The trophy stood in a place of honor on the mantle and served as a constant reminder that there was gold in them thar California hills.
The next lure, however, was to come from the Utah hills.
I had been running the car every weekend and had
picked up three more trophies at Saugus and one at Fontana, but I had begun to look for broader horizons--and that meant Bonneville. It was only April and the annual Bonneville meet was not until August, but I had already started to make my plans and to formulate my dreams. I could just see the Bonneville trophy standing with the others.
There was one major project I had to complete, though. My folks had really started to get upset about my school situation. I had trouble thinking of anything but racing, and for the first time my grades were starting to get pretty bad. I realized that I had to bring them up before the end of the year or it was going to be a rough summer. Again my practical nature took over, and I buckled down in the last six weeks of the term, finishing my junior year with the B average that would give me a summer of bliss--working in the hot rod shop and racing.
During the summer the job at Quincy blossomed into a real challenge. I was officially a welder on the muffler rack, but my unofficial duties included driving the parts truck, sweeping up, selling parts--whatever needed doing. As an added benefit for being his man Friday, Quincy sponsored the coupe. In a limited sort of way he sponsored the coupe. He donated gaskets and bolts and anything that wasn't expensive. I bought the expensive stuff on a cost basis, which, often times, represented my pay check for all of the other duties.
I used the company pickup to tow the car to the drags, and when talk of Bonneville came, Quincy offered to pay my expenses up to the Flats. At 16 this made me feel like the most important race driver in the world.
When the time came, the 700 mile trip to the Salt Flats didn't seem quite as far as it had earlier, but then we didn't have a boiling radiator to contend with and I was pretty busy with that swaying race car trailing behind the truck. It's funny how quickly the picture had changed. It had been only a year since I had gone up to the Flats with Bill and George and now it was all my show. What a gas it would be to go back and relive those experiences from my early days of racing. I've often wondered if I was ever quite as happy with the later accomplishments--the really big ones--as I was with those first ones. I think you get jaded with success. Oh, sure, I got many thrills later, but I'm not sure they ever measured up to the thrill I felt when I wheeled that race car onto the Salt Flats in 1954. I suppose a baseball player gets the feeling when he plays in his first World Series game--even after hundreds of regular season games--and I'm sure an actor gets it in his first Broadway show. It's hard to explain. It's a kind of mixture of fear and joy, and you don't know whether to cry or just jump up and down and shout. Whatever it is, I had it. It was the Series and opening night all rolled up into one. The regular season was over and here was Bonneville. I hadn't had any of these feelings the year before at the Flats. I thought I had been excited as a crew member, but it was nothing like this.
There were race cars just about as far as you could see, and some of them were really super creations. I had been impressed on my first trip, but now I had something far more personal with which to compare them--my coupe. I didn't know if I could really compete, but I sure was ready to try.
Two of the guys from Quincy's were with me, and we tuned the coupe on the Flats and waited in line. It took considerably longer,than tuning took at Saugus or Fontana because there were about ten million more cars at Bonneville. I think that added a lot to the jittery condition of my already jangled nerves. My time finally came, and I drove the car out of the line and onto the racecourse.
They use a five-mile course for the timed quarter-mile at the Salt Flats, and this made the course look about as long to me as the Mississippi River. Beyond the timing lights there is just infinity. The flats stretch on forever. It is the same on either side. The salt goes right over to the mountains, which are 10 or 20 miles away. All of a sudden, I felt lonely. It was just me out there and miles and miles of nothing but more miles and miles.
The starter gave me a go sign; and I hit the accelerator hard. The coupe leaped out and roared down the salt. It seemed like an eternity before I reached the timing lights, and suddenly the car began missing badly. By the time I reached the lights, the coupe had dropped off by 20 mph. This wasn't exactly the lesson I had intended to teach these veterans. I had gone 128 mph, the seventh fastest time out of 28 cars. In the process I had bent three valves.
