Growing up in Lakewood

I don’t exactly remember when I met Darrell “Duie” Dumont, but it had to be around age thirteen. I do remember that his interest were the same as mine, fast cars and racing and with that common thread, we formed a friendship that lasted longer than anyone else I know.

We both had the desire to own a racecar someday and be like the Hot Roders in California that we read about in the magazines. But at our age and position in life, all we could do was read about what the real hot roders were doing and study the names and pictures in Hot Rod and Rod & Custom Magazines. 

California was so far away from where we stood, it might as well have been on Mars. Our resources were limited to being able to afford the coffee and hamburger necessary to hold down a booth at the coffee shop, where we read all the hot rod magazines from the news rack until we had them memorized.  We did a lot of visualizing about what it would be like to own a race car and race it on a drag strip, like the ones we read about in California. 

Our favorite spot to hang out and do this reading was Mel’s Delcon on Madison Avenue in Lakewood.   Mel knew that we may never buy the magazines that we mulled over for hours.  He also knew he wasn't’t making a big profit on what we ate, but he put up with us, so we became regulars after school.

We spent a lot of time, thumbing thru the magazines until we had memorized everything, including the ads. We knew the names behind the companies that produced the parts, as well as those who raced; in most cases they were one and the same. W read every story on how to build an engine for racing and it got to the point that we were experts (in our minds) on how and what we would build for an engine, when it became time.

The engine of choice, at that time was the Ford Flathead. We knew by studying the ads, we would learn who the main manufacturers were that made the products that we would eventually buy.  There were those hours of discussions Duie and I had about making the choices.  Ed Iskenderian has the best ads I said, “yea, but Clay Smith has a super great looking decal, plus he has had many mentions of doing good in these articles, Duie said.   "Oh, and there’s Winfield, he has a cam he calls SU1A, it seems like a lot of stories mention it. “I’m going to use Vic Edelbrock’s three carb manifold,” I said. “Yea but  there‘s Tattersfield and Phil Wyand, they make triple carb manifolds and then there’s Barney Navarro who just came out with a four-carb manifold, Duie continued.    Wow!! Four carburetors. "Duie, you’d have to be a real show off to pull into a drive-in with your hood off and four carbs sticking up there for everyone to see.       SO...…That was Duie's pet closer.  SOooo!!!

There were a lot of choices and there were more and more people getting into producing parts as the sport was growing at a fast pace. The stories kept on coming to us through the magazines, year round. Even though we were buried in snow, we read what the authorities had to say. Don Francisco, Ray Brock and the chief overall authority, the man that knew everything that was going on and what everybody was doing at all times, because he was the editor of the Bible (Hot Rod) and the Godfather of all hot rodding and drag racing. Our real hero," Wally Parks.

                                      A NEW GUY IS INVITED TO THE FORUM

One day Duie mentioned that he heard that a kid by the name of Howard Weise, who also lived in Lakewood and was about our age, had a 34 Ford coupe in his garage and was building it into a hot rod. So we invited “Howie” to meet us at Mel’s for our weekly forum.

We weren’t sure as to weather we would let Howard into this tight knit group of ours until he proved himself worthy.  He started out on a solid note when he said he had a collection of every Hot Rod magazine published and that he read every one twice and some three times.

He went on to tell us about his choices or parts he wanted to buy for the build up of his “MILL” as he referred to the engine. We listened to what Howie had to say with an open mind, but then, when he said that he had called “Barney” to order the four carb manifold, we both came about six inches out of or shoes and looked at each other, both with the look of disbelief and dumbfounded ness, if that’s a word.

Who was this guy who would, pretend or otherwise, drop a first name of one of the West Coast Gods that we had such a great admiration and respect for. It was like a school classmate coming over your house and after meeting your parents for the first time, calls your father by his first name. We didn’t call our California heroes by their first names for fear of being sacrilegious. At least,    not until now.

Not to be shown up, or let Howie think that he was a step ahead of us, we immediately picked up the conversation with Duie asking me, “ By the way Joe, did you get a hold of “Ed” about your cam? “ “Yes I did, he finally called me back the other day and told me the cam is on its way. I also called Don and he is sending a set of his Boxed rods. What about you Duie, what did you decide on heads for your "MILL”      “Yea. I decided on Edelbrock, so I called Vic and he said he’d be shipping them to me next week.

We never got to see Howe’s 4 carb "Navarro" manifold but he did have quite a collection of Hot Rod Magazines and what particularly interested us was the chain hoist hanging in his garage for hoisting engines in and out. We had further sessions at Mel’s with Howie attending, but Duie and I were always prepared to roll up our pants cuffs when it got too deep.

                                          'THE LAKEWOOD DAYS' 

                                                    High School

The early days of my career were influenced by my curiosity and desire to create new things that had to do with drag racing.  It all started in Lakewood Ohio, a west side suburb of Cleveland.  Lakewood High school was a great learning experience for me, not because I was a bookworm by any stretch, but because it meant learning more about the skills I needed to further my interest in race cars. 

