Garlits returned to Texas in August for a California Challenge against the vocal West Coasters at Houston’s Freeway Drag Strip. The rerun proved that Don was the quickest.” The dragster tried to catch up, and almost did. It rolled past the line and flagman and took off. The roadster approached the line but never stopped. A dragster and a roadster pushed off and came back toward the starting line. “After dodging each other all day the ‘stars’ were ready for the final round. The final came down to Garlits and Greth, as told in Mabry’s words. On hand were Langley, who was to Texas what Garlits was to the Southeast 1956 NHRA Nationals champ Melvin Heath Jack Moss with his twin-engine mount the well-regarded Cook & Bedwell dragster (recently purchased by Meyers & Davis) and the famed Speed Sport Roadster of Lyle Fisher, "Red" Greth, and Don Maynard. It was June of ’58, and Mabry, whose own B/Gas dragster was not ready for the event, made the 100-mile drive from Arlington to Wichita Falls to have a look for himself. If I wanted something, I had to build it myself.” “I was born in '32, and when I grew up, there was no money for toys, so I hung around my granddad’s blacksmith shop and my dad’s cabinet shop. “I've been building my own toys all my life,” he said. (“A third-member failure,” recounts Mabry, “before we learned to use a big one-piece axle.”)īeginning in the mid-1980s, he built motorcycles ( Web site) that have set 16 records at Bonneville (including the fastest ever, at 256 mph) and was inducted into the Dry Lakes Hall of Fame in 2004. Among the cars he built were Kenny Bernstein’s first dragster for the Anderson brothers and the rear-engine car in which John Wiebe tangled with Jeb Allen at Tulsa in 1973. Mabry later became a founding member of the SEMA Chassis Builders Association and cranked out Top Fuel and Funny Car chassis through the 1970s. That’s Mabry, right, talking with another pretty good Texas old-timer, Bobby Langley, of Scorpion fame, in a photo from about a year ago. So, who's Ed Mabry? He's a member of the Texas Drag Racing Hall of Fame, half of the famed Hunt & Mabry team that terrorized Texas in the late 1950s and early 1960s with blown and unblown fuel dragsters, and he later built chassis from his shop in Arlington for some pretty famous folks. The Red River Timing Association offered “Big” a cool $450 to come west to Wichita Falls, Texas, to take on the local competition. Was I interested? Did John Wayne wear a 10-gallon hat? The event, held 50 years ago this June in Texas, is regarded as being the episode that helped establish the phenomenon known as “appearance money.” Garlits was tearing up the East Coast with performances that those west of the Mississippi largely discounted as popcorn times, but, as Texans are wont to do, they put their money where their mouths are. I received an amazing package this week from Ed Mabry, a follow-up to earlier e-mail exchanges that began with the teaser, “I have pics of Garlits’ first meeting with the west. (Below) Pete Ogden in Romeo Palamides’ slick car. (Above) Garlits’ SR1 in the pits in Houston.
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