We pulled the cylinder heads and found that the clearance between them and the valves had been too close. The combination of the high-lift camshaft and the milled (ground-down) heads had caused the valves to hit the heads and bend. It had probably cost us a much better showing, because the car that won the class went only 137 and I was sure that I could have gone faster than that.
As we pulled away from the Flats, I took one last look at the machinery there--an objective look.
Some of the streamliners were works of art. I couldn't believe how anyone could do that much work on a car. They were starting to be professionally fabricated race cars--I realize that now. They had hand-formed aluminum bodies and dzeus fasteners and handmade tanks, and everything was safety wired. The fittings and the hoses and all the bits and pieces in them were so much nicer than any of the machinery we were running at regular drag strips that I just sat there, wide-eyed. Once I saw how race cars were really supposed to be built it made a lasting impression on me. From that moment on I vowed to do fantastic workmanship on my cars and make them, above all, really fine pieces of machinery--well engineered and well designed.
At that moment the future began to fit into place, and I think I raised my sights about eight notches. Later, when I was building the jet car, I realized that before you even start on a car like that you almost have the entire machine, every nut and bolt, every axle and every conceivable part of the car entirely worked out in your mind--every piece of the thing, every panel and how it's going to hook on, every tank and where you're going to put it, everything you're going to do. These early days in racing were important to help me formulate my future ideas.
When I got back, I delivered another big shock to my folks. I guess it was really more of a disappointment than a shock since they expected it. I announced that I was not going to college. I wanted to build race cars, and that was the only thing I was interested in. I suppose by then they had pretty much given up on trying to change my mind about racing. If they couldn't keep me in art school, how would they ever keep me in college?
My last year at Venice High School was really something. I think I had two periods of machine shop, one period of drafting, one period of phys ed, and one study hall--not exactly an academic curriculum, but it gave me plenty of time to pursue my real interest. And besides, I could do a lot of work on the coupe parts in machine shop. That was the year that a very curious thing happened to me: I fell in love. It wouldn't have been too curious to most guys my age, but I didn't think I had time for it to happen to me--what with the part-time job and racing. But it happened, nevertheless.
Marge Toombs was a classmate of mine, and I had dated her from time to time for the past year or so. All of a sudden she started showing up at the Clock Drive-in every evening, and I found myself spending more time talking with her than with the guys. That was really taking advantage of a guy, talking racing to him and all the time sitting there looking cute and smelling pretty.
Well, I was in love, and I would just have to work it into my schedule. It wasn't too difficult, because Marge went to Saugus and Fontana with me and we were always at the drive-in together. She never really seemed to be too excited about the races, however, and it bothered me. I felt that she was just going because I wanted her to, and this didn't seem to be the way it should be happening. I've always been concerned about forcing anybody to do anything.
After graduation I went to work full time at Quincy. Life seemed wonderful. I was working around zoomy cars all day long, dating Marge at night, and racing every weekend. All this was to quickly change.
As romance will have it, along came the next step--we got married and got a little apartment near the shop. The next thing was that we were going to have a baby. This news left me with mixed emotions. I have always liked kids, and the thought of having one of my own really excited me. On the other hand, it kind of goofed up most of my plans. I had felt that I didn't need to go to college because I was going to be a race driver. Now that I was married and had a child on the way I couldn't be the race driver I had wanted to be, and I didn't have the education to do much else. I was faced with a real dilemma. I had thought these things happened only in radio soap operas, but here it was, happening to me.
The job at Quincy would unfortunately have to go. I needed more money now and I started asking my friends again if they knew of any jobs. Gene Rourke told me that Sam Hanks, the great Indianapolis driver, was working for Bill Murphy Buick and he might know of something. I went to see Sam and,in my usual hero-worshiping manner, said, "Mr. Hanks, I'm a race driver and my wife is pregnant and I need a better job." That was about as straight as I could tell it.
Sam looked at me and smiled as he said, "I know the feeling, kid."
