When we first fired up the Junkyard we ran a news item on photos of Dave Wallace’s Road Runner from back when it was new in 1969. If you don’t know Wallace (D2), he’s a longtime gearhead journalist, having been involved in the likes of Drag News, Hot Rod, and Petersen’s Drag Racing magazines. His dad is D1, a photographer for Drag News, so D2 started working at San Fernando when he was still a zygote. He had the type of SoCal hot rodder’s fun that you’d expect in the early ’60s, then served as an MP in Vietnam, and came back for the explosion of drag racing. He’s currently a nitro hippie with an ad agency and a freelance side gig. He’s also our friend, so we can claim we know a guy who is in the Drag Racing Hall of Fame. Part of being Dave’s pal is getting in on his weekly barrage of nitro-tastic emails, and part of being us is dragging more words out of him so we can share more of his world with you.

So there’s the background of why we have this photo. Dave’s story (mildly edited) is below it.

“Don Baker was the first of my childhood chums to get his license, lucky duck; he turned 16 in February 1965, whereas this October baby had to suffer through that entire (sophomore) school year without one.  On those rare occasions when he could get the keys to his father’s Corvair van, our favorite thing to do was imitate the then-new Little Red Wagon near my house in Sepulveda, in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.

The only way to get that pathetically underpowered, back-motored van airborne was  by hitting the double-bump intersection in the background at 50-plus mph. Yeah, it was real hard on the front suspension, but what did we know, or care? Running down the center of Noble Ave. (the north-south street in background) was a drainage channel. If no one was coming across Rayen St. (forcing him to abort) and Don was going fast enough when he hit the ditch, the front suspension would compress hard on its stops, then jerk the ultralight front end skyward.

We discovered this unadvertised benefit to Chevrolet’s back-motored, flat-six layout by accident one night when my buddy forgot about the double drainage dips on Rayen and failed to slow down.  We were both bounced off of the headliner, and suspected that the front wheels had left the ground. Another pass was clearly in order (for research purposes)!

So, Don dropped me off at the curb to warn him of any approaching vehicles from Noble Ave., then made another approach, even faster. Sure enough, his tires actually cleared the pavement! A new sport was born for bored Valley guys. From that night on, whenever he’d drive me home, he’d hit the bump a little faster and harder.  We knew we were ‘on a good one’ when his dad’s magnetic St. Christopher statue jumped off the metal dash.

On the day of the photo, I borrowed the fixed-lens, 35mm camera that my dad used at San Fernando Raceway, bought a roll of film (remember film?), and shot Gawd knows how many passes (one shot per ‘run’). My buddy recalls that his best attempt that day was the last one, which ripped the fuel lines from both carburetors, spraying gas onto the red-hot engine. Amazingly, he was able to shut it off and avert the entire van bursting into flames.

We never showed this trannie to anyone for 25 years. Around 1990, I stumbled onto the slide and ordered a set of 8x10s for Don, and me, and his father (who’s now 82). His dad looked at it for the longest time, then said something like, “Y’know, the Chevy dealer and I never could figure out why the front end kept failing, especially since I never hauled anything heavier than my family.”

Fast approaching 60 (in February), Don is one of only two of our childhood gearhead pals still into cars.  He drives a trick ’38 Willys two-door sedan (with a ’41 front end), powered by a big-block Chevy. Like me, he fled Los Angeles for the Sierra foothills. Together with his wife and two sons, he operates two successful restaurants in Auburn and Lincoln, California. I had lunch with him at the Auburn joint, Awful Annie’s, just last week. Our wheelstands of 1965 came up in conversation, as they always do.”

Don Baker at his “Hot Rod Table” inside Awful Annie’s Restaurant in the Old Town district of Auburn, California.