Nostalgia drags today, lotsa pictures.

Dan and I went to the Nostalgia Drags in Bradenton, Florida today. Don is going to kick himself for missing this one, but he is playing in Pittsburgh this weekend. For my money these were some of the best races I have seen.......gassers, altereds, front engined dragsters, super stockers, you name it.

I took a bunch of pictures, so please bear with me, I can only post 5 at a time. Sorry if some are duplicates and if some make no sense at all, but I am no Allen Funt when it comes to cameras. :D :D So here goes..........

Don

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Don, those were great, do you have any more?:D

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Oh yeah, I got more......:3dSMILE: :3dSMILE:

My clicking finger is going to sleep.........:eek:

A few more........

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Great pics Don!!!! Hadn't seen Mondello on a race car for many moons!!!!! Thanks for all the great shots, had to have been one heck of a fun day!!!!!!

Glad you enjoyed them. It was really a terrific day, the weather was cool and the cars were some of the best I have seen. Some have a 50 year history of racing, like the 6 cylinder dragsters and the yellow T with the two fours on it.

Dan has been bitten with the dragracing bug and fell in love with the little flathead powered dragster. Here he is taking one of probably 20 pictures he took of it from every angle.

Don

you are a very lucky man, thanks for the pictures

Looks like you guys had a fun day! Better watch out those vintage cars will eat dans wallet up real quick. Thanks for the cool pics.

Great stuff, Don.

Many thanks

Jim

Don,

Thanks for sharing the pic's.

Earl

thanks don gotta lover the six-in-a-row's ! and the nova gasser , wow.

These pics are awesome!! I'm again reminded how I would love to move to and to cruise Florida!!

Great pics Don, thanks for sharing. Tell Dan he can't start building a flathead powered FED until he finishes the RPU. :p

Dig the crazy whitewall slicks daddy-o. Thanks Don. :3dSMILE:

I hope these pictures brought out some memories for everybody, seeing the cars sure did for me. Bill, I know what you mean about keeping Dan on the RPU until it is done, all he is talking about now is going racing. :D Gassersrule, I knew you would like the dragster with the 6........there were a couple of them, and MAN could they move!!! Blew off a couple of V8 dragsters really bad.

Cool story. I was looking at the yellow T bucket that is in a couple of pictures, and the guy who owns it and I strike up a conversation..........he mentions he lived in Pittsburgh........so did I. He graduated in '62, I graduated in '63. Finally we start talking about street racing and it turns out he and I raced at the same stretch of road every Saturday night. He had a Triumph altered with a Chevy with 6 carbs, and I had a Bugeyed Sprite with a 289 Ford. I remembered his car and he remembered mine.

Now it gets even weirder. He and I were there the same night the State Police held a major bust and surrounded the place and arrested a bunch of people. He lost his license for 6 months, but we ran my car through a cornfield and hid it, then tore down a fence so we could get away. He told me the Police had "plants" in the crowd taking pictures of all the racers and they even went to the local Eat N' Park and arrested a bunch of them later that night. That night was just like something out of a movie........our own little American Grafitti. :)

Small world, huh? :D :D

Don

Oh, BTW, next time you are watching Pass Time or Pinks and they say they are at Bradenton Speedway, this is the track they are at. They come here a lot.

I'm planning on coming down to Bradenton the first week of December and staying till the end of the year for a little R&R before going over to Orlando and working at YWAM for three months.
Always looking for somewhere to go, so where is the track and how often do they run?

Exit 220 on Interstate 75, then 9 miles East. The Nostalgia drags were just a special event there, but the track is open I think every weekend for regular racing, plus a lot of special races during the month. Here is their website:

http://www.bradentonmotorsports.com/

It is a really laid back track where you can actually get right into the pits and staging lanes. My Son and I were so close to the action yesterday we were getting pelted with little round rubber balls from the cars doing burnouts! :D :D It is also not expensive to get in and for a racetrack the food is actually pretty good and reasonable. Last time my other Son Don and I went to the Mustang Nationals we were having a beer at 8 am and saying there was just something very wrong about that picture! :LOL: :LOL: Wrong, but fun. :cool:

Glad to hear you are going to be around the area, you'll enjoy yourself there, I'm sure of it.

Don

Don great pics. Some awesome classics. I also thought it was cool to see a big dragster with a straight six and the old flathead as well. This stuff looks like what used to run in Sacramento when I was a kid. Gotta love the muscle cars!:D

Great pictures Don.
Your story of hiding in a corn field is awesome. Those were the good ol days, huh?

Yeah, it really was a cool time back then. The place where we raced couldn't have been designed better for streetracing if you had an engineer plan it out. The staging area was Pete's Gulf Station and it had a four lane highway in front of it (route 51), and old 51 , which was closed down when they built the four lane, ran behind the gas station. The parking lot of the gas station was huge so you could get a lot of cars in there, and we used old 51 as a warm up road to do our testing and tuning.

It was typical 1964 with very little traffic on the highway at night, maybe a car every 5 minutes or so, and the closest Pennsylvania State Police barracks was probably 15 miles away. On any given Saturday night the guys from Pittsburgh would come to meet the guys from the Mon Valley and they would race for hours. It looked like an organized event with tons of people walking around and sitting on the hillside overlooking the gas station.

To be honest, I was kind of happy to see the cops show up that night because the guy I was talking about with the Triumph came in on a trailer and according to my buddies "was looking for the guy with the bugeyed Sprite." :eek: His car was pure Altered, jacked up in the front, big M and H slicks behind, rollcage, and lots of carbs peaking out of what was once the hood. He was waaaaay out of my class, and at least I was spared from being embarrassed. :D I would have ended up looking like Toad. :o

Don

Don, thanks for the pictures, brought back memories of the alter gas that Bob Burns and I ran, back in the late 70's. I got out of car racing right after we burned down the car and garage by accident. The only time I saw concrete melt. Never want to be the warm again till they cremate me ( that way I'm preheated before my finale resting place)
BradC

Great shots Pop! wish I could have joined the fun. Lots of great shots!:D

Hey Don...haven't posted in a while, but I remember the Eat N Park you're talkin' about!

Just got a message from a guy from the HAMB who coordinates the reunions for Pittsburgh Int'l Dragway. We were talking about the good ole days and Heidelberg Raceway when it was dirt. Herb Scott, Ralph Quarteson etc.

You're right buddy! We lived at a time that can never be duplicated or replaced.

Pat

For some unknown reason I just pick this thread up ......

Thanks Don.

Ratty 46