Well, it turned out that Sam could get me on at Bill Murphy's and I was a little happier with my situation. Not only did I make more money, but I was to be around the hottest driver at Indy--a guy who was holding down a good job and raising a family and racing successfully. Maybe I could find out how it was done. I'm not sure if the situation had much of a soothing effect on me at all. As a matter of fact, I think it rubbed a little salt into my own racing wounds. Here was this guy who had the world on a string. He came back from each USAC championship race a hero, and I wasn't getting anyplace.
One day I asked him just how he was able to keep all the parts of his life straight. He looked at me and said, "You have to take first things first, Craig. Get your financial situation worked out, make sure your family is taken care of, and then go racing."
I'm sure it was good advice, but I felt that there must be a short-cut someplace. If I followed Sam's words of wisdom it would take me roughly 86 years before I could even get near a race car. At $65 a week there wasn't much left after the financial situation and the family were in order. So I was right back where I started--right in the middle of The Romance of Helen Trent.
Then I made a fairly logical decision: I'd forget about racing for a while and concentrate on my job. So I put the coupe away. Maybe something would come along and I could race again. And it did--I was promoted to assistant manager of the get-ready department (I think Sam might have had something to do with it). Get-ready was the department that serviced new cars before delivery to the customers and being assistant manager was a pretty good job. Then, not much later, the manager of the department got sick and was given an early retirement. I was named manager and all of a sudden my salary almost doubled. It had all happened very quickly.
After Christine was born and Marge was back on her feet, I decided that it was time to get the coupe out of moth balls--where it had rested faithfully for what seemed an eternity. Actually it was only three and one-half months.
I installed an improved super-charger on the coupe and won a couple more trophies at Saugus and the new Santa Ana drag strip. Then I decided that the car was ready for another plateau--the El Mirage Dry Lake. I didn't plan to drive the car myself, however. The Dry Lake course was fast and dangerous, and I didn't feel that I had the experience to handle it. Several guys had been killed there, including one in a coupe. The car might be ready for El Mirage, but I wasn't.
El Mirage Dry Lake was just what the name implied. The racecourse there was second only to Bonneville in prestige and was a rough, sandy strip whittled out of the rocks and sand dunes of a section of the Mojave Desert. It was long and fast and tough.
The search for a driver for a new car belonging to a kid was tough, but Don Rackeman, who now is one of the editors of Drag News, agreed to drive for me. Off we went to the Dry Lake. Don was driving several cars at the time, and when we arrived, Lou Baney, who was president of a car club called the "Screw Drivers," stopped us. He said the Dry Lake's Association (he was also on the board of that) was cracking down on certain driving regulations and it was doubtful whether Don could drive the car. "He's driving too many cars, Craig, and they're going to cut it out," Lou said.
"What am I going to do? Drivers are hard to find--especially for a kid with a new car. I've paid my fees and everything, Lou. What'll I do?" I asked.
I got the only logical answer in the book. "Drive it yourself, kid. It's your car and you know it better than anybody," Lou said.
Well, my heart almost stopped. I thought, "You've really put your foot in it now, race driver."
"Listen, just get in the car. When you get to the starting line, I'll okay your driving card. Tell them you want to make a practice run that doesn't count. If you don't like it, we'll look around and see if we can find someone else to drive it," Lou said. There wasn't much sense arguing with logic like that. I either did it or admitted that I was afraid to. I got in the car and pulled it to the starting line.
Lou made the necessary arrangements with the officials. Racing was considerably more informal in those days; there weren't safety checks and driving tests and all of the things that young drivers have to go through today. Lou just told the fellows at the timing stand, "Let the kid have a practice run." And, like it or not, there I was, about to take a practice run.
The course is a mile and one-third, and it's just dirt--slippery dirt. Some yellow traffic cones were set up so that you could tell where the course was, and someplace down the middle of that big dust bowl there was a measured timing trap. Someplace in the middle of that mess--you had to guess exactly where. I knew that the track was pretty loose and that it was going to be quite a ride.
