[ponyakr]

my b-ball days were a special time in my life. during my last 2 years i think we won close to 30 games each year & lost only about a dozen or so. our coach trained us well & would layout our plan of attack for each game. both our offensive & defensive plans depended on who we were playing. one night he had planned everything so perfectly that we beat a class 3a school by nearly 20 points. we were as small as you could get, class c. so nobody really gave us a chance before that game. it was just 1 of those special nites when everything just fell into place. it was 1 of my best games ever. i think i scored 22 points & didn't miss a single freethrow. i later experienced several nites like this while bracket racing. sometimes everything just falls into place, even if your not quite up to par that nite. maybe a couple of guys red lite, 1 breaks & you even get the bye run. you only have to make 1 decent pass to get the win. now that don't happen that often, but it has happened to us several times. but most wins you have to earn. the lessons i learned from competitive b-ball served me well in bracket racing & probably helped contribute to my success & enjoyment of the sport. i'll try to send a b-ball pic from my senior year.

[ponyakr]

i'm posting a pic of my 1st wheelie. as you can see i'm holding up the front end of a rear engine car. they were purty lite. the other boy in the pic helped me pick it up, then i held it up & posed for the pic. that boy was also a classmate & teammate on the b-ball team. he could jump higher than me so coach called him bunny rabbit, later shortened to just bunny. he was a preachers kid & smart. when he came, he bumped me down from 1st place to 2nd. but we were good friends & made some great memories playing b-ball together. now i want you to notice the car in the background. its a '66 coronet 500, 383, auto, 3.25 posi rear. when my dad talked about buying a new car to serve as part time family car, part time ride to college for my sister, i tried to give him my input on how it should be optioned. i suggested a 426 hemi, 4-speed, & at least 3.73 gears. but cooler heads prevailed, & i think it still turned out o.k. it made a real nice street car (for a non-pontiac) & served my sister well for many years. but my mom looked real out of place driving it. lookin back i can hardly believe my dad let me get away with those options. what we really needed was a 4-door family sedan. my dad was a purty cool old dude, god rest his soul!

[Greg Reid]

That look's like a Renault aircooled. My Grandfather had one when I was very young that he built from spare parts.

[ponyakr]

this story is about how i came to name my goat " gung ho ". in 1970 the war in viet nam was still blazin. i was a senior in college, so my college deferment was just about up. some guys were geting there notices to sign up for the draft 6 months before graduation. viet nam was a war nobody liked or understood. so most of those sent to fight were draftees. it wasn't like ww2 when we were attacked by the japanese & hitler was trying to take over the world & exterminate all the jews. back then kids would even lie about their age so they could get to go to war & fight for this country. well, i decided that, rather than wait to get drafted, i'd just do what a lot of other guys were doing, & join the national guard. they didn't go to war back then like they do today. so i signed up & was soon sent to basic training. i was not prepared for what awaited me. that next 4 months was H???. to this day, that entire experience is still the worst & most miserable of my entire life. i was raised to be nice & treat people right. but from the very moment my foot stepped off the bus at fort polk, La , my life was changed. there were always drill sargents in your face, shouting orders & requiring many push-ups as payment for any screw-ups. many of you have no doubt experienced this or at least seen it depicted in movies. i was taken from a care free life of cruisin down the street in my gto & goin to see my honey, to this wild world of discipline, & both physical & mental training. i suppose the best word i could use to describe what i felt is shock. they talked(hollered) down to me & called me every kind of low life scum they could think of--lower than a worm in the dust. well, hey, i thought i was a purty nice guy. obviously, they didn't. i realize that its just all part of the training, but at the time it was a traumatic experience for me. lookin back now, i can recall some things about it that are humorous, but at the time, we didn't think it was funny. 1 such incident occurred rite after we arrived. they marched us down to a barber shop, & 1 by 1 we went through for our buzz cut. now picture this. its 1970 & most of these guys have hair shoulder lenght or longer. it was sorta like an automated factory where all the raw material go in 1 end & the finished product comes out the other end & they all look just alike. the barbers would ask each 1 how they wanted it cut, but they soon found out that it didn't matter, we all got the same style--real short. & to add insult to injury, they'd march us down to the barber shop every friday to get a fresh buzz cut, whether we needed it or not. & to top it off we had to pay the barber out of our meager pay checks. well, i see this is gonna take to long, so i'll finish it next time.

