Q: I've a narrative about what one other reader referred to as the Fremont Drag Strip, which I knew because the Baylands Raceway. It’s sort of lengthy, however I assumed you'll take pleasure in it.
Firstly of my instructing profession at St. Francis Excessive College within the Eighties, Japan was consuming us for lunch when it comes to electronics manufacturing.
I used to be instructing chemistry on the time. I used the analogy that a catalyst capabilities for a response as if it's a decrease mountain cross than the upper cross that an uncatalyzed response represents.
One in every of my college students mentioned, “Properly, you'll be able to’t recover from any mountain cross with that Japanese piece of junk you drive.” (It was a 1980 Honda Civic hatchback.)
I replied, “My automobile can beat your automobile (a compact Oldsmobile wagon) any day.” It was recreation on.
Tom Farrell, Santa Clara
A: Certainly it was.
Q: The younger man’s associates wished to tug race down Foothill Expressway. I mentioned I used to be not going to encourage rushing, so I proposed one thing the place every automobile would have a passenger who would sign when the automobile reached the velocity restrict.
Then the group of boys got here again with the suggestion that we drag at Baylands. The racetrack would time how lengthy you took to drive a quarter-mile and offer you your high velocity. You paid $10 to go as many instances as you wished. It was referred to as “Thursday night time grudge match” and folks might convey their vehicles, street-legal or not, and drag for enjoyable.
Tom Farrell
A: Gents, rev up your engines.
Q: As every of us bought into the road, we had been surrounded by not-street-legal muscle vehicles revving their engines, all dropped at Baylands on trailers. We had been later instructed by the boys who had been spectators that night time that the announcer made a remark about how nice it was that “anybody might come out to Thursday Night time Grudge Match,” as evidenced by the 2 small vehicles, my Honda and the Oldsmobile wagon.
We agreed to go two out of three, nevertheless it wasn’t obligatory, as a result of I received the primary two drags by 0.25 seconds with a high velocity of 71 mph.
The younger man attributed his defeat to the truth that he forgot to disengage the emergency brake on his drive over the Dumbarton Bridge to get to Fremont. The occasion was introduced on the PA the subsequent day at St. Francis. The younger man was a junior and in his senior yr yearbook, they had been requested what they'd bear in mind most about SFHS.
He wrote, “When Mr. Farrell beat me in a drag race.”
A: Now that may be a yearbook remark to savor.
Search for Gary Richards at Fb.com/mr.roadshow, or contact him at mrroadshow@bayareanewsgroup.com.