The team broke up in 1987 when Bernstein landed the Buick backing for a NASCAR team and his own fuel Funny Car endeavor, but for Cummings, of Hammond, Louisiana, the split-up just meant more racing for him and his burgeoning family on his own nickel.

Today, the Cummings --- father Larry, mom Linda, and sons Britt and Slate, and even grandsons Daltin, 14, and Cole, 11 --- have a "super" team of their own, boasting three recent IHRA World championships and livery of 10 race cars, including two Jr. Dragsters for the two grand kids plus a couple of Top Dragsters, two more Top Sportsman cars and Stockers, Super Stockers and Super Gassers.

And like in the old Bud/Ford days, the Cummings now has a "super" sponsor of their own, in the form of Moser Engineering of Portland, Indiana, a maker of racing axles, gears and just about everything else in the rear end department. "We’re back," says Cummings patriarch Larry, who started racing at age 19 in a brand-new ’66 396 Chevelle.

Not that they have gone anywhere.

The Bud/Ford deal changed his life, for sure. For one thing, he quit his job as a bread delivery man, one that he had for nearly 20 years, and the $55,000 that the sponsorship gave him --- plus all the parts and pieces, oils and antifreeze and nearly everything else that Motorcraft offered the public --- was way more than the $25,000 he was making as a bread man. But when he and his family returned to racing locally in 1987, they started their own parking lot striping and maintenance business that is successful enough today to allow for that Cummings "super" team to travel far and wide in NHRA and IHRA land.

Larry began racing in 1966, starting in Stock Eliminator. "They had a class in Gulfport (Mississippi) called ‘Strictly Stock.’ You’d drive your car there and run with street tires, like Pure Stock today. I ran D/Strictly Stock in a ’66 Chevelle Super Sport 396/375 engine. I did real well in it. I won the Mississippi State Championship in it that year, my first year of racing. I still have the trophy, with a big crown on it. It was a big deal. I was 19. I didn’t win any money, but that trophy was worth a million dollars. I still have it," he says.

He took that 396 motor out and put a 427 in the Chevelle and ran NHRA B/Modified Production with the same car, racing locally. Other race cars followed, including a ’58 Corvette that ran D/Modified, a ’72 Vega wagon with a small-block and two-fours and a four-speed that fit into C/Modified, and in 1978, a rear-engine dragster that ran C/Econo Dragster and set a couple of records and won some divisional races.

Then, in 1985, Cummings got the call to drive an ex-Pro Stocker-turned-Super Gasser Ford Thunderbird with the Budweiser team.

At first, he thought the offer was a joke.

"Kenny Bernstein was good friends with Moose Pearah, who owned Atlanta Dragway, State Capitol in Baton Rouge and a track in Houston, and he rented an old air base at Lake Charles, Louisiana and ran bracket races there. We went over there one Sunday for a race and it got rained out. So I’m coming down the interstate going home and Moose passed me, flagged me down and gets in the truck with me and starts telling me about this super team that Budweiser and Motorcraft was putting together with Kenny Bernstein as head.

"He said, ‘I have the Super Gas car and I need a driver for it, do you want to drive it?’ It was overwhelming for me. It was my oldest son and wife in the truck listening to all this, and he said, ‘you’ll have to run all the national events, and this, this, this, this,’ and he kept on and on for about an hour and a half. When he got out, I said, ‘Well, I’ll think about it.’ I got home and my wife and son were ecstatic and I said, ‘I don’t know what made him stop, but this ain’t gonna happen, y’all can just forget about that. Don’t get too carried away.’"

That evening, the phone rung and it was Moose. He asked Larry, "Cummings, did you make up your mind yet?" "I said, ‘Norman (Moose’s first name), I thought you were just fooling around with me, playing a trick. I didn’t take you serious.’ He said, ‘This is serious, do you want to drive this car?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I wanna drive the car, what do I have to do?’ He said, ‘Have your suitcase packed Tuesday morning, we’re flying to Detroit for a press conference at Ford Motor Co.’"

Moose had bought an ‘84 T-bird Pro Stock car from Rickie Smith, and he had it all painted up in the Budweiser/Ford Motorcraft team colors. He and Cummings put a 512-inch motor in it. "The car would actually run a 9-flat," Larry remembers. "At the press conference, I met Edsel Ford, Kenny Bernstein, Frank Iaconio, all my heroes, everybody who was anybody at that time. I even met some of the members of KISS. I was an old country boy, never been out of town just about. It was unreal. And from there, they put us on an airplane and flew us to Los Angeles and we had a press conference with NHRA. We had a big, good time out there, same thing. That’s how it came about, just that quick," Cummings says.

Other team members included Jim Van Cleve from Washington State, who had a Ford Mustang for Competition Eliminator, and Glenn Tinsley from Victoria, Texas had a similar Mustang that ran Super Stock. Frank Iaconio ran a T-bird in Pro Stock, and Larry had the T-bird that ran Super Gas. They had just about every NHRA eliminator covered.

It was overwhelming for a guy like Cummings who had raced on a shoestring budget all his life. There would be UPS trucks pulling up at his door unloading parts from Ford. They wanted all their stuff out there, anything Ford had as a product – wax, antifreeze, oil, everything. The two companies wanted the "super" team members’ trucks for displays at each race track, where they’d open the doors and all the stuff would be on the door trays. They all parked in a circle under big free-standing canopies.

"It was the first sportsman team of that caliber ever. They gave me $55,000 to run Super Gas. It was huge in those days. We got tires, wheels, all our oils, transmissions, and converters from a company that wanted their stickers on the cars, all because we got so much press and coverage. I was only making about $25,000 to $30,000 a year with the bread truck, maybe $300, $400 a week, and that was big money back in ’85. And all of a sudden I was a professional racer," Cummings said.

