April 01/08

Gloria and I attended a show at the International Centre in Toronto last year. It had been twenty years since our last visit there when we attended one of the biggest annual car shows in Canada. Actually, our Northern Force Jet Funny Car was the events feature vehicle in 1987 and was again featured in the Molson’s Breweries display in 1988. This time we were there to check out the camping and R.V. show.

Our history with the International Centre started in the early seventies when Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductee ‘Dizzy’ Dean Murray created the ‘Motion’ car show. One of his first shows was promoted as the “Sights and Sounds of Motorsports”. Every hour a different vehicle was fired up and the throttle jazzed for a couple of minutes. The crowds loved it! The biggest impressions were made by Gary Rainthorpe’s supercharged front engine dragster and a National Tractor Pullers Association twin engine supercharged monster that blew the ceiling tiles right out of their framework. Later that day a bylaw enforcement officer, with police protection, shut down the show until ‘Dizzy’ agreed to stop running the vehicles. Such was his legend.

Although not promoted as such, another sights and sounds show took place in Toronto on Princess Boulevard outside the Automotive Building on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. This was the annual venue for the Speed Sport show. In those days the drag race cars were the stars of the event. Sunday night, after the show closed to the public, race car haulers would line both sides of the boulevard. The cars were pushed out of the building then fired-up to put them on the trailers. It was a matter of pride to show that your piece sounded as good as it looked. “All show and no go”, was not acceptable. A considerable crowd would gather and applause would follow many of the fire-ups. Even though I raced and enjoyed the sound of a high R.P.M. small block Chevy, I was hard pressed to contain myself when the brute energy of a Chrysler Hemi broke the winter silence.

The car shows were important social and marketing events. They gave us an opportunity to give our sponsors some exposure, show off the latest in equipment and technology, meet new friends, and re-visit those we had not seen since last season. These shows were attended by the who’s who of drag racing and created a formal entrance into the racing scene for new competitors from super-stockers to blown funny cars and dragsters. Track owners attended to solicit the drivers to come to their tracks. The more popular cars and drivers could put hundreds of spectators in the stands. I made my first corporate sponsorship deal at a car show.

One winter we ‘white knuckled’ our way down an ice covered 401 to the Autorama show in Ottawa. The highway was a skating rink for a hundred and fifty miles. We lost first place in the competition division to a local Karbelt sponsored modified production. To appease us the judges awarded a first place for unique display stanchions. We all knew the Karbelt car had a “dummy” engine in it but it was good politics to ‘stroke’ the local racer and event sponsor. The rules clearly stated that the cars be race ready and mine was. When the show ended, vehicles were pushed into an underground tunnel that ramped up and out onto the exhibitors parking lot. To show my displeasure with the judging I fired up the car in the tunnel, revved up the engine a couple of times, which attracted a large audience and when the way was clear, did a burnout that propelled me up the ramp towards the exit at a fair clip. When I went over the top and into the parking lot, there was my friend Bryan with the trailer thoughtfully placed directly in front of me with thirty feet of ice in between. The resulting crash wasn’t as bad as the humiliation. My friend Steve Brown repaired the damage when we returned to Cambridge. Like ‘Dizzy’, I was also “over the top” from time to time.

And now this statement...I’m twenty five to thirty pounds overweight. Most of it appeared shortly after I quit smoking two years ago. Of course I got that ‘beer-belly’ which so many of us baby boomers seem to sport. I don’t like mine but I come by it honestly and without too much guilt. There is a story here but that is for another day. Let me just say this...some of my earlier race cars were called ‘Draftlifter’ for a reason.

At last year’s IHRA national event at Toronto Motorsports Park I ran into my good friends John, Sharon and Danny Fletcher and their families. They all looked great and I told them so. Sharon returned the compliment. I said thanks and commented that I was wearing black because Gloria thought it looked slimming. John said; “Tell Gloria it doesn’t work that good!” I sucked in the gut a bit and carried on. Here is the good news. A most unlikely source has given me some hope on how to deal with my excessive girth. I like snacking and have been able to stay off tobacco because of mini chocolate bars, creamy caramels and a box of toothpicks a week. That is until now. According to a publication I just read, many in our society are members of the “mobile electronic snacking generation”. Yes sir folks, this article has given me renewed hope. Instead of that double/double with a couple of Boston crème donuts, I am going to turn to my Blackberry to “snack” on the latest clip from my soap opera, an update on Britney Spears or up-to-the-minute reports from the stock market. Yea baby! Instead of a massive truckers wallet on a chain strapped to my fat ass, I am going to accessorize my wardrobe with mobile browsers, satellite radios, I-pods and the latest cell phone technology. I will be one happening funky dude, looking chiselled because my cravings are now electronically satisfied. That cheer in the background was Gloria. Guess I’ll go tell her exactly what cravings I’m talking about. So, let’s see now. I'll activate my hand held global positioning system in order to navigate from my office to the kitchen...oh, just a minute, was that my tummy or cell phone vibrating...and why has the smoke detector gone off...ok, that was a sports update coming in...and who the heck is paging me at a time like this...can't they tell I’m having a snack? Trying to look groovy and being cool sure is stressful in the twenty first century. Think I'll open a bottle of beer and a bag of chips and watch fifty hours of non-stop NASCAR on the SPEED Channel.

That’s why I’m ‘Bogus’.