About those vast gaps in the landscape of memory

My buddy Kipling, he of the 426 Hemi Charger, claims that if I can recall match races on the 86 Dragway from forty years ago I don't have anything to worry about.

He's right and he's wrong.

I can remember an orange GTO Judge facing off against Earl Vollet's 64 hemi-powered Plymouth Fury like I saw it last night.

That might have happened in 1969 or 1970.

But I can't remember last night.

There are vast gaps in the landscape of my memory.

I remember the GTO won.

Those ram-air IV Pontiac motors would propel a two ton car to a flat twelve ET with nothing more than a set of slicks.

The three or four people still alive who know what that sentence means are nodding their heads in agreement right now.

But that was 40 years ago.

So Kipling is right.

But a lot of water has run under the proverbial bridge since then.

And most of it is simply water run away. 

I have no idea where it went or how it got there.

So Kipling is wrong too.

Highway 86 Dragway

It was in the summer of '68 that the road between Guelph and Elmira was torn up and replaced with a proper two-lane asphalt highway. Not long after, a couple of white lines appeared across the new road, a quarter of a mile apart.

The starting line was right in front of my parents' house, and the other line was a quarter mile to the south, just before the road took a gentle rise which peaked in front of Johnson's farm.

The reason our end was the start was because just to the north was the intersection of the Marden-Maryhill Road. The guys who ran on the 86 were typically in the 100 to 120 mph range at the top end. Bearing down on that intersection at that speed was an accident waiting to happen.

If on the other hand you were heading south, a car cresting the hill at Johnson's farm gave you lots of time to abort a run.

Most of the racing happened at night. Some of these meets looked like they'd had a fair bit of planning. There'd be flares at the start and finish lines, spotters at the top of the hill with walkie-talkies, and somebody with a police-band scanner. On a good night you'd find dozens of cars parked along the shoulders.

That was the golden age of Detroit muscle. Our house was set well back from the road, but you'd hear the action. That was my signal to climb out my second story bedroom window and head up to the fence for a front row seat.

There was a fellow in town by the name of Earl Vollet who was a big cheese in the Ventures Car Club. He'd built a replica of a Sox and Martin '64 Plymouth Super Stock racer. 426 Hemi with the two four barrels.

"King of the Street" according to the Mopar propaganda. I saw that car get whupped a couple of times. Once by a '69 GTO Judge and once by '68 Camaro Z-28.

In 1970 Vollet showed up with a brand new Hemi Challenger, hemi orange with a black (painted, not vinyl) roof. Automatic. That too got a spanking from a small block Z-28.

There were a number of quick Fords around at the time. The 390 Mustang GTA's were a lot quicker than the magazines gave them credit for. Ran with the big block Mopars all the time.

When the '69 models came out you saw a few Mach 1's. With the 428 and the shaker hood and the drag-pak option those were a pretty sweet car. In 1970 the 351 Cleveland motor showed up in the Mach 1. I saw several of those on our dragstrip. Had a sound all their own. I could hear the difference between a Windsor and a Cleveland 351 from half a mile away.

The quickest Ford that ever graced the 86 belonged to one of the Reinhart boys who lived on the next concession. Dad was a dairy farmer, and one of his lads went on to become a big deal in the NHL. His older brother had one of the quickest street cars I've ever seen. It was a gold '68 Mustang hardtop, supposedly with a 427 side-oiler, that had been on the Super Stock circuit the year before. At least that was the story.

From time to time Reinhart would run the car with open headers. You'd hear it fire up one concession over, and you could track it's path from the sound it made. That was a car that never hung around for more than a run or two. Anything that loud would prompt the normally tolerant neighbours to call the cops.

At the bigger meets the cops would inevitably show up. I'm not aware that anyone ever got charged with anything racing related. Thanks to the spotters there'd be a flurry of get-away activity, but there'd always be a few cars still sitting by the side of the road. The cops would join the car owners in looking under the hoods and chit-chatting about cams and carburetors and headers and axle ratios.

One night after the dust had settled I actually witnessed a couple of OPP cruisers square off on a quarter mile run. I think cops were more down to earth back then.

There were three brothers who lived on Bagot Street in town and between them they pretty much owned the 1969 Mopar catalog. One had a 440 Charger RT, another a blue 340 Dart with a white stripe, and another a black Super Bee. The Bee was the prettiest and the fastest.

