[ponyakr]

as i,ve said '78 was our best year yet. i saw today in our scrapbook that T.J. had figured it up at the end of the season & we had won $ at 69% of all races attended. thats not a record, but at the time we thought it was great. we usualy went to 2 races a week, so we had to pay for truck gas, gas for 3 cars, eats & motel. we won enuff to cover all these expenses with a little left over. the cars were already built so the only expenses not covered were truck notes & insurance. & thats what the day job was for. i? was living my dream! there was never a thought of what are we going to do this weekend. we knew that when saturday came, "we are outa here", usually headed to tyler, texas for the sat. nite race, then on to either hallsville,texas or haynesville, La on sunday. sometimes it would rain on our parade. i hate rainouts. some weekends it rained sat. & sunday. i remember what a sad, hollow feeling it was driving back home in the rain knowing we had just blown a whole weekend & did'nt even get to back off the trailer. it just made the whole week gloomy. but, hey, there's always next week. it was,nt always fun & excitement but the good times more than outweighed the bad. lets crunch some numbers. we went to 49 races but 4 were rained out. we had 15 wins--that means we won exactly 1/3 of all races completed. we also won money with 7 runner-ups, 6 semi-finals & 4 qtr. finals. & that doesn't include all the semis & qtrs at track where they didn't pay that far down. we won races at 5 different tracks. anybody know how much gas was in '78? here,s 1 fill-up 19.7 gals for $11.40--aprox. 60 cents. entry fee at 2 tracks was $7, 1 was $10, & usually either 15 or $20 for a big race. inflation has taken its toll. & we could have done better but we had to take a whole month of to get a new trailer house set up & get married. but i guess it was probably worth it. as i look back on it now, all in all i'd have to say it was definitely 1 of the best years of my life. against all odds, including all the chevy naysayers & pricks, we had proven beyound any shadow of a doubt that our trusty pontiacs were up to the task & there was not a hi-dollar chevy any where out there that we couldn't beat! more evidence of this is captured in the results of the ihra points meet held that year at tyler & printed in the ihra paper "the drag review". if it'll scan alright, i'll post it. (ps) T.J. is investigating how to get all these pics & stuff processed so we can share it with you. please bear with us, we're new at this & still "dummies" on the subject. hey we don't even have a cell phone. can you believe that? T.J. bought 1 a few years back, but we live so far back in the sticks it would'nt work out here, so she took it back.