In the 60's the "Smokers" (car club) March meet consistently had over 100 T/F dragsters. They also did something that will never happen again. They ran a 64 car show on saturday and a 64 car show on sunday. The winners from each day would then race for the title.
There were several shows like that in So.Cal in the 60's. Doug Kruse, yes the body builder, put on 64 car shows at Lions and there were cars that didn't qualify. The racers would always gripe about the quick turnaround time you had between rounds on saturday night at Lions but would show up at San Fernando on sunday where you couldn't run until noon and had to close down at 4:30 which included qualifying and the race and nobody ever complained. You have never seen anything like a full day of T/F cars running without a break in the action trying to qualify for 64 spots. If they blew a engine or oiled the track they used cat litter to sweep up the mess or if it was real bad on the starting line use a little rosen than ran the next pair. The only sweepers they had were the guys out their with brooms sweeping it up. Their also was not "one" grove down the track. One car might go down the the middle, the next on the left side of the lane, another on the right side. Just ran where they thought the track was best for them and some ran right on the edge. They didn't put traction compound on the track. You had a bottle of traction compound that you poured under your tires before your burnout, that's all.
It's was totally amazing to have one pair of cars staging to run and the next pair starting up on the rollers at the Beach. If you look at pics at Lions and it shows the tower side grand stands you can see that the stands ran right up to the edge of the track. You could almost touch the cars. I remember one time when Mickey Thompson who was running the track and got mad at someone in the stands and climbed over the fence into the stands. You didn't want to get Mickey mad at you. Most of the people in the tower side stands were racers, what a party that was.
Talk to some of the old racers like Garlits, Connie, Jerry Ruth, Mike Kuhl, McEwen, Purdhome and many others and they will all tell you racing today is nothing like the late 50's to mid 70's and tell you it was by far the best of times.
