Eliminations continue for the second annual CompetitionPlus.com War Stories Showdown, a competition which places sixteen of drag racing's personalities head-to-head in storytelling competition. Over the next four days, you will be presented with the first round strories of each respective contestants. They are paired on an NHRA eliminations ladder seeded by reader vote last week.

Today's competition features the No. 10 seeded Pat Musi squaring off with the No. 2 qualified "Waterbed" Fred Miller. The second match up will be the No. 3 ranked Don Garlits matching up with No. 6 Kenny Nowling.

For the next four weeks, CompetitionPlus.com will conduct its second 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.

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. That happened last year and wasn't pretty at all. 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.

#10 – Pat “The Thug” Musi

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Dropped An M-80 in a Porta-Pot Occupied By Bob Glidden …
1ST RD - defeated Whit Bazemore, 79.17% to 20.83%

ME AND UNCLE ROY IN THE POCONOS WITH A NAKED MAN …

Roy Hill might not be participating in this year’s competition but I have a feeling he’s going to get dragged into many stories along the way. I will tell you that when you put the two of us together there was never a dull moment.

Case in point, one year the IHRA got the idea they wanted to stage a drag race on the pit road at the Pocono Raceway. This wasn’t the first time they had a race at a NASCAR event. The first one was back in 1974, my first year in Pro Stock and after a few deaths they decided it was best to stick to purpose-built drag strips.

Well, for some reason Larry Carrier got the idea he wanted to go to Pocono.

That turned out to be another big mistake.

First off, there was not one bit of rubber on the so-called drag strip and secondly, when it started raining – they had to deal with old Roy boy and me running roughshod through a hotel for days.

The IHRA brought me in on Wednesday or Thursday to do a press conference with the media.

Their press guy decided it would be a good idea for me to take one of the media people for a ride down the so-called strip in my Pro Stock Monza. They said it would be a good idea to give the writer a feel for the experience.

It was a good feeling for him alright. He nearly $%^& his pants, that’s how good it was. I wasn’t so far behind him.

Bear in mind that this guy, sitting in the seat beside me, had no seat belt. Back then, the Pro Stocks had to have a passenger seat as mandated by the rule book.

We rode Paul buck naked up and down the elevator for about a half-hour. When the elevator door opened, some women would scream and others would say, “Oh my.”

Not one bit of rubber and I dropped the hammer. This guy had a death grip on the roll cage and I was holding the steering wheel equally tight.

Remember we running 8.20s and the cars were already out of control.

I didn’t even take time to look over at him because this car was all over the race track. I was at the edge of aborting the run and I still stayed in it to give the guy the experience.

I got out of the car at the top end to get both parachutes. Yes, I pulled them both.

The guy hadn’t moved, his knuckles were white from holding on so tight.

The guy asked me what we were supposed to do next and I told him as soon as I threw the parachutes inside the car we would drive back to the pits. Back then we didn’t tow the cars. The guy decided it was in his best interests to walk back.

It started raining at that point and it rained, rained and rained some more. There wasn’t a lot to do up there in Poconos so we were stuck in the hotel for days.

That’s where Roy and I hooked up.

The IHRA learned two valuable lessons that weekend. Never trust me to take a reporter for a ride and never to let me and Roy get bored in a hotel.

Can you imagine our crews in the Poconos, bored and it pouring rain outside? That’s not a good vision to have.

Roy and I decided we were going to have a fire extinguisher fight in the hotel. It was going to be me and Roy and the crews going head to head.

Our good ole buddy Paul Gant, one of drag racing’s best African-American Pro Stock drivers, gets in on the action. At the time he was working on my crew.

Paul and I grew up together and raced on the streets around home growing up. I knew him very well and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He was known to get in on some of the action from time to time knowing that full well the trick could be turned on him at any time.

He starts working one of the fire extinguishers, too.

By this time, it was a free for all. Back and forth to the rooms and in the hall – it was getting pretty crazy.

I kept noticing that Paul would stick his eyeball up to the peephole of the door to see what we were doing.

So we went elsewhere and slowly slipped back long enough to unscrew the peephole out of the door without him noticing. Once we got that out of there, Roy and I went back to getting one another. We knew that would be enough to get Paul to look through the peephole.

