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The Era of the
Oswego Dragway 
"Horsepower is the force that determines how fast you hit the wall. Torque is the force that determines how far you take the wall with you after you hit it."
Chapter 3 The BARBARIANS
Plus each copy of Chapter 3 comes with a genuine piece of the Drag Strip
asphalt with a Certificate of Authenticity!
The Liberator and the Barbarians
Chapter Two was selected originally from about 100 hours of video footage and 100's of photographs etc. Finally I got it down to about five hours of footage and then there was one (hour).
The Barbarians is chapter 3 of the documentary, The Era of the Oswego Dragway, called ‘The ERA’ for short.
The Barbarians details the activities of the young men and women from the Fox Valley in the 1950's and their role in the evolution of hot rods & land speed racing into modern drag racing. It was that same innovative drive and enthusiasm that Detroit automakers' have come to harness in marketing muscle cars in the 60’s & 70’s and still to this day.
Drag racing was born in the USA after World War II. It was a competition of who gets away from the traffic lights first and has the most powerful car to pull away from the other. To make things safer the Police and a new organization named NHRA took this activity from the streets to the airfields in the 1950's. Ironically this is one fact that makes the Oswego Dragway unique, it was the first, purpose-built, drag strip in the US in 1955.
Two other drag racing firsts were "Pappy" Hart, who opened the first commercial strip in Santa Ana, California, in 1950, and Florida's "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, the first person to define himself as a professional drag racer.
James Dean was killed in his race car in September of 1955, the same month and year the Oswego Dragway started as a dirt track. James Dean was born in Indiana.
The material in Chapter 2 was selected originally from about 100 hours of video footage and 1,000's of photographs etc.
Chapter 3, The Barbarians, is draw from an even larger body of research. The Barbarian in this chapter refers affectionately to not only drag racers but also hot rodders and in fact all teenagers in general.
The title of Chapter 3, The "Barbarian", is a pejorative term for an uncivilized, uncultured person, either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos perceived as having an inferior level of civilization, or in an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, insensitive person whose behavior is unacceptable in the society of the speaker.
While the phrase “The Barbarians” is used here to refer to a generation of racers, the inspiration for the title, it was partly inspired because there was in fact a car, or a pair of them, eventually called the Barbarian. The first built by Jerry Wagner, bought directly from the dealer and sponsored by Ken Nelson and Bill Yoakum of the Hillcrest Speed Shop. Jerry Wagner often had Ken Nelson race it including at Indy in the summer of 66’ or 67’.
It was eventually sold to Dennis King who made the conversion from a Chevy II to a Camaro and was sponsored by Al’s Speed Shop. {John Hulls-Bellwether}
Ch 3, Part 1. The Strip: Part 1 shows a complete run the strip itself from the Smith’s brothers house across Highway 34, down the track and onto the return.
Ch 3, Part 2. Hollywood: While the word is pejorative, I chose it to represent a certain ill repute with which hot rodders and teenagers, in particular, were cast in Hollywood movies.
At the risk of repeating myself, James Dean was killed in his racecar in September of 1955, the same month and year the Oswego Dragway started as a dirt track.
James Dean's fascination with racing reflected that of many Hollywood’s movie producers.
In “youth culture”, Hollywood discovered an endless source of exploitable films about real or imagined teen problems. The titles say it all, 1953 The Wild One, 1935 Road To Ruin 1935, 1944 Youth Run Wild, 1955 Rebel Without A Cause, 1958 Dragstrip Riot, 1961 The Explosive Generation, 1969 Hell’s Angels on Wheels.
Finally the world was made safe again thanks to beach movies like Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, 1963 Bye Bye Birdie, Grease and American Graffiti. (1953 Ben Hur, 1954 On the Waterfront)
These films were unburdened by plots and brief musical interludes every few minutes. Hum, why does that sound familiar? Could rock ‘n’ roll be just a ‘harmless outlet for today’s youth.’?
Youth’s timeless dilemma, how to conform with their friends and defy their parents at the same time.
Ch 3, Part 3: Bill Modesitt and the Illinois Valley Idlers: This story’s call to adventure is answered by many Hero’s and mentors. So let’s just pick one as an example to talk about for now, Bill Modesitt.
Bill was a B-24 mechanic in the Navy and twice visited the Bonneville Salt Flats for speed week as a young man. He was a dragster racer and builder, a drag boat driver, a speed parachutist, and honorary member of the Australian Confederate Air Force, now the Commemorative Air Force. He did this and while at Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass where he eventually was promoted to the top position as Plant Manager.
Bill was one of those who said he credits his experience at the strips with swift subsequent career advancement.
After meeting several hundred participants, I have come to believe that besides the obvious aspects of the sport of drag racing as, “a means of personal affirmation,” the Oswego Dragway functioned like a community college, especially in the beginning. It was a vocational, business, finishing school with majors in marketing, entrepreneurship, automotive technology, and mechanical science. Innovational enthusiasm literally permitted racers “to disprove on pavement the "laws of physics" that experts had laid out on paper.”
