Lightning can strike twice in the same place, even a year apart. Lightning in this case was a 15,000-pound monster truck called Backdraft.

I’m blanking on the year, but I know the event was called the Night of Thrills and it took place at Ye Olde New England Dragway, my home stomping grounds. The track manager had booked in a pair of monster-truck drivers who were to cap the night with some car crushing on the track. Monster trucks are a great draw and tend to help build the crowd as even casual racing fans, especially those with kids, will come in and check them out, just for the freak factor and wanton destruction.

The plan was to have the trucks make a teaser appearance earlier in the evening. This appearance would consist of them actually drag racing to (if my memory is correct) the 300-foot cone on the track to get the crowd excited.

I’ll be honest and tell you the sight of two actual monster trucks staged on a normal drag strip is kind of cool, if for no other reason because they fill the whole track, wall to wall. Anyway, the tree flashed and the trucks both screamed as their blown alcohol motors began working in an instant. Shockingly, the trucks really spun the humongous tires lots on the hit of the throttle, and the Backdraft truck, while gaining speed, got into some really weird harmonic situation with those big tires. They were bouncing and flexing in unison, and while it looked cool, it was clear that steering it was not a lot of fun under those conditions. The truck in the other lane was on a clear pass and it was out far enough to be away from danger when the Backdraft truck crossed the track and destroyed a good chunk of the guard wall. Two hours later when the wall was repaired and the track was clean, we joked in the tower about the value of “creative thinking.” This fanciful thought was worth about two hours of pay for the entire track staff as the evening dragged on.

Cut to almost exactly a year later when I was stunned to see two monster trucks sitting in the pits at the track the morning of the match race, which was once again called The Night of Thrills. This time the track operator had decided to shorten the length of the monster truck race to just sixty feet, which did nothing except move the section of wall destroyed by the monster truck–the same monster truck, mind you– loser to the starting line so replacing the jersey barriers required a slightly shorter tractor jaunt to pick them up. That was the first time I have ever seen a human being turn the same shade of purple as Concord grape juice. The track operator was literally about to blow an o-ring and fans who were at the race the year before must have been thinking that this was something we planned to have happen ever year.

Needless to say, that was the last year for the monster trucks.