Quote:
Originally Posted by LakeCleElum
Street racing in the town I patrolled: Motorcycle doing a long wheelie; headlight pointed toward airliners landing at Sea-Tac........Grandma coming home from Bingo makes a left into a Stop-N-Go to get gas and buy lottery tickets.....MC hits the car and rider dead...Grandma thinks road is clear as no oncoming headlight........... Family sues grandma.........I was not the Star witness for the Plaintiff..........
Take it to the track I say.......
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The old "Renton Loop" maybe? I think we used to meet at a Herfy's hamburger joint down there.
In the late '70's and early '80's, I got a little bit wrapped up in that scene. I was kind of a "lost soul" - dad had died when I was 18, I was pissed off, yada yada... We would meet up to race at that Herfy's, up in Everett on Colby Avenue when it was still legal to cruise, and down at Golden Gardens. There were guys bringing licensed NHRA Super Stockers and Gassers on trailers sometimes, claiming they made the money to fund their legitimate racing through this street racing.
I was lucky. Very lucky. I never got hurt, never hurt anyone, and never got caught. There were some horrible wrecks, as one would expect. Then I finally got very, very lucky...
A couple of twins that worked at the local Union 76 started racing with us. Their dad got suspicious, and quickly figured it out. He essentially knocked all of our fool heads together and made us stop. Better yet, and the way he really succeeded, was he introduced us to sanctioned bracket racing at SIR.
From there, it was literally "off to the races". Boy, did we have a ball. And to do it where it was actually safe and legal, where there was no chance of getting into trouble and almost no chance of hurting someone. We were in hot-rod heaven.
I was young and foolish. Luckily, I survived, by the grace of my buddies father. What a wise man - he didn't shut us down, he re-directed us. I owe him a great deal.