There were many influences in my school years, one of which was Meredith 'Pop' Miles.  Everyone just called him 'Pop' Miles.  Miles had an engine shop next to his house and in it; he had a few machine tools he used to modify engine parts for most of the racing enthusiasts in that area, including myself.  One day I took the flywheel from my Ford flat head engine to him and asked him to make it lighter.  I watched him put the flywheel on the lathe to remove excess weight. 

The lathe was exactly like the one we had in the Auto Shop at school.  Miles liked to talk a lot while he worked and like a sponge for information, I listened.  He told me of all the flywheels he made lighter like the one he was doing for me.  A few days later, I asked if I could help by machining these flywheels for him on the lath in auto class at school.  After I showed him I could do the job, There was a steady supply of wheels to be machined.  A. K. Cook, the Auto Shop class teacher, who smoked cigars continuously, already convinced that I was one of his more advanced students, was open to my proposition of cigars for lathe time and I was off and running in my first business enterprise. 

One day a fire sent me to the hospital with both hands very badly burned.  The fire started in the back yard of my home in Lakewood while I was cleaning parts to get my 1932 Ford four door sedan ready to paint.  During my three-week stay in Lakewood hospital, I met a man in the next room who became a good friend. His name was Lou Beck and he was there for a hernia operation. 

Lou, was in the paint manufacturing business and during the long visits we had in the hospital, I told him of my interest in racing and how my engine could make more power if it burned nitro methane instead of gasoline for fuel, like they did in California.   I also explained that Nitro was very hard to get because the distributor, Commercial Solvents, did not want it sold for racing fuel.  He hinted that he could buy Nitro- methane because it was an ingredient, frequently used in the paint stripper business and that he could easily buy it for me without Commercial Solvents any the wiser. With Lou buying and selling it to me at his cost, it was very little more than the cost of gasoline at the time.  This is how I was able to run my high school dragster on nitromethane in it's purest form (straight). 

Before his departure from the hospital, Lou introduced me to his daughter.   Donna was my age and in spite of the fact that she went to West Tech, the cross town rival high school, there was an instant attraction.

One day a guy by the name of Mickey Cook, moved to Cleveland from Pittsburgh.   He drove a beautiful 32 Ford Model B roadster that looked like it should have been on the front cover of Hot Rod Magazine.  Mickey and I became good friends, in spite of my father, who preached, "If you don't stop hanging around with 'those hot roders', you're never going to amount to anything".  Mickey Cook, for some reason, in my father's mind, was the worst of all the bad influences in my life.

I told Mickey about my meeting Donna while in the hospital and that I had a crush on her, but because my hot rod wasn't finished, I had not yet gotten over to see her.  He suggested that we hop in his roadster and go visit her immediately.  When we arrived, I introduced Mickey to Donna and to her father, Lou Beck.  We were into a discussion with Lou about hot rods, when we heard Donna, about as excited as a school girl can get with a phone in her hand, talking with a girlfriend.   We soon learned that she wanted her friend to meet us and she insisted that the three of us drive over to her house.  I could tell by Lou's nervousness, that having his daughter ride off in this fire engine red hot rod, that sounded like it was already running eighty miles an hour when it was idling, wasn't setting very well with him.  But Donna pleaded, that because she lived just around the corner, everything would be fine.  The long and short of that story is that, Mickey got to meet Donna's best friend Jan Starbird that day and by now, the two must be enjoying, somewhere close to their forty fifth wedding anniversary.

A popular thing for hot roders in the Cleveland area, as well as in other cities, was gathering in the drive-ins to show off their cars and sometimes to find challengers for a drag race, which of coarse was run on the street, with a flag man and sometimes with no lights.  Just like what we read so much about in California.  Many of the drive-in, hot rod crowd that I met then, went on to be legitimate drag racers when organized drag racing came on the sceen. Names Like the Hrudka Bros., Ron Hassel, Mickey Hart, Eddie Schartman, Jim Koonce, Slim Carter, Chuck Starkey, Arlen Vanke, Bill Sass, Lou Novotny, Bob Riggle and many others, went on to become N.H.R.A. National Champions

Now, Fifty (50) years later, most of that same crowd, meets once a year in Cleveland for a re-union.  They come to bench race and talk about the good old days, the races they won, the races they should have won and how lucky so many of us were to even survive, some of the crazy stunts we pulled. This annual event is promoted and organized by Mickey Cook and Red Mathie.

Another influence in my high school years was Jack Harris.  Jack, who was destined to ultimately own the largest speed parts warehouse system in the entire Midwest called Rush Sales, started building a Flathead Ford powered dragster.  The driver sat behind the rear axle, which was later referred to as a slingshot dragster.  One of the dragster's main attractions was the full streamlined body he created, by hand, from sheet aluminum.  It amazed me to watch him weld and shape flat aluminum sheet into something as beautifully as the body on that dragster.

