This story
was published in Cars Illustrated in the late 80’s written by Tony DeFeo.
If I am
breaching some copyright and you are Tony DeFeo let me know and I will remove
it , otherwise sit back and read one great tale .
Dave
He
stood on the other side of the counter. To his left was an Accel catalog rack.
To his right, an empty Diet Pepsi that had been downed with one massive gulp.
An unbelievable feat performed by an unbelievable man who was about to tell an
unbelievable story. Bobby was a well known, sometimes liked, never understood
speed shop merchant. He had occupied the same spot behind the same counter for
as long as any of us could remember.The fact that he moved on and left his
lifelong vocation for a position in some construction company left a void in
the local hotrod social circle. It took him just a little farther away from the
thing that had made him a cult hero for so many years. You see, Bobby used to
be a street racer. We shared many afternoons together straddling each side of
that counter, bullshitting, bench racing and learning. The learning was a one
sided thing-he did the talking, I did the absorbing. We would go on for hours,
talking about things ranging from our imagined ultimate performance
combinations to the discipline needed to be a winner. Invariably, the
conversation would always wind down to what he saw as being wrong with the
street scene today. These kids today are assholes, he would say slowly and
deliberately. He had a way of talking, you know-like a first grade teacher
discussing a subject that was going to go over the heads of his pupils. Bobby
always talked that way. He would say, I mean, like they have no concept of how
to do it. Street racing is a lost art to these kids. They sit around in a
parking lot with their hoods up. Not only do they show each other what's under
their hoods, but they tell each other what's in their damned motors! Give me a
freaking break. It's a generation of assholes. Bobby used the term asshole a
lot. In fact, he called me asshole so many times I almost started answering to
the name. It was his way of making a point, and more often than not, he was
right. "Back in my day," he would say, "you built a car to race,
not sit in some damned parking lot. And nobody, but nobody knew what you was
runnin' under the hood! Nobody, not your brother, not your best friend, not a
damn soul." When Bobby was right, Bobby was right. "Street
racin' was a way of life .
back in
my time, he said. You did it because it was the thing that made you better than
everyone else. And you worked with what you had. You worked the pieces you
already owned, and when you needed somethin' and nobody had it, you made it.
Shit, you didn't run out and buy a cam. First you messed with the valvetrain
and screwed with the geometry 'til you got the motor to breathe the way you
wanted. These kids today are schmucks. All they know is gimme this and gimme
that. It's monkey see, monkey do, and no one knows what the hell is goin'on
inside there. Bobby had always made it clear that in his day, he was truly hot
shit. 1, not knowing him on any other level than as a great dude to bench race
with, took most everything he said about the old days with a grain of salt.
Bobby went out of his way to remain vague about the past. It was always we and
they. That is, until this afternoon. 'Tony, he said, let me tell you a little
story. I'm gonna tell you about the biggest street race in the history of the
sport. You wanna know where I'm comin' from? You wanna know where I been,
listen up 'cause this is where it's at, man. It was 1968, he began, you ever
hear of the Mudd Brothers? (1 hadn't, and felt stupid like, after all, how can
you call yourself part of the street scene and not know a group of dudes known
as the Mudd Brothers.)They was the king of the street. (To my ears, they
sounded a lot like a we, or even I). You see, back in the late'60s he
continued, there was kind of a war going on. It was the guys from Jersey and us
dudes from Brooklyn. These people have all the names that you've heard before.
We're talkin' about the classics, dudes like Levi Holmes, Jesse, Brooklyn Heavy
and a guy that went by the name of Doug Headers. Headers, man, he made the
front page of the Daily News for blockin' the Gowanus during rush hour to get a
run off. These guys had style. There was a bunch of guys, all of Them heavy
hitters. The good ones, the real good ones, went on to run Pro Stockers and
shit like that. These are the dudes that made drag racing what it is today. They
all came from the street. See, back then, the innovation came from the street
and went to the track. These days, it's the opposite 'cause the same people
that made the news on the street are on the track now, sendin' it back. It's an
inner circle. We was right in the hot of it. (There goes that we deal again,
sounding more like an I every time). Bobby leaned closer on the counter and
confided, there was a war goin'on at the time. Those guys from Jersey were
good, real good. They'd come over and kick our asses, they'd take our money and
make us look bad on our own land. Yeah, they were pickin' us off left and
right. The Mudd Brothers were good, though. They were tough, ya know? And it
didn't take long before we started makin' the Jersey boys look bad. Yeah, it
was the Mudd Brothers and Super John. John was a Chevy man, and we was always
into the Mopars, the Hemis you know. John was runnin' this Camaro with a big
old Rat under the hood. That baby was stormin'. We was runnin' this big old
Mopar with the Hemi in it. We'll skip the bullshit and get right to the heart.
