The story I am about to relay is true. It is the stuff of legends, one of those happenings that will live forever in the minds of those who witnessed it. In the words of York, Pennsylvania native and legendary MoPar racer Bill Stiles, "it was the Woodstock of Drag Racing!" In these times, the resulting legal actions may destroy the sport. However, it was held on a Saturday night in 1965, in a time when there was not so much focus on lawsuits and political correctness, and a lot of focus on drag racing and fast cars.

Although I personally was not in attendance at this event, I had been at York U.S. 30 Dragway in York, Pennsylvania many, many times, and my cousin was a participant in all the Super Stock Nationals held at York, as well as the subsequent events at New York National. The story of this event includes drama, sportsmanship, intrigue and cover-ups. It also includes some of the best doorslammer racing ever seen on this planet. This is a story that should be preserved.

In 1965, Super Stock and Drag Illustrated was a small, eastern publication that covered drag racing, focusing primarily on the popularity of stock-bodied drag racing. Match racing between the heroes of the day was a lucrative way for the drag racing stars to make a living, much more lucrative than the standard NHRA/AHRA national event tour, and it flourished, especially in the east.

The Mopar racers had started the whole thing. After their altered-wheelbase B bodies had been deemed too wild and were given the heave-ho from NHRA FX classes, they needed a place to race. Drawing big crowds at match races, they had evolved to using fuel injection and nitromethane, and the first funny cars were born. This match racing turned out to be so lucrative, that eventually the Ford and Mercury factory teams built hybrids to compete against them, despite Ford’s ban on racing the altered Mopars. It was a wild summer, and travelers up and down the east coast would see transporters going north and south, heading for their next gig. In fact, the California heavy hitters, such as "Dandy" Dick Landy and Butch Leal in his "California Flash" Plymouth headed to the eastern seaboard "tour" for a couple of months to get a piece of the action.

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The keys to getting match race bookings were exposure and performance, with the emphasis on exposure. The editors that be at tiny Lopez Publishing, the owners of Super Stock and Drag Illustrated magazine, decided that they would host a one-day event at the renowned York U.S. 30 Dragway and promote the stuffing out of it. They figured that just perhaps they could make a couple of bucks as well as gain some notoriety for everyone. The magazine was not rich, and could not offer a big purse, but was quickly becoming the "bible" for doorslammer racers and could offer one thing perhaps more important – exposure.

Exposure was the lifeblood of racers who made their living on the match race trail, as so many did during that time. So, it contacted racers and teams such as Sox & Martin, Bob Harrop and Bill Lawton’s "Tasca Ford" crew, as well as most of the other stars and offered them good "ink" and a moderate purse in return for their presence at York. The event would be scheduled for Saturday evening, August 7, 1965. In the eastern Ohio shop that hosted my cousin’s aluminum-nosed ‘64 Hemi Dodge it was the topic of conversation for months prior to the event, and it was highly anticipated. For the first time, there would be an event where stockers would be the headliners, and there was a lot of interest. It turned out there was much more interest than the promoters had expected.

The classes would be the legal Super Stock classes of course, which at that time consisted of Super Stock (stick) and Super Stock Automatic. Also included would be a whole bevy of classes tailor made for the match racing doorslammers that populated the East Coast. They were based on weight and type of fuel used, so they were named based on that criteria. 3200 lbs. Gasoline, 3000 lbs Gasoline, and so on (32G and 30G), with the top class being 2700Fuel (27F).

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The big name factory Mopar match race cars were all in attendance, Sox, Harrop, Dave Strickler, as well as West Coast stars Leal and Landy. The blown fuel car of Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge towed in from Chicago, and virtually everyone else who was anyone on the match race scene was in attendance. The Fords and Mercurys came to play as well, but as hard as it is to imagine in today’s world, Chevrolets were rare. At that time, they simply did not have the oats to compete against the Hemis and the SOHC (Single Overhead Cam) 427 Fords. However, some independent bowtie teams decided to attend for the experience and exposure, as the few Chevys in existence at the time did command a pretty good match race following.

In order to fully understand the situation as it unfolded, it is important to have a basic layout of the legendary York U.S. 30 Dragway. York U.S. 30 was located just west of the city of York, Pa., in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country and along historic U.S. Route 30, a major artery that eventually will take you completely across the USA. Actually, the drag strip itself was an airport, and the drag races were secondary to the facility’s main function. If there were races going on, and a plane needed to put down, the races were put on hold until the plane landed and taxied away. The weekly program was generally run on Saturday night, so as to keep interference with the air operations to a minimum.

