I never did figure out why this tall, skinny guy named Jimmy Parker wondered into our garage one late summer day in 1975 with an interesting proposition. He was not someone we knew and why he came to us will always remain unknown. But he had an engine and we had a car so he offered us the chance to go racing in the fairly new class of Top Alcohol Dragster.
Maybe a few facts very brief facts about drag racing might be in order here. Drag racing had evolved from the early fifties from guys meeting on Saturday night on out of the way roads (like the road by Davis Airfield in Muskogee where I grew up) to little drag strips out in the country, to multi-million race tracks. The types of cars had progressed from cars people drove to work or school everyday to ones that were especially built for the sport. Much like the evolution that happened from stock car racing to NASCAR.
There are classes for the basic stock cars and classes, depending on engine size and the type of fuel used, for the dragster, funny cars and altereds. Dennis and I had been running in what was called competition eliminator with a six cylinder Ford engine and then a small block V-8 Ford engine. Those classes were way down on the list as to how fast they ran, how expensive they were and how much time and energy it took to keep them running. In everyday life you could compare this to driving a beat up 1971 Fiat versus a brand new Mustang.
So what do you do when someone wonders up and offers you the chance to go race with the "big boys"? Top Alcohol Dragster was the second category down from the fastest cars, Top Fuel Dragster, the only difference being the car ran on methane or alcohol instead of nitromethane. Dennis was doubtful, I was ecstatic. Dennis's big question was who was going to drive the car as he did not seem to want to (driving was not his thing). Jimmy Parker had an idea.
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The next Saturday Jimmy showed up with an ex-top fuel racer named Watus Simpson. Watus was well known as one of the very good drivers and an all around nice guy. Somehow that Saturday afternoon everyone agreed to give the partnership a chance. A flurry of activity began and in a matter of a couple of weeks the dragster was together with Parker's blown Hemi engine. With no paint on the race car, no fooling around with testing and tuning for weeks on end we were off to the last race of the season in El Paso, Tx. The dragster ran very well, we won a few rounds, learned a lot and everyone got along well. This was "fun" drag racing! Now we had the winter to get our act together.
Watus's Sons and friend Sam waiting to make a run
Another interesting fact about drag racing. Except for some of the National Events drag races were scheduled on a Saturday and Sunday.
When Dennis and I raced the C and D gas dragster we did not travel very far to race, maybe Tulsa and Houston were the furthest. Switching to the alcohol car the races were a little further away and everyone worked so the final preparations on the car usually occurred on Friday evening. It always seemed like we did not get on the road until 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning. The goal was always to get to the race track about 8:00 in the morning. Since I was the only one who did not work guess who got to tow the trailer down the highway in the middle of the night. Somehow I always managed to get us there and back home on Monday morning in time for everyone to go to work and I to school. A few bottles of Pepsi and chatter on the CB radio and I could have driven to Canada.
Of course I was back in school juggling studying, the house, the boys and the race car. That fall I jumped into Calculus, Biology and Chemistry. I guess I figured if I took what looked to be the hardest for me first I would know if I was smart enough to make it. I was terrified of the Calculus class but it turned out to be one of the easiest classes I ever took. The Chemistry was a challenge but Biology was fun. With taking twelve hours including labs it wasn't easy and my sleeping time on test days was severely cut back. I can remember going to bed at 9:00 and getting up at midnight to study. Also probably guilty of distracted driving as I would make index cards of formulas and stuff and study them on the thirty mile drive to Denton.
That semester I met another gal a few years older than I was trying to get her degree. We ended up in a lot of the same classes and it felt very good to not be the only "old Lady" in school. Actually all the teeny boppers came to hate us as we always managed to set the grading curve pretty high. The other nice thing about being an older student was that all of the professors understood the balancing act we were doing to come back to college. After Wally started going to the child care center at TWU they would send me a note to class if he was sick. I then had to go get him and there were many times he sat in my lap for some lecture or sat on a stool in some biology or chemistry lab. Missing a class was definitely not in my playbook.
Have to admit that one occasion occurred that I did miss a few days of class. Ford Motor Company did annual trips to honor dealerships and guys in the service departments that met quotas or whatever. In the spring of 1976, Dennis as Owner Relations Manager, we got to go on one to St. Maarten Island in the Caribbean. Was I, who had never seen the ocean or been out of the country, going to turn that trip down for Chemistry class? Not Hardly. Of all the future Ford trips I got to go on that was my very favorite. It was the most beautiful place, the nicest people and the only one when Dennis did not get sick or lose his luggage or throw a "fat fit" or end up not talking to me for two weeks after we got home.
Spring also meant the beginning of racing season after working on the car and trailer all winter. What a season it was!
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