[ponyakr]

T.J. in the news

[ponyakr]

from tyler & prescott

[ponyakr]

some consistent et's & some decent rt's. no rt's recorded where we raced til '86. also had 1 time slip with a .505 rt but the scorer had scratched out the 1st # written & wrote the correct # above it. so i figured some would think i doctered it. & there was also a .500 rt but it went red so i didn't include it.

[ponyakr]

'74 at ammorilla(don't know how to spell it), texas. it was awesome, notice big is gettin down & dirty under his swamp rat digger.

[ponyakr]

it took a couple of weeks to get used to the routine. after that we figured we might survive if we could just hold out long enuff. i lost 20lbs that first 2 weeks even tho i was eating all i could get my hands on. we had a sorry cook. most of the guys wouldn't eat any more than they had to. so i'd watch, & when i'd see somebody get up from the table, i'd say " hey, if you ain't gonna eat that, give it here. i'll eat it". we were burnin some serious calories. 1 guy had enuff & decided he was gonna leave. he waited til late at nite when he figured no body was lookin, thru his duffle bag over his shoulder & struck out walkin. but a drill sargent spotted him. & this guy was a bad dude. he was black, about 6' 6" tall & he taught all our classes on hand to hand combat, including bayonet training. so in a few minutes this guy came back in with a black eye, draggin his duffle bag behind him. he never tried to leave again. i met 1 nice kid from houston. he was a tall lanky white haired kid, 1 of those i mentioned who came there with shoulder length hair. he had a '57 chevy street ride, & after he found out my name was hurst, from then on he called me 4-speed. now i want to tell you about the young man who inspired me to name my goat " gung ho ". there was this tall country boy who was always serious. took all the training as very serious business & tried to be the best at everything he did. i can still remember in our long runs you could always see him far ahead pumping his arms wildly,trying to run even faster. i remember us saying, " boy he's really gung ho " we later found out that he didn't even have to be there. his brother had been killed in viet nam, so he joined up to go get some revenge on those who had don it. now we understood why he was so " gung ho " --he was on a mission. i don't know if he survied it or not-- i sure hope so. thats what inspired me to put "gung ho " on my goat--i was on a mission. T.J. even rigged up an american flag with our co name on it, for the trunk lid. i'll post some pics. T.J. just came thru & reminded me to tell ya'll this. on thanksgiving day 1970 we got up at 3am, packed up our tents & other gear & marched about 3 miles thru the woods to attack a mock viet nam village at dawn. it was complete with a full system of underground tunnels. & i remember it was cold that morning(about 22 degrees). after we got back from training, about noon, they gave us the rest of the day off. they had told us in advance & said we could invite friends or relatives to visit as long as we didn't leave the post. so i told T.J. & she got in the ole goat & her & the girfriend of a fellow trainee from our home town drove on down to see us. i don't know which i was happier to see T.J. or my ole goat--"cause i loved them both dearly. anyway we drove out in the woods & had us a picnic. it was like a cool drink of water to a man who had been out in the desert for days. a man in my co lived in a nearby town, & he let any body that wanted to bring their car down that last week so they'd have a ride home. his yard was full of cars. i had the goat brought down & when we were released, i jumped in & headed for home. the best way i know how to describe to you my feelings on that goat ride home are captured in the words of martin luther king, " free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, i'm free at last".

[ponyakr]

flag & gung ho

[ponyakr]

i came up with another name for my car, but we never got around to puttin it on. i guess we were always either to busy racin or gettin ready to race, it just never happened. but T.J. had it all planned out & even drew a hand painted picture of it, which still hangs in my moms house today. i'll send a pic. when you look, check out the fine detail. she hand painted each & every decal. the name i chose was D-Con. we lived in a trailer house which from time to time was home to mice. we put out traps & even tried d-con once. it worked, but the dead mouse would eventally cause a "stank ", & would have to be dealt with. i noticed on the d-con box it said someting like, kills rats & mice. i imediately related rats to bbc motors & mice to sbc motors. & since chevys were our main competition, the name just seemed to fit perfectly. i'd planned to put, in smaller letters below the name some where, the words, " rat & mouse killer ". who knows, maybe some day i'll still get a chance to use the name. stranger things have happened.

[muscle_collector]

so what are you and tj doing now days? thanks for the stories and pictures. sadly i sit and wander what kind of stories will our kids be telling one day.

