Got this in the mail from a friend of mine earlier today … ah, youth … or more specifically, my youth.
Although I grew up in a sportscar-oriented family, all of my friends were more of the hot rod type of guys.
Camaros, Firebirds, Mustang Fastbacks and, at the top of the heap, Mopar stuff.
Good friends of mine’s father (Big Ed) ran a brake & muffler shop, but mainly as a way to finance his drag racing habit. Within the family, there was a hierarchy of cars. Apexing at Big Ed’s bracket car (a fastback Barracuda with 426 built to within an inch of it’s life), and running all the way down to mom’s Polara station wagon … with a 383 Wedge motor dropped in.
Before any of the boys got their own car, they would have to “share” the wagon with mom.
On many, many occasions, we would be out at Lower River Road or out in Felida, park at the now-deserted start line of the unofficial/official drag strip and something close to the following scene would transpire:
“Whose are those?”
“Looks like it could be off of Du’tiri’s 442 … ”
“God! That guy is SUCH a horse’s ass!”
“Yeah … was it him or that shotputter guy from Bay that stuffed it into ditch last term?”
That guy from Bay, I think … ”
We were, of course, looking at a set of burn out marks, usually at some wholly inappropriate place along the strip.
By the end of senior year, I loathed Du’tiri, but here’s the funny thing: I had never met Du’tiri. Not once. Never even seen him. But boy did he have a rep … a rep of being the kind of guy who would take a car that daddy had bought him, and gone an shown off by doing burnouts 200 yards into the strip for all of the assembled multitudes (OK, dozens on a good knight).
Ah, burn out marks …
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