For the next four weeks, CompetitionPlus.com will conduct its third annual War Stories Showdown. The veterans of yarn spinning are paired for what promises to be a series destined to produce the finest behind-the-scenes stories.

Here are the rules –

The field was seeded by reader vote. The participants are paired on the standard NHRA professional eliminations ladder. Each story represents an elimination run for the participant. The readers will judge each war story on the merits of (A) believability and (B) entertainment value. Please do not vote based on popularity. You are the judge and jury, so vote accordingly. Multiple votes from the same computer IP address will not be counted.

Voting lasts for three days per elimination match. Once a driver advances to the next round, they must submit a new war story.

This is an event based on fun and entertainment value, and the rules are simple. The stories cannot describe any felonious acts (unprosecuted, that is) and you can't use a story about your opponent, against them. There is a one event win rule.

This is drag racing with no red-lights, disqualifications and plenty of oil downs minus the clean-ups. Please enjoy as each of our competitors tell their own stories.

Let the competition begin -

RACE COMPLETED: #9 Bill Doner (75.68) def. #5 Rickie Smith (24.32)

No.  5 Rickie Smith vs. No. 9 Bill Doner

NO. 5 QUALIFIER – “TRICKIE” RICKIE SMITH
TO THIS POINT:
FIRST RD - (63.77) def. #12 Steve Reyes (36.23)
SECOND RD - (87.38) def. #13 Steve Earwood (12.62)

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – EXPERIENCED MONKEY FIGHTER

Growing up in North Carolina, the fellas around here were pretty mean. They’d drink, and you’d see the evidence that they’d been in fights with cuts all over their arms and jaw. There was one boy, pretty tough, around here and he was called “Big Boy Griffin”.

One night, Big Boy Griffin found out he wasn’t so tough. He got the crap beat out of him, and seeing how he was so tough and got beat up I decided I was going to take on his opponent. I, too, got the tar beat out of me and ended up getting my jaw cracked.

Now you must figure this was some big and bad, tough Carolina boy that whipped us both. Wrong. It was an 80 pound monkey.

This is the story about the day a monkey at the 1972 County Fair in King, NC, beat me up pretty bad.

The County Fair was the big thing to go to around here and in 1972, I was a senior in high school. One of the big attractions at that fair was a caged monkey and you paid your $5 and you went in and got to fight him. If you beat him, you got $20.

Now this monkey’s cage was 8 foot by about 12 foot. It was like a rolling jail cell.

I watched this show for several years growing up and it’s safe to say I was a little on the redneck side. I was an athlete. I played football, wrestled and I guess you could say I was the bully of my class in school.

Now I had watched, time after time, as the locals went in there, nine out of ten who I’d say were drunk, and get whipped by this monkey. These were grown men who were pretty mean who loved to fight. One by one, they’d go in there to beat this monkey. One by one, they’d be carried out by their buddies, beaten and bloodied.

My senior year, all my buddies, believing I was tough and most importantly sober, egged me on to jump in there with the monkey. The peer pressure got to be too much and I let the guys talk me into getting in there with that monkey.

I figured I could pick up an extra $15 by doing something I was pretty good at – fighting.

So I paid my $5 and the man running the deal handed me an old leather helmet just like they used on old time football. They strapped that on you and that’s all you had.

I was thinking good of my chances against this monkey because I was on the wrestling team and didn’t worry that I wasn’t a boxer. I figured I could muscle him down and if the monkey didn’t bite me, I’d be in good shape.

Well we got to messing around in there, and moving around. I’d move one way and he’d move the other. We were sizing each other up, I guess.

I swung and swatted at him a few times, and missed.

Meanwhile the monkey was getting fired up and jumped from one side of the cage to the other. He did that a few times all over the cage.

I figured the smart thing to do was to crouch down low and get ready because me and that monkey was about to throw down. Then I started acting like him and jumping around the cage. That went on for a few minutes.

Then all of a sudden…and it was like it was slow motion…I saw it and still remember to this day…he came off of those bars and I was crouched down low; still he came off that bar with both his feet and hand and he knew what he was doing. He caught me under my chin and I flew backwards. The whole cage rattled and moved around.

The monkey had nearly knocked me out. I bet I flew back five feet.

The monkey hit the front of my head and the cage took care of the back. All I know is that I had a pretty good headache and jaw ache.

In my life, I’ve never been in a fight that I saw stars, but this time I did. I’ve gotten hit playing football and got my bell rung, but never stars or whatever else I could see flying around. I was like one of those cartoon things where it had the birds flying around the head.

I was so mad that I was heading after the monkey for a shot at him and that’s when the trainer got in the middle. He could tell I was hurt. So they took me out of the cage, another victim of the monkey.

