DRAG RAGS 1965: TERRY COOK TELLS HOW THE WEEKLY SAUSAGE GOT MADE

by Dave Wallace    Mon, 2022-07-11 22:06

 

 

A.J. Routt Photo

Before we pull the 'chute on 1965 and continue down our chronological quarter-mile to the '66 season (coming next time), let's veer out of the groove to pay homage to the short-lived Drag World newspaper. Drag News was far fatter, and Drag Sport Illustrated delivered finer photography on brighter newsprint, but Drag World's modern design and overall production quality scared its two older rivals into upping their respective games before flaming out as an independent publication in its second year. 

Among the personal back issues retrieved to research two prior 1965 installments of this series were two editions marked up in red ink (as seen in the accompanying clippings). One edition's notations indicate individual editorial payments owed to freelance photographers and columnists. The other issue is filled with text corrections of mistakes missed during that week's rushed production process. Thus did we suspect that both issues originally belonged to publisher-editor Mike Dohery.  

Four years ago, sample scans of both marked-up issues went 'cross-country to Drag World's original associate editor for comment in the March 2018 print edition of Drag Racer magazine (RIP). Sure enough, Terry Cook recognized the handwriting and high editing standards of his late boss and main mentor.     

Once we got Cook e-mailing, we couldn't resist asking follow-up questions about the week-to-week operations of a typical drag rag of 1965. We've edited excerpts from those written conversations into the modern version of Terry's own "On The Carpet" interview series of 1965-66, before the proudly-independent title was acquired by AHRA's Jim Tice and neutered into the sanctioning body's house organ.  

Terry Cook's name simultaneously fell out of the newspaper's masthead, only to resurface in the Dec. '66 Car Craft. He graduated to CC editor in 1969, then took over Petersen's Hot Rod flagship in 1972 before quitting California and the industry's top job in his early 30s. Now pushing 80, Cook recently retired from subsequent, simultaneous careers producing fiberglass custom cars (loosely based on 1930s classics) and Lead East, the New Jersey show that he ran for 35 years.  

DAVE WALLACE: How did your journalism career get started?

TERRY COOK: I had a weekly Drag News column, "New Jersey News." I started it for free, then I got $5 per column, then $10, then $15. I was out there [in L.A.] at Lions one night and met Mike Doherty. He had read my shit in Drag News and offered me a job. I flew home, sold my C/Dragster, bought a 1960 Pontiac for $750, threw everything I owned in the trunk, drove 'cross-country, and started what has been a totally enjoyable and rewarding career and life. It was pure luck and fate that I had come to California just when Mike was starting up the publication.  

DW: Did Doherty own Drag World?

TC: No, the original owner was Brainard Mellinger, who traveled the world importing cheap junk to the USA to sell retail. He ran ads in the Los Angeles Times seeking people who had schemes to make money. Mike saw the ad and sold him on the idea of Drag World. After the first year or so, when we were still not making a profit, Mellinger told Mike to sell it. Our second owner was Gil Kohn. After another year of not making money, Kohn arranged to sell it to Jim Tice of AHRA. Mike told me I could move to Kansas City with the paper. Luckily, I heard there was an opening at Car Craft.

DW: Describe a typical workweek at a drag rag. 

TC: I'd go to two or three tracks most weekends: Lions, Irwindale, San Fernando. Once I added Carlsbad on a Wednesday night. I'd come to work Monday morning, write my column and do whatever needed to be done to get the paper out: write captions, work on the "dummy" [mockup of what story and ad went where —Ed.]. Mike edited all the copy. The photographers would come by the office every Monday with stacks of photos. Doherty would usually make the selections. We worked until at least 10 p.m. Mondays. Tuesday started at the office, then went to the printer to oversee paste-up, following our dummy. I proofread each page. The drag rags all went to bed on Tuesday night and were shipped to readers on Wednesday. 
 
DW: How much you were paid?

TC:  I started in 1965 at $10,000 a year [about $92,000 today —Ed.]. After three years, I had worked my way up to close to $12,000. Drag World covered expenses for an out-of-town race, like Bakersfield. I don't recall them reimbursing me for going out to Lions every Saturday night.  

DW:  Many media veterans still consider the original, 1965-66 Drag World to be the best-written national tabloid ever published. The paper seemed to be popular with subscribers and sell to fans at tracks. Why do you think Drag News and even Drag Sport Illustrated lasted longer as independent tabloids? 

TC:  There never was enough ad revenue for us or DSI to compete with the two major, established players, Drag News and National Dragster. Drag News was packed with ads because Doris Herbert paid Don Rackemann some incredible commission, supposedly 35 percent or more. Drag News was always a schlock rag, journalistically, but Rack was a fabulous salesman. We never had a salesman other than Doherty, who was always busy helping put out each issue.
   
DW: Drag World was also controversial at a time when bad news was downplayed or altogether ignored by most publishers "for the good of the sport." Do you think that a reputation for sensationalism hurt its chances in such a conservative environment?    

