Yeah, I know it’s a spectacle.  But it is a spectacle that I care about.  For most of my adult life drag racing has captured my imagination.  A distinctly American, male oriented form of competition, involving  imagination to visualize the possibilities of maximizing the output of an engine, to understand the physics of a chassis — to achieve improved acceleration over 1,320 ft of a quarter mile…

There are many ways to describe drag racing, each inadequate to capture the circus like atmosphere of a drag strip.  Drag racing is a team sport, complex and expensive.  Often family members are important to provide the skilled labor necessary to prepare a car for the starting line launch.  Obviously drag racing is dangerous, demanding split second judgment when making a 200 miles per hour, seven second pass to the finish line timing lights.  An engine built to produce in excess of 1000 horsepower is a controlled explosion.

Given our current political environment, a drag strip is the only place where I can accept sight of the confederate battle flag flying along side of the American flag.  In other contexts the “stars and bars” are symbols of racism, insurrection, and hatred.  At the track the confederate flag is a reminder of the early days of drag racing in the South, of cars piloted by Ronnie Sox, Don Nicholson, and Arnie “the farmer” Beswick.  I was a teenager in those days. 

There is a wild, irrational, “hell yeah” dimension to racing, a resistance to what is, even to refuse the 2nd law of thermodynamics which dictates that all things reach a stasis of rest…  Perhaps this is expressed by the old confederate flag…

You will enjoy some of the photos which I captured during the hours that I spent close by the starting line and in the pits.  I enjoyed a brief conversation with Jeff and Dave Lumbert who worked to prepare their River Rats Pro-Mod ’57 Chevrolet for another quarter mile pass.  Best of all, I was fortunate to exchange some reminiscence with Arnie Beswick who piloted the Tameless Tiger GTO in years past.  Arnie still travels with his car.  The modernized current version of the Tameless Tiger is “thunder and lightning” when it launches with front tires barely touching the surface of the race track.

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