Sure enough, that’s what happened.

The peephole was loose and when I put the hose over the peephole the force of the extinguisher thrust the glass out and a rush of the flame retardant knocking him down. Keep in mind that Paul was a big ole boy.

I was afraid at first that I’d knocked his eye out.

“I’m blind, I’m blind,” he screamed.

That’s when Roy comes up with the idea to undress him and handcuff him in the elevator.

He’s screaming about his eye and we’re taking the old boys clothes off. We don’t give a crap.

We thought he was faking. Yeah, his eyeball was a little red but we thought he was overdoing it.

We took off everything right down to the socks.

He was buck naked and you could have called him Mr. Ed.

We handcuffed him and drug him to the elevator. He can’t move a muscle.

We rode Paul up and down the elevator for about a half-hour. When the elevator door opened, some women would scream and others would say, “Oh my.”

You can imagine this scene.

Halfway between the first and the second floor the power goes dead in the elevator. We knew that wasn’t a good thing, at least not for us.

We hear this yelling from down below and the voice said, “We’re going to turn this power on and we want you to come down to the first floor.”

I had my finger jammed in the second floor button so I could get off on the second floor.

Paul is in the elevator headed down to the first floor and Roy and I look at each other, “We can’t let him go down there because they’ll arrest Paul.”

We take off running down the stairs just in time to see the hotel’s house detective crouched down waiting for the elevator to open up. That guy looked just like that old TV character Columbo.

Roy and I walk up behind this guy and we wait to see if he’s going to do something to Paul. We had a plan that if he did do something to Paul we were going to handcuff him to the elevator.

The door opened and Columbo jumped back like someone was shooting at him.

He was so shocked that all he could ask Paul was, “Who did this to you?”

Paul looked at Columbo as responded, “Does it look like I did this to myself?”

Columbo continued, “Tell me who did this to you and I’ll have them arrested.”

Paul was looking dead at me and Roy, contrary to what some might say, there is honor among thieves.

Paul looked at Columbo and told him, “Trust me, you don’t want to know who did this. Just leave it alone.”

Columbo unlocked the handcuffs and put a blanket over Paul.

All along the walk back to the room, Columbo is saying to Paul, “You don’t have to worry about anyone or be scared. We’ll get them.”

The funny thing is that it never stopped raining in the weeks following and the IHRA gave up on the idea of a Pocono race.

Columbo never gave up on trying to figure out who did that to Paul.

Old Columbo never knew just how close he came to being buck naked and handcuffed to an elevator.

#2 – “Waterbed” Fred Miller
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Rolled With Raymond Beadle …
1ST RD - defeated Ted Jones, 77.01% to 22.99%

DOG, RABBIT, BETTING AND OF COURSE, BEADLE …

When Raymond Beadle and Harry Schmidt came out with the Blue Max in the mid-1970s, we were very much a part of the

match race scene. I can remember we ran a little over 100 dates in one season.

If you match raced back in the day, you usually ended up at U.S. 30 outside of Chicago.

There was always a big “to do” out there.

U.S. 30 was the hometown to the Chicago guys and very well known.

I can remember one particular match race where the promoter at this track put us against Don Prudhomme in a match race where the winner takes all for $5,000. If you got beat, you got nothing.

Most tracks couldn’t afford both of us running on the same weekend.

Back in those days, Prudhomme was nearly unbeatable.

Back then Indy paid $5,000 to win. The championship paid $12,000.

Back then, this best two out of three race coming up at U.S. 30 was the talk. It was even on the cover of Drag News.

We were prepared in case we lost to not leave empty handed. We had boxes of t-shirts printed up and back in those days, teams just didn’t do the t-shirt thing. Beadle did.

Back in those days you had a small Chaparral trailer with very little room, and virtually none for t-shirt boxes. This weekend, we made the room.

The key to winning at U.S. 30 was the understanding in the eyes of the betters that red-lights didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if you flipped upside down and on fire, if you crossed the centerline and got there first – you were the winner.

We came in there with these boxes of shirts and when we unloaded, had them all over the hood of the truck and everywhere. We figured that since they packed the place if each person bought a t-shirt, we’d make out like gangbusters.

