True Story

[outlaw]

Growing up dad always had hot rods and I started working on cars very young once I graduated from drop light holder. We never took any of dads cars to the track. I started working for long time div. 4 racer John Turley in his shop in the mid 80's when I was 17. I hadn't worked there long and he would line me out on what needed to be done in the mornings and leave and on several occasions I was working on his 69 super stock mustang. He's friends would stop by while I was alone once when I was pulling the engine out and their jaws would hit the floor and say does John know you're doing that and my reply he told me to. This happened several times with different friends of his once I had the carb tore to pieces among other things. One day Turley says he has a friend coming up for dinner from a town about thirty miles away and wanted me to change the oil in friends car while they ate. Tells me the mans name which means nothing to me because I knew nothing about drag racing at the time. The man shows up in a new Chrysler k car looks at me with a look that scared me to death and says something like boy don't mess my car up to which I said nothing and I'm 17 and thinking anybody can change the oil and service a car. I changed the oil in that car several times and the man scared the crap out of me everytime before moving to another job. It took me several years before I figured out I was a deluxe oil changer then the scary man was Div. 4 tech man Red Anderson. To this day I find both of those things hard to believe. To Red's defense it was a k car.

Terry Hindsley

[Randall Klein]

Ah! Red Anderson.....at the very first Texas Motorplex race my partners D/S '69 Chevelle was called to tech after 1st rd. Red told him to take the black paint off his headlights as Ron had entire front blacked out. Ron said it was mild customizing and Red was having none of it....got Farmer involved and a loud dispute entailed....during which Ron said Red and Farmer were mickey mouse enforcers....well, mickey said get out & don't come back until headlights had paint removed. (We had lost 1st rd anyway,so...)

A few years later we are in rows of S SS cars waiting to get teched at a Houston mall before heading to track, and here Red is working our line....we had a '66 Nova in F/S and fairly legal, but were hiding out hoping Red would jump ahead...Nope, but he was as nice as could be, but took a good look at the grille and headlights

Those were the days, sleeping in the tow waiting for dawn and tech
They'd send 4-6 entrants at a time to track

[Dan Bennett]

It wasn't just that they were flexing their muscle against sportsman racers.

Jim Hooker painted most of the Haas Pro Stock cars at the time. The shop had sent a new Glidden Thunderbird to Jim for painting. That was in the 7-11 days and the rendering had the side color extending around the front and over the headlights, bezels and all. So that's what Hooker did.

It did not pass the tech "chamber of horrors" as we all called getting a chassis cert sticker - and the reason was painted headlights which didn't even have to work in the first place.

Can't help comparing this to the approved jellybean rules in force today.

[Adger Smith]

Quite a few years ago he was doing tech on just carbs. We were in line and had our car # and class on the carb. He looked at it and measured it and said "that carb is undersize". I said, yes I know. He had just picked it up and my partner reached out and took it out of his hands and said "Then it's Legal" and walked away with the carb. I just stood there dumbfounded and he shrugged and said, yep it is.. back at the car I ask my buddy if he knew who the Carb tech guy was that he took the carb from.., He shrugged and said he didn't care. Guess it was my lucky day.

[Richard Grant]

Back in the 1960's I was racing a '57 Chevy Convertible 270HP in F/S. The local track asked me to have a match race with a D/S. I agreed and thought that I would get a spot but when I got there they matched us heads up. We were using a flag man and the first race he beat me off the line and won that round. In a best 3 of 5 race I managed to win the next 3 races. The track had hired Red Anderson to work the race so the F/S owner protested me and I had to teardown. I pulled on the track in front of the tower and pulled the heads. Red ruled me legal. I was thrilled and had little problem after that with being protested. That was a thrilling day. I got $100 for winning and $50 for passing protest so it was a very profitable day. That was a lot of money in that day.