Wheelstanding in the Kmart Parking Lot

By Tommy McNeely

Tommy McNeely took the Fugitive show just about anywhere, including a Kmart parking lot!
Photo thanks to Tommy McNeely

Here was a fun and very interesting experience. In 1972, George Tuers was driving the Back Up Pickup. Four of us had raced in Minneapolis (me, George, Roy Trevino, and Tommy Davis in the Red Baron). Justice Brothers was one of our sponsors and had asked us all to go to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as they had just gotten the Wynn's distributor to change product lines. We arrived in Cedar Rapids. They had a nice spread for us, which included steaks. Actually, it was condemned meat as one of their neighbors was a federal meat inspector. Great steaks. We drank a little beer during dinner and later went downstairs. The basement was like a first class bar. 

We drank some more and between 10 and 11 p.m., one of them said they wished they had called the TV station and got the cars on tape. We told them to call and the station agreed to meet us at the local Kmart parking lot. We arrived and George and I unloaded. Roy and Tommy's cars were broken. A crowd started gathering and after we warmed them up, it started to become a really big crowd. I think the whole town was there, including the police department. They helped with crowd control. In the meantime, Roy was selling pictures for $.50 each (the police got theirs free). He actually did well and we made a couple of hundred dollars. 

I was quite a bit faster than George was, so we agreed he would nod his head and leave. Hopefully, we would be fairly even when we went by the camera. If you remember, George weighed way over 300#. He was getting adjusted in the car and stuck his head out the window and I thought he was nodding. I left, which made him mad and he was watching me instead of what was going on. There was a restaurant at the far end of the parking lot that he didn't see because he was concentrating on me. Finally, he saw it and let the truck down, slid it sideways and ended up in the flowerbed next to the restaurant. He was probably less than three feet from the restaurant. It was quite an experience and George was mad and a little nervous. However, the TV station got some really good footage, but we never did that again. 

This was actually very funny later. Also, I think most of the people in Cedar Rapids were there to watch. 

Tommy
lcdc@bluebonnet.net