There were two African-American guys that were well known around U.S. 30 and let’s say they oversaw the wagering among other things in the grandstands. Austin Coil knew them and they answered to the names of Dog and Rabbit.

There were times when Raymond might make his way up into the grandstands from time to time, and if he got beat really bad by someone on a qualifying run at a national event, a person he could usually whip, well you had your suspicions.

Before the event began, Dog and Rabbit pulled up to our trailer with this Cadillac full of guys and they all got out. Rabbit pulls his pant leg up and he’s got those high socks and in there he had rolls of cash. He pulled out the money and asked Beadle how much money did he want for his t-shirts. Beadle said they were about $5.

Rabbit then asked how many did he have. Beadle told them how many and Rabbit decided he wanted to buy them all.

They took every t-shirt we had and we never had to sell a one.

They had t-shirts in the trunk and on the roof of the Cadillac.

They’d cruise the pits and then go up into the stands and give them away to some of their friends up there. Then they’d sell some of them.

The heavy money was on Prudhomme, so we pulled up there for the first round and Prudhomme smoked the tires and didn’t run well. We won that round.

That kind of changed the outlook of the whole deal.

One thing you have to understand is that Dog and Rabbit were racing smart. This was not just a bunch of dumb guys in the stands betting. They knew what they were doing.

Case in point, one marquee race driver, and I won’t call any names had a provision in his contract that if he won the first two, he didn’t have to run the third one. He did that one night, pulled up there and said the rear-end broke – when he towed back to the pits and loaded the car into the trailer, Dog and Rabbit demanded to see the broken car. Security had to be called in at that point.

So, what I am saying is these guys didn’t bet red car, blue car. They bet on the drivers and they knew the deal.

They’d actually come down and talk to you between rounds to find out what was going on.

We pulled up for the second round and the first round had changed all the betting in the stands.

Prudhomme was still the favorite, but Beadle had known Dog and Rabbit dating back to the time when he raced with Schumacher.

The key to winning at U.S. 30 was the understanding in the eyes of the betters that red-lights didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if you flipped upside down and on fire, if you crossed the centerline and got there first – you were the winner.

Prudhomme was no-nonsense. He was there to race, no t-shirts, no socializing – get there and race, win it, get your money and leave.

The second race went like this; Beadle pre-staged, Prudhomme crept in there and was slow getting into the pre-stage and Beadle lit the stage light and boom he left and Prudhomme followed. I’m not even sure if he got staged.

I’m not even sure the tree came down.

There was no red-light.

At the other end, Prudhomme gets out – throws his helmet, pissed off at the world, cussing and saying every profanity you can imagine. He was hotter than hell.

But, we had won.

There went the best two out of three. Prudhomme got sideways over the deal.

Prudhomme came back with his best run in the final run.

That was the last of the winner take all match races for Prudhomme.

That was a big weekend for us. We sold every t-shirt, won the match race and got a favorable nod from Dog and Rabbit.

Did I happen to mention that we beat Prudhomme at Indy back in 1975?

DON GARLITS VS. KENNY NOWLING

THE "OH MY GOSH THEY KILLED KENNY" STORY

The spirit of the War Stories competition is one of competitors telling tales of being on the road and sometimes outlandish antics. The story Don Garlits submitted in the quarter-finals, The Indestructible Connie Kalitta, featured a tale about what he said he witnessed during a match race with Shirley Muldowney in the 1970s. Ms. Muldowney alleged the details in the story are inaccurate and offered to tell her side of the story.

Since this story would have involved other parties, we just felt it was best for the spirit of the competition to declare an early victory for Garlits who held a 50% percent voting lead after 12 hours. Traditionally no one has ever overcome a 15% lead much less a 50%.

In a perfect world such decisions are black and white. There is a winner and there is a loser. In this case Garlits was declared the victor and the unfortunate loser being Nowling, who was through no fault of his own, denied the opportunity to even bridge the gap.

All we can do is chalk the experience up to just that -- an experience. If you want to know the whole story you'll have to ask Garlits or Muldowney, as I am sure they will be all too eager to tell you.

We still feel the CompetitionPlus.com War Stories is one of the most exciting and fan off-season events in drag racing and will continue to serve as one for years to come.

