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On May 7, 2011, Leslie Long organized another Santa Ana Drag Strip and Main Street Malt Shop Reunion at the park alongside the creek bed on East Memory Lane in Orange, California. Long tries to hold these reunions at least twice a year so that we can all get together and reminisce about the beginnings of drag racing in this country. A good friend of Leslie’s, Gene Mitchell, caters the food and does it without charge. The park is easy to get to and is only 50 feet from the parking lot, which makes it easy for those who have trouble walking. There is no charge for parking either. Long took over the reunion from Marie and Bill Jenks, who had been organizing this event for many years. Since many of the original drag racers at the Santa Ana races were from the cities of Santa Ana and Orange and knew each other, they would stop in at the Main Street Malt Shop in Santa Ana. It was a popular hangout and over the years this developed into a weekly get together, especially after the drag races. Quite a few young women also raced at the drag strip back then. While the Santa Ana Airport drag strip was not the first venue site to offer drag racing, it was by far the most influential and the first drag strip that can be called a “professional drag racing facility.” At least no one has come forward to contest that attribution.
Drag racing is as old as the automobile. The forerunner of motorized drag racing was the horse races that took place at county fairs and gambling events. Many drag races were simply impromptu events to settle a wager or to win bragging rights. Races were held on city, county and state streets and highways or on dirt roads in fields or orchards; anywhere the police weren’t. There are oral records of drag racing events even promoted and abetted by the police. A pre-WWII race was held on Highway 39 against a roadster and a quarter horse and the police blocked off both ends of the road until the race was over. The roadster won that time though quarter horses often won those short races. There were numerous drag races around the country after the war ended in 1945, but they were not professional or sanctioned events until a race was held at Goleta in 1949. Don Edwards remembers going to it with his father as a young man. It was organized and they gave out trophies, but it cost nothing to attend and it did not continue on a permanent basis. The Santa Ana Airport drag strip was different; it was organized, there was a standardized group of rules, there were safety patrols, tech inspections, an entrance fee, crowd controls and it took place on a weekly schedule. Drag racing before Santa Ana changed according to the people running the race, the area or the needs of the participant and was almost always illegal according to the laws. Santa Ana changed all that. In addition, there was a conscientious effort to encourage the media to report on the drag races.
C. J. Hart, with help from his wife Peggy, Creighton Hunter and Frank Stillwell put on the drags at the old county airport in Santa Ana. Hart had the idea that if there was a place where young people could come and safely race their cars that there would be fewer accidents on the roads. This wasn’t an original idea. Many groups around the country tried the same thing, including the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), which had begun to implement such programs on the dry lakes prior to World War II. Hart never took credit for inventing drag racing and scoffed at such titles as the “Father of Drag Racing.” But whether he deserves the accolades or not, there is no denying that when he formed the drag strip and began racing on July 2, 1950 that he hit a nerve among young people that erupted with such enthusiasm that it was an overnight success. Hart was the right man at the right place at the right time. Drag racing had been done before, in many places and with some well-known people, but it simply had not caught on. As the first group of drag racers prepared to race that summery day almost 61 years ago they saw the first drag race as we know it today. What Hart had created is almost unchanged since that first July race. The distance was a quarter mile, there were safety patrols, crowd controls, admission, and organization. They may have replaced the flagman starter with an electronic “Christmas Tree,” and refined rules on inspections and classes for the cars, but in effect, modern drag racing started at the Santa Ana Airport.
Hart must have talked to and copied some of the rules and procedures from the SCTA, but he wasn’t a lakes racer. He wanted a course close to population centers in order to draw the young kids who weren’t interested in the 160 mile round trip to the dry lakes and back. Hart also never expected the Santa Ana drag strip to turn into a business. He had a successful garage and shop already. A drag strip might bring him a little more business, but his main motivation was helping to contain and stop illegal street racing which was a blight on the community. I remember those days when nearly every other headline read, “Death on the highway,” or “Hot Rodders kill woman and her daughter in fatal crash.” It was a pox on the community and the authorities were at their wits end trying to figure out ways to curb the mayhem. The problem was never cars, or boats or airplanes or any other mechanical contrivance. The real problem was the immaturity and lack of wisdom and experience in young people. Young men always dare other young men to do things that smack of risk and utter stupidity and young women egg the young men on. Cars simply increased the risk of death and injuries, but we did things then that I would never think of doing today.
