rock and roll after seeing the Beatles. I still am. Fifty years later, I might get disgusted with both mediums but I can’t shake either.

Speaking of disgust, one of my earliest memories of the drag races is going with my Grandpa Cole. He was a round, bespectacled jovial man who worked as metallurgist at Skunk Works and taught me to love football. He asked me what I wanted to do one Sunday: Watch football, go have lunch at the Golden Arches or …? I asked him to take me to the drag races. It turned out there were no dragsters racing at Fernando that day, only doorslammers.

“This is like watching cars go down the freeway,” he said. He never took me there again. He and I did go see the Rams play football at the Coliseum, but our bonding at the drag races was one and done.

Not long after that, my Uncle Phil crashed at Fernando when a U-joint came apart and went through his foot. I vaguely remember seeing the crash and my Granny and Aunt Joan crying and the ambulance wailing and a lot of confusion.

I was maybe seven, and to be blunt, the passage of time hasn’t lessened the confusion.

But I do remember this: The Rams. The Beatles. The Pond. These were all shards of the same mosaic, Los Angeles during the 1960s. If you were a kid and not tall enough to see the air pollution, this place was Paradise. These days the air is clearer, but San Fernando Raceway is closed. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

So yeah, after working through these memories, I can say with near certainty that my first drag race was at San Fernando Raceway, after the Beatles played Dodger Stadium, and maybe before the kid from Family Affair was pantsed on the Gridley Street Elementary School playground. But it was definitely before Kennedy was shot. Robert, I mean.