Personal Narrative-The Jantzen Beach Car
It was about 1950. Larry Meyers and I had just watched Joey Chitwood’s Thrill Show. Chitwood drove a car on two wheels with the right side in the air. We had never seen that kind of driving before. Didn’t know a car could do all that. He jumped a few cars, and rolled a few cars, too. This was at the Jantzen Beach track a ¼ mile asphalt track. We came away excited and confident that we could drive like that. We went out and bought a 1920 Chrysler sedan. It had flower vases hanging inside of the back doors. It was tired and worn out, a sad old car. We bought it for $15 from some guy in our neighborhood. We never even bothered to ask if it could run. It needed work but could get up to 40 mph. That was good enough for us. We immediately
took it up to an open field between 88th and 92nd. There were piles of dirt that looked right for our proposal. I drove-carefully aiming for the right edge of one pile. I pushed the gas petal to the floor. As we accelerated forward it made all sorts of noises. Good noises. It roared which added to the excitement. We went up “our” dirt ramp; the right side went up as planned. We planned on a on a (complete) roll over. Instead it flopped on its left side and stayed there. In those days (there were) no seat belts, no roll bars. I thought my head would go through the canvas top. Then Larry landed on top of me screaming and kicking. There was dust and dirt and broken glass all over. Something had gone terribly wrong. To top it off we had to walk home. We never saw the car again. Years later I learned there were tricks to the trade. But I never tried that again. Once was enough.
took it up to an open field between 88th and 92nd. There were piles of dirt that looked right for our proposal. I drove-carefully aiming for the right edge of one pile. I pushed the gas petal to the floor. As we accelerated forward it made all sorts of noises. Good noises. It roared which added to the excitement. We went up “our” dirt ramp; the right side went up as planned. We planned on a on a (complete) roll over. Instead it flopped on its left side and stayed there. In those days (there were) no seat belts, no roll bars. I thought my head would go through the canvas top. Then Larry landed on top of me screaming and kicking. There was dust and dirt and broken glass all over. Something had gone terribly wrong. To top it off we had to walk home. We never saw the car again. Years later I learned there were tricks to the trade. But I never tried that again. Once was enough.