Once I got to driving age it was just a matter of time before I was racing instead of watching. The first race-worthy car I owned was a factory ordered 340 Duster. Four speed, buckets, 3:55 posi, radio delete. Man was I proud of that car! Spent more time waxing it than driving it.

My very first race on the 86 was against Kenny Boyce's 67 Chevy ll SS. 327/375 with 4:11's. Four speed of course. I had no idea. He was so far ahead of me at the halfway he nonchalantly signaled and pulled into my lane. He coasted past the finish and was still ten car lengths ahead of me.

Later on I'd take my SD 455 Trans Am for the occasional rip down the quarter. It's problem was traction. Basically you didn't have any with the factory polyglas tires. I recall going up against Brian Vollet's 440 six-bbl '71 GTX. Ken Goslin had bought that car as a tow vehicle for his Hemi 'Cuda Super Stock racer.

While on paper the 455 should have had the better of that match, Brian pulled about a half length ahead in first gear while I was going up in smoke and that was it. Still a half length ahead at the finish line. Both of those cars were good for 110 at the top of the quarter.

My buddy Kipling bought a SS D big block Chevelle race car and put mufflers and license plates on it. He was the big dog for about two weeks, which is how long it took to put a rod out the side of the block. Running race cars on the street seems like a good idea, but in practice it never worked out in the long run.

There's a ton of really fast cars I could reminisce about. My '70 Dart 340 had some modifications done by the previous owner, who'd been a high school machine shop teacher. Don't know what he'd done because everything looked box stock when you opened the hood. Didn't even have headers. Cleared the top of the quarter at just under 7,000 rpm in third. If you were up for it you could grab forth and carry on till about 150 mph, but by that time the quarter mile was quite a ways behind you.

Johnny Hirtle had a brutal 69 Super Bee. He'd broke the original motor and we swapped another Mopar big block in that had been built for Super Stock racing. That was a mid twelve car easily, even with the 3:23's that he left in the back.

Those were good times. Alas, time went on. Cars got slower. The guys who drove them got older and raised families. More houses went up along the 86.

It's called the Elmira Road now and there's no stripes painted on it.

But Toyota just named their latest hot-rod the Toyota 86.

Thanks, Toyota!

Hooked on classics

Back in the day there was a used book store on Quebec Street in Guelph, right by the alley that separated it from the Woolworths store.  The old bag who ran it had a steady clientele of aging perverts trading in their pervert magazines. She also recycled textbooks and novels and virtually every embodiment of the printed word that you could imagine.

Including car magazines. Car Craft, Hot Rod, Car and Driver... you name it, they were all there for a quarter of the cover price, and often not more than a month or two old.

The old bag had an inherent suspicion of anyone walking into the store not wearing a trench coat and a week of stubble. She'd be sitting behind a pile of books at her desk, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and doling out toxic stink-eye to young customers like me.

One day I left her store clutching a new purchase that had a 1966 Comet  Cyclone on the cover. As I blinked my way into the sunlit street I suddenly froze; there in front of me was a 1966 Comet Cyclone!

Red with a black vinyl roof. Twin scoops. 390 cubes under the hood.

And it was running! An empty car just sitting there, its rumpa rumpa rumpa idle making my hair stand up. What a moment!

That was still a couple of years before I was a legal licensed driver. When I hit that age I was shopping for cars that had the rumpa idle. I was working at John's Supertest at the time. The Leader boys at the Gulf station down the road had a couple of cars for sale.

A 65 Chevelle and a 64 Chevy II.

The Chevelle was out of my price range, but I figured I could manage the cost of the Chevy II. It was a 283 four speed and it went like stink. I hemmed and I hawed and by the time I got around to making a decision it was sold.

To Kipling.

I made do with lesser cars for awhile, all the time keeping an eye out for the right purchase. I almost had a 413 Dodge but Earl Vollet beat me to the bank. Finally I gave up and factory ordered a brand new 340 Plymouth Duster.

That was the first of a run of 340's. My Mopar string was occasionally interrupted. Once by a 348 Pontiac convertible with a four speed. By a 1967 Impala SS with a 327 and powerglide. By a 1973 SD 455 Trans Am.

Kipling meanwhile went from strength to strength. From that Chevy II to a big-block Cuda to a big block Chevelle that had been on the SS/D drag racing circuit the year before, and then that hemi Charger.

Other friends had other classics. Barney had not one but two 396/375 Novas. One was a no option bench seat four speed with 4:56 gears in the back. The other was an automatic. Power steering, vinyl roof, black on burgundy.