Besides innumerable business persons, no more enthusiastic racers can be found than the three Fox Valley residents with whom I have spoken that are particle physicists.
Ch 3: Part 4. Logged footage: here’s where you can get involved. Having mentioned that I am buried in research data, and after receiving numerous suggestions, we have included mostly unseen footage, which requires assistance to help identify all the participants and vehicles. Again, I got this idea from Jerry Klein and the Illinois Valley Idlers who handed me home movies along with a log of racers and dates.
Credits: The credits to this project of individuals and sponsors would be incomplete even if I could type faster and see better, but given that neither is true, I offer my apologies and refer you to the web site where I can continue to make corrections and add new names. There are many others more capable and competent who could have done a swifter and better job on this project over the last fifty years but sadly, fate has left only me dumb enough to do it. Despite all the help I’ve been given, all I can do is what I have done.
Mission Statement
The ERA, an on-going documentary project, was designed to record, research, document and preserve the personal histories of the enthusiastic old people who were the energetic young people from the greater Fox Valley and Midwest who played a vital role in merging land speed racing and hot Roding creating modern drag racing.
The ERA simultaneously tries to note some of the many positive benefits that accrued to the lives, enterprises, citizenship, military service, and avocations of these young people by the very nature of their activities, involvement and labors at the track whether as individuals, as racing teams, in car clubs or even as spectators.
From my observations over time I have the impression if you don't give young people something positive to do they'll find something else to do. But if they get to pick the activity you don't know how good or bad it's going to be. Ironically, the impetus behind the Oswego drag strip was a few individuals who wanted to drag race some place locally in the Fox Valley area. These individuals were members of the Aurora Autocrats car club and followed up by the Audett’s, The Traction Masters, all out of Aurora and next by the Illinois Valley Idlers from Ottawa.
From Answer dot com we know that Drag racing is also popular in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Caribbean, England, Mexico, Greece, Malta, South Africa and most European and Scandinavian countries. At any given time there are over 325 drag strips operating worldwide.
Chapter 1, The Instigators, is an introduction to the story about the people who brought thunder and rumbling to the Fox Valley. A fun high-energy part of Chapter I is the collage of old silent home-movies where dozens and dozens of take-offs spanning many years of drag racing, mostly at Oswego, but also at other tracks from the Midwest.
Chapter 2, The Competitors, is about the people who delivered the echoing thunder and the rumbling earth to the Fox Valley in their own words and images.
The backbone of the Safety & Standardization model of modern drag racing as it was conceived by Wally Parks required the cooperation of Car Clubs and Police Departments. The goal was to move Illegal Street racing off public highways and onto well-regulated, sanctioned drag strips. And that was in the 50's.
It’s still true today. I set up a Goggle "Alert" where they monitor daily newspapers across the U.S. articles mentioning fatal accidents related to illegal street races. On average, I get reports of two or three every week. The problem is obviously still around and just as likely can never be eliminated. Nevertheless, it's worthwhile to do what can be done. I don't know how many small, inexpensive, accessible drag strips were around in the 50's and 60's or how many remain but I've got to guess many more than there are today.
Drag racing: Two cars standing side by side are started with a "Christmas Tree" starting light that first indicates the proper starting position and then gives you yellow light followed by green. Don't leave the starting line before green because that is a foul start that gives you a red light that means automatic disqualification. If nobody fouls it's first to the finish line 1/4 mile (402,33meters) further down the track that counts. Electronic timing and lots of photocells measures time with an accuracy of thousands of a second and gives you split times, total time and top speed of the race.
The form of competition is the same as a tennis tournament or the football world championship, with quarter-, semi- and final "matches." Qualification runs are used for the "seeding" of the starting field (just like in tennis) and to decide who will get the 8 or 16 places in the competition if there are more cars than that. Don’t ask me to explain that.
So there are a number of ways to go on the next chapter. One can go back further into the past and the roots of drag racing on the salt-flats and Pike's Peak and into the later years of the Oswego Drag Strip and it's final demise and in some ways it's rebirth at Route 66.
But what I really want to do is get about another ten or twenty interviews so I can focus on editing. The problem is no matter how much I do, I learn about a couple more people I want to talk to and that's the way it's been from the beginning.
Donations:
"If necessary to continue funding research on this project we may begin offering toothbrushes and dog dishes. If it's good enough for Jeff Gordon why not us?"
The Era Exhibit was open September 15, 16 and 17, 2006.
The Official Oswego Drag Strips Days were September 16 & 17, 2006.
A car show on Saturday was planned plus other special events for both the novice and the expert, for the drag racing fan, for local history buffs and for those who just plain love a good story, The Era of the Oswego Dragway.
Mission Statement: To research, record, document and preserve the personal histories of the young people from here in the Fox Valley and the Midwest who played a vital role in merging land speed racing and hot rodding creating modern drag racing. And also to simultaneously note the myriad of positive benefits that accrued to the lives and avocations of these young people by the very nature of their activities and labors at the track. Whew! Jay Thompson
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