When we first built the Rolling Thunder Funny Car I had just moved to
Oyster Bay. One night while Monty and I were out on one of our Budweiser
tasting tours at the local bar in town we met a few of the local ladies.
They asked what we did for a living but having no knowledge of our sport
they couldn't quite figure out exactly what a funny car really was. About 20
Buds later, we decided to invite them over to our new place and show them
first hand -- at 3:30 a.m.
After a brief tour of the garage, Monty suggested we start the thing up
and do a burnout in the driveway. Just to give them a better understanding
of the sport you understand. Well, at about 4:00 a.m. we started the car
just in front of the garage. I rolled forward a few feet into the VHT Monty
put on the driveway.
Just as the butterflies went open my new biker neighbor came running
through the bushes between our houses and looked up to see this thing coming
right at him. Never seen two bigger white eyes in my life as he changed
direction in mid air and landed in the sticker bushes next to the house. All
this in his jockey shorts, which he proceeded to pee in. Embarrassed himself
so bad he ran back to his house.
By now I figured we had done enough damage and before we attracted any
more attention I decided to back the car into the garage. Forgot about the
tarpaper that covered the walls and proceeded to set said garage on fire
with the flames from the headers. Halon bottles work quite well in a small
garage. Not as well with the big door open though.
About the time we got the fire put out we had the police and the fire
department at the house trying to figure out what was going on. Seems some
of the neighbors had called about an explosion going off in the
neighborhood. The biker was the one who called the fire department. The only
one. Turned out he had been growing pot behind our garage and didn't want to
lose his crop in the upcoming blaze.
By the way, we wound up dating the girls for the next three years. I
almost married the one I met, but then that wouldn't have been a good idea!
She'd probably want me to quit this racing nonsense.
Bob
fcdriver1@aol.com