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We painted the Vic the night before it's racetrack debut. I'd wanted to paint it dark metallic purple with a white top, but with all of the excitement of "going racing Sunday night!", I'd forgotten to 'liberate' some Rustoleum from the grocery store/hardware where I worked. So first we tried mixing a sample of all of the remnants of paint lying around my buddy's brother's garage, but ended up with dog turd brown. Finally, a quart of black paint of some sort was found and we brushed it on. We had enough white to cover the tin we'd screwed to the top to cover the splice and the wheels. Since my friend ran # 99, we used on of his stencils and put #6 on it's doors. If you stood back about 10 feet and squinted a bit, that old Vic looked pretty racy with it's torched out fender wells, proper left to right stance and heavy chicken bars welded to the bumpers.

I had to work on race day until 4. The butterflies were really strong that day. While I'd watched a million races, I'd never even driven a car in Hot Laps. At the dirt bullring where we were going to race her, the fast way around was to drift it out to the fence on the straight-aways and drop to the bottom in the turns. The track generally was dry/slick, so there wasn't much broad sliding. But since I'd only driven the Vic in and out of the garage, I had no clue as to what to expect. Since short track racing is a contact sport, what was it going to feel like to hit or be hit by another car? Would I roll it over? Would I drive it straight into the wall on the first lap. Worse yet, was I going to do what my mom predicted and kill myself. A slow Sunday at the store gave me too much time to think.

Since my friend Gary hadn't finished his '59 Ford yet, he and his brother Donnie volunteered to haul the Vic to the track. Sitting on the home made trailer behind the '59 Chevy pickup, my '53 at least looked like a race car and a few of the other racers came over to check her out. Most were low buck guys and introduced themselves. The hot dogs like the 300 Engineering '56 Crown Vic crew or Bill "the Skinny Skunk" Larson's bunch didn't give us a second glance. We'd arrived at the track late, missed hot laps and qualifying. So we'd be running a heat race and the consolation, a race for cars which didn't qualify fast enough for the Feature event. I backed the Ford off of the trailer and waited for my baptism by fire. Finally my heat race was called and I climbed in the driver's window, put on the motorcycle helmet...the type that looks like a bowl with leather ear flaps borrowed from my cousin, fired up the flattie and started driving to the lineup area.

Halfway there, the motor just died. I cranked on it a second, then tried to shift back to Neutral. But the inline shifter we found somewhere jammed between two gears. So trying to restart the car was an exercise in futility. A wrecker came over and towed me back to the pits. Not even getting out onto the track was really embarrassing!

We had plenty of fuel at the carb but no spark, so the next order of business was to pop the distributor cap. A quick look showed that the condenser wire had come loose from the points. Two seconds with a 5/16" wrench fixed that. We un-jammed the shifter, and since the Vic had a 4:11 rear end, I'd just start off in second which was the gear I'd be racing in. Soon the Consy was called and I drove her back to the lineup area. Since I hadn't qualified, I was to start dead last. Just as well since I could watch how the drivers raced the track.

To this day, I hate sitting in the lineup waiting to race. Too much time to think about what could break on the car, the race before yours always seem to take hours and you can't tell when it's finished except by the roar of the crowd. It seems like I generally smoke a half pack of cigarettes waiting in line. But on this night I was genuinely scared.

Finally, we were waved onto the track, stopped on the front straightaway to be introduced to the crowd, then waved on for a couple of pace laps. Nowadays, I generally tap the bumper of the car ahead of me to try rattling his cage on the start, but not on this night. I stayed back, probably too far back from the '56 Chevy ahead of me.

Finally, after what seemed like 100 pace laps the green flag flew. I jammed the throttle to the floor and we were racing! I found that I could easily stay with the pack on the straightaway. Maybe the Flathead wasn't dead after all. But I got blown away in the turns. Our cheapie chassis setup and my lack of experience really showed here. The pack started spreading out and in not too many laps, I felt a tap on my back bumper. I guess I'd been concentrating so hard on just driving the car that I hadn't looked in my mirror. The leader was right behind me! Before I had a chance to move over to let him by, he jammed his '62 Galaxie's front bumper into my left quarter panel and spun me into the infield. I stalled the car, took a deep breath and thought "Damn, that was fun!"

The yellow flag came out. After the cars stopped on the front straightaway, the officials lined us up for the restart. Luckily the new battery from my mom's Mustang I'd borrowed had plenty of juice and the flathead refired. Having to be push started would have been even more embarrassing. I'd already had my dose of ribbing for the night. So I whipped the Vic around and pulled to the outside at the rear of the field. But somehow, that spin had made me feel more racy. On the inside was a rusty '60 Ford 4-door with rattle can numbers, it's 223 smoking a bit when he revved it. I decided then and there that my life's goal would be to beat that ratty Ford! As we came off the fourth turn for the restart, I forgot about simply driving and started racing, swinging wide almost scraping the fence. Turns come up quick on a quarter mile track so at the last moment I chopped down ahead of that '60, scraping a little paint but keeping the Vic straight. When we hit the backstretch I looked in the mirror and he was 5 or 6 car lengths back. I hoped that I could pass another car, but unfortunately the white flag then the checker fell and I didn't get a chance. By then, the Flathead was pushing steam out pretty bad. But when I drove to my pit, shut her down and climbed out, my dad said "Good job, girl!". That made everything.. the long nights of stocking shelves, being perpetually broke because of a beat up Ford and all of the other sacrifices worth it. Those words also helped give me an addiction to racing stockers that has lasted until this day.