That was 1976, so it was the last year I wrenched a funny car. At this time of year, we had just built a second Corvette fflopper, and were getting ready for its first event at the old dragstrip near Detroit. Our shop was on 67th and Pulaski in Chicago, and it was a nice setup: a 1500 square foot warehouse surrounded by ten foot fencing with razor wire on top. The Corvette was hard to drive because it didn't create a lot of downforce, but it was sleek, and we set some mph records. A 237 mph clocking at NY National was our best. In those screaming dragstrip commercials that used to play on the radio, it was billed as the world's fastest Corvette, which it may well have been at the time, albeit with a nitro-burning supercharged Chrysler engine.
On weekdays, I worked on the race car primarily at night, and taught school during the day at Percy Julian High on 103rd and Vincennes in Chicago. I had a couple of Honors English 3 classes, a humanities class, and a job program that I administered. My kids were great. Ninety percent young women in the Honors English classes; a hundred percent boys in the job program. It wasn't easy keeping the ladies quiet, but they were good students, and we made a lot of progress. I was just getting my feet wet writing for car magazines and shooting some races. I started shooting my own photos after complaining about how little I was paid to write. The editor told me he had to save some of the money for the photographer. "I can do that, I said." I had tinkered with cameras for many years, so I had some hint of how to take decent photos and eventually figured it out. I knew the drag racing thing couldn't go on forever, given my other responsibilities, so the journalism and photography gave me a way to stay close to the car biz. By 1980, I would quit teaching, move to NY and become a full-time writer and photographer. In March of '76, lived with my wife and infant son in a Chicago bungalow at 10637 S. Bell, in Chicago's Beverly Hills neighborhood. I had purchased that house for $20,000 in 1972. In the fall of '76 I sold the bungalow for 33K and bought a 1920s colonial with a spanish tile roof and copper gutters for 43 K. It was less than a mile south of the bungalow in an old Chicago neighborhood called Morgan Park. There were some tough times that year. The race car went backwards into the guard rail at 200 mph in July, and, while the driver suffered only a concussion and a lot of bruises, our operation never recovered from the financial hit. My second born, a daughter, was born with pyloricstinosis in December and nearly died before an 86 year old pediatrician figured out what was wrong. She survived and now has a daughter named Grace. A few rough spots, but all things considered, 1976 was a good year. Hadn't thought about any of this in many moons. It's good to reflect. Paul On Mar 18, 2011, at 9:26 AM, David J Brooks wrote: > Paul's comments on a photo he did 35 years ago an new adjustments got > me thinking. > > I use to do a "way back when" column for my companies Newsletter, jobs > we had done 30 years ago, so i just thought i would put this out > there. > > What were you doing 35 years ago about this time.?? > > Me i was doing my first of many Trans Canada Pipeline jobs, providing > precise elevations on a series of bench marks North of Toronto. > > Dave > > -- > Documenting Life in Rural Ontario. > www.caughtinmotion.com > http://brooksinthecountry.blogspot.com/ > York Region, Ontario, Canada > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
