My family situation had started to resemble my studies in my junior year of high school. I needed to pay more attention or I was going to flunk out of the husband and father course. It was difficult to be a good husband and father with the racing thing. Weekends found me at the track while other fathers were taking their kids to the beach. My evenings were spent working either on the coupe or overtime at Murphy's to earn enough money to make ends meet.
So, when Marge told me she was pregnant again, I knew it was back to the help-wanted ads. I found a job in the material and process engineering department of Douglas Aircraft and started to devote more time to my family. We went on picnics and to an occasional drive-in movie, and after Norman was born, I even stayed home most evenings.
I was still racing as much as my budget and my conscience would allow, however. New drag strips were springing up all over southern California in 1957, and it was pretty easy to race any night I could swing it.
Fortunately, it wasn't quite as costly to race in those days as it is now. I mentioned before that it was pretty much a backyard affair. Well, it was somewhat of a junk yard affair, too. The only new parts we bought were those we couldn't find used someplace--things like supercharger parts or actual speed equipment that had come out of southern California and not Detroit. We were often able to buy even some used speed equipment. There always seemed to be someone throwing in the towel and making some sort of desperation move--like going to work.
It was a more casual scene then. Most of the guys drove their cars to the strip. Only once in a while could we find someone with a pickup truck and go first class. We just towed the car behind the truck. And I can remember towing the car through the desert to El Mirage--they were real fun times. We would tow the car and drive flat out. It would be hot--and I mean hot--and I would be driving along with the heel of my right foot resting on the accelerator--barefooted--with the other foot stuck out of the window in the breeze. It's quite a trick when you're going about 90 with the truck and the race car along all those dirt roads back in the desert.
We had some pretty narrow scrapes on those back roads, too. I remember one day when we were late getting out of L.A. and I was really making tracks in Bill Adair's truck with my race car behind. We must have been going 95 when we came to a little bridge over a dried-up creek. Not only was it narrow, but the road curved to the left just past the bridge. By the time we saw the bridge, it was too late to put on the brakes because the race car would have jackknifed and flipped us at that speed.
On the other side of the bridge and slightly to the right was a small grocery store and filling station, with a house trailer beside it. There was no choice, we would have to go between the pumps and the filling station and get the rig slowed down straight ahead in the desert. As we got across the bridge and were headed for the tiny space between the pumps and the building, three people stepped out of the door. They saw this truck and race car heading for them flat out and just dove for anything that would give them protection from the big crash.
We made it through the small opening and I eased on the brakes. It must have taken a quarter of a mile to get the truck slowed down safely, and we got to worrying about the people at the store. We didn't know if we had hit any of them, or if they had hurt themselves; so we decided to go back.
The truck had a twin Smitty exhaust system and it always sounded like it was going flat out; so when we appeared from the other direction it seemed as if we were trying to race through the pumps the other way. The three dusty people were just extracting themselves from beneath the trailer and behind the building when they saw us coming. One of them screamed, "Here they come again," and they all hit the dirt a second time. We got to laughing so hard we almost hit the bridge.
Everything was more informal about racing. It had a long way to go before it was to reach today's sophistication. There were no trailers and fancy rigs at the tracks; they came later. About the closest we ever came to a trailer for towing the race car was the time we borrowed a rubbish truck from the father of one of the fellows to haul an Igniter's roadster to Fontana. It was quite a scene when we arrived at the track. There were all these clowns and the roadster in the back of the rubbish truck. I remember the fellow on the loudspeaker saying, "Look at those guys. That really shows ingenuity, folks, hauling a race car in a moving van." About that time somebody screamed, "It's not a moving van, it's a rubbish truck," and everybody at the track broke up.
It was a world of fun and flatheads and Jimmys, and the only way we ever competed with the GMC's was by using super-chargers, which were made only for our cars. Jimmys, in fact, most of the time were unbeatable, and they were a little bit mystical and magical with their overhead valves.
Those early drag racing days were definitely the good old days of racing, and they were rapidly disappearing. Racing was becoming more complicated. The competition was getting tougher, and everything was getting to be less fun and more complex.
Craig's "belly-tank" lakester was made from a surplus World
War II aircraft fuel
tank.
For example, the fellows in the club and at the drag strips were all beginning to talk about belly tanks and more advanced drag cars. The belly tank lakester was made from a large fuel tank that had been attached to the belly of a P-38 in the late stages of World War II. The fuel tanks were available at surplus stores in the area and were big enough to mount a large V-8 engine inside and still have room for a driver. The tanks, of course, were very streamlined in design and offered a low drag profile for a racer body. They looked like a large bomb on wheels--which is what they were.