Johnny had a Super-bee with a full race 383. Kenny had a 327 Chevy II that could outrun any 340 Mopar in town in the quarter.

The quarter mile we ran on most was out on the Highway 86, right in front of my house. That was the favored local dragstrip from the time my parents moved there in 1967. A typical meet in the late sixties involved dozens of cars, hundreds of spectators, look-outs with walkie-talkies.

A guy named Rinehart lived one concession over and had a 68 Mustang with a 427 side-oiler. He had a couple of younger brothers who were making a name for themselves in local hockey circles. One of them eventually became a big deal in the NHL.

Rinehart used to run on the 86 with open headers. Rumor had it the car had been on the NHRA Super Stock circuit the year before. I could hear his car from the moment he fired it up a concession away. That was a low 11 second car - maybe even high tens.

The racing would go on until the OPP arrived.

Alas, times changed. Some of the drag racing guys got into the drug dealing culture.

Most of them got into the family & jobs & mortgage culture.

Fast cars went away.

When I stick my foot in the Mustang fifty today I can only leave it there for a few seconds. 100mph comes up much too fast, and I have no desire to go any faster.

You can go to your local Subaru dealer today and buy a new Subaru that will beat most of those old school muscle cars in the quarter mile.

But it totally won't give you that rumpa rumpa big block idle that made your hair stand up back in 1966.

The house I grew up in

Both my parents came of age in refugee camps in Denmark. It wasn't till a few years later, after they'd been repatriated to a Germany as foreign to them as Timbuktu, that they hooked up.

Not long after that they set sail for Canada. They arrived at Pier 21 owing the government of Canada their ship fare.

I remember our house beside the railroad tracks. Mr. Jackson was an occasional visitor. While I wouldn't have known it at the time Mr. Jackson was an old-school hobo who went wherever the train tracks took him. My folks would see this raggedy bag of shit wandering around and invite him in for a shave and a bath and a meal.

From time to time Mr. Jackson took them up on the offer.

Then there was Mr. Wiener. Word was he was a Jew. He played the piano when he came to our house. We had a piano because my mother (and I am 100% sure none of the impetus for the piano came from my father) always imagined herself playing one.

So Mr. Wiener, who played the piano in our house, and also played the piano in the church my folks dragged me to at the time, was presented as a Jew who had seen some sort of light.

I remember as a child of no more than five or six going to a Synagogue in Hamilton to attend his daughter's bat mitzva. Her daddy had embraced the tribe of Jesus?

In hindsight, I realize he's just a guy who enjoyed playing the piano. He did what he had to do.

But Mr. Wiener's piano playing led me into seven or eight years of piano lessons with John Goobie, who was also a frequent visitor in the house I grew up in.

John's eldest daughter Beth went on to make a name for herself as a writer of children's books. Virtually everything she has ever written embeds a brutal subtext of child abuse. For years and years I spent half an hour a week in a dimly lit room with her dad, who according to her was a satanic child abuser. All I remember is happy family outings with their family and mine, and the excruciating boredom of my piano lessons.

In the end I did manage to pass my Royal Conservatory grade eight piano exam. Today I am hard pressed to find middle "C".

As I was winding down piano lessons my father was going from factory hand to entrepreneur. One of his first hires was a gay guy prominent in the local hot-rodder community. That would not have been a place to "come out" at the time.

 He was on the payroll till the day he died, of complications from Hep C/AIDS thirty years later. My parents treated him like family and spent lots of time at his bedside as he was going down for the last time.

By then there was a steady stream of Vietnamese refugees flowing through my family's home. They still flood my parents with gifts at every holiday season.

In my late thirties I had to briefly (probably not so "briefly" in my parent's view) take advantage of their second floor to take refuge with my children after a marital collapse and a house fire on the other side.

This was cut short by a new wave of Muslim refugees from Afghanistan. Ya, yours truly was kicked out of the family home to make room for towellers.

But it was time to move on, and those Afghan refugees got traction there and have gone on to make productive lives for themselves in both Canada and the US.

They too remind my parents of their gratitude at every holiday season.

Along the way there has been the love affair with the Chinese entrepreneur who used to run several restaurants in Ontario and has many pictures of herself posing with senior officials in the Communist regime in China, and the pictures of my parents at a Sikh wedding.

They are getting on in years, my folks, but once or twice a week you'll find them serving dinner at one of the homeless shelters in Guelph.

I could not be more proud.