Tom,
Great story. When I was a teenager in the 50's the Pierson coupe was on
the cutting edge and appearing in HRM and some of the "small-books" on
performance. I met you and had the pleasure of seeing the car run at
Bonneville in the late 80's when my LSR career was just starting. I have a
video of you and your wife at the starting line trying to fire a balky SBC.
She was really giving the effort a lot of "body-english" and was very happy
and excited when it finally lit.
As a side story, 10 years or so back I bought a set of early Hilborns for
a Flatty from a trader in the Santa Rosa, CA area named Vern Tardel (the guy
who made and sold the coffee mugs shaped like a Stromberg 97 Flatty carb).
Sometime later a Flatty dragster racer named Tony Lloyd asked to borrow the
injectors for a little gas motor he wanted to install in his rail to license
his young son. Before running the injectors we sent them to Hilborn to be
"freshened-up". Stu Hilborn got to checking the serial numbers against his
records and found that they were originally purchased by Dawson Hadley, one
of the early Pomona Valley Timing Assn. "PVTA Choppers" and the driver of
their old 1950's Chrysler powered dragster that looked like it was made from
an old Indy-type car. Tony Lloys said that he had one helluva time getting
them back. Stu reportedly wanted them for his collection and was VERY
reluctant to part with them.
I noted with interest that Dawson Hadley was involved in your old Pierson
Coupe in the past. Do you have any idea of what happened to him? He, along
with the likes of Calvin Rice, Jazzy Nelson, and Art Chrisman is one of the
real icons of the roots of drag racing. Did I see his name associated with
early LSR racing too?
You mentioned Bob Joehnck. He was another unsung icon of early
performance. When I attended college in San Luis Obispo from 1955-59 Joehnck
had a performance shop in nearby Santa Barbara and really worked some amazing
tricks with early OHV V8's. Patterson Ford, a dealer in Santa Maria, had
Joehnk massage a 312 "Y" block powered 56 sedan. It had a very long Dachund
(sp?) painted down the entire side of the car with the words "Patterson Ford,
The Longest Deal In Town". It didn't take too long before the car was dubbed
"The Long Dog". They had the exhausts coming out of the fenders opposite the
exhaust ports and ran about 100-105 with the thing in "C" Gas. Needless to
say they had no competition in the class. To make things interesting they
would match-race the "A" Gas and "B" Gas winners after eliminations, usually
winning.
During those days, Fred Dannenfelzer(sp) was running a altered coupe and
I was campaigning a slingshot fuel Flatty powered dragster. At the last El
Mirage meet "Fast Freddy" turned 305 in his blown Chrysler lakester while I'm
still trying to get into the "Two-Clubs". My, how things do
change........Ardun Doug King in CA
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