I was going right along with the sport, I guess, because I was getting more serious, too. The Rourke brothers were building a belly tank, and the next thing I knew I was in the garage in their backyard (the garage came with the advent of more complicated racing) looking over the plans. I got pretty involved, and before you could say "Bonneville Salt Flats" I was a partner and the driver. It worked out fine because they couldn't go to the Flats in August, and I could take the car.
Marge really hit the ceiling when I told her the news. I guess she had a right to. She was pregnant for the third time and could see how much time I was going to spend on the new project. I promised her that I would only devote a couple of nights a week to the belly tank, but she knew that I would never be able to live up to that promise. I knew also that it would be a pretty tough vow to keep; so I began to think of a job that would give me more time to spend with racing and still pay the bills at home.
A fireman friend of mine told me that the Costa Mesa Fire Department was giving civil service exams; so I took the test. I was told that if I passed the exam and wanted the job I would work about 13 days a month. The rest of the time was mine. I could devote it to the family and racing. It sounded ideal. While I was on duty, I would be able to work on the plans for race cars, for the fellows had a lot of time to read and do what they wanted to do while at the station in the evenings.
The results of the exam arrived on the same day as our third child, Dawn. I was a three-time father and a fireman at 21.
The job at the fire department did give me the time I needed for racing, but, as Marge had predicted, I was spending less and less time with the family. The belly tank project had gotten more complicated than I had expected and I was at the Rourkes almost every day I had off. I missed the kids, but I was so involved with the new car that I just couldn't quit.
The Rourke brothers had gotten a new Oldsmobile V-8 engine from a local dealer, and it was a gem. Thinking of the speeds that the super-light belly tank was going to go really turned me on. I had to drive that car at the Flats.
The car was finished about a lap and a half ahead of my marriage. I knew that I had better ask Marge to come with me to Bonneville or we were about all over. She wasn't too wild about the idea, but when I told her that we could leave the two girls with my mother and take Norman, she agreed. Norman was three and really liked races; so he would have a ball, I convinced her.
When we left for Bonneville, we were racing into another era. The belly tank was powered by an overhead valve V-8 Oldsmobile engine. The age of the flatheads and even the Jimmys was gone, and with it much of the fun--all of the rubbish trucks and used parts were now racing only in our memories.
I qualified the Olds-powered belly tank at a respectable 236 mph but lost the clutch. It was decision time again. At that moment we had just enough money in our pockets for the trip home. It seemed such a waste to have come all this distance and to go home without even really competing. But the closest place for parts was 110 miles away, in Salt Lake City, and then there was the money thing. Marge thought about it for a long time and said, "Go ahead and get the clutch. We'll get home somehow."
We drove into Salt Lake and bought a Ford truck clutch, hoping it would be strong enough. When I left the garage, I counted my change. We had 38 cents to our name. Unfortunately the truck clutch didn't hold either, and we were through. I had missed the one thing I wanted most--membership in the exclusive 200 mile an hour club. But at least I had gone almost 240 mph in qualifications, and a lot of people had taken note of that. It would help with my car building and driving credentials in later years, and I really felt that I was on my way to far greater accomplishments.
But the situation at hand was a more pressing problem. How does one get from Bonneville to Los Angeles with 38 cents? We thought of everything short of knocking over a service station, and there was just no way of doing it. Then something happened that was to give my professional racing career its biggest boost. An old school buddy, Dick Faulkner, was there with his father-in-law, Ed Perkins, who owned Perkins Machine Company in L.A. Ed came over and said he thought we had a really fine car and was sure we would do well next time. Then he said, "I understand you're a little short of money." He handed me an Associated Credit Card and $20, which seemed like all the money in the world to me, and said, "It looks like you need a sponsor. Come and see me when you get home." I don't know where he got the idea that I needed a sponsor. There I was with a despondent wife, a screaming kid, a broken race car, and a pick-up truck, and, oh yes, 38 cents!
That was the beginning of my first real sponsorship and one of the most pleasant relationships of my racing career. I never forgot that gesture at the Flats--as a matter of fact, I've never forgotten any of the people who made racing possible for me.
Ed sponsored the coupe and the belly tank the next year and things were going well in racing--except that they weren't going any place. I was winning lots of trophies, but they were all for the same thing, week after week. I was on a treadmill.
I bad been working for the fire department for about a year when I realized that if I was going to make it big in racing and get out of the situation I was in, I would have to get started. Otherwise I would end up in the same boat as most of the other guys in the fire department--trapped.