It's unfortunate we had to kill Kenny in the process. - Bobby Bennett

WINNER - #3 –  “Big Daddy” Don Garlits
WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – I Didn’t Do It - T.C. or Swingle Did It
1ST RD - defeated Jim Rockstad, 

#6 – Kenny “Let Me Sell You A Free Ticket” Nowling

WAR STORIES CLAIM TO FAME – Once Won A Burnout Contest In A Rental Truck
1ST RD - defeated Steve Reyes,

THE NOT-SO-GREAT RACE

This is an out-of-control story about an out-of-control motor home, a would-be concert promoter (me), an inexperienced
driver and a frenzied assistant.

If you drive a truck for a living or for that matter a motor home, then you already know what the Jake brake is and how important it is to stopping a large vehicle.

In the summer of 2006, I learned about the Jake brake the hard way.

That year, the National Guard had set up recruiting displays at the ADRL events in Valdosta (GA) and St. Louis. At those same events we had also put on concerts that attracted a lot of people. Both events were a great success and the Guard was quite pleased with the results. Now, at the time, I was courting the Guard to get them more involved with the ADRL but for some reason, I just wasn't hitting the right notes.

So I turned to a close friend, John Cane from Valdosta, who was a successful business man with an extensive background in the music business and is solely responsible for not only the two concerts in Valdosta and St. Louis, but every concert that the ADRL has ever had. He suggested that I work on promoting the concerts and he would take care of the rest.

I knew that the Guard was involved with an event called the Great Race which is this annual, cross-country rally with old cars that travels from one end of the country to the other with many stops in-between. It typically attracted a much older crowd during the stops and the National Guard was looking to draw more of their ideal demographic, you know guys and gals in their late teens and early 20s.

Along with Brian Evans, who at the time worked with me at Nowling Motorsports Management and is now the ADRL's Director of New Business Development, we pitched the Guard on having three concerts to coincide with three of the Great Race's stops in the Midwest.

They loved the idea and so we were set.

Our game plan was simple. Hit the road in my motor home, oversee the events, have a good time and make a few bucks.

Easy money!

We really had no budget. We did have a motor home and about enough money to pay for the fuel. Our plan called for the three of us – my assistant Jessica, my right-hand man Dave "Bones" Koch and me - sleeping and eating in the motor home. So, what could be simpler?

The first of our three shows was set for Dublin, Ohio. But first we had to head to Arkansas to pick up some equipment for John that we would need for each concert.

On the way to Arkansas, we had lunch with an old friend of mine, Junior Smith in Lebanon, Missouri. Junior, who'd made the trip in Arkansas numerous times before, even suggested a shortcut that would save us hours on our trip.

Jessica, Bones and I set out for Arkansas. We're heading down I-44 after lunch with Junior and things are just great. We're planning on taking the shortcut and I'm lying back watching a movie, Jess is reading a book and Bones is driving.

After a couple of hours, it begins to feel like we're on a roller coaster and not on a road. So, I walked to the front of the coach to check things out and I noticed a strong smell of burning brakes.

I looked at Bones and asked, "What the hell kind of road are we on?"

Now, Bones was new to the motor home world and we were on this narrow, two-lane road that was winding its way through the hills. Not at all the kind of road you'd want to take any kind of large vehicle on.

The smell of burning brakes at this point was pretty strong and here we are, winding back and forth, back and forth down this mountainous road with about a 15% grade.

Just as we were coming to an opening, where the trees were clearing and you could see that we were approaching a small town I look and Bones is practically standing up in his seat.

"Holy shit, we've got no brakes!" he shrieked.

I went running to the front and he's got this look of panic on his face. I looked up and the town that was once off in the distance is now dead ahead.

Things start getting pretty ugly at this point. We're trying everything to slow the motor home down, but it's moving along at a pretty good clip.

Up ahead we both see a stoplight with a school bus, its lights flashing and cars stopped behind it. To the left is an auto body shop and to the right – a gas station with cars pumping gas.

And of course, there's oncoming traffic in the other lane.

I'm starting to get a bit freaked now, yelling, cussing and beating the dashboard, which started to break apart from my furious pounding.

How are we gonna stop this thing? Throw it into reverse?

