Thursday, October 25, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
In 1950, Wally Parks took the initiative to find safe, controlled environments in which Southern California hot rodders could challenge the limits of their mechanical creativity and push the limits of their driving machines.
The following year Parks formed the National Hot Rod Association, and although the organization didn't conduct a race in Las Vegas until nine years later, it provided the boost Southern Nevada hot rodders needed to organize their own drag racing association.
The NHRA is at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for four days beginning today with its second Winston Drag Racing Series event of the year at the newest drag strip in the country.
The race cars visiting this week use space-age materials, computers and the latest gizmos available from what has become a billion dollar automotive aftermarket industry.
They will race on a smooth-as-can-be quarter-mile of concrete and asphalt.
The environment couldn't be further from that in which Las Vegas' first drag race occurred 48 years ago.
WHERE THEY RACED
Like their California brethren, a core of hot rodders in Southern Nevada began working with police to find a suitable racing venue.
Sheriff Butch Leypoldt, who died in 1990, began assigning officers to oversee the races. By best recollection, Southern Nevada's first organized drag races took place in 1953 on Vegas Valley Drive adjacent the Wells and Stewart Equipment Plant.
One of the racers' favorite police officers was Dale "Gun smoke" Swift.
"No one wanted us to race (illegally) on the streets and the police began to accommodate us," said Cecil Fredi 63, a gunsmith and retired casino worker.
"`Gun smoke' watched out for us. He stopped us before we could do anything that would get us into trouble."
With volunteers starting the side-by-side races with a flag and borrowed timing equipment from the Las Vegas Sports Car Club, local rodders had a place to race.
"Before (Vegas Valley Drive) we had to go to California," Fredi said.
Once a racing venue was secured, Jack "Ace" Hanley began organizing the events and started the Las Vegas Drag Racing Association.
"I mostly worked the bucket," Hanley said, describing how money was collected to buy trophies and cover expenses.
Hanley mentioned Ralph Mosa, who owned a television repair business. Mosa would bring a van equipped with a public-address system to the race and provide the announcing.
That track lasted until 1954. For the next two years, hot rodders -- now proudly calling themselves drag racers -- shifted to Vegas Drive and conducted races on the site of what is now the Las Vegas Municipal Golf Course.
The vagabond speed merchants spent 1957 competing on another makeshift strip of pavement on Highland near the corner of San Francisco, which later was renamed Sahara.
It wasn't until 1958, when the city of Henderson provided a patch of asphalt near what was Dick Stewart Dodge, that Southern Nevada had its first sanctioned permanent drag strip.
The Henderson track survived until 1964.
After going two years without an approved racing venue, Stardust Raceway was built at Tropicana and Rainbow. Legendary racer "Big Daddy" Don Garlits once thundered down that track at about 225 mph before it was closed in 1971.
Eight years later, the Speedrome was constructed on what is now the grounds of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and it lasted 21 years until the speedway closed the track and opened what is one of the country's most impressive drag racing facilities.
JUNKYARD DOGS
Before high-performance parts shops opened and light years before you could boost a car's horsepower through mail-order supply houses or the Internet, there were junkyards.
"We grew up in the junkyard," Fredi said. "Tell me kids today would want to do that? We had the love to race without a budget to do it.
"And there weren't a lot of parts out there to buy anyway."
The mecca for young racers in the early 1950s was Gibbs Junkyard, and their savior was Fred Gibbs, whose parents, Burt and Cecilia Gibbs, owned the auto parts graveyard on North A Street.
The younger Gibbs also was a hot rodder and campaigned a highly modified 1931 Ford Bantam-bodied roadster until his death in a 1961 car accident while returning from the U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships in Bakersfield, Calif.
Drag racing pioneers had to use the blood-and-sweat spirit of innovation that helped develop the American West to devise ways to breed speed.
"We had creativity; we just didn't have a budget," Fredi said. "So we hung out at the junkyard."
Front-end suspensions from 1939 Fords and rear ends from 1940 Fords were attached to Model A chassis to make many of the earliest dragsters.
Ford Flatheads and Oldsmobile engines were the hot powerplants. Then came 354 Chrysler Hemis and soon Chevrolet V-8s.
Add a transmission from a LaSalle and weld together some scrap tubing if you wanted a roll bar.
"Junkyards were our friends," said Randall Connell, 58, a retired salesman.
The ultimate horsepower was created by converting a 4-71 or 6-71 supercharger taken from their side-mounted position on a diesel engine and fitting it atop an engine block.
Or in the case of the Gratz-Walker-Hanley dragster, slap six two-barrel carburetors on a log manifold and put it on top of an engine.
Carl Gratz, who Fredi said had the fastest Olds in the early 1960s, was one of the top local racers along with Hanley, John Gilbert, Jesus Melina and Frank Cope.
In drag racing's earliest days, how-to manuals were created nearly every day in the minds of junkyard mechanics. No one was better than Gibbs.
"Fred was our catalyst, our mentor," said Fredi, who helped work on and drove Gibbs' legendary Bantam.
"The price was always right. Most of the time he'd just give you the parts."
But the effort required to build a competitive race car called for teamwork, and that led to the creation of car clubs.
ORIGINAL CLUB SCENE
Car clubs are a lost chapter in U.S. history books. Love of personalizing the automobile weaved together varying strands of society in the United States.
The Sinners and Crapshooters are thought to have been started about 1955 as racing fever was fueled by the new organized races. A couple of years later came the Butchers, Cherry Tears, Trimmers and Roadrunners.
"We lived `American Graffiti,' " said Steve Kirby, a 60-year-old retired welder who was a member of the Hustlers.
Memories of former car club members recall friendly rivalries.
"There was mutual respect between the clubs," said Bruce Bartlett, a Hustler. "There weren't any fights."
Although Gibbs was a member of the Crapshooters and Fredi wore Butchers' colors, they worked together on Gibbs' roadster.
The Hustlers were known for holding regular dances at the National Guard Armory at 25th and Stewart. Revenue from the dances funded the club's race cars.
Bartlett said alcohol wasn't permitted inside the Armory, but prohibition wasn't part of any club creed.
Memories of Lucky Lager beer and nights cruising drive-ins such as the Round Up or the Tip Top brewed fond memories at a recent gathering of Southern Nevada's first drag racers.
"The town was so wide open then," Fredi said, "your beer bottles would fall off the trays hanging on your door when you were at the drive-in."
Today's Top Fuel
dragsters might produce 6,000 horsepower, but its doubtful they can produce as
many fond memories.