I can remember clearly the night of the great decision. I was out at Station Two; we had gotten the place all cleaned up, had dinner, and were sitting in the little living room area, just Ray Gallagher and myself. I sat there and looked at Ray. He was about 50 at the time and I was 22. He was reading the fireman's manual on knot tying, and I could almost see myself in the same position 28 years later. It wasn't for me! It was the best job I had ever had, but I knew that I had to make the big move. That move could only be in one direction--the world's land speed record.
My entire life had been built around running at drag races and Bonneville. I was sure that my real future lay in the direction of the big record. To try to make it in oval track racing would mean that I would have to start at the very bottom and scrounge through for years and years with low purses and high travel expenses. With a wife and three kids, that was completely out of the question, especially when there was a golden opportunity just sitting there on the Salt Flats.
Mickey Thompson was one of the hottest drag racers around and was heavily involved in speed runs with his four-engine Challenger. He was getting a lot of publicity, which, I guess, started me thinking about the land speed record again. This LSR thing had been in the back of my mind since grade school days. I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on it too much when I was actually up there at the Flats because I was always pretty well wrapped up in the project at hand--either the coupe or the belly tank. Now I let my mind take the ball and run with it--and run it did.
The record had been away from the United States for something like 34 years--I remembered that from the seventh grade.
Now Mickey was running, and even though there was some doubt that he would break the record, he was running in the high 300s. Before, it had been pretty inconceivable to me that I could reach that pinnacle of hot rodding. There were no finances, and I really had nothing; I was just a kid with a dream. But Mickey demonstrated one very significant change, one thing that made the idea a lot more conceivable: Mickey was doing it, and that meant it could be done. He was just another hot-rodder, a regular guy, but he had put a car together with four engines, and he was out there challenging them. John Cobb was some legendary figure from a seventh grade textbook. Mickey Thompson was real--one of us.
"Ray, I'm going to break the world's land speed record," I announced to my studious companion.
He looked up from his manual and said, "Sure, Craig. Now leave me alone, will you? I've gotta brush up on these knots."
That did it.
For the next few weeks I was the most studious person at the fire station, but I wasn't studying about knots and fire fighting techniques. I had gone to the library and checked out every book I could find on aerodynamics and had started designing a land speed record car. There were drawings every place, and the fellows lived in constant fear that the chief would come over some night and fire me. We were supposed to spend a certain amount of time each day studying the fireman's manual, but I just didn't have time for that.
I remember one night when I was right in the middle of a particularly interesting chapter on the center of pressure in high speed aircraft design when the alarm sounded. I grabbed my coat and helmet and tucked the book under my arm. It turned out to be a fire in an electric motor of a warehouse air conditioning system and a couple of the fellows climbed up to disconnect the motor and put out the fire. It certainly didn't take all of us to do that. I guess I got pretty engrossed in the book while sitting at the curb under the street light, because the fellows got in the truck, turned around, and pulled it right up beside me and blew the siren. I went straight up in the air, and they broke up. "You guys won't think it's so funny when I come back to the station one of these days a celebrity," I said.
One of them piped up, "Sure, Mr. Celebrity, now would you give me your autograph so we can get back to the station?"
After weeks of studying and designing, I realized that the only engine capable of the speeds I needed was a jet. The piston engine had about reached its limit at both the Salt Flats and in airplanes. All of the new, fast planes were jets; so it stood to reason that the new, fast cars should be jets. Another factor was responsible for the jet decision: I had designed a slender, three-wheeled car, with the single wheel up front; and this needle-nosed configuration would lend itself perfectly to the shape of a jet engine.
I started haunting surplus stores on my days off and finally found a J-35 engine that had been used in a navy jet fighter. It had a $500 price tag on it.
It looked like the perfect engine, but there were two other small considerations. How would I pay for it, and where would I build the car once I got it? You just don't build a monster like this on the street. The car I had designed would be nearly 40 feet long. There was only one person, Ed Perkins. Ed had the money and the space.
"The conditions look just right to bring the land speed record back to the United States, Ed," I told him next day at his office. "There's a golden opportunity just sitting there." We talked the whole thing over pretty extensively.
I often talked things over with Ed. He was not only my sponsor but my friend. Mine were the only race cars he ever sponsored. He once told me that he did it because he liked me and enjoyed being at the races himself. He also said that he felt it was good for his son, who was younger than I, to see what was going on and that I was a good influence on him. Now I was about to pop the big question to him.
"With $10,000 1 could get the design completed, buy the engine, and get enough material to get the thing off the ground and organized to the point that we could interest the big companies in it," I told him.
Ed said, "Okay, you've got it."
Enter, another era.