I looked down the track and everything was kind of stretched out of proportion and unreal looking. Walt Disney must have gotten his idea for Fantasia from this place. I thought to myself, "If Disney ever wants to cast another star for Dumbo, I know where I can find the perfect one."
I had butterflies in my stomach and my knees were shaking. You know how it feels when your knees get to knocking and you can't get them stopped. Well, this was ol' fearless Craig Breedlove--the biggest bundle of nerves in the Western Hemisphere. But that was the last time my knees ever really shook. I was uneasy and concerned lots of times after that, but they never really shook again. I guess my knee shaking episode falls into the same category as the early thrills. It was just a great big scare and I guess I kind of outgrew it, too.
The course record at that time was held by a car driven by Don Rackeman, the guy who was supposed to drive for me. It was a GMC powered Chevrolet, and it had held the record at the Lake for about three years running--setting the last mark at 137 mph. And here I sat. I figured, "Here goes," and pushed the button. Somehow I was able to keep the car going in the right groove, and by the time I got to the timing lights I was really moving. The car was full of dust, but I could see the yellow cones plainly, and, man, they were going by fast. I got to the end very quickly and wheeled the car around.
People were yelling pretty loud when I got back. On my first practice run the flathead had turned an un believable 141! Everybody just went nuts because they had considered Rackeman's Jimmy coupe almost unbeatable and here this punk kid had shaved four miles an hour off the record in his first run. I felt great and somewhere along the line, my knees had stopped shaking. I said, "Okay, this one will count."
Suddenly people had stopped everything they were doing and were watching me. All of the work had stopped on the cars, and people at the hot dog stands had paused. All eyes were on the punk kid. I liked the attention and particularly the bizarre nature of the whole scene. It was like one of my racing fantasies when I was nine or ten. All of this gave me confidence when I approached the starting line the second time.
Off I went in a cloud of dust, and the coupe roared down the course like a desert lion. The run was wilder than the first because I got going a little sideways for the last few hundred yards, but it was too late to back off then--I had to keep my accelerator foot down. Being sideways cost me a little time and I went only 139, but that was good enough to break the three-year stranglehold the Jimmy had had on the record.
Naturally I wasn't satisfied after having gone 141; so I announced that I would tune the coupe a little and "have another go at it." I changed the plugs and the carburetor jets and just happened to glance over toward the Jimmy coupe. They were swarming over it like a bunch of apes and I thought, "Oh, boy, here we go."
Nick Arias owned the car and between him and Don, they had about all the experience in the book. And the whole thing was quite a blow, to have the kid come in from out of nowhere and dust them off. They went 141 in the Jimmy and that really made me mad. Imagine, I had made two runs over this crumby course and already I felt like I owned it.
Well, the next time out I almost proved that I did. The coupe went 144 and the whole place went wild. Not to be outdone in the one-upmanship category, either, I decided to tune it some more and come back for another run. That just about did it. I think the guys with the Jimmy figured that I was completely nuts, and had decided to sit this one out. I changed the jets again and went 148. Don came over and said, "I don't care if we put dynamite in that Jimmy, it's not going to go 148."
I think I drove harder and pushed the car farther mechanically than I ever had because I wanted that record. After the practice run I overcame my fear, and I wanted to prove something to myself. A lot of people later asked Lou Baney how a kid could beat the Jimmy and he told them, "The day finally came when parts and tuning and driving ability all ended up in one car, and it won."
That was really my first taste of winning big. And it was the last time I ever considered letting anyone else do the driving for me--none of that "leave the driving to us" stuff for me anymore. It was all my show from that moment on. Still, there were a lot of times in later years when I sat in jet cars and asked myself why I hadn't "taken a bus."
But I was never without this obsession for speed, this fantastic desire to win, that always made me push everything to its limit--cars, parts, and particularly records.
