[ponyakr]

i live in the bayou country of north la 10 miles north of dugdemona bayou near beautiful caney lake -- former home of 14lb record bass my first season of racing was loads of fun. i learned a lot & got some good experience. our home track was running stock,ss & street modified. there was no such thing as bracket racing. that brings up a ? for some of you older guys. do you remember what year et bracket racing started in your area? i wonder if it might have started sooner in some parts of the country then took a while to filter down to little podunk tracks like ours. or was it something nhra came up with & it started all over the country at the same time? i ran d stock & won my class almost every week. they gave a trophy for class win & a bigger 1 for overall win. i soon had a room full of trophies. we finally had so many trophies we talked the track owners into giving us $5 instead of a trophy. later T.J. sold several to a neighbor so he could brag to his girlfriends. we ran off track records, so i set mine so low nobody else in my class could touch it. it was even lower than the c stock record held by a stage 1 455 buick. i ran some on an airport runway-- no lites, just a flagman. spots were given as so many feet head start. the short ones were marked off. they guessed at the long ones. a pinto won several races so they put a bounty on him. his spot was 410ft (estimated of course) on me. i beat him & we never saw him again. when an airplane wanted to land we stopped the race & when he was out of the way we'd fire'em back up.