Now in its 66th year, this is a life story that would make a terrific script for some 1950s’-style exploitation film about hell-raising juvenile delinquents. In its opening scene, the teenaged star would be revving up a crude, primered Ford coupe, waiting for a traffic light to turn green. Grinning wickedly, the kid dumps the clutch. He fishtails down a deserted four-lane highway out on the semi rural edge of California’s San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. Approximately 1320 feet later, young Jimmy leads some Encino rich kid’s brand-new 348 Impala across a brush-painted finish line. For a split second, he’s the happiest kid in the whole friggin’ Valley.

Then Little Jimmy hears the siren. In his blurry side mirror, he makes out the flashing red lights of a big Belvedere. Jimmy pulls over. A stone-faced policeman lectures him about racing on the street, writes him up for everything from engaging in a speed contest to no rear-view mirror, and then orders our hero to appear in court.

At this point, the audience would have to endure every "B"-movie director’s feeble attempt at plot development: cruising to Bob’s Big Boy for a Silver Goblet milk shake; picking up his car-hop girlfriend after work; making out at the Van Nuys Drive-In; visiting Tony Nancy’s nearby upholstery shop for some fatherly advice about street racing, plus a personal tour of Tony’s full-race highboy. At home in bed, later than night, we get a peek into Jimmy’s nightmare about his looming court appearance at City Hall.

Switch scenes to the Van Nuys, Calif., courthouse. A buxom blonde receptionist instructs Jimmy to relinquish his driver’s license en route to the judge’s chambers. From the look on his face, you known our star is wondering how many agonizing months — or years, even — will pass before he’ll be seeing that precious piece of paper again.

The stern-looking, silver-haired judge is playing himself. Unbeknownst to our hero, on Sunday mornings, Judge Darrel Morgan trades in his robe for a black-and-white-striped shirt, white pants and black boots. This happening jurist just happens to be the part-time manager of San Fernando Drag Strip — a place that young Jimmy had heard a lot about since the track opened in 1955, but had never visited.

"The judge told me I needed to go out to San Fernando the following Sunday," recalled Scott, "so I did, as a spectator. When I saw him and said ‘Hi,’ he told me that the guy who passes out time slips hadn’t shown up that day. He asked if I wanted to make a few bucks. What a gravy job: getting paid to watch the races!"

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Scott spent the next six months as an on-call substitute, manning every post from flag starter to grease sweeper. He became a regular member of San Fernando’s tiny crew in 1959, and stayed on until the track closed, 10 years later. Most of those Sundays would be spent in the cramped timing tower, where Jim developed into one of the finest — and funniest — announcers that this writer has ever heard. Because his Saturday evenings invariably involved racing at Lions, Scott would warm up ’Fernando’s PA system with a detailed recap of the previous evening’s action at "The Beach." Some racers and fans were known to arrive extra-early on Sunday mornings, while equipment was being set up, just to hear these stories about the night before.

During these years, Scott advanced from a DeSoto-powered T-bucket to a Scott Fenn kit car to a modern SPE (Roy Fjasted) digger that became Lions’ first unblown-gas car in the Eights, he mentioned with obvious pride. Simultaneously, he crewed for Valley heroes like Larry Dixon Sr. and Roger Gates. Jim’s big break came in 1969, when Al Weiss offered up the seat in a supercharged, Chrysler-powered gas dragster. Among other regional events, the team of Weiss & Scott won Top Gas at the Last Drag Race at Lions. When NHRA dropped the class in 1972, they tried running the same combination in Competition Eliminator. However, neither enjoyed this forced introduction to full-tree, handicapped competition. "That was a real riot, giving a guy a two-second head start while you sat on the starting line, waiting," deadpanned Scott.

"Al wanted to switch to fuel, so I had my two-weekend Top Fuel career," he said, laughing loudly. "I went out once to get my license, and then we qualified for the PDA Meet. He hopped it up real good for the first round, and it shook so hard, I didn’t even know where I was. Everybody had real bad tire shake at the time, and with such a narrow, front-engine car, your head was banging back and forth between the tubing. I got to the other end with a throbbing headache. It was not fun." Scott retired on the spot. Weiss finished out the season (with Dwight Salisbury driving), looked at his bank balance, and parked the slingshot.

"When NHRA announced the new Pro Comp class, Al called me up and said, ‘It looks like they’re making a class for you and me,’" Scott explained. "We used his old Top Gas combination — an iron 392 Chrysler — on alcohol, in a lightweight, short, rear-engined car. That was 1974, our storybook year: We won three national events [of eight scheduled —D.W.] and runner-upped once; won a couple of points races; set the national record a couple of times. We were getting ready to start the ’75 season when Al had his major heart attack, and had to quit racing. He sold everything."

Scott continued driving other people’s alcohol dragsters and Funny Cars for seven years. Burned out after crisscrossing the country to run 32 weekends in 1982 — while holding down a fulltime management job with the Anheuser-Busch brewery — he quit racing, again.

