Talkin’ Music with Jack – Racing In The Street

Racing In The Street

By Jack Coll

11-20-13

     My how time flies, a few months back, perhaps sometime in August, (2013) a nice article came out in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I think another in the Philadelphia Daily News about street racing in Philadelphia.  I’m not sure but I think they still race behind the airport on Enterprise Avenue as I remember the article.  Street racing in Philadelphia brings back a lot of fond memories for me, as the one time owner of a 1967 GTO, a 1968 Firebird, Three 55’ Chevy’s, a 63 Chevy with a 283, four barrel, of course, I loved speed.  In hind sight most of my cars, and I had a lot of them, most of them were pieces of S….  (Sorry, that’s car talk)

So earlier this week we’re working in the frame shop and Brian throws in a Bruce Springsteen CD, as he often does, and one of Bruce’s songs comes on titled “Racing in the Street.”   With the music playing my mind drifts back to when I was king of the strip.  I think it was a few days later  I was tuned into a radio station, it might have been WMGK, and an Eagles song comes on that I hadn’t heard in a while simply called “Ol’55,” which always strikes a chord with me seeing how I owned three of them, and raced them all.

The weekend race track I attended was in South Philadelphia, the track was opened on Friday and Saturday nights, on most nights the track located on Front Street was open for racing from 12a.m. until 4, or 5 a.m., depending on the police interference.  Most of the race car drivers refer to those hot summer nights at the drags in South Philly as the greatest nights of their life, to me it was just another night.  I had highlights and low-lights, one of my best highlights, and the greatest racing achievement of my Front Street racing career was me, in my 55’ kicking a 1967’s Corvette’s ass. (Alright, the Vette was a bigger piece of crap than my five.)

Typically we would arrive at the track after midnight, sometimes we would come up from the shore to race and head back down following the race at five or six in the morning, typically we would sleep in the car or on the beach, although we always hung out in Wildwood, we would often sleep on the beach in Cape May, they never checked the beach after midnight there.

I was always amazed at the Front Street track, it would be like 2 a.m. and old people like 35 and 40 years old would have beach chairs set up all along the track, on a good summer night it seemed like a thousand spectators looking on.  The race cars would line up side by side, when you reached the front of the line you raced whoever was lined up next to you.  As you inched your way up towards the starting line you were eyeballing the guy next to you, in front and in back of him because you didn’t know who you were going to get, but you always wanted to win.  When you reached the starting line it was usually a young, good looking girl, (they were all good looking, we were 17 years old)  when she dropped the flag, you were off, you didn’t want to jump the flag, because there was no backing up, you would be forced to run the track alone to get out of the way for the next race. When the flag was dropped all you heard were tires on the black top, a little fish tail, a lot of smoke, and three quarters of the way down the track another race was lighting it up at the starting line, when you crossed the finish line you would either smile, for the victory, or pounded your steering wheel like the other guy cheated, I mean that’s the only way you could have lost, the other guy must have cheated because you always knew you had the fastest car at the track.  You crossed the line and went around the block to jump right back in line.

I don’t remember if I raced for two or three years, often after my illustrious street racing career, we would visit Front Street as a spectator. We would park, sit on the hood of our car, whatever piece of crap I was driving at the time, and watch the cars streak past us.  I would sit, and watch, and recall, even at that young age how when I raced, it was all different, how I was the best, and had the greatest car.  In the end of my time on Front Street, they were bringing cars in on trailers, and there seemed to be a stronger police presence.  The Philly cops would swoop in with four or five cars from both directions and the jail break was on, they could only get four or five of us and there was on a good night 50, 60 or 70 race cars, among a thousand or so spectators.  Even the spectators would jump into their cars and race off, I never really quite understood that, the spectators weren’t doing anything wrong.

I don’t remember if we got popped on a night I was racing or a night when we were simply spectators, if you were racing you always had to go back, pick up your friends and then get the hell out of there.  I don’t remember who else was with us that night, I had a car load of friends.

The cop drill on Front Street was when they showed up, we would disperse, wait about fifteen minutes, and all reconnect about two or three streets over from Front Street, I don’t remember if it was Passyunk Avenue or whatever street back in that little industrial park.  On that warm summer night when the cop stopped us it was the usual conversation, I didn’t know what was going on there, we were coming home from the shore and I got lost, and I thought it was despicable that these kids were out here in the early morning hours breaking the law, and somewhere at some point while I was trying to impress the cop with my big words, (despicable) I don’t remember the conversation word for word but I think I remember him using the words “Shut Up.” (Pretty rude, I was being nice to him)

At a time in our lives when you didn’t need a good night sleep, hell you didn’t even need any kind of sleep, and back when you felt like you lived an entire week every single night of your life, life was good, and as we entered our 20’s, the reality of growing up and realizing that street racing would not turn out to be the greatest achievement of our life, the thoughts of that at the time really sucked, and then you had kids, and life’s real achievements really kicked in.

Let’s send out two songs that made me remember the glory days of Front Street, back when I was the racing king of the world, if even just for a moment, Thanks for the memories.

“Ol’ 55””

The Eagles

Well, my time went to quickly

I went lickety-splitly out to my old fifty-five

As I pulled away slowly, feelin’ so holy,

God knows I was feelin’ alive

And now the sun’s comin’ up

I’m ridin’ with Lady Luck

Freeway cars and trucks

Stars beginning to fade, and I lead the parade

Just a wishin’ I’d stayed a little longer

Lord, don’t you know the feelin’s getting’ stronger

Six in the morning, gave me no warnin’

I had to be on my way

Now the cars are all passin’ me

Trucks are all flashin’ me

I’m headed home from your place

And now the sun’s comin’ up

I’m ridin’ with Lady Luck

Freeway cars and trucks

Stars beginning to fade, and I lead the parade

Just a wishin’ I’d stayed a little longer

Lord, don’t you know, the feelin’s getting’ stronger.

Well my time went so quickly

I went lickety-splitly out to my old fifty-five

As I pulled away slowly, feelin’ so holy

God knows I was feelin’ alive.

******************************************************

FROM THE ALBUM; DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

“Racing In The Street”

 By Bruce Springsteen

I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396

Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor

She’s waiting tonight down in the parking lot

Outside the Seven-Eleven store

Me and my partner Sonny built her strait out of scratch

And he rides with me from town to town

We only run for the money, got no strings attached

We shut ‘em up and then we shut ‘em down

Tonight, tonight the strip’s just right

I wanna blow ‘em off in my first heat

Summer’s here and the time is right

For racin’ in the street

Yea, that’s some good memories.