TC: From the start, Drag World was a class act journalistically. Issue Number One had the story about Petty's Barracuda crashing into a crowd; an accident that other publications never mentioned because National Dragster never reported on driver deaths or any other negative news. When somebody died, the only way the drag-racing community across the nation found out was by the black condolence ads that you might see in Drag News; not allowed in Dragster. The Petty story on the front page of our first issue immediately branded Drag World as a “scandal sheet” in L.A., which of course was bullshit. It was a real newspaper, like the New York Times, that was factually reporting the news, but many dunderheads in drag racing were so totally ignorant of life in the real world, they spread the scandal-sheet slur. Most likely that came from Rackemann and/or from the NHRA offices, now that they had a serious competitor. National Dragster is a house organ, not a real newspaper, and Drag News was mush. 
 
DW: You graduated from writing a free newspaper column to running Car Craft, then Hot Rod, in no time, then walked away from a career in your prime. How does that time in the publishing business look now, four decades further down the road?     

TC: I was blessed to work at Drag World and Petersen Publishing Company at the time I did. It was a magic, golden era, the best and most-creative 10-year period of my life. I had editorial freedom with a minimum of interference from "chicken blowers" [an enduring nickname that Cook coined for ad salesmen and publishers —Ed.]. Drag racing, as we knew it, and our memories of it, are going the way of the buggy whip and rotary telephone. We were blessed to live through that glorious era when dragsters smoked the tires on purpose. Now, with the USA and the entire world going straight down the shitter while the youths of America are only concerned with taking a selfie of themselves in their new, stubble-faced look of a bum beard, I'm just trying to squeak out a living and survive perhaps another healthy 20 years of existence.  

His second issue (Mar. 12), founding-publisher-editor Mike Doherty came out swinging with his first subscription ad. Without naming a competitor, it's no coincidence that associate editor Terry Cook (left) and most of the freelance writers listed were previously associated with Drag News, the sport's dominant independent newspaper for the prior decade. Drag World also competed for readers and advertisers with L.A.'s second independent weekly, Drag Sport Illustrated (est. 1963).  

 

Even after half a century, the resilient AA/Fuel Altereds refuse to go away! Bans were big across the board in '65: From week to week, it was hard to keep track of which cars or specific components were either being outlawed, rumored to be threatened, or newly allowed. The emergence of factory politics—and Detroit dollars—further complicated rulesmaking by AHRA, NHRA, and NASCAR's new drag-racing division.


  

Rose-colored retellings of this era's factory warfare too often underplay or overlook Detroit orders dictating whether and where Ford and Chrysler products would be allowed to tangle on any given weekend. Consider that Drag World was born at a time when Hemi-powered stock cars were banned from NASCAR's superspeedways; GM’s division managers were forbidden from any association with auto racing; altered-wheelbase Dodges and Plymouths were banned from NHRA-legal Factory Experimental classes; and factory-backed Mustangs were forbidden from racing Mopars until Ford scrambled to redesign its cam-in-block 427 Wedge as a SOHC V8—an engine combination effectively banned by NASCAR even before it could be dropped into a Grand National body. The youngest of L.A.'s three independent weeklies was first to fully embrace the controversial F/X'ers, while Drag News and Drag Sport Illustrated remained reverential to Top Fuel Dragsters, the traditional "kings of the sport" (if not  for much longer).  


   

Jersey-transplant Terry Cook (right) quickly became known for candid "On The Carpet" interviews of national stars encountered on a weekly basis in southern California. Among them were "Camgrinder War" heroes Tim Woods (left) and John Mazmanian, rarely seen or photographed together.


 

Jocko Johnson and Woody Gilmore jointly developed an adjust-to-wheelbase body that adapted to any Race Car Engineering slingshot and was removable in 15 minutes, according to this ad. Alas, the streamliner craze had been sputtering out ever since the previous summer's barrage of believable 200-mph clockings by conventional, nonaerodynamic, lighter rails. Jocko's swoopy plastic did not help that cause. The pictured prototype's referenced March Meet debut went so poorly that Frank Cannon left all of the crunched panels behind in Famoso's dirt. The only other running model that we recall proved undriveable in the lights—which Larry Faust wiped out the first time out with the Jungle Four's rebodied RCE slingshot, seriously sideways at Lions. Their punctured nose was patched overnight and tested the next day at San Fernando, with no improvement, before vanishing for decades. That second body survives amongst the Garlits Museum's  
incomparable collection of streamliners.

   

Two victims of an intrafactory ban were Chrysler legends Roger Lindamood and Dick Branstner, whose altered-wheelbase Color Me Gone match racer was repossessed for violating factory edicts forbidding both exhibition wheelstands and nitromethane. Dodge's repo men also collected the duo's class-legal Color Me Gone II, the defending NHRA Nationals Stock Eliminator. In this Drag World scoop, builder Branstner suggested that the real reason for the stunning repossession was that the latter was outrunning Dodge’s favored team of in-house engineers-racers: "We went 9.50-148, and consistently beat the [Ram]'chargers."


