racers -- more

["Gary H." <62to65mopar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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This neat "racer talk" reminds me of what it was like back then. The 
excerpt below is from a Mopar Muscle Magazine article by By Geoff 
Stunkard that really captures the tone and feeling of that long ago era, 
in my opinion.
Gary H.



The Riot of ?65
by
?Al ?The Lawman? Eckstrand
from an unpublished interview with Geoff Stunkard  

We went to the Super Stock Magazine Nationals in York, Pennsylvania, 
that summer with the Golden Commandos altered-wheelbase car. It was a 
fabulous race. Everyone who was anyone was there, and if you weren?t 
anyone, forget it. By then, the cars were really, really radical, and we 
were wearing a lot of safety equipment and burning nitromethane. That 
day, I raced in an Unlimited Class they had developed. Hour after hour 
it went on.
 
Jon Lundburg was announcing, and he knew how to work the crowd. There 
were thousands upon thousands of people there that night. I remember 
they were letting people in for free by the time it got dark and you 
couldn?t move in the place. Nobody was manning the gates. We had won 
some money earlier in the night and I went to go collect it; they had 
put all the cash in this shed. Baskets full of it. It was literally 
falling out.
 
It was an unbelievable sight. People were on the track and the cars were 
rushing down between them. I thought for certain that somebody was going 
to get killed. There was no place to sit, and moreover, the cars were 
wheelstanding. In the darkness, people down the track had turned on 
their headlights so we could keep racing.
 
More than anything else, though, I just remember the feeling of winning. 
Round after round, we were killing them. You would have to back up to 
the starting line and these people were right there, almost on top of 
the car. You would rev the motor and they would part just a little and 
then, as the car launched, all you could see was darkness. That was 
because the car was going up and you were looking at the stars. I had 
never pulled wheelstands that high before, and the first time I wasn?t 
sure what had even happened when everything disappeared. Then it would 
come down and the people would be opening up and the car next to you was 
running as hard as you were and you would pull away and win. It was 
great.
 
In the final, it seemed like 4:00 in the morning, I was up against Dick 
Landy. Landy was a very pleasant man. He always had this cigar but I 
don?t recall him ever lighting it up; that was his trademark. He was 
from California and his Dodge was one of the toughest in the country. It 
had been guys like him, along with Mickey Thompson and Hayden Proffitt, 
who had put stock car drag racing on the map out there.
 
Right then, Jon Lundburg was trying to control the crowd, which was 
surging out onto the track. I don?t remember exactly what he said, but 
it was something to the effect of, ?If you don?t get off the track, 
somebody ought to throw a Coke bottle at you.? It wasn?t meant to be 
incendiary, and he was just try to warn them that they were out of line 
being that close, but you can imagine what happened next. This hailstorm 
of Coke and beer bottles came roaring out of the stands, people were 
getting hit right and left. Luckily, I don?t think anyone was badly 
hurt, but it made the whole thing seem even more out of control than it 
already was.
 
They got it cleaned up, and I raced Landy and won that night. We talked 
about it years later at a display at a Chrysler show in New Jersey, and 
I don?t know if he ever got over me beating him at that race. It doesn?t 
matter. We were the best two cars in the country that night, and nobody 
can ever take that away from either of us. It was my last big drag race 
win; I retired at the end of the season. 

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