This bio for you gun guys has been primarily about my shooting activities starting at an early age, but some non-shooting background is in order, as it’s relevant for the “big picture.”
Like most young boys, I had a fascination with motorized vehicles in addition to my passion for shooting and experimenting with firearms. My father was an aerobatic pilot who taught flight instruction in the Navy, and he started taking me flying almost before I can remember. My uncle owned and rode motorcycles his entire adult life, and was passionate enough about it that before WWII he owned a Crocker, and in the ‘50s a Vincent Black Shadow. You bike guys know what those two names mean...
Anyway, I had been poring over aviation, automotive, and motorcycle publications at the library along with gun magazines since age 7. This was the era of the Land Speed Wars at Bonneville between Craig Breedlove and Art and Walt Arfons, and the heyday of the Michigan Madman, E.J. Potter, with his Chevy V-8 powered exhibition dragbike.
When I was 9 years old, Dad took me to see E.J. Potter and his V-8 motorcycle at a local track.
I’ll never forget the sight and sound of Potter sitting at the starting line on his direct-drive-only bike (no clutch), perched on a jackstand, the alky-burning, Hilborn-injected 327 Chevy turning 7000 RPM with white flames coming out of the exhaust headers. When Potter rocked the bike off the jackstand, the spinning tire hit the pavement with a sound like a woman having her guts torn out with a pair of Vise-Grips. Every hair on my 9-year-old body stood up. Bike and rider rocketed down the strip, both tire and engine screaming. The bike was sideways most of the time, and left a crooked black stripe the entire length of the track. My whole body was shaking as I saw the speed displayed on the light board at the end of the track: 163 MPH. I promised myself that some day I’d build a V-8 bike of my own. It took thirty years, but it happened…
I started driving in 1968 at age 11 on our hundred-acre summer property in Imperial, MO in a 6-cylinder 1957 Ford station wagon that the caretaker had bought for $75 so that his sons and I could learn about cars. We took the body off and sold it for scrap, getting $17 if I remember right. A plywood and pine “truck bed” installation soon followed, as did a crude “roll bar” (mainly useful for passengers to hang on to while standing in the bed) and an aluminum beer keg for a gas tank. We called it our “dune buggy,” but if there’d been any sand around, I’m sure our creation would have gotten hopelessly stuck…
I don’t know whether it was our ineptitude at bleeding brakes or if there was something seriously wrong with the braking system, but no matter what we did, the brakes on the car wouldn’t work at all if you just stepped on the pedal and expected the car to slow down. The driver had to pump the pedal quickly three or four times before the brakes would begin to bite. It taught us to think ahead while driving.
The Ford’s transmission was a manual three speed with a non-synchronized first gear. Additionally, the synchros on second and third were so worn that they might as well not have been there. That was what I learned on in 1968. It was a good teacher. Over 30 years later, soon-to-be Le Mans racer Chris Kniefel was my instructor in a Dodge Viper at Justin Bell’s racing school in Florida at Moroso Raceway Park. Chris was startled when I shifted the Viper GTS into 5th on the front straight at 135 mph so quickly that the tires chirped. “Where the hell did you learn to shift like that?” he demanded.
I told him, but I’m not sure he believed me…
At the end of that same summer of 1968, Dad replaced his aging 1956 Thunderbird with a new 1968 tri-power 427 Corvette. Dad was impressed with the skill I displayed double-clutching the “dune buggy” I’d learned on, so he took me out on some paved rural roads where there weren’t many people, and let me drive his new Corvette.
Oh. My. God. Now this was what a car should be like!
More later...
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Originally Posted by Don Purcell
