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.

First round voting lasts for two 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 stories.

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RACE COMPLETED - No. 7 Chip Woodall [70.47] def. No. 2 Paul Candies [29.53]

NO. 2 PAUL CANDIES –
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – SET SLOW ET IN HIS FIRST RUN AS A DRIVER

TELLING THE STORY OF: THE DAY A MAN NAMED Q-BALL TAUGHT ME MY ROLE

It was Q-ball Wales who set me straight. He taught me my role in drag racing.

Destiny wasn’t the reason I became a championship nitro team owner and successful businessman. I credit this to Q-ball.

Back in 1959, Q-ball and I built our first rail dragster. It was a pretty good dragster and by winning a few races as a driver in local competition, we felt we were pretty tough to beat.

After all, when you look at how well I did in Opelousas, La., how could you doubt my driving talents? We had a blown Chrysler in a Scotty Finch chassis. The cars back then had a mechanical gas linkage and were pretty hard to keep under fire.

So as we did the push start in Opelousas, I pulled up to the flagman and staged for my run. I let the clutch out and figured there wasn’t much to this driving thing. I stepped on the throttle and instead of feathering into it, I went full throttle and the front end snapped straight up into the air. I figured then, “This is probably not what I am supposed to be doing.”

I stepped off of the throttle and the front end bounced around.

I got on the throttle again, and eased it to the floor and realized I had been driving for a while and was getting close to running out of track. I reached over and grabbed the brakes and they were pretty good, even better than Q-ball said they were.

I looked up and I was just making it to the finish line. And for you whippersnappers not around in ’59, the Chrondek timers would not record a speed under 60 mph. For my pride, the track manager was gracious enough to say there was a malfunction in the clocks. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell me I was going too slow to get a time.

In my mind, I was pretty talented. After all, you have to have some talent to get a mean dragster down the track with the front wheels in the air and rapidly cover the quarter-mile in the manner I did.

This confidence provided the inspiration to branch out in an attempt to conquer the rest of the world. Our first trip was a race at a track in Texas called Green Valley Raceway where they were paying $50 for low elapsed time and $50 for top time.

We battled it out with a driver named Vance Hunt for a total of 13 runs to decide the quickest run and top time. I took the $50 for low ET and he got $50 for top time. My confidence couldn’t have gotten any stronger.

Sunday came around for eliminations and there was no denying I was the driver to beat.

I crossed paths with a young guy with a Chevrolet named Smiling Jimmy Nix from Oklahoma City in the first round. He strapped quite a holeshot on me and the more I tried to play catch up, the more I smoked the tires. Jimmy’s old Chevrolet went right down the track to the win.

We loaded up and headed for home. I was hopping mad at the whole experience. Winning had come so easy back home in Louisiana but on the road, we were handed our butts in Texas. The faster car wasn’t supposed to lose.

Q-ball  was a working man and I’m a school boy. I was driving home so he could rest and go to work on Monday morning. We were about an hour outside of Fort Worth, Texas, when he popped up out of the back seat and asked, “Are you still mad we got beat?”

“D*** right I am,” I responded in a defiant tone. “The Chevrolet beat us.”

Q-ball laid back down and about somewhere between Shreveport and Texas, he popped up again.

“Are you still mad we got beat?” He asked.

Never changing my tone as I stewed the whole way home, “D*** right, Chevrolet beat us.”

Back to sleep he went and when we reached the south side of Shreveport, he popped up out of the back and said, “Look … are you still mad?”

“Yep, I sure am,” I responded.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” Q-ball offered. “I’ve watched you and what we’ve been doing. You’re not a very good mechanic. You’re not a really good driver either. My suggestion to you is to go home and learn how to make money so you can afford to hire people like me to do your business for you.”

That was the greatest piece of advice I have ever received. Now you know why you’ve never seen me behind the wheel of anything.

NO. 7 QUALIFIER – CHIP WOODALL   **************** WINNER **********************
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – COULD RETURN AN INSULT WITH AN OVERWHELMING RESPONSE

TELLING THE STORY OF: YOU AIN’T LOOKING IN MY TRAILER

I’m really not a rude person. However, if someone demands I need to behave or believes I’m a cheat, I will go to the highest degree to ensure I get full payback.

Case in point, when Jackie Peebles, a guy I drove for – for many years, invited me to his wedding, it was under the stipulation I had to behave. I really believed his request was rude, even if he did experience life on the road with me many times.

To save another story for another day, I ended up showing up at the wedding in a Kermit the frog outfit [with green leotards] while an attorney friend showed up in a realistic gorilla suit. We would have gotten away with the charade if Peebles hadn’t recognized my walk.

The preacher ended up chasing us out of the church where we jumped into our waiting limo, changed and returned to the wedding as ourselves leaving no clue we had been Kermit and the Gorilla.

The gorilla suit was no cheap deal. It was high dollar crafted and we needed to get one more good “gig” out of it. Mary Heischler, the wife of Green Valley race City track owner Bill Heischler, inspired the return of the gorilla.

If I’m not afraid to prank the late great Buster Couch, I certainly wasn’t afraid of her.

So we're booked into Green Valley with the dragster and Funny Car and somehow or another Mary had it set in her head that we were smuggling people into the track.

We arrived and she greeted me with, “I’m checking your trailer.”

I responded, “No you’re not, there’s no reason for you to be in there.”

I had my window cracked about three or four inches when the rent-a-cop walked up and said, “We gotta look in the trailer.”

I told one of my crewmen to let him in the trailer, and when he got in, shut the door on him. Well, he did. Then we left the gate and headed to our parking spot in the pits. We parked and I told the kid working for me, John, to go open the trailer and let him out.

“No way, I ain’t opening that son-of-a-b**** for any reason. He’s plenty mad in there.”

John went ahead and opened the trailer and he was correct, Mr. Rent-a-Cop was mad. He called the cops and wanted us charged with kidnapping.

The cops came out and started asking questions to which I responded, “I had no idea he was in the trailer.” After all, I never saw John shut the door.

Eventually it all calmed down and sometime later they felt it would be a good idea to book us in again. Bygones were bygones.

Having successfully pulled off the gorilla thing once before we were prepared if she continued her witch hunt looking for stowaways.

We arrived at Green Valley and while they might have forgiven the last episode, they certainly hadn’t forgotten. They were still convinced we were sneaking people into the track via the trailer.

They played right into my hand.

“If you think I am sneaking people in, then you need to go check the trailer. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

It was all I could do to keep a straight face.

They went back there and opened the trailer. I heard all kinds of commotion as the door opened and my gorilla friend came flying out on top of the same security guard and even rubbed up again Mrs. Heischler. I guess you could say we scared the ape s*** out of them.

Ole Mr. Rent-a-Cop kept reaching for the gun he didn’t have and the gorilla got after him for a while, chasing him. He wasn’t fond of gorillas. I guess we were the only ones laughing.

They ended up booking us again and I guess Bill was responsible because Mary never really got over it. Mary was so mad, she wrote me a two-page letter which I still have.  Basically she told me what a piece of s*** I was.

Funny thing … they never asked to see in my trailer ever again.

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