[ponyakr]

in '74 & '75, before i built the speed barn, a man who i'll call ys, let me use his shop & helped me wrench on my stockers. 1 corner of his shop was home to my stash of coors. most of the time it would be almost to the ceiling. when it got low, i'd make another run. now ys was a chevy guy. he had a '69 z-28. sometimes when we'd get tired of wrenchin, we'd git the ice chest & a case of brew, jump in the z-28 & hit the streets. ys also had a little front engine digger. 1 nite we took both cars, & ys took his digger to our local track. it was either the last tt or the 1st round when ys made a pass & ran off the track just passed the lites. from where we were we could't see a thing. it appeared as if ys just disappeared off the radar screen. so the race was stopped & we went down passed the finish line to see what had happened. here's what we saw. veering off to 1 side of the track, it looked like a lawn mower had made 1 pass through a deep stand of grass & weeds. it appeared as tho it hadn't been mowed in years. it was maybe 4 or 5' tall. we saw the trail, but we still didn't see ys. so we started walking down the trail & finally saw some movement ahead. ys was getting out of the car but was finding it hard going in the deep grass & weeds. we could barely make out the back of the car. we drug it out of the weeds & back to the pits. then we gathered around to here ys's story of what had happened. he said that just before crossing the finish line, something came loose on the motor & completely covered his face shield with oil. he could'nt see a thing. he just tried to hold it straight, but veered off the track. actually, the weeds had done a good job of slowing him down. we all had a lot of good laughs about this for several years. we told him he should send the track a bill for mowing their grass.