Soon after he started on the car, Jacks desire to be in the speed shop business took precedence over his desire to go drag racing and for a while the car sat unfinished.  He knew of my keen interest to go drag racing and after many discussions, I inherited the dragster with two Flat Head Ford engines, for what seem like only a few dollars at the time.    I kept the car in Jack’s garage until it was finished  in 1956

The engine was a 296 cu.in. flat head Ford with Edelbrock heads and 3 stromberg carbs, converted

to burn pure Nitromethane.   But it was the shot glass of benzine that made it work.  We learned this

trick from Frank Spillar who owned Midwest racing on Cleveland's East side.  Once a year, Spillar

would travel to California to get all the speed secrets straight from Gods themselves. He talked first

hand to the stars that we only read about like, Ed Iskenderian, Vic Edelbrock, Navaro, Clay Smith,

and other Heros who were making news. He then shared their secrets with us so we could catch up.

There were no names or lettering on the dragster's body, but I often thought of painting one on that said sponsored by ‘Lakewood High School’ because, without the school athorities knowing about it, the school played a major role in supplying the resources to completely finish the dragster.  The front-end suspension, drive line parts and so many engine parts were either made or modified with the help of the students in Machine Shop and Auto Shop classes.  Even Mr. Barufka, who ran the Foundry class, showed me how to cast aluminum for the front wheel hubs.  All this was going on while the lathe in A.K. Cook's Auto shop was busy, almost full time, turning out flywheels for cash needed to pay for all the odds and ends. Plus, the cigars for A.K.

Some of the preppie kids from the rich neighborhoods drove new cars to school.  Red Armstrong, drove a new 55 Buick Century to school, which was really the factory's version of a high performance stocker.  It made a big impression with most of the girls and made Red, one of the cool kids around school. 

I drove a 1932 Model B Ford sedan in which I installed one of the modified flat head Ford engines that I inherited with the dragster.  It had an Edelbrock intake manifold with three carburetors converted back to gasoline for the streets.  I left the air cleaners off so the loud, air sucking sound at wide open throttle, could be heard in harmony with the screeching tires. Which only happened when I knew all the study hall windows were wide open.  Naturally, this tagged me the school's hot rod.

The best looking girl in the entire school, maybe in the whole city, was Betty Jensen, she was the Home coming queen and had the entire back field of the football team chasing her.  I never could figure why she got hooked on me, but I think it was because I saved her from an x-boyfriend, who was physically abusing her, or maybe it was because she liked the flame paint job on the hood of my Model B four door sedan. Whatever it was, when all the other guys and gals were at the Friday night football games, Betty sat faithfully in my garage, watching intently, while I prepared my car for Sunday's trip to the drag strip.

The first drag strip in the area was forty miles away in Akron.  It was an abandoned, two lane, bumpy road, that had a gradual turn, starting just before the finish line.  The turn got tighter, the further you went into the shut off area.  Not very safe, to say the least.  Good strip, bad strip, not having any strip prior to that, I didn't know the difference and, besides, I wasn't too concerned about safety at that stage in my life.   I got the biggest rush from just being there.

  On severial occasions, my dragster was towed to and from the drags in Akron, by Bob Riggle (Hurst Hemi Under Glass) and his brother Dale.  The Cam Jammers Car Club, who ran the drag strip, finnaly got permission to use the airport for the more noteable "Akron Drags", but this happened only once a year.

I don't think I ever remember being more excited than when I was on the starting line, on the old strip, with a croud of spectators about four deep, leaning over a picket fence only five feet away,  I was center stage and very nervous.  This was not only my maiden voyage with this dragster, but my first run ever, down a quarter mile strip.  Together with that big croud, we waited for the flag-man to give me the go.  But the flagman seemed to be taking his good old time.  What he saw to my rear, I couldn't see, but to my surprise, he was waiting for someone that he thought I should race.

Well, who should pull up in the next lane but Walt Arfons, sitting out in front of an aircraft engine powered dragster with a propeller in the rear for added thrust.  It was appropriately named "The Bologna Slicer".  When the flag man finnaly dropped the flag I was gone.  I knew I was way out front, but in the excitement, I made a decision to not shift, fearing that if I missed a shift into high gear, he would get me.  That turned out to be a bad decision.  A second later, even the noise from my engine, screaming in low gear, was drowned out by the sound of that monster with the big propeller blade going past me with only two feet between us.  I later thought about how I could have been sliced bologna in the process of losing my first side by side drag race.  

Back in the pits, with my blunder chalked up to inexperience, Duie and I had a great time meeting our new friends, Art and Walt Arfons, the "Green Monster" boys,  Art introduced us to their mother, who was a real hoot and the most excited person in the entire pit area.  What a kick it was to meet that whole group.  Art Arfons went on to do great things with his famous "Green Monsters" including many land speed records.

 More to come:

The N.H.R.A. Nitro Ban:    back to gasoline---             

The World Series of Drag Racing 1959 --  Mickey, Duie and Jim

Dragway 42 Home of the Ohio Gassers: Gordon Collett, Connie Kaletta, Ohio George Montgomery

Lakewood (the company) on the brink, but saved by Ma Schubs.....