Jess is sitting behind us screaming and crying, Bones is turning white and I'm literally beginning to watch my life flash before my eyes.

Death in a runaway motor home. Not exactly how I pictured my obituary.

Suddenly, as if by divine intervention, we're less than a block away from the intersection with no signs of slowing but the bus sign goes down, the bus turns right and so do the cars lined up behind it. We go blasting through the intersection - which had a red light - and with literally no brakes at this point and smoke barreling from the rear - we continued to coast about another mile until we came to another hill that finally slowed us down. I can’t even imagine what people must have been thinking as we went flying by.

If anything had pulled out in front of us or we came upon another red light while we were coasting, who knows what would have happened.

After the thing finally came to a stop, we were all shaking. I opened the door, walked out and just puked. Jess is inside crying and Bones is sitting frozen behind the wheel looking as if he'd just seen a ghost. I must have laid in the grass on the side of the road for an hour or more wondering what in the hell just happened.

Unbelievable!

We had the motor home towed to a Freightliner shop where they removed what was left of the brake system and went to work getting us back on the road. The guy at the dealership asked us why we didn't use the Jake brake. Bones and I looked at each other.

The Jake what?

The dealership rep showed us a switch on the dash that activates the Jake brake, which is a device that is designed to use the engine to slow down a large vehicle on a steep grade, saving the brakes.

Needless to say, we had a huge piece of neon orange tape next to the switch for the brake so that Bones wouldn't forget about it. And every motor home I've used since then has a similar piece of tape next to the switch.

And here's the best part. We had no money for a hotel, so the three of us had to sleep inside the motor home, up on the lift at the dealership. Talk about weird!

Wait! Things got even better.

So, we have our shows in Dublin, Ohio and Springfield, Missouri and it's off to Wichita, Kansas for our third and final stop. Now, if you've ever been to Wichita in the middle of the summer, the daytime temperature hovers around 120 degrees in the shade with one hundred percent humidity. At night it's not a whole lot cooler.

We're driving through Wichita heading to the concert setup area and we first have to drive through an underpass. Now, the sign said 14 feet and even though we know we're 12 feet, six inches, it was like one of those times when you go through a parking garage and you still poke your head out to take a look.

We start underneath the bridge and we see scaffolding and some stuff on the other end. Immediately we realized that the 14-foot clearance wasn't going to be fourteen feet.

Suddenly there's a horrendously loud bang from up above. It was the satellite unit and the two air conditioners being ripped off the top of the motor home. As I looked in the side view mirror I was overcome with sheer terror as I watched the cars behind us swerve uncontrollably to dodge the a/c units.

Where there once were two a/c units, there were now two big holes in the roof. We stopped and got out and looked back to see our stuff, lying on the road with cars still swerving around it.

Are you kidding me?

As we walked back to get our stuff some wino comes walking out of the alley laughing his ass off.

"You're the third one that got it today," he chuckled as he took a gulp from his paper bag.

We later found out that the scaffolding was there for a work crew that was making repairs to the roof of the underpass that had been damaged by several previous incidents caused by the low clearance.

The road crew hadn't changed the main warning sign, but we did notice afterwards that there was a small sign hidden behind a tree that warned of the impending low clearance. But, we weren't paying attention to the small sign.

Now we've got no a/c and it is just miserably hot outside. The good news was there was plenty of air blowing through the two big holes in the roof.

We finally pull into our destination, happy to have even made it. I was exhausted. What else can happen?

Like I said earlier, have you ever been to Wichita in the middle of the summer? Along with heat there are torrential thunderstorms. That night, the area got hit with a huge line of storms and without any money to stay in a hotel we were once again forced to stay in the motor coach with no air conditioning and some plastic over the holes in the roof to keep the rain out.

The storms were ridiculous. The plastic didn't do much and yep, you guessed it. The water started pouring inside in the middle of the night.

To add insult to injury, it rained again on the way back to St. Louis.

Despite the insurance claims, when it was all over, I was still out $20,000 (which I didn't have).

However, after those three concerts with the Great Race, the National Guard was more inclined to listen to me. Eventually it led to the ADRL's current partnership with the National Guard.

I guess it was all worth it, but believe me, there wasn’t much “great” about the Great Race!

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