Forget, for the moment, all those so-called “outlaw” street-racing shows streaming on Motor Trend these days.
If you were a kid growing up in the mid-20th century with a need for speed – as in going fast on four wheels – there’s a chance you got into drag racing and giant engines by way of Herman Munster.
The Beach Boys, too.
Herman was the TV dad of the 1960s sitcom “The Munsters.” He was the patriarch of a family that looked like it came from an old monster movie from 30 years before, and he drove a hot rod every day to work.
The coach was crafted for the show by George Barris, the Steven Spielberg of custom car designers.
And The Beach Boys? All about cars and what was under the hood, they were.
“My four-speed, dual-quad, Posi-Traction 409,” warbled the California lads in their 1962 ode to the V-8 engine that rumbled like a million ocean waves all at once while zipping faster than Sputnik into the night.
Meanwhile, “Wide World of Sports,” the ESPN of its day, made stars out of Big Daddy Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme and other guys who punched the quarter-mile in their futuristic-looking rail dragsters – going zero to 60 in about a nanosecond, or so it seemed.
From the late 1950s through the 1970s, West Virginia was in the midst of a Golden Age of Drag Racing. If you were into the sport, you were there.
Thank neighboring Ohio for that.
Six days on the road
The Buckeye State was race-crazy, too, but a decree put the brakes and parachute to a critical part of the enterprise: Thou Shalt Not Race … On One Certain Day.”
Gary Jarvis, of Winfield, Putnam County, picks up the tale.
“Everybody talks up California and the car culture and all that,” he said, “but for years, Ohio was second in the nation only to California when it came to drag racing.”
“You had 26 dragstrips in Ohio,” he said, “but there was one thing. They were all closed on Sundays.”
Which pegged the meter in Putnam, being only a couple of counties over.
For the shade-tree mechanics and other wrench-turners, racing was a weekend hobby, he said.
Guys wanted to run before they had to punch the time clock for Monday.
In 1958, a group got together and built a drag strip in Winfield.
“And we were open on Sunday,” he said.
“We were the only one in the region, so all the Ohio racers just made us part of their weekend circuit.”
Such visibility got people interested in the sport who may not have been otherwise.
Other tracks unspooled across the region, including Fairmont’s famed Eldora Raceway.
“I always considered Eldora my home track,” said Mike Kelly, a Monongalia County school board member who races on weekends from Pennsylvania to Tennessee.
“I was 16 or 17 when I started going there,” the Westover native said. “It was after I got my license.”
Green means Go
Eldora was eventually paved over to clear the way for an industrial park. All the other tracks in the Mountain State are gone, also.
The drivers and their memories remain, though.
That’s why Jarvis and a group of other buddies who used to shoot off the line got together to form the West Virginia Drag Racers Hall of Fame in his Winfield hometown nine years ago.
“A lot of the people we’ve inducted are no longer with us,” Jarvis said. “This means a lot to their families.”
Kelly was inducted last year. Fifteen more are going in tonight. Visit the organization’s Facebook page to learn more.
Jarvis, in fact, is already working on the 10th anniversary for 2023.
“We’re still ironing out a lot things,” he said, “but that one’s going to really be special.”
For Kelly, it’s about adrenaline, he’ll say, grinning, except when it’s not.
There are the Christmas tree lights counting down to green.
And the Nuuur-r-r-RU-UN-GG-G! Doppler-wail as the engine tries to jump its lane.
All that horsepower.
All those RPMs.
All that speed.
Pace cars (and other memory-jumpstarts)
Kelly’s current main racer, a 1967 Barracuda, will kick up on its back wheels before scorching the quarter-mile at speeds upward of 140 mph in 10 seconds, or less.
“Yeah, it’s fast,” he’ll say, chuckling.
Something else, however, goes delightfully slow, which is just how he wants it.
That’s when the memories unspool in his head.
He agrees with Jarvis. It is family.
Kelly thinks about his late dad, Ollie, working on cars with him.
And his son, and Ollie’s grandson, Kaleb, who is a racer in his own right.
It’s also a checkered flag for community, he said. Every time.
“You meet so many good people in this sport.”
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