[ponyakr]

while lookin thu our scapbook i saw something that sparked the idea for this post. now this is a pontiac street racin story. i'll send a pic that will show the funny car that sparked this story. the name on the car is "wild wilford". now this guy was wild. he'd do a tremendous smoky burnout all the way across the line & continue to about 1/2 track. but the show wasn't over yet. he'd put 'er in reverse & back up almost as fast as he'd gone forward & there was nobody there to direct him back like most cars. i guess every body was too scared of getting run over to get anywhere close. every body just got out of the way. i've often wondered how nhra & ihra let him get away with it. it looked really dangerous. but the crowd loved it & i reckon they figured it mite bring in a few extra fans. now fast forward a couple of years. there's this guy in town (whom i'll refer to again as joe) who drove a '69 or '70 gp, 400, th400. by the way, my dad called evrybody joe. i think he picked it up in service during ww2. he called me joe too. he'd say, "hey joe, hand me that crescent wrench". well joe would come by the shop occasionally, set around sippin on a tasty beverage, which he always seemed to have, & soak up the pontiac racing atmospher. so i guess he finally took all he could stand & bought a '68 bird from a local junk yard. he planned to pull the motor & trans from the gp & put 'em in the bird, to make him a street racer. he told me his plan & said he wanted to shut down some of those tounge waggin bbc guys in town. well by now, you know me, i was all for it. i told him to bring the cars over to the shop. he could use my tools & i'd even be glad to help if he needed it. well he did, & i did, & the bird was soon on the street. but a few days later he came back & said he thought he needed a little more cam before he challenged the bbc guys. so i ordered him a ra4 duplicate & he soon had it fired up & thumpin. i'll never forget this scene. he leaned over the fender to listen, sorta cocked his head to 1 side, & said (in a very countryfied voice) "you know i like that, its sorta got a rang to it". then he asked if i had any slicks for sale. well, by now i had everything, so i fixed him up with a decent set of 9" slicks, & he was off to conquer the world. he only got to race a couple of times. he beat the bbc boys so bad, when the word got around nobody else would run him. now remember, this is a small town & there aren't any 8sec nitrous cars runin the streets like today. his hi 12's were more than enuff to take care of the local big mouths. so just out of boredom i suppose, or maybe he just enjoyed it, he would strap on his slicks, stop at the 1st redlite on main street, do a smoky burnout, then blast off when the lite turned green. then he'd proceed to the next lite & repeat the procedure. the police all knew him so they'd just tell him to cool it, & go on home. when i heard these tales, i imediatly linked him to wild wilford. so from that day til this, i call him " wild willy ". he still answers & knows just what i mean by it. he later got tanked up & went to see his girlfriend. they had an argument & he got mad & tore out up the road, then told me later, " big d, i was so messed up, i forgot to shift & it went off like a hand grenade". but it died as the badest ride in town! the end.

[ponyakr]

wild wilford at amorilla, tx '74

[ponyakr]

i just noticed, i spelled wilfred wrong--please forgive. once again the scrapbook inspired a story. at 1st i thought, "naw, that don't have nuthin to do with pontiacs or racing". but the more i thought about it, the more i see it had a lot to do with my racing, years later. after ww2 my dad came back to his dads 80 acre farm & went to work. they started milking cows by hand & selling the raw milk(it was legal back then) in a nearby town. about 3 years later i came on the scene. for the 1st 4 years i reckon i lived a fairly normal life. but that would soon change. somewhere around age 4 or early 5, my dad took me out 1 day & set me on a big tractor. as i remember it was either a case or an allis chamblers. it had a long front end, with 2 wheels close together. the back wheels were strecthed far apart. my dad showed me how to operate all the controls & told me to start drivin in circles around our house, so i did. now remember folks, i'm no more than 5 years old here. well i was doin o.k. & havin a blast when i got a little to close to the corner of the house. i got the front end by alright, but i forgot all about that rear tire stickin out so for on the back. when that tire hit the corner of the house it just kept right on diggin til it dug a hole deep enuff to kill the engine. well, i thought i had either tore up the tractor or the house or both & that would probably end my tractor drivin days. but when my dad saw what happened, he got a good laugh out of it. he just backed the tractor up & moved it away from the house a bit, then set me back on the seat & said " now son, you gotta remember that the back tires stick out futher than the front, so allow enuff room for 'em to clear". so of i went, round & round the house. hey that was my 1st dirt trackin experience. i'd run to the end of the house & turn left. if you have raised any kids, would you have turned them lose on a tractor at age 5? my dad did. & i've got a sister & a mom still around who can testify. it really happened!