[ponyakr]

well i guess they're lost in space again, so i'll try again

[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]

i find myself in the position of having to print a full retraction. it seems that i have unintentionally printed a falsehood. it concerns my tale about a racer finding a snake in the trunk of his racecar. i saw him today & he told me i had it all wrong. he said i didn't call him snake, i called him "copperhead". you gotta watch us old dudes, sometimes we remember things a little bit different than they actually were. i tried to remember, but i just don't recall copperhead. but it does make sense, when i think about it, 'cause his hair was red. it sounds just like somethin i'da come up with. anyway, a big apology to "copperhead". by the way, its been rumored that copperhead is planning a big comeback tour this year out of semi-retirement. ya see we're old, but we ain't dead yet. good luck copperhead! now this brings up another tale. copperhead had 2 brothers that were also red heads. i saw 1 of them the other day & ask him if he remembered me comin over to their house & taking them riding on my cushman scooter. he said he did then asked me if i remembered letting him ride it in his yard & having a wreck. no i have no recall of that happening. here's what i remember of how it went down. i was about 14 or 15 & had just discovered girls. well, as boys will, i sized 'em up & made my choice. this girl was sorta tall & shapely & good lookin--she was my pick of the liter. now it just so happened that this girl was copperheads sister. so i concocted me a plan. i'd go over to his house & take him & his brothers ridin on my scooter, if in return they'd promise to try & talk sister into going riding with me. & NO, it didn't work. lookin back on it now, i figure the only reason she ever rode with me was to shut her brothers up so they'd quit pestering her. anyhow, for the few times she did go, it was really a thrill to a young boy who knew absolutely nothing about girls. as i remember it was about 2 years later before i ever had a date. so to all you red headed brothers, i say many thanks for trying to help me out back then. that scooter was the 1st of many 2-wheel street rides i had. it was a red cushman with a wisconsin husky engine & a 2 by the tank shifter. any of ya'll had 1? after that i had several hondas, a couple of yamaha dirt bikes & finally a black harley sportster with lots of chrome. but once i started racing, the thrill of 2-wheelers faded away, so i sold the harley. i also quit hunting & traded my duck gun(an 870 wingmaster pump 3" magnum) for a '67 goat with a blown up 400, th400, & posi rear with 4.11 gears. precious memories.

[ponyakr]

here's a late model story. back about '08 or '09 i'd just bought my 1st racingjunk.com car. the former owner said he ran 11.90's with it. i had it shipped down from kansas on a truck for about $450. if i remember, gas was about $4 a gallon, so we figured it would be cheaper than going to pickm it up. especially if you count time spent. everything looked o.k. it was obviously built by someone who had done it before. i was well pleased & could'nt have built 1 like it nearly as cheap. if you don't have a car & plan to start from stratch, you can probably save a lot of $ & work if you buy a car thats already built, or at least a roller. there are some real nice cars that come thru at reasonable prices. the worst thing i found wrong with my car, the front wheels were bent. they must have come off a car that did tall wheelstands. & it had tall moroso front tires. i'd learned years before that we could'nt cut decent lites with tall front tires. so i got some 15x4 cl's & bought the shortest street tire i could find. i think it was a 185, & just under 24" tall. the 9" slicks were almost gone, but i figured i mite get by with them for a couple of races. i'll have to admit after the traction problems i'd seen caused by a 455 i was skepticle to say the least. but the guy i bought it from said it hooked good. he was right. after a decent burnout i pulled to the line, fully expecting to have to lift when the tires broke loose. but to my great surprize, it just nailed me back in the seat & blasted off.it was a little quicker off the line than T.J.'s quickest ride with a 60' time in the low 1.60's. every pass i made it hooked perfectly. now to me thats a real testament to how well ladder bars work. & then what really blew me away, a couple of days later, i jacked up the rear end & noticed when i turned the right wheel forward, the left wheel turned backwards. this thang was a 1 wheeler! once again i thought, what if we'd had ladder bars back in the old days. how many more races could we have won? but thats water under the bridge--you can't go back.