 

Here's one of two 1965 issues confirmed to be editor Mike Doherty's personal, marked-up copies, hot off the press this September. His red corrections indicate the attention to detail that resulted in what many readers regarded as the best layouts, journalism, and copy editing of any independent drag rag.
This homegrown racer's big upset earned a winner's-circle sandwich and a heavy trophy that might've been bigger than Sacramento's Top Fuel Eliminator, John Cox. Drag World's event coverage extended to northern California, but rarely beyond state borders.  


  

Publisher-editor Doherty marked up a second copy of each issue with editorial payments due his paid freelance contributors (or not, as indicated by the "n.c." on the Sonic I's publicity shot, probably provided for free by a sponsor). The occasional inclusion of land-speed results by tabloid publishers reflected drag racing's common roots on dry lakebeds.
Five bucks (worth about $46 today) was the going rate for a fresh, exclusive action photo or the occasional artist's illustration. These weekly payments from the various drag rags helped keep a small army of SoCal freelancers alive well into the 1970s.  
Drag World quoted the Houston Post's November coverage of astronaut Gordon Cooper's pass in Preston Honea's Hemi-powered Rambler Marlin, revealing the astronaut's plan to reteam with Gemini V partner Gus Grissom in a two-car, AMC-backed team. Cooper sounded confident that their NASA bosses would sign off on the venture in time for February's track openers, but we've found no published evidence of either the referenced A/FXer or exhibition wheelstander materializing. 
With so few advertisers to consider, Drag World felt no pressure to pull punches. Doherty's insightful editorials and Cook's candid interviews were a winning combination appreciated by readers, at least. Terry's boss once turned the tables and subjected his lone employee to his own medicine by putting Cook himself "On The Carpet." (That 1965 interview is reproduced in full at the end of this article.)     
Irwindale Raceway's recent opening in suburban L.A. lowered the lid on Fontana Drag City's coffin for the third time in its brief existence. Today's Inland Empire residents might be surprised to learn that 50 miles from downtown seemed too far to tow or drive at a time when Lions, San Fernando, Pomona, and, now, Irwindale all operated closer to population centers. Earlier this season, the same fate befell both Palmdale International and San Diego Raceways, signaling the end of SoCal's track-building boom (OCIR being the notable exception, launching in 1967). 

   

For the third week straight, Doherty and Cook broke big, front-page news above the fold. With engines and mentoring from Keith Black, youngsters Leong and Prudhomme were the hottest act in fuel racing. Just this year, the trio dominated NHRA's two biggest, oldest national events at Pomona and Indy, yet Prudhomme chose to strike out on his own by taking over the Torkmaster Special that Kenny Safford toured nationally for B&M’s Spar brothers. Snake wisely tabbed old-buddy Dave Zeuschel as engine-builder for 1966, his and wife Lynn's first season as owner-operators.    


Editor-publisher Doherty surprised readers by putting his ace interviewer "On The Carpet" this year. We've scanned the full interview for you. Read to the end for Terry's rosy predictions of a drag-racing future on the scale of major-league baseball, when "crowds will average more than 25,000 paid each week at more than on[e] location."
Forty-odd years after leaving Hot Rod and the drag-racing press, Cook's byline sudden reappeared in this two-volume, selfpublished 2021 memoir. The press run was limited to 500 copies of each book, which reportedly sold briskly @ $19.95. 

Terry might have a few left; pester him via [email protected].
 

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PREVIOUS DRAG RAGS

THE EARLIEST EDITIONS
 BANS WERE BIG IN '57
ISKY STIRS THE POT IN 1958
DRAG RAGS OF 1960 – TRAGEDY, POPCORN SPEEDS AND A CAMSHAFT RIVALRY 
DRAG RAGS OF 1961: CONTROVERSY STALKS NHRA 
DRAG RAGS: 1959 - GARLITS GOES FROM ZERO TO HERO, TURNS PRO 
DRAG RAGS: 1959, PART 2 — HOW THE SMOKERS BEAT THE FUEL BAN 
DRAG RAGS OF 1962: GARLITS IS NO. 1, WALLY IS ALL GAS 
DRAG RAGS OF 1963: FUEL IS BACK - OR IS IT? JETS RUN WILD 
DRAG RAGS OF JAN.-JUNE 1964: INNOVATION WITHOUT LIMITATION 
DRAG RAGS OF JULY-DEC. 1964: ZOOMIES PUSH THROUGH THE 200-MPH BARRIER 
DRAG RAGS OF EARLY '65: EXPLOSION OF WEEKLY PUBLICATIONS 
DRAG RAGS OF JULY-DEC 1965: FUELERS, FUNNIES AND GASSERS APLENTY  

 

 
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