[ponyakr]

even my dad realized i was probably to young at this point to drive the milk truck

[ponyakr]

any body remember studebaker vehichles? they were quite popular back in the 40's & 50's. they had both cars & trucks. my 1st driver was a stude 4-door with suicide doors on the back, & 3 on the tree. i was only 5, so i could neither reach the pedals, nor see over the dash. so dad would let me sit in his lap & steer & shift gears & he would work the pedals. i thought the system worked quite well. now i thought dad was doin this to to let me have a little fun, but by age 6 i found out his real motives. there's always lots of work to do on a farm. its all hands on deck. i was the only son, so dad was training me to help him work. but for me the driving part was always great fun. now by the summer of my 6th year, we had a little red stude pickup. dad had built a plywood box on the back & we would go around to all the dairies in our area & pick up their raw milk in 10 gal metal cans. when we got it home, we'd load it on a 2-ton reefer truck & take it to be processed in monroe, about 40 mi away. while there we'd load up with processed milk & bring it back home to sell. so my dad got a big pillow for me to sit on so i could see over the dash. i still couldn't see over the steering wheel 'cause it had manual steering with a huge steering wheel for more leverage. by now i could reach the pedals enuff to operate everything. i remember this all took place between 1955-57. we stopped in a little town called saline. they had a little cafe with some tables & a juke box. elvis was just geting popular & i loved elvis. dad would give me a dime & i'd play 3 of elvis's latest records, probably something like thats alright mama, jailhouse rock--you know the early stuff. & we'd always buy a choclate malt--they were 25 cents. by the way, gas was still 20 something cents. for the 1st few days of my 1st grade year, i drove me, my mom & my sister to school in our '55 mainline ford with 3 on the tree. it was fun for a while,til i found out the other guys were goin early & catchin flys during baseball season & playin football during the winter. here,s an oft repeated scene from school ground football. i was bigger & stronger than the other guys from all the work my dad had me do, so they'd give me the ball & i would trudge down the field, dragin kids with me, usually with 1 attached to each leg. oh it was great fun. so i quit driving to & from school & started ridin my bike so i could get there earlier. driving was routine by now. i'd already logged thousands of miles in the red stude. any of you guys get to drive to school in the 1st grade?

[ponyakr]

now folks, i didn't get out much in those days. i had to get up at 3am & milk cows, then go to school, then milk again when i got out of school. no weekends off either. i had no idea what other kids were doing at home. i just assumed their dads were teachin them how to drive too. i later found out during drivers ed, at age 15, that most kids had no idea how to drive. our de car was a big ford galaxie, '65 model with 3 on the tree. i can still remember the other kids jumpin & jerkin & killin the motor trying to take off. by that time i had probably logged over 100,000mi in milk trucks, so when it came my turn to drive the de car, i knew just what to do. i got 'er out on the highway, shifted smoothly thru the gears & set to cruising at 60mph. our drivers ed man was the calmest man i ever knew, even when the student was screwing up bad. when i got up to 60 that day, he didn't even look over at me. he just said in a very calm voice " we'll never drive over 55mph in this car". so i slowed 'er down to 55 & that was that. now i was 7 before my dad would let me drive our 2 ton truck to monroe. this was before the interstate was finished(I-20). so when we got to town we had to cross a 4-lane draw bridge across the ouachita river. traffic would usualy be backed up in all 4 lanes on both sides of the river. i remember that dad would always keep a sharp eye out for the law. but we had a plan. when we'd see the law approaching in all this traffic congestion, we'd switch places real quick. it always worked, never got stopped. i have to wonder what a lawman would have thought or done if he had seen me & found out what was goin on. & what about the folks who did see me, what did they think? i know what they'd do today. they'd tell the person they were talkin to on their cell phone they had to go. then they'd call 911 & say " there's a kid driving a truck & you'd better do something before he hurts somebody". i never did. but that was a different day & time.

[ponyakr]

i liked driving a 3 on the tree, but when i got to use a floor shifter in a 2 ton truck, i thought that was about the coolest thing i'd ever done. i guess thats why i loved yankin on a 4-speed in a hot rod so much. & later in life i got to drive an 18 wheeler. now that was a life changing experience. i was used to mashing the clutch pedal to shift. but for those of you who don't know, after you get to rolling down the road, if you mash the clutch, it won't shift at all. finding this out & getting used to it was quite a shock to me. these things are designed to shift smoothly at certain rpms without mashing the clutch. except for the 1st old mack i drove, most of the trucks had either a 9 or 10 speed. you'd shift thru either 4 or 5 gears, then flip a button on the stick & go back thru the same shift pattern again all the way to hi. gearing down when you are slowing is another trick, but i won't go into that here. once you learn how to do this smoothly its really great fun. i suppose thats 1 reason why so many people choose truck driving for a career. i feel its also kin to racing. when you feel that big ole engine (talk about torque) groaning & twisting, trying to get that 50,000lb load up to speed, its an awesome felling. it reminded me in so many ways of trying to harness the torque of a 455 pontiac. these ole trucks are as close as a lot of guys will ever come to racing. but i understand why so many guys (& gals) love trucks. i do too!

