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Story by Al Anderson

Some people you encounter in life leave an indelible mark.

One memorable encounter occurred on Dominion Day in 1964 when Don Garlits ran 179 mph at St. Thomas (Sparta) dragstrip. Last fall, memories flooded back when I saw a poster promoting that event.

A second, closer encounter occurred at 10:05 a.m., Feb 9, 2011, when I visited Big Daddy at his Ocala, Florida Museum of Drag Racing. The visit also allowed me to put a check mark on my bucket list.

Jim Cowan of the Canadian Street Rod Hall of Fame and Harold Mutter, former owner of ProMotion joined me, and as the three of us entered the inner sanctum, Big Daddy his own self looked up from behind the desk. The desk, shelves and walls of the room were covered with trophies and pictures from his long career.

After introductions all around, I showed him a copy the poster advertising the Dominion Day match race against Scott Wilson (Time Machine) at Sparta (St Thomas) Dragway. Garlits looked at the poster, leaned forward and said, “. . . I remember it well.”

Unlike the thunder of his passes, a palpable silence engulfed the room for the next few moments. In a somber voice, Garlits said “my wife is quite ill . . . you work all your life, then . . .” his words trailed off. “Our 58^th anniversary is on Feb 20^th” . . . for a moment, it felt like this conversation and our visit with him could be a shorter than one of his blistering passes down the track.

Whistfully, Garlits talked about working at the American Can Company in the early ‘50’s. He and other employees had a sort of 50/50 draw. The winner was decided by making a poker ‘hand’ using the pay envelope number. On week, his cheque was number 7777. That four of a kind was good enough to win $450, an enormous windfall at the time. Enough that Garlits thought it could be a down payment on a house. At the time, he was a member of the National Guard and the Korean War was raging. Garlits was packed and on standby, he could be called virtually any day. His wife encouraged him to buy the crank and pistons he wanted. Garlits told us “that was the kind of support I always got from my wife.”

For that few moments Garlits, who was a drag racing force to be reckoned with from 1955 until his ‘retirement’ from racing in 1992, seemed all too human. The parenthesis around retirement are because in 2003 Gaternationals, at the age of 71, Garlits made a 4.76 second pass at 323.04 mph. In 2004, Garlits said “my wife said racing had become so intense that it scared her to watch me.”

Harold made a comment about the number of items in the room that are connected to UFO’s and aliens.

“People have asked me if I believe in UFO’s and the like” said Garlits, squinting a bit as he leaned forward again, “I always say I know about them.”

He showed us a two-page spread from the Orlando Sentinel titled Still Out Of This World that expanded on his interest in UFO’s.

Then Garlits said, “I don’t want to get too far away from drag racing . . . that’s what you’re here to talk about.”

Although he won the 2 out of 3 races that particular day at Sparta, Scott Wilson or Garlits couldn’t remember speeds or times from that particular day. In a phone conversation with Wilson, he did recall that at the following week’s match race at Niagara drag strip he won. “I raced Garlits all over the place,” said Wilson. “He was one tough competitor . . . the one to beat . . . a great innovator . . . he beat me way more often than I beat him.”

London native Scott Wilson of London match raced Garlits at Sparta, and many other Ontario tracks. The Time Machine website notes that Wilson and his team ‘played around’ with a Hilborn 4-throat injector system coupled with an Enderle pump. On May 16, 1965 that playing around saw Wilson’s Time Machine run 190.26 in 8.53 at Sparta. At Deseronto on May 24, 1965, Wilson laid down a smoking 8.03 at 200.88. By April of ’67 at Grand Bend, Wilson driving the 427-cammer AA/Fuel Time Machine to a 7.29 to beating a jet car down the ¼ mile.

In another best of three matches in ’67 at Niagara International Dragstrip with Garlits, Wilson red lit on the second and third runs. Garlits’ posted a 7.62 to win that event.

Garlits said he worked as an accountant, before he opened his own shop. He gestured to a picture behind his desk of his first flathead powered dragster . . . “that was in back in 1954 . . . simpler time, you built a car, took it to the track,” Garlits said, “then there was a guy with a green flag who started you off . . . the average guy could go racing.”

“Nowadays, you need between 3 and 5 million before you get to the track. Back at the shop you need a full crew to operate chassis and blower dynos . . . then you have to have an eighteen wheeler to haul spares and all that crap to the track.”

“Crew chiefs can cost more than a million a year . . . but the whole thing could have been saved,” said Garlits.

“My dad taught me well, take a good look at how things have been going up to now . . . there about a 90% chance things will continue on that way. So if they are making engines more powerful today, they will be more powerful tomorrow. If they been stretching wheelbases today . . . builders will continue to stretch ‘em . . . the only thing that stop this in NHRA drag racing is the rules. They (the NHRA) stopped the wheelbase at 300 inches, they made the weight 2,300 and something, and they made the cubic inches 500, gear ratios 3.20.”

If it was not for the rules . . . they would be going over 350 mph in the 3’s – but they would killing a guy or two a week . . . just like in Rollerball, you know the movie . . . in that they finally got to no rules. I contend there should be an event once a year where there are no rules, one car on the track at a time, no spectators down course (only spectators in the back) . . . then we would see just how fast we can run a top fuel dragster in a 1/4 mile on the planet Earth, with all the technology we have. Every we strap ourselves into that thing . . . you know, each ride may be your last one.”

Jim Cowan reminded Garlits that Malcolm Campbell spoke the same way in 1935 when he ran the Bluebird down the beach in Florida.”