I remember a game we played where the boys had to run across six lanes of traffic to get to the other side of the road and if we stopped in the median we were called chicken. To be a chicken was to be labeled unmanly and we would have rather died. Another game we played was with pocket knives. This was before all the school shootings and stabbings and the teachers didn’t care if we were armed with knives. The goal was to throw the knife into the ground as close as we could to our competitor’s foot. The closest throw won and the boy that pulled his foot back was the “chicken.” I remember two guys playing the same game in the army and sticking a bayonet into one of the recruit’s foot. A particularly lethal game of “chicken” was played on Newport Boulevard when it was a rural road with three lanes; one coming, one going and the middle lane for passing only. The object was to take the middle lane and refuse to give it up to another young man coming at you in the opposite direction. To up the ante the two nitwits would straddle a car in the two other lanes so that there was no way to escape unless the “chicken” slammed on his brakes and turned to the right, often smashing into the innocent family sedan unaware of the contest. The bloodshed was staggering and the authorities tried every measure to combat this idiocy of young people to risk their lives for nothing more than bragging rights.
Hart can’t be credited with the victory over this mayhem, but he can be given due recognition for bringing together all the earlier attempts at organizing drag racing and creating a product that got the attention of young people everywhere. It was an instant success and pushed him into an uncomfortable spotlight. People traveled from all over the country to see this “new” form of racing. The media beat a path to his door. He was emulated by thousands. Drag strips and timing associations sprung up everywhere. Young people looked, asked questions and went back home and created a drag strip just like the Santa Ana Airport drag strip. Hart hadn’t set out to do anything more than get kids off the street and now he had set in motion the effort to create a new sport. Others had been influential too, maybe even more so, but you don’t recognize the second man to walk on the moon, or the man who came before him who made it possible. No, the only man that you remember is Neil Armstrong and yet he would tell you that his achievement was the culmination of thousands of men and women who worked so hard to make his success possible. C. J. Hart took all that had gone on before him and enthused a new generation of drag racers. His creation lasted a decade and was quickly overshadowed. Hart drifted into the background, contented with what he had done and eschewed the spotlight.
The spotlight now was shown brightly on the racers themselves, many of whom would go on to other achievements. Illegal street racing didn’t go away, but the sheer volume of such racing diminished greatly. Today there is an occasional news bulletin about a fatal crash, but it isn’t a constant event and the media doesn’t blame hot rodders. Hot rodders are now a respected element of society and the illegal street racer is understood to be simply a punk who has no respect for others. Many of those who raced at Santa Ana went on to create tracks like Paradise Mesa, Saugus, San Fernando, Irwindale, Lions, Orange County, Pomona and drag strips across the nation and in foreign lands. Santa Pod in England was partly named after Santa Ana. The reunion is a simple affair, the desire and need to meet old friends and racing adversaries and relive old times. It is one of my favorite reunions and it honors the men and women who started a sport and can take credit for helping the nation reduce the horrible death and destruction that illegal street racing caused.
Here is a list of those who attended this reunion; Jim “Grumpy” Donoho, Shari Donoho, Ray Morton, Otto Ryssman, Leslie Long, Bill McGrath, Gene Mitchell, Jim Cripps, John and Nancy Albert, Don Sheffer, Vic Enyart, Larry Deutsch, Jim Snyder, Ed Clancy, Steve Lincoln, Bob Lincoln, Eldon Harris, Weed (Tim Krauschaar), Rick Kersh, Doug Wilson, Susan Berardini Foshee, Gene Ellis, Mel Dodd, Rod Smith, Tom Scherer, Charlotte Scherer (Dr Tom’s granddaughter), Jeff Ottinger, Ed Iskenderian, Terry Shaw, Stu Taylor, Kiley Taylor (Stu’s daughter), Ken Freund, Pat Berardini, Patricia Delamar, Phil Grisotti, Greg Ryan, Taylor Ryan (Greg’s daughter), Tony Lara, Robin Taylor Lara, Jared Lara, Jim Miller, Norm Stevenson and Ray Simpson. We are losing a lot of our original oldtimers, but we are gaining some of their children and grandchildren and this reunion is all about keeping our heritage and history alive.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].
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