He raced with the Super Team for two years, from 1984 to 1985, and that was the biggest sportsman deal ever put together in drag racing, the Budweiser/Motorcraft Super Team. All their cars were painted just alike, the trucks and trailers were painted just alike, and their uniforms were the same.

Larry did well at divisionals and semi’ed at the national event at Columbus, Ohio, but he would always go rounds. But Super Gas was tough back then, just like it is now. The ‘Bird was okay, but the motor was too big in it for the throttle stop type of stuff they had at the time. "It was a new deal for me also because I got out of a dragster in wide open Comp Eliminator and now I’m hitting the brakes down there. We didn’t have much of a throttle stop back then, just a bolt in the carburetor that we moved around to keep the back two barrels from opening all the way," he said.

In 1987, the team dissolved, the reason being that Kenny Bernstein got a deal with Buick to go NASCAR racing, and he did away with the Super Team because he had interest in that deal. Larry took off eight months and rested and then got another dragster, started his own business and bracket raced locally.

In 1988, oldest son Britt, now 37, then 17 but a racing veteran of three years, started racing hard in IHRA Modified Eliminator with the family dragster, C/Econo Dragster or C/Dragster. Then entrepreneur Billy Meyer bought the IHRA and came out with the 7.90 class, so Larry bought another dragster and he and Britt both raced the 7.90 class. Larry got runner-up at a couple of national events, and Britt won a national event and did well at the divisionals.

Then in the early ‘90s, IHRA came out with the Top Dragster class and the Cummings started racing that. They took the same car with a small-block and went to Darlington for the first-ever Top Dragster-class race, qualified No. 2, and Britt got runner-up.

Slate was a late bloomer. "He never went to the races with us when he was growing up, he didn’t care for it, while Britt was just about born at the track. He went to every race I ever went to. Believe it or not, when he was 15, he drove the Budweiser/Ford rig from St. Louis to Denver for a race. That’s how he was, older than he really was. A real responsible kid," Larry said.

Slate graduated from school, and then told Larry one day, "Daddy, I think I’d like to try one of those cars." "We took him to the track and got his license, then went to an IHRA national event in Steele, Alabama, and he went a couple of rounds in 8.90. We came home, and next week he said, ‘Let’s go bracket race Saturday night.’ I was tired and didn’t want to race, but we loaded up and went and he won in the dragster. He just started rolling from then on."

Slate won the IHRA national championship in Top Dragster in 2000, Britt won Quick Rod in 2003, and Slate was the IHRA champion in 2004 in Super Stock. Now Larry is driving a Stocker and a Super Stocker, after a layoff that began in 1997.

The Cummings have a total of eight class cars, split between three family members. They’ll take six with them, in two rigs, four in one and two in the other. The new Cummings "super" team has two Stockers, an IHRA C/Crate Motor Stock ’67 Nova, and a ’94 Camaro for D/Fuel Injected for NHRA. There is a ’98 Grand Am Super Stock/B Stock for NHRA, then Larry has a ’97 Firebird that runs Super Stock/Production in IHRA. They have a ’63 Corvette roadster for 9.90, a ’97 Firebird for Top Sportsman, and two dragsters, one for 8.90 and the other for Top Dragster. All are class cars. When they go, wife Linda included, the Cummings have just about six eliminators covered, split between many classes.

Last year, Moser Engineering, of Portland, Indiana, sponsored them, and they wanted the team on the NHRA side, so now the Cummings are pretty busy until October 2005, racing as many national and divisional events as possible. Then the boys will go to some of the big-money bracket race in the dragsters. Other than that, they’re class-racing, trying to win a championship. Following in pop’s footsteps, you might say.

So far, not bad. Last year, Slate won the IHRA Super Stock Eliminator crown and finished No. 3 in Top Dragster (he’s now 27, and scheduled to marry fiancee Patty Schmitt next year). Britt, married to wife Deanna, with two kids, finished in the top 10 in the 8.90 car in Quick Rod. Larry didn’t finish in the top 10, the first time he hasn’t placed since he came back. But he also took last year off to dedicate himself to the business. At the 2005 IHRA Division 2 opener at Immokalee, Florida, Slate got runner-up in the Super Gas/Super Rod car, and Britt was a semi-finalist in the Top Sportsman car.

"For 2005, I’m back too," Larry says. Stock and Super Stock are his eliminators, mainly Stock, in both associations. "I want to win my division in IHRA this year," he says.

The Budweiser/Motorcraft "super" team taught Cummings that it’s more important to a corporate sponsor to be clean, have all your stuff clean, and present yourself in a good manner. "It’s more important to them than winning. They want the image. You have to be friendly with every fan that comes along, because you never know whose kid that is or who you’re talking to. It taught me to be upfront with the spectators and present myself professionally. That goes for Moser Engineering now," he said.

This, says Larry, is the second coming of the "super" team. The only thing the family doesn’t have is a Pro Stocker, but the ’98 Firebird Top Sportsman car is an ex-Pro Stocker, built by Tim McAmis. Now it has a 632 two-four-barrel engine in it, and it runs 6.80s with a Bruno transmission.

Larry has thought about going back to four-speeds in Stock, maybe a small cubic-inch car. "I really liked that. They were fun cars to drive," he says.

"I’m 57, Linda is 56, and we’ve been married for 38 years. And all that has been with racing. Fact is, the day after I got married, I was racing the ’66 Chevelle at Biloxi Drag Strip. The car still had ‘Just Married’ on the car. Luckily, I had begged and begged all my friends to please not write it on my paint, so they wrote it on the windows. That was the same track that I won my first championship, and I won that day."

There’s more. "When Britt got married to Deanna on a Saturday, Sunday we went to a local track and ran a points race in the 7.90 class with both dragsters, and I won and he got runner-up.