From Vaughn Jones
I am in Applegate, Southern Oregon. This car I have had since 1990 & always wanted to gasser it like we did back in the early 70's in high school. I finally got it most of the way done in 2007as the money just wasn't there all at once. I would save a few bucks and buy parts and or have something done to it one item at a time. My school was Crescenta Valley High which was in La Crescenta, CA. This area was a hot bed of racing back in the late 60's and early to mid 70's. There were well known racing streets: Van Nuys, Sepulveda, Wentworth, Tujunga Canyon & Foothill. Back then in La Crescenta there was only one police station which was about 1000 sq. ft. and a couple of patrol cars in Montrose, that was it. They just couldn't really keep a handle on us, too many of us and not enough of them. This was before the 210 and 2 freeways so cops coming up from L.A. would have a long trip up into our foothills. You could pretty much find a race or 2 most nights. It was real busy on Fri & Sat nights. We use to do what we called staging. What we would do was retard the timing until it sounded shitty and drive thru the In & out burger, Bob's big boy or A & W. This is where there was usually guy's who wanted to race parked in the parking lots. Driving thru a few times and then parking was usually all it took to have one of the guy's come over and ask if you wanted to race? The bet was made, usually $15-$50 which back then would fill your gas tank for about a week. The place was set up and usually a large crowd of people and cars would all meet a the race spot. We would pull around the corner from the race spot and re time the car and pull the plates off of the cut outs. It was always interesting to see the worried look on the guys face when the same car would pull up sounding a whole lot nastier that it sounded when the bet was made! There were times cars parked at the side street entrances blocking the new dragstrip that the race was going to be on. If some would want onto the street you would tell them to go another way as its not safe right now. By the time they got to phone (no cell phones) to call the cops the race was over and gone! Back then the tires didn't hook up as well as the new avail tires of today, so a lot of times it was who hooked up the best usually won if both cars were fast. The gasser were fast as the weight was transferred back towards the rear tires. We always had home made ladder bars as we couldn't afford the store bought type as we spent the money on other go fast items. Some what popular back then was a reverberator. It was hooked up to your car radio / 8 track and would make kinda of an echo as the music played for the stereo sound.
Gassers ruled the streets back then!