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Drag Racing Stories
Cork and Miller: A Top Fuel Riddle
By David Hapgood
When the winter gloom finally lifted from Oregon last spring, I managed to get out of the city for the first joy ride of the year. Drag racing was pretty much the last thing on my mind. But upon reaching the Portland suburb of Troutdale, I spotted this large fifth wheel trailer rotting in a field. Even from a distance I could make out the word 'Dragster' on the side. To say that I was intrigued would be an understatement. In my dreams, the smaller lettering on the trailer was going to read 'Top Fuel.' It was a bit of a shock when I walked over and discovered that this was exactly what it said: "Cork & Miller Top Fuel Dragster."
I grew up on the east coast, so a fair number of the smaller Northwest fuel teams of the 1970s are still unknown to me. The names on the trailer were drawing a blank. I turned to a nearby house and saw a man struggling with the start cord on a power mower: maybe he had the answers. I walked over and introduced myself. Yes, he owned the trailer, but the TF car was not inside. As for the history of the 'Cork & Miller' TF team his best guess was, "I think Miller drove it," which wasn't exactly a lot to go on. Then he caught me off guard by asking if I thought the trailer was worth anything. I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, so I muttered something vague about the bad economy and the depressed market for nostalgia racing equipment. I left him as I found him, struggling with his lawn mower.
The "Cork & Miller" TF team was a mystery, and finding their old trailer in its original paint was like unearthing a gem. For a long time I've maintained that the mid to late '70s was my favorite era in drag racing, but it wasn't until now that I realized that this time frame was more or less defined by the venerable 5th wheel trailer.
To my sensibilities, there was always something magical about a 5th wheel. I had fond memories of stopping by FC and TF pit areas after a night of racing to talk with the crew and look in through the side door at the nose of the car for one last look, and there it would be: a monster you had watched generate thunder an hour earlier, now nestled silently between fuel containers and wall-mounted slicks, with perhaps a spare engine or two resting on the floor nearby.
The fact is that to this day I love 5th wheel trailers and the era that they stood for. The "Cork and Miller" trailer was a fine example: I guessed its vintage as 1975 to 1982.
I assumed that when I got home I would simply go to my favorite racing website (www.draglist.com, of course!), type in Greg Cork or John Miller under TF drivers on the drag lists, and the mystery would be solved. Well, I was wrong. Despite more than 6,700 separate TF entries on the lists, there was no sign of either Cork or Miller. Their omission was a perfect example of how the site is and may always be a work in progress, a living document.
The next step, albeit one I did not relish, was to try Google. After much searching I came up with a page from Don Ewald's excellent site, www.wediditforlove.com, which had a competition number listed for a Johnny (but not John) Miller in TF in Division 6 from back in the 1960s-1970s. OK, this had to be the same Miller as in 'Cork & Miller' -- or did it? I realized there must be hundreds of John Millers living in the Northwest: there was a chance that two different John or Johnny Millers drove top fuelers.
The mystery had evolved into something far bigger than I was prepared to tackle just then, so I put off the serious research for another time. And yet it wasn't more than a couple of weeks before it began eating away at me again. So I contacted longtime northwest photographer Larry Pfister of www.horsepowerheaven.com and asked if he remembered a 'Cork & Miller' TF car. He didn't, but he put me in touch with Woodburn Dragstrip photographer George Adams, of www.nwdragracing.com. George sent out an all-points bulletin, and within days I had the contact info for a man named Larry Nail, who was said to have worked on the "Cork and Miller" TF car and could answer all of my questions.
Thanks to Mr. Pfister and Mr. Adams, now I was getting somewhere!
Before I called Larry Nail I decided to phone TAFC racer Jim Peters to run it past him. Jim is from Molalla, Oregon, which careful readers will note is the same hometown lettered on the side of the 'Cork and Miller' trailer. Molalla is not a large community, and I was sure that Jim would have some information for me. I was correct. He said that Greg Cork was an old friend of his who had passed away a few years back. Jim was still driving one of Greg's former alky FCs, outfitted with a new Roush Impala shell. I was sorry to hear of Mr. Cork's passing, as I'm sure he would have gotten a kick out of the hoops I was jumping through to write this story. "The guy you want to talk to," Peters told me, "Is Larry Nail."