Did I mention that my buddies were laughing so hard they almost cried?

We went off and drank a few beers and I learned that when you start drinking, the pain don’t hurt as bad.

The monkey fight was on a Friday and on Saturdays I always had to get up and go to work at 6 AM with my uncle laying bricks. I rolled many wheelbarrows full of concrete in my teenage years.

Well I went into work that next morning and I knew I was hurt. Every morning, momma used to make me two country ham biscuits to take as my lunch for the day. She would always set them in the kitchen and I would come by, pick them up on go on my way to work.

I woke up that Saturday and I knew something was bad wrong. I was in pain and I couldn’t move my mouth. My teeth wouldn’t come apart.

Now, these ham biscuits were special…cured country ham. You just didn’t give them away. And, if somebody would have tried to take them, there would be a fight.

Well I grabbed the biscuits and slipped out when Mom went to the bathroom. I didn’t speak to anyone because I couldn’t talk.

The one thing that made me the maddest…I had to give those biscuits away. I couldn’t chew them.

I worked all day and I was scared, I hurt really bad. I told my uncle and he and everyone laughed like h***. They sent me on home.

I had to face my momma and tell her what happened. I couldn’t speak. I just mumbled with my mouth shut.

Momma got mad. The best way to tell when she got really mad is that she would call me Rickie Charles. You had better pay attention to her when she said Ricky Charles. She ended up having to take me to the emergency room that night.

Turns out that old monkey had cracked my jaw bone. For a couple of weeks I had to suck chicken noodle soup through a straw. I caught it everywhere I went. I gave people something to laugh about for a while there.

And, on top of that, momma made me two ham biscuits every Saturday that I couldn’t eat and had to give away. She would laugh at me and say, “You’ll learn one of these days.”

I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. Animals are so much quicker than a human being that’s it’s not even funny. There’s no way a human can match an animal when it comes to quickness.

I never went back into the monkey cage again. I learned my lesson. You don’t fight animals. If I have to, I’ll either have a ball bat or a gun.

Trickie Rickie learned his lesson that day. I learned there ain’t a monkey in this world worth my country ham biscuits.

NO. 9 QUALIFIER – BILL DONER
TO THIS POINT:
FIRST RD - (59.38) DEF. #8 TOMMY IVO (40.62)
SECOND RD - (62.26) DEF. #1 BILLY GLIDDEN (37.34)

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – ONCE ESCAPED AN EVENT VIA HELICOPTER WITH RAYMOND BEADLE

TELLING THE STORY OF: LINDA AND THE OPEN

We always had a “soft opening” of Seattle International Raceway on the first weekend in April, setting the stage for our giant Northwest National Open the last weekend of the month.

This story centers around the fourth annual opening and I’d lined up every heavyweight I could.

Heading the dragster cast was the hottest driver in the country, Don Moody, Ohio’s Jim Bucher with the world’s fastest Chevrolet, young Jeb Allen, Canadian star Gary Beck, Jerry Ruth and a bunch of others.

The funny car field had ‘em all…The Snake, Mongoose, Ace, Hawaiian, 240 Gordie…as we said in the ads, “you name ‘em, they’ll be there.”

I snuck a line into the ads that went, “Is this a Big Race? Does a bear (bleep) in the woods!?!”

The radio stations didn’t like it, but they ran it.

Somehow, I’d gotten a reputation as being able to deliver just about anything it took to make these events over the top…still, I had no idea what was coming next.

One night we were having cocktails (funny how that happens) when my whimsical pal J Michael Kenyon (no period after the J, please) blurted out, “If this is such a big race, how come Linda Lovelace isn’t coming?”

“What in the hell has Linda Lovelace got to do with a drag race?” I asked.

I knew who Linda Lovelace was, but just barely. The movie “Deep Throat” had opened around the country late in ’72, but hadn’t arrived in the Great Northwest until '73. It was the first and perhaps, in retrospect, the last porn movie to hit the mainstream.


“Well,” explained Kenyon, “in the world today, nothing is REALLY big unless Linda Lovelace is there.”

I put the matter out of my mind and continued the more important matter of serious drinking.

A week later I was in Southern California for a 16-car funny car event we ran the Saturday night before Easter at Irwindale.  I was having lunch the day before the race with some old pals when a guy named Dick Stewart casually said, “You know, we were at a party at Hef’s the other night and this gal Linda Lovelace was there. You know who she is?”

The Hef he was talking about, naturally, was Hugh Hefner and the party was at the Playboy Mansion.

I not only confessed to knowing who she was, but also noted I had some friends who thought it was my place on earth to deliver her to a race in the Northwest two weeks hence.

“Well,” said Stewart, “I’ll have Barbie Benton get a-hold of Linda and have her call you.”