As an airport, the drag strip was very wide, and it was not uncommon for them to run four cars at a time on regular race nights in order to speed things up. The stands sat back away from the racing surface a good ways, with a wide grassy section between them and the drag strip itself. At the far end, between the strip and Route 30, way past the shut down area, was the airport operation itself, the hangers and service area for airplanes. That area was wide open to the drag strip area, the whole way to Route 30, so although it was quite a hoof, anyone could walk through it to gain access to the pit area. To enter the track as a racer or a spectator, it was necessary to turn off of 30, drive down a lane that ran parallel to the track, and enter from the backside. It had seating capacity for about 4500 or so, and was large enough to handle another couple of thousand walking around without much problem.

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When the gates opened late on the morning of the day of the event, the line was already long and backed way up almost to Route 30. My cousin was in that line with his Hemi Dodge, having towed in from Ohio on an open trailer. Even at that early hour, it was apparent to him "that they did not have the staffing to handle the crowd," remembered Max "The wait to get in was long and very boring".

In they came, racers and spectators by the thousands. Many got impatient and tired of waiting in the backed-up ticket line, and just left their cars where they were and hoofed into the place. According to Bill Stiles, who at the time was the tuner of the Dodge driven by the late Dave Strickler, "people parked along Route 30 in West York, and walked up to twelve miles" to the facility. Those folks continued walking right in through the airport service area and into the pit area, by the thousands, like Bedouins across the desert. Despite an early effort to control that, the couple of rent-a-cops on duty were absolutely powerless to stop it. When the numbers were tallied at the end of the day it turned out to be one of the largest one-day events in the history of the sport, to this day.

The paid attendance was somewhere around 22,000, and they figured another 8-10,000 walked in the back way without paying. It was absolutely packed, not for the claustrophobic, and was quickly getting out of control. Stiles continues "I think attendance was close to 50,000. The people were on the drag strip itself and when the cars went down through, it would just open up."

It was a warm day, with a lot of down time early with planes taking off and landing. Some of the spectators had brought coolers full of liquid refreshments not available at the track, and by evening there were folks passed out on the grounds. The restrooms became full very quickly, and so folks handled that the best they could. As a result, you had to watch where you stepped. The refreshment stand ran out of food and drink before the race ever started. Still the people came.

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There was simply nowhere to put everyone, and so they spilled out onto the grassy area between the stands and the drag strip, on even to the edge of the drag strip itself. They would stand alongside each other the entire length of the drag strip, each stepping out from the one in front to see down the length of the drag strip, forming a funnel that would part as the cars came down through. Fred Ristagno, whose restored Sox & Martin Duster was recently featured in CP, was there, hanging around with eventual winner Bob Harrop and his "Flying Carpet" AWB Hemi Coronet. He recalled that "there were people standing next to the cars and touching them as they left the line. The crowds overflowed the strip and far beyond the finish line they were so far out from the guardrails that they spanned the surface rail to rail. This started about three quarters the way down the strip." Fred goes on, "they would part like when Moses crossed the Red Sea as the cars came down the track. It was totally insane and there was no way to control it."

The starting line area was also a sea of humanity. The throng made it impossible to see the cars at the line, if one was in the stands you would just see this mob around the starting line area and then two cars would explode from it. Max had noticed that while staging, people were standing real close to the back of the cars for a reason. "It seems they were peering through the back window, reading the tach," Max later told me, "and then placing bets with each other on what the rpm was when we released the clutch. It was the most unbelievable night of all my years racing".

This pandemonium went on well into the night. My cousin was beaten early, but stayed to the end anyway. "There was simply no way to leave, as the pit area was impossible to get through, and the lane leading out of the place was clogged with parked cars. I don’t know what they would have done had they been forced to get an ambulance out of there".

One of the more memorable incidents of the night, however, came when someone in the tower, frustrated with the danger of the crowd standing right along the drag strip’s edge, implored the folks in the stands to "throw something at those people" so they would move back. Well, that is exactly what they did. Beer cans, soda bottles, you name it, flew out of the stands at the standing throng. So what did the standees do? You guessed it - they picked the stuff up and threw it back. Needless to say, event staff was horrified by this development, and did not make that request again.

The final round went off around three AM, and the place was still packed. The eventual winner was Crescent, New Jersey’s Harrop in his altered wheelbase Dodge, which had been running 9.40’s at 150+. To this day, Harrop, a heavy hitter of the day, still refers to that event as one of his most memorable days in drag racing.

Even with all the extra goings on, it was, as most who were there admit, a terrific drag race. They saw all the big names they came to see, Harrop, Sox, Landy, Leal, Nicholson, et al. It was, in terms of competition, one of the best ever, and would be today considered a fabulous event even without the story that goes with it.

By the grace of God no one was hurt, and one only can imagine the lawsuits filed if it had been held in today’s litigious society. In today’s world an event of this nature getting out of control like that would be unimaginable. But, it was not today’s world; it was a time when it was not the norm to hold someone else responsible if things did not turn out perfect. The simple fact is that it went off, and is still considered as one of the largest and most successful single day events in the history of drag racing.