I was looking around my closet the other day and ran across my street racer jacket. I took it out and put it on. I started wondering why I don’t wear it much any more, and about how much I used to and still love this jacket. At one time there was not much of anything that I owned that was more important than this jacket to me. It is still important to me. I thought of the time I was at a street race and how just having it on almost got me hauled off to jail.

I received it from my ex-wife as a gift at my surprise birthday party. All my non-car friends were looking at me like I was some sort of mad man, wearing this crazy cartoon motorcycle gang reject vest. But there I was smiling from ear to ear, happy as can be, standing in the middle of a Mexican restaurant looking like I just got released from some biker prision. I got my colors and no one can take them away, street racer for life. That is the funny part, I am a street racer but I don't race on the street. I don’t preach street racing {anymore}. I don’t hang out at the street races…much. {from time to time if I run across some one hooking up on a back street I will watch} But, if you ask people about me, Ron………….oh he’s a street racer. So I wear my jacket as a strange badge of courage.

There is a down side. Every time someone gets run over by a street racer, we are guilty by association. That is the hard part. Anytime some kid racing his Honda down some main street somewhere, hits a pole or kills himself or a whole family going to church, we are guilty. In the old days, people were killed, I’ve seen it myself, but now its all over the news and in the paper. The police got all pissed because they had to do something, so they closed all the cruise spots and chained up all the parking lots. They put no parking signs at all the places we used to park and hang out.

But street racing is not the some either. There was a time you'd run up on someone at a light and hook up. You know, bang a couple of gears and that was it. It was not running like an idiot through some residential neighborhood doing 130 mph like the fast and the furious.

It happens, things change. On a good night, we would take over the Burger King parking lot at Crenshaw and Jefferson with two or three hundred people. Mostly brothers, but lots of white dudes came from the Valley and South Bay. It was safe and it was fun. My whole week revolved around this one night of the week. Some fast cars were there, but it was the people and personalities that made it so exciting. Camalot, Chicken Bobby,Tow Truck Jerry, John Hall, Blue Bug Gene, Bar-b-que, and so many others, I don’t have space to list them here.

The yelling, calling out, the cheating, it was all a part of the game of street racing. Camalot yelling out to the crowd "I have a junk yard motor, a 327 I think. Come on homeboy! Let's get down……..you got heads up on 2nd Ave. All I do is street race and drink my wine.” He would sucker someone every once in awhile. He is a story all by himself. Sometimes crazy, sometimes drunk or playing drunk for the sucker. But he was smart. He would only race on 2nd Ave., because he lived on 3rd Ave. I remember him saying “ I’m going home and drop my mufflers.”

He had a red ’67 Camaro with a black vinyl top, four-speed and a small block. It was on Crager mags with what looked like some 13 x 32 slicks hanging out on the back. Then he would say "I’m gonna come around the corner, do two burn outs and line up! I ain't gonna wait on nobody”! I can still see it like it was yesterday. We would be standing on the corner of 2nd Ave and 48th. Suddenly, the roar of a uncorked small block rumbles in the night stillness, and you can see Camalot wrestling with the steering wheel, wearing his signature straw hat, coming around the corner. He does his two burnouts, lines up and rev’s his motor to about seven grand, not looking at anyone, no gestures, nothing. He was just sitting there, lined-up with his foot to the wood! Insane! We know Camalot has the go and he could go whenever he wanted, so we are waiting for the other car to line up. After the other car lined up, Camalot, with his motor still revved up, opened his door, leaned out of his car, looked down like something was wrong, but he still had his foot to the wood! The guy in the other car dropped his RPM’s, and Camalot dropped the hammer! He leaned back in the car, snatched second gear, closed the door, banged third, and he was gone! He never lifted, ran past the finish line, turned the corner and was gone. The other guy was sitting there wondering what just happened. Camalot came back in his regular car a few minutes later, got paid and went back to the Burger King parking lot.

The money was everything and the money was nothing. You needed cash to get down, and to build your motor. Some guys would do anything to get the money to put it all together. They would even set up a race to lose in order to race the person they really wanted for a larger purse. By the mid-80’s, a ten thousand dollar street race was not uncommon. Guys would exchange a brief case full of money over a street race. You don’t have the money? You could lose your car or worse, your life. Yeah, there were some rough times out on the street then, and I don’t miss them at all.

My street racer jacket is still important. Even though, when Brotherhood Raceway was open, Big Willie was handing them out like candy to anyone and everyone he felt like. I'm still embarrassed that he gave one to, then mayor, Richard Riordon {I still have the picture}. And even if Randy Thomas refuses to ever wear one again, I think I will pull it out, dust it off and maybe wear it to the Long Beach Hot Rod Swap Meet.

Racing is life.......everything else is just waiting.