This second retirement lasted three years — until the day "Gene Adams called me up and said, ‘I’ve got an injected-fuel car, and I’d like to have you drive it.’ That was Bob MacDonald’s dragster. At the time, the really fast alcohol guys were running 7.40s and ’50s. The best that anybody’d run with an injected car was 7.65, around 210; they just weren’t competitive. That car was the beginning of the comeback for A/Fuelers. It ran, like, 7.60 at 214 the first lap, shutting off on my license pass. Its third pass was a 7.32 at 216 that qualified Number One at Bakersfield’s March Meet [at that time, still an NHRA points meet —DW]. ‘National Dragster’ later called that pass ‘The Run of the Year.’ I was just pushing the pedal; Gene was the guy who reopened the door for injected-fuel cars, and showed that it could be done."

When MacDonald ran out of money, Adams and Scott took Dennis King’s record-setting "Asian Flu" A/Altered out on the road, with some success. Less impressive was a subsequent season of flogging a Ford alcohol dragster for John Mitchell and Don Madden. Then our hero’s happy script took a sudden, tragic turn.

Early in 1988, his best friend and wife, Carolyn Rae, was diagnosed with cancer. The disease spread quickly, culminating in a brain tumor. That November, after several operations, "Rae" passed away, at 47. They’d been together for 30 years. The guy who’d always had a smile for everyone was emotionally devastated.

"I was on a terrible downer," Jim admits. "My son, Scotty, moved back home to keep me company. He started talking about this Nostalgia Top Fuel deal. He said we ought to do a dragster. That’s probably the single thing that most got me caring about life again; it gave me something to get involved in. I was out chasing parts. Robert Reehl chased me down a dragster. When Larry and Matt at EPD [Engine Prototype Development] heard that I was interested, they sent me a motor.

"Nostalgia Top Fuel was still a tire-smoking deal, so we could be competitive with a big-block on alcohol. When they went to slider clutches, it got real fast, real quick, and you could see the handwriting on the wall: An alcohol Chevrolet was not gonna run with a nitro Chrysler! Also, I got oiled in real bad at Firebird Raceway in 1989 and got off the track, hooked the front tire, and went end over end at about 150. We dug that EPD engine out of the Arizona desert."

The repaired rat motor was transplanted into the former Smothers Brothers’ Beach Boys car, and the Scotts tried Nostalgia Eliminator, then indexed at 7.50 seconds. Jim Sr. won the 1993 ANRA points title; Jim Jr. repeated in 1994, after which the full-bodied beauty was sold to Mike Cross (whose 1995 Goodguys title became the car’s third points championship in three years, with three different drivers!).

Their sale of the digger financed the purchase of an old Horton Funny Car chassis that enabled the father-son team to run two 7.50 circuits simultaneously: the California Independent Funny Car Association (CIFCA) series, as a Trans Am, and Nostalgia Eliminator, as a Bantam roadster. Eventually, the Chevrolet gave way to a late Hemi. The Scotts took turns driving, though Junior gradually evolved into the regular shoe, while Senior assumed crew chief duties, and took the occasional fling.

Late last season, Scotty launched his own business (Specialty Bearing and Supply, Gardena, Calif.). Because the younger partner suddenly lacked both the time and spare change to keep racing at this level, the Scotts agreed to sell their dual-purpose race car. After briefly contemplating another retirement, the senior Jim decided, instead, to invest his half of the proceeds into another injected-nitro dragster. This month, Scott will make his debut with the slingshot at Goodguys’ March Meet (assisted by the car’s original team of Civelli, Brown, Hollander & Archer).

At age 65, this former world champion seems as enthusiastic about driving as he was in the 1960s. Indeed, Jim Scott’s life story is getting a happy ending worthy of a good movie. He met "another great gal," Lois, and is happily remarried. He retired as purchasing manager for Anheuser-Busch’s big brewery in Van Nuys — the same town where he’d made the court appearance that changed his life in 1959. He substitute-teaches at Universal Technical Institute (the home of "Hot Rod U"). He’s got a nice house with a big garage in Fallbrook, Calif. He’s living every hot rodder’s dream of driving a nitro-burning dragster.

After reflecting on his 65 years for this writer, Scott added that he wouldn’t change a thing: "I’ve had the honor and privilege of working for and driving for some really smart people: Al Weiss; Dale Armstrong; Gene Adams; Dale Smart; the Mallicoat brothers; Johnny Mitchell; Don Madden; Larry Dixon. I mean, there’s nothing like listening to an Adams and an Armstrong and a Ken Veney theorize in a motel room, all at one time. For a guy like a Jim Scott, that’s way too heavy! That’s what makes the driver look good. A great driver can’t save a mediocre car.

"I’ve been lucky because something has always come along that I could mesh into. When Nostalgia Eliminator came along, I said that index racing is counterproductive; ‘What’s the incentive to going fast?’ But it’s a lot of fun — and it’s a lot harder to make something run consistent than you might think. The index deal controls how much you spend. We don’t have to burn anything up to run 7.60s. We don’t have to work real hard between rounds. We bring along some munchies, sit around and visit. It’s more like when I first got into it; nobody thrashed at the track.

"I like the way the Goodguys tie together street rodding and nostalgia stuff and racing. I see more people I know than I do at NHRA events. They aren’t all racing, but they come out and say ‘Hello,’ and it’s a lot more relaxed. My daughter and grandkids come out, too. We’ll do about half a dozen races a year, and that’s enough for me.