One Hot Summer Night in '57

One hot summer night in 1957, Bill Logan, my old Manual High school buddy and I, went out to the Southern Circle in his new 2-tone blue 57 Chevy Bel-Air 2-dr hardtop, just looking for one more night of drag racing. Earlier that day we had just installed two 4-barrel carbs and intake manifold on Bill’s car. (That same afternoon Bill had sold his old single four-barrel carb and manifold to Delbert Cambridge, with some bad results for Delbert!)

As we drove around the Southern Circle we saw George Herman in his souped-up 1957 all-white hardtop 4-door Chevy. We pulled in beside him thinking he might want to race. But it was not Herman. Whoever it was, Bill asked him, “Wanna drag race that car buddy?” “Can’t do that, I already got too many speeding tickets, but I will let your friend (me) drive my car in a drag race,” was his answer. WTF??? I was only too happy to do it. My wheels at that time were a 46 Caddie that was slow as a dog.

I got in the driver’s seat of this guy’s car and as we head out of Southern Circle onto 31 South, the guy twists his tachometer on his dashboard around so it was visible. Tachometers were not at all common back then. Then he starts giving me instructions. “DO NOT SHIFT (standard shift) INTO 2ND GEAR UNTIL I TELL YOU.” We stop at the first stop light, Thompson and 31. This is it. The light turns green. Bill’s car jumps about four car lengths ahead of me. At about 50 mph I start to come up on Bill’s tail. As I draw even with Bill I start to shift into 2nd but the owner says “DON’T SHIFT YET.” So I keep it floored in first! Bill is wound-out at 50 mph but I’m not. At 72 mph in FIRST GEAR, my engine is turning about 7 grand. I am about three or four car lengths ahead of Bill and the guy says to me “NOW SHIFT AND LEAVE IT IN 2ND GEAR.” At over 120 mph I am now about half a block ahead of Bill. We play the stop lights and drag race from one stop light to the next all the way to Franklin and almost back to Southern Circle. It turns out that one Indiana State Trooper by the name of Irwin has been tailing us from the start. In the rearview mirror I see the flashing red lights stopping Bill. I say to the owner, “We are busted!” This nitwit says, “FLOOR IT! RUN!” I said, “No thanks, I’m STOPPING” and I did. As Officer Irwin wrote our tickets he said to me, “Your car is a lot faster then this other guy’s, right?” I said, “It’s not my car, it’s this guys car.” Officer Irwin was not impressed: “No problem, you were behind the wheel. See you in Beech Grove Court.”

PART 2, COURT AND AFTER

The next day I met Bill at our hangout, City Service gas station on East Prospect. As we talked about the night before, one of the mechanics asked who gave us the tickets. “A guy by the name of Irwin,” I said. “Irwin lives next door to me,” the mechanic said. We asked if he could talk to him and ask him to go light on us in court. The mechanic agreed to try. The next day Bill and I went back to City Service. We asked the mechanic if he had talked to Irwin yet. “Yep, I asked Irwin if he remembered the two guys that were drag racing on 31 the other night.” Irwin says, “Yes I do and DON’T try to talk me out of it because these two idiots were going over 120 mph, weaving in and out of heavy traffic. And they ran two stop lights.”

Bill and I gasped. We were going to jail for sure. And when I got out, Dad would kill me.

I told Mom about this new information. We agreed to keep it from Dad. Mom knew a friend who worked for a lawyer. The lawyer said he knew the judge and could save our drivers licenses somehow.

The evening of our trial, our lawyer comes out of court with a client, looks at our tickets and said to us, “I just got this guy off light for the same thing you guys are up for and I can’t ask for any more favors from the judge tonight. Ask for a continuance and I can still save your license.”

Bill and I had been sweating this for two weeks. After our meeting with the lawyer, we said to ourselves, the hell with it, let’s just get it over with.

To our surprise, the judge didn’t put us in jail but he did give us a big fine and took our licenses for 90 days. After a few days of walking and bumming rides, Bill said to me, “Licence or not, I’m driving. You want to go around at the drive-ins tonight, Dale? OK, I said let’s go.

After a week or so of Bill driving and me riding, Bill said one night on the way out to the Pole, “This is for the birds, me driving, you riding. You drive my car and I’ll ride. So I took the wheel and as we were heading for the Pole on the street behind the ball park, Bill says pull over, I gotta take a leak. I said, “Can’t you wait until we get to the Pole?”  Bill said NO he couldn’t so I pulled over into a ballpark parking lot. Since no other cars were on the lot, Bill got out and did his business.  As a precaution I raised the hood to look as if we were having car trouble. Finally, as luck would have it, along came a police car with two cops. They pulled up beside us so I got out and started taking off the air cleaner. One asked who owned the car. Bill said he did. The cop then got out and walked around to Bill’s side. I said to the cop in the patrol car, “ Hey buddy would you mind putting your spot light on the motor. “Why?” he said. “It keeps bogging down like it’s trying to vapor lock or something,” I said, bluffing my ass off.

Meanwhile the other cop asked Bill to see his driver’s license and registration. Bill offered his registration and says he didn’t have his license with him. “Who’s driving this car?” said the cop. “Dale is driving my car,” Bill says. Bill then showed the cop a National Guard card and like that, Bill was good to go. 

Next, the cop walked around to me. I’m doing my best to look like I am working on the engine and waiting for THE QUESTION: “LETS SEE YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE PLEASE.” The gods smiled on me that night, however. The cop just said, “ Vapor locking you say?” Yes I say.  “You see that gas station over there on 16th St?” he said.  “Yes sir” I said.  “Well if you can make it over there tell them we sent you. They’re good with engines, they’ll fix you up.” “Thank you, sir! We will give it a try.”  With that the cops drove off. Bill and I didn’t take any more chances after that. We did not drive until we got our licenses back!

As it turned out, Officer Irwin did go lightly on Bill and me. Irwin told the judge we were doing 85 in a 60 mph zone and traffic was light. Maybe his neighbor got through to him after all.

By Flip65