Asked about the speed records he set, Garlits responded, “170 . . . but it was s strong 170, 176 I think, not like 171, that kind of thing, 180.00 of course . . ., then we went 19 . . . the Greek claimed 200, the NHRA wouldn’t recognize that , my car was the first one that went 201.34 on a Chrontek NHRA timer . . . while the Greek was the first to 200, we made the first official 200 mph run . . . then there was a big lull while I figured out the 426 . . . then I went 240 with a backup of 238, then 250 with a backup of 249, then went 260 with a backup of 255, then 270 . . . I actually went faster at Gainesville but that 272.56 wasn’t accepted . . .”

“At each plateau, the slide rule experts,” said Garlits, “like Roger Huntingdon . . . figured we would never exceed 160/170 mph . . . because he was so respected, a lot of strips around the country, when we hit 176, figured it had to be fake . . . that was good

For me, because a lot of tracks around the country wanted to see for themselves . . . their attitude was oh yeah, well he’ll never run 170 on our track.”

Then Garlits showed a big smile, “That year, we ran 170 on about 5 different strips – then we ran 174 at Bakersfield – that record stood for 7 or eight years . . . this is unblown you understand . . . 7 or so years later, somebody ran 180 with a blower . . . it took several years to reach 174 unblown. . . . this is before slider clutches, for the most part, they locked up real quick . . . you got off the line, then you’d see a little puff of smoke when you were out about 300-400 feet, that meant the clutch had locked up . . . tires were different then – they were designed to slip a certain amount . . .

There was NO sprayed track back then . . . one of the worst things they ever did, was spray the track . . . that makes it dangerous . . . went to South Georgia Motorsports Park a few few years ago . . . I just a long burnout for ‘em with Swamp Rat 8, I was running maybe a 100 mph . . . I just touched the throttle a bit to see what it would do out about an 1/8 a mile, I did a loop-de-loop on that greasy surface (once the tires got loose) . . . it would never have done that in my parking lot. They talk about how racers just need to slow down, if they stop spraying the track, the racers will slow down.”

It’s like the government saying we don’t know what to do about inflation . . . all they need to do is stop printing money. The federal government, the state, the NHRA are all liars . . . all you need to do is watch what any of them of doing and do the opposite.

I don’t want to get too far away from drag racing . . . paper currency must retain its purchasing power . . . otherwise they can’t pay the people with the guns to make sure we keep paying taxes . . . if you took the printing press away from the government, we would have chaos – real quick!

They have committed so much to the people, they owe more in benefits than the feds can pay . . . the whole idea is to get us gone sooner . . . the whole health care thing is about them needing to ration care to seniors . . . that gets you gone sooner . . . when all this social security was put into place, we died about 62 . . . so they set the age at 65 . . . now technology has raised the age . . . this 80 year old bullshit is breaking the bank . . .

If we as trustees of the benefit plan for the people who work here at the Museum . . . if we did anything like the way Congress handled social security, we would be the federal penitentiary . . . but they are exempt from all that . . . why isn’t that in the media?

There are so many aspect of Garlits life that are surprised me. I wasn’t aware he ran for Congress in 1994, a declared Republican, according to a 1994 article in the Orlando Sentinel, Garlits’ platform smacked of a down-home, common sense approach. Although there were slightly more registered (mainly white) Democrats in Citrus and Levy Counties, most of them were considered moderates, who might cross over for the right candidate.

A Washington Post article by William Booth in October of 1994 was titled High on Fuel, Low on Bull. “If Big Daddy is elected, Congress will gain a man whose name is registered trademark . . . fans consider him a nitro methane-sucking, drag-racing god . . . while the racing world is holding its’ breath . . . so are the Democrats.”

Garlits said, “When I was running for Congress is 1994, Newt Gingrich sat me down in his office and said . . . if you win this election (the polls were looking pretty good), you have to go along up here to get along . . . you’re outspoken and set in you ways, but its a little different up here.”

I got 43% of the vote and my opponent got 57% . . . they went over my election returns . . . she was a Democrat, and they were power . . . what you have to realize that bureaucracy is what runs everything . . . the bureaucracy does not change with each election . . . that’s where the power lies . . . the Democrats had been in power so long, their people were in place . . .

Garlits’ views on extraterrestrials and the conspirator nature of Washington politics may have contributed to his opponent (Democratic) winning the seat. The Democrats made much of a statement Garlits made about Shirley Muldowney that when were better suited to being barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen came back to haunt Garlits during his campaign. The reality was that the statement was a publicity stunt cooked up by friends Muldowney and Garlits to get people to the dragstrip.

I have that little Dodge Pack car – while I do enjoy driving it, I run it about 133 mph . . . a race with a Super Stock champion at Indianapolis, his reaction time was .010 reaction time, mine was .007 . . . I don’t have the drive to bust my balls to get to every event . . . I have other responsibilities, I have the museum and my wife to take care of . . . his voice wavered and trailed off.

Garlits talked about the transition from slingshot to rear engine cars – “the first acceleration records that were ever set were on the German Autobahn, set by rear-engine nitro methane burning V-12s with Rootes blowers and zoomy headers back in 1939 . . . the cars were built by the Auto Union.”

There was one car in California, Ollie Morris’ White Owl, a little rear-engine flathead dragster . . . it was a killer, very hard to beat . . . he was always a hero of mine . . . If he went to a meet, he most likely would win . . . there was a big story on him in Hot Rod back in the 50’s.

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