Between the Mudd Brothers and Super John, we pretty much turned the Jersey
dudes away. We took a lot of bread off them. So here it comes, after a few
years of jerkin' around with these guys, it comes down to the Mudd Brothers and
Super John. There had to he a king and it came down to one run between the two
cars. The stakes were high. Now remember, we're talkin' 1968 bucks here. It was
$125,000 a side, a quarter million buck purse. We weren't fuckin' around man.
Super John had Dickie Harrel set up his Chevy. Dickie was a big funny car dude
back then, runnin' the Rat motors and doin' real good 'til he died a couple a
years later. Super John's ride was a legal SS/AA stocker. It was a high class
pro effort and he had the deck stacked with Harrel. It wasn't gonna he easy to
beat ,em. What we did was buy the S&K Speed Hemi Dart. It was still a brand
new car at the time. Stick machine, it was set up for SS/B. In fact, the night
the run went off, we had just painted the car black and the paint was still
tacky. There was all kinds of hand prints all over the back of that sucker.
John had Harrel and we wasn't gonna be outdone by that shit, so we got our
hands on Jake King. Kings the guy that' put Sox and Martin on the map. That guy
really knew those Hemi motors. Anyway, he set up the Dart. The race was a
one-shot winner take all. It was a weeknight. We were gonna run down at Kennedy
Airport, 150th and South Conduit. Bumpy as shit today, but back then it was prime
real estate. This run was big news. I didn't count, but somewhere around 5000
people showed up. We had an official police escort to the strip. When
something's that big, with that many people and that kind of cash involved and
the whole thing's gonna take but a few seconds, what could they do but make it
as smooth as possible. Yeah, so we had one cop in front and one cop out back.
We cleared out the road and set the two cars up under the overpass. Both
machines sounded strong, you know, that cackle that a super healthy motor
makes. The smell of racing gas was heavy in the air. Both machines pulled
behind the line and did a couple of massive burnouts. Man, they were soundin'
strong. On the dry hops, the Chevy looked like it was makin' all the right
moves. He'd plant the gas and that sucker would just lean back and dig in. The
Hemi would get up there hard,'cause it was a stick, but the Chevy looked like
it was gonna take it. Both cars pulled to the line and the starter stepped
between 'em. They was both bringin' up the revs, clearin' the mills out and you
could just hear the sound carryin' and bouncin' off the landscape. The ground
was shakin', the overpass was shakin' and all along the street people was
finalizing all the side bets. God only knows how much money changed hands that
night.
The
starter raised his hands and motioned the guys to get ready, and, except for
the cars, there was total silence. He counted to three, quick, and both
machines dug in and left hard. Tha Camaro pulled half a car on the wheelstanding
Dodge. A little way down, the Camaro pulled the lead, by almost a full car on
the Hemi. We thought we was beat. But you know those Hemis, man. They ain't
worth shit on the bottom end. But man, when they start breathin', look out
,cause nothin' can stop' em. The Camaro was in High as the Dart hooked into
Fourth gear. The Dodge had eaten up about half a car by this time, but there
was a half to go and the quarter was commin' up but fast. Tony, he said, let me
tell you, my balls were in my mouth. But then it happened. I heard the noise
and man, it was beautiful. Once that big mutha of an Elephant got comfortable
there in Fourth gear, the noise just changed. That Camaro was makin' the same
pulling, working growl the whole quarter, but when that Hemi hit High, the deep
roar turned into his floating pulsating, reverberating hum. You could literally
hear, from a quarter mile away, the power that bitch was makin'. It was
beautiful. The Hemi stormed by the Camaro with about a hundred feet to go. We
won the whole muthafuckin mess and we were kings' SO Tony, man, when you hear
me talk about the scene out there today and the kids out there and I talk to
you and try to get your head straight, you know where the hell I'm comin' from.
I was pretty blown away by the whole deal. The story, if it happened the way it
was told to me, was fantastic. 1 was inclined to believe the man simply because
I had always known him as a straight shooter. But one small thing stuck out in
my mind, one thing bothered me about the story. If it was that big, with that
many people involved for that kind of money, and it involved the people that he
named, how come I had never heard of this before? I mulled it over as I bid
Bobby a good day and went on with life. 1 never told the story to anyone, that
is until I was at a Mopar meet in New Jersey. I was talking to a fella named
John McBride, a well known super likeable guy who specializes in rare and hard
to find Mopar stuff. To make a long story short, we were on the subject of Hemi
Darts and he began to relate this story to me about this super big buck street
race between a bunch of guys known as the Mudd Brothers and their Hemi Dart and
some guy known as Super something or other. McBride had heard about the run
back during his racing days and made a trip up to New York to cheek out the
action. (1 also called) Ronnic Sox and he confirmed the connection as he
remembered doing some subcontract work for the Mudd Brothers for that race. So
there you have it. A factual account of the events that took place that night
some 18 years ago when the biggest street race of all time went down to he
forever etched into the annals of the sport.