OK, now I had two sources telling me that Mr. Nail was the man, and I knew I was on the right track. Just for kicks (and because I owed him a phone call) I ran "Cork & Miller" past local TAFC racer Donn Hosford, who told me about how John Miller had helped him early in his career. He also said nice things about Greg Cork. The verdict so far was unanimous: everyone was not only familiar with 'Cork & Miller', but the two men were respected and well liked in the northwest racing community. I've lived here for 18 years and I was starting to feel perfectly stupid for not already knowing about them. It was time to phone Larry Nail.
I have to say, one of the most rewarding aspects of being involved in this sport are the people you meet along the way, whether in person, via e-mails, or over the phone -- though sometimes you never know what you're getting into when you place what is known as a 'cold call'. But with Mr. Nail I had no reason to worry, as he ended up being a friendly guy who gave me an hour of his time. "I raced with Greg Cork for twenty-seven years," he told me. When I asked if he had a photo of the TF car, he said he would take the one hanging on his garage wall and mail it to me so I could scan it for this article.
It wasn't the first time that a racer who is a total stranger has entrusted me with his irreplaceable, vintage material, but it's always nice to be reminded that this sort of thing still happens in the world. When the package arrived I saw that Larry had enclosed several additional photos as well. Seeing how this article never would have seen the light of day without his input, I am including all of the pictures, below. Thank you, Larry!
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| "Cork and Miller" at Seattle, circa 1979. Photo by Auto Imagery. |
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| The "Cork & Miller" TF crew. From left to right: Greg Cork, Larry Nail, and Doug Bennett.
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| Gary Kmetic's Pro Nostalgia Chevy, the last car that Greg Cork tuned. |
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| Gary Kmetic and Larry Nail's current machine: the beautiful Russ Parker driven "High Bucks III" AA/Altered. |
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| Larry Nail's daughter Kayla, her 5th year in Jr. Dragster. |
In a note that came with the photos, Larry gave me the phone number of John Miller, driver of the now legendary (at least in my mind) "Cork & Miller" TF car.
I placed the call and found Mr. Miller to be another friendly, talkative guy. To my surprise, he informed me that he did not have a single photo of the only TF car that he'd ever driven. I told him I would see what I could come up with, as by now I'd asked Draglist webmaster Bill Pratt get in touch with Dave Kommel of www.autoimagery.com, the outfit responsible for not only the "Cork & Miller" action photo seen above, but many of the cool photos that drag racing fans enjoy to this day at nhra.com.
John Miller said that the "Cork & Miller" TF car had been built by Don Long, and was formerly owned by Dean Rowley and driven by Gordon Fabeck. "It was known as one of the hardest launchers in TF," Miller told me, "It only weighed1520 pounds." Unfortunately, he did not have an ET slip from his best run, but remembered it as, "a 5.95 at 249mph." I thanked him for his time.
I then returned Larry Nail's photos and called him again, with follow up questions, still searching for the elusive ET slip to put the exact numbers up on the drag lists.
Well, to make a long story short, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the ET slip no longer exists. Larry and I went on to talk about why the team quit. "We started with 55 pistons," he explained, "and we used them all up."
"You quit when you ran out of pistons?" I asked, a little taken aback.
"That, and nitro had hit $1400 a barrel."
Ah, yes, that was more like it: a familiar story from the era. $1400 sounds almost quaint in today's nitro world of multi-million dollar expenditures, but there was a time when the rising cost of nitro was the primary reason for any number of teams going out of business. In those days, to a bunch of guys trying to run a TF or fuel funny car, a drum of nitro was a serious investment.
So there you have it. Four months after spotting an old TF dragster trailer sitting in a field in Troutdale, Oregon, the mystery is solved. May the "Cork & Miller" top fuel team take their rightful place in Northwest drag racing history!
David Hapgood
hapgood_d@hotmail.com
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