[ponyakr]

i wonder how many gb's of memory the human mind has. i've heard it has an unlimited amount of storage capacity. i've found that mine has a lot more stored in there than i realized. i've thought of things lately that i have'nt thought of in 30 or 40 years(or more). i now remember my 1st ride in a pontiac. it was a '64 cat, 389, auto, 4-door, family car. it belonged to the family of a b-ball teammate of mine. in '65 they'd occasionaly let him take the car out & go to town. sometimes he'd pick me up & we'd make the loop around our little town. sometimes it would squeal the right rear tire a little & we thought that was great. we thought, "man, if you put 1 of these motors into a lite body, it would be hot". we were right. either in '65 or '66 we had a friend whose brother had a '65 gto 4sp. 1 day he let his little brother borrow his goat, so he came & picked us up, then drove out to a flat stretch of road. he popped the clutch & barked the tires as he shifted gears & we thought we had died & gone to heaven. i already had gto pics hangin all over my room & i knew i wanted 1. but this was the clincher. yep, i'd have to have 1 of those someday. now those brothers were members of a whole family of gearheads, including dad. later they put together an old car that looked like a gangster ride. i guess it was a 40 something. but they put a 389 motor in it & what they called a hydro trans. it wasn't super fast but purty spunky & definately the coolest lookin ride in town. we'd jump in it & join the muscle car parade when we could. the seeds were planted. it was just a matter of time. wish i had some pics of that old car. by the way, that man has a '68 bird that he restored. its real nice. its got a 455,th400, sorta bronze colered. he takes it to shows & sometimes i meet him driving down the road. the next time i talk to him, i'll see if he has any old pics i can share with you.

[ponyakr]

one summer day, me & my friend with the 389 cat family car, got together & decided we'd try to make a little cash to help with the gas for cruisin. my dad suggested that we pedal peas & watermelons & even offered to let us use the little '53 chevy milk truck. i reckon we used that old truck for about 20 years or so. 1 of the few memories i have from age 4 is my dad catching a plane to dallas & driving that truck home. i remember at age 6 i'd sometimes go along on our house to house delivery route. my dad would hop houses while i drove, then we'd switch up & he'd drive & i'd hop houses. "hopping" a house means that you get the milk out of the back of the truck, then run up the driveway to the house, set the milk down on the doorstep, pick up the empty bottles, run back down the driveway & jump back onto the truck which was usually moving before you got there. this job could not be done slowly, you had to keep it moving to get all the milk put out before the hot sun started shining on it. the driving was fun, the peddling was not. so me & my friend picked peas(my dad always had plenty) & chilled down watermelons & went to town peddlin our wares. when we pulled into a neighborhood it was like the ice cream truck had arrived. the kids would see us & go runnin into their house, hollerin at the top of their voice "watermelons momo" & the momos would come out to see what we had. we sold lots of watermelons & ate the rest. we sold all the peas & lots of choclate milk too. so we were able to do more cruisin when he could get the ole '64 cat for the nite. this is part of where i came from. whats your story?

[ponyakr]

2nd gen, 455, th400, 4.88 gears, best e.t. 9.85 in 1000', best rt's .505, .506, .508 & yes, she won with this car too. the only car she raced without a win was the rag top. she never got a chance. it blew up on the 3rd time trial, due to incompetent machine work. we quickly retired it & built her another '68 hardtop. 2 interesting things about this 2nd gen. i bought it from a u-pull-it junkyard because it had a dual pattern pg trans. they were rare. when i pulled the motor & trans out together, the trans fell on the floor, leaving the front half of the bell housing bolted to the motor. i was really disapointed. after removing the dirt & grime, i could see that it had been cracked almost all the way around for a long time. it was hangin by a thread. its a wonder why it didn't fall out on the road. also this is the same car that "cotton" won the La state championship race with in 1983.

[ponyakr]

i thought of something that might help somebody out there. if your just getting into racing or plan to, here's what i consider a "Must Do" for bracket racing. i'd just put a 455 in T.J.'s last ride. somebody told me that the "big ten" 8.5" rear ends from the 2nd gens were almost as strong as the 12 bolt & would work just fine. so i had a pontiac friend set up a set of 4.11 gears in a 10 bolt & stuck it in. as usual, i was pressed for time & left out 1 important detail. i'd been told by others to always tack weld the axle tubes to the center section before you try to race with slicks. i'd begun to do this on all our cars before their 1st race. but this time i figured we could get by 1 race & i'd do it next week when i had more time--WRONG! soon as she hit the throttle & those big slicks got a bite, the center section broke lose from the axle tubes, broke the u-joint & the pinion bored a hole thru the floorpan. all this could have been avoided. so always put at least 4 good tack welds around the axle tube where it enters the center section. its o.k. to weld it solid if you prefer, but not necessesary. if you do, don't weld a non-stop bead all the way around. the heat can draw the tube out of alignment. just weld a very short bead, then move to the opposite side of the tube & weld another very short bead & so on until finished. by doing this you can avoid the mistake i made, save parts, & have more fun.

[ponyakr]

this .500 rt turned red, some didn't. don't know about nowdays. the .505 was not "doctored", & i don't know how i overlooked the .506, she had even drawn a star by it.