If this all seems like it’s happening fast, let me explain.

Stewart’s wife was former Playmate of the Year Ann Randall and a close friend of Hefner’s longtime paramour Barbie Benton.

We ran the race at Irwindale and I flew home to Seattle not giving another thought about Linda Lovelace attending our race.

I saw no reason at this point to mention the Linda Lovelace deal to my demented friends, because I was sure it was just talk.

Imagine my surprise when, a couple of days later, my secretary buzzed me to say there were a couple of ladies named Barbie Benton and Linda Lovelace on the line wanting to speak to Mr. Doner.

I will note at this time, for the record, that Mr. Doner was my father and my name was and still is Bill or, as my mother called me - “Billy Lee.”

Even though I hadn’t clued anyone in on what happened in Southern California, I felt certain the call was a prank.

The first thing I heard after saying hello was, “Mr. Doner, this is Barbie Benton. Do you know why I’m calling?”

“I think so,” I stammered, “but why don’t you fill me in.”

The preliminaries out-of-the-way, she put Linda Lovelace on the phone and, to cut all this short, we made a deal for plane tickets and $1,000 to have her come to Seattle for the race.

God, things sure were a lot simpler in those days.

Of course, I couldn’t keep this a secret any longer and you can imagine how quickly the underground drums began to beat.

Now, I decided, to take things a step further…I re-cut the radio ads and in place of the line about the bear’s bathroom habits, the ads went “Is this a BIG drag race? Well, Linda Lovelace is jetting in from Hollywood just to attend.” If the radio stations balked at the bear line, you can’t even imagine what they thought of Linda Lovelace. In those days, you couldn’t even run ads for a film like “Deep Throat.”

One more little thing…my marriage had for some time been suffering and when the Linda Lovelace news began exploding all over the area, my wife suggested she might be better served if I packed my duds and found lodging elsewhere.

And that, friends, is why I became a resident of the infamous Jet Inn by the Seattle airport.

As for the Jet Inn, Tom McEwen once remarked that when he wrote the great book of drag racing, it would begin at the Jet Inn. What he meant by that, you’ll simply have to ask him.

The Open was a two-day event with qualifying Saturday and the race itself on Sunday.

In between, on Saturday night, we planned to race four funny cars - Snake, ‘Goose, Hawaiian and Ace - at our nearby Puyallup track to defray some of the booking costs.

Linda arrived in Seattle around noon Saturday and I had Kenyon and a goofy southern drag racer named TB (for Thomas Burn) Smallwood pick her up and spent the afternoon running her around to the radio stations.  

That night, Kenyon and Smallwood, giggling like a couple of kids with a big secret, brought Linda to the Puyallup race.

One of several things which happened that night at Puyallup included Linda, who was handing out autographed photos to the racers, giving  one to McEwen, saying “I have a more risqué photo in my case if you want me to get it.”

“No, ma'am,” stammered The ‘Goose’, “that’ll be just fine.”

So much for the captain of our “Team Gulp.”

With Puyallup behind us and the forecast for good weather on Sunday, I took it as good news when my wife invited me back into the house.

I did, however, keep my quarters at the Jet, just in case.

Safely tucked into my bed late Saturday night with the prospect of a delicious Sunday directly ahead, I was in a deep sleep when the doorbell rang around 2:30 am

I just rolled over, but my wife (I forgot to mention she was on crutches after severely breaking her leg skiing) hobbled down the hall to answer the door.

There stood Kenyon and TB along, of course, with a partially clad Linda Lovelace.

“Can Billy Lee come out and play?” asked Kenyon as simple as if he was asking to use the phone.

My wife didn’t even bother to respond; she just crutched her way back to the bedroom and jabbed me in the side with one of her aluminum sticks.

“Your little friends want you,” she said, with absolute rage in her voice. “And you’d better pack your s*** -- this time it’s over for good."

I went to the door, took one look at the semi-ribald scene on my porch, and said, “As much as I love you guys, your timing is ill.”

With that I took the lovely Mrs. Doner’s advice and hit the road.

It was too late to even bother going to the Jet, so I just headed for the race track.

Getting in the front gate was out of the question, since traffic was already backed up about two miles.

I knew how to get in the back gate, however, and curled up on the couch in my office, thinking, “the worst has got to be over.”

I was not, as you might imagine, certain I had used the best of judgment in all of this and could only wait for the next explosion.

It wouldn't take long to come.

Stay tuned for what happened that fateful Sunday, both before and after The Open.

Don't worry: I'll finish the story even if I lose this semifinal match.

And, to those of you who were involved, don’t bother to call your lawyers. I’ve checked and the statute of limitations has long since run out.

{Voting Completed}

The winner of this event advances to the final round.

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