"...when you see the third yellow, go!"

A more sensible person would have requested further instruction before piloting his well-worn, barely-passed-tech-inspection-without-resorting-to-bribery, Mustang as quickly as possible down the quarter-mile for the first time, with every manner of monster-engined behemoth shaking the pavement in the lane next to him. For me and my friends however, the vagueness of "...when you see the third yellow, go!" simply added to the appeal.

Tired of the usual mischief that 18 year-olds living somewhere between the middle-and-end-of-nowhere get into in their (well some of their) final summer before college, my friends readily agreed to follow along as I took my car to the track to see what it could do. I'd spent enough time in my neighbors' garages, listened to enough war stories, watched enough NHRA Winston Drag Racing and had a large enough collection of Hot Rod magazines in the bathroom to know the basics: drive around the water box if you don't have slicks, pull up to the line, let 'er rip when you see the green light and slow down before you hit the sand trap at the end.

My mother had previously forbidden me to race my car at the track, likely spurred by visions of me and my dumb-a$s friends returning home with pieces of what was formerly a white 5-liter Mustang chained to the back of a flatbed. Based on the stories I told her years later about some of our other exploits that summer, her fears were well-warranted. So like any teenager whose mother tells him not to do something, I met my friends after work and headed out to the track.

A good evening of buffoonery for teens in the middle-of-nowhere is not complete without some sort of police involvement, so it was not much of a surprise when we were pulled-over about five minutes away from the track for driving with the headlights off (UFO-grade foglights and smoked headlight covers were all the rage at the time). After some discussion, and a warning, we were back on our way.

Upon arriving at the track and paying our entrance fees, we were directed to the tech inspection line. Although somewhat concerned with the loose battery, starboard-leaning driver's seat and questionable lug nuts, the inspector let me race under the assumption that the car wouldn't be going that fast anyway. After writing my car number on the windows in the ubiquitous white shoe polish (now I really felt like a hot-rodder), the inspector directed me to the race shop to pay the $5 rental fee for the biggest helmet my 5' 8" frame could support over my far-too-large-for-my-body cranium. Helmeted-up and ready to go, I decided (in the name of seeing what the competition looked like, of course) to check out a few races from the grandstands first.

It was there in the grandstands that I learned that reading and hearing about something is far different than actually doing it. I sat wide-eyed as I watched everything from Bill E. Bob's clapped-out diesel pickup to "Fast Eddie's" '81 Malibu (I would later learn that every track has a "Fast" Eddie or Tony or Tommy driving a Malibu, Camaro or Mustang of some vintage) went blazing down the track. Wanting to be sure I knew the procedure when I got to the line, I decided it would be best to go down and ask one of the track officials what to do. Keep in mind that when I say "official", I mean chain-smoking gentleman with headphones, a mop and skin like a dried tobacco leaf. After confirming that I was running on street tires, the official's instructions were simple: "when you"...you know the instructions by now.

After a seemingly-endless wait in the staging lanes, it was my turn to go. Too nervous to pay attention to what kind of car was in the lane next to me, I drove around the water box and pulled up to the starting line. First I went too far forward, causing the Pre-Stage and Stage lights to flicker on-then-off. Then I was too far back, not understanding that both sets of lights needed to be illuminated before the official would trigger the green. With a tap on the window and some guidance from the official, me and my pride were finally in the right spot. My left leg was trembling from the fear of making a fool of myself in front of everyone, and the Herculean-effort required to keep the car's clutch depressed for anything longer than ten seconds. With another tap on the window to remind me to flip the visor on my helmet down, I was ready to go. The yellow lights illuminated in their 1-2-3 sequence, the green light illuminated, another second passed while my mind drew one of those "hey, I wasn't ready" blanks - then I floored it. The plume of smoke from my right rear tire would have made John Force proud (if he was into Mustangs with worn-out Traction-Lok rear ends that were supposed to spin both rear tires...and he didn't actually want to go anywhere quickly). My friends would later tell me that the announcer joked "hey, we've got a smoke show down there!" Needless to say, the ensuing run was less-than-impressive.

I got the hang of the whole thing after a few runs. Motivated by my friend's offer to steal an NHRA sticker from the snack bar if I broke into the 14-second range, I later ran a best time of 14.9 @ 93mph. We affixed that sticker to the car's rear quarter-window, and I kept it there like a badge of honor for the next two years. A few of the guys never understood that you're racing the clock in heads-up drag racing, not the guy next to you, so I took some friendly ribbing about many of my losses that evening. We visited that track a few more times that summer, eventually perfecting the technique of removing the evidence of burnt rubber and shoe-polish numbers from the car before I got home.

Throughout my college years I would go on to spend countless days and nights at the drag strip closest to my school. Although my times with the Mustang got better, I always seemed to meet people with newer and faster cars. It was always a ton of fun, but nothing will ever beat the sights, sounds and excitement of that first night. Oh, and the advice I always give a first time racer? "...when you see the third yellow, go!"

The First Car

Ask most people to tell you about a memorable experience in their life, and you're bound to hear the relatively-short story of their first kiss, first love, (first?) marriage or birth of their first child. But there is one subject that is guaranteed to make those same people lay their heads back in their chairs, don their rose-colored glasses and look toward the sky as if preparing to tell a story as significant as The Birth of a Nation. That subject is the person's first car.

The length of the ensuing tale is directly proportional to the age and running condition of both the car in-question and the person telling the story. Most twenty-somethings can tell you a good story or two about their first car, but not the same way someone three times their age can. It's as if people keep these stories fresh in their minds, just waiting for members of the younger generation to ask the right questions or complain about their own first car.

The stories are almost-always comical: I've heard of a mid-'70s Corvette that could destroy anything on the road today despite having less horsepower than any Toyota Camry made in the last ten years, an automatic 6-cylinder Mustang that the small-town cops could never catch and a Volkswagen Beetle that shuttled its owner back-and-forth to school (10 hours away) on just two gallons of gas. A room full of professional painters could not come up with the superlatives people use to describe the color of their first car: red cars were candy apple red, black cars had a gloss so deep you could use the door panel as a mirror to shave in and the other colors were either rust brown, pea green, puke orange, sky blue or banana yellow. The stories usually contain financial lessons: saving money earned from the paper route the person had from birth to age 16 to raise the $25 needed to buy the car, working 3 full-time jobs, making straight A's in school, helping tend the farm and saving enough money to turn grandma's hand-me-down into the boulevard-prowling Beast of the Northeast - at age 15 and being responsible enough - at age 15 - to know that all that was needed was basic transportation to get from point A to point B.

But don't laugh too hard at the people who tell these stories. There usually is some wisdom hidden somewhere deep within. Remember, it wasn't their generation who popularized leasing, 72-month loans and 100% financing.

The picture above is me at age 16 posing with my first car, an '85 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon. I could talk about that car all day, but I'm not old enough yet.