Never let it be said that John Force isn't up for a good story, either telling or creating one. And some of the best stories are created on Force-inspired road trips.

The 16-time champion, drag racing's ultimate rags to riches story, has always remembered where he came from, whether it's the trailer park in Bell Gardens or the logging community of Redwood Creek. On July 3 - 5, Force embarked on a journey with film producer Brent Travers and digital coordinator Aaron "AJ" England to relive a few of those memories.

The three-day Force nostalgia excursion encompassed 1208 miles of searching for a childhood school and an old church. Along the way, some incidents transpired that could only happen in John Force Land. Some are believable; some are not so believable.

"I never lie; I might embellish," Force has always declared.

The trip is all part of a big-picture vision where Force hopes to see his life's story played out on the silver screen. But first, it will take a quality documentary to knit it all together; at least, that's how he understands it all. Those who know the animated, iconic drag racer understand that sometimes when a plan doesn't move fast enough for his liking, he will get involved and give it a monster push, much to the chagrin of those around him.

Force took his film specialists to where living paycheck-to-paycheck was the norm, and runaway trucks through the neighborhood were commonplace.

"[Brent] said, 'To do your movie, to do your book. You've got a script, that's all great, but Hollywood's different," Force explained. "He said, 'You might have to look at doing a documentary, maybe doing some cartoons, doing some stuff to open that door."

"And he said, 'Write a documentary like Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, where he writes around the car all day. I know if I get on a roll, I can write a lot of it. We filmed at Pomona, coming back and forth, and I crashed.

"And they said he was jumping up and down like, 'He's dead. He goes, We got the closing of this deal already in the first week out."

Force chuckles at the joke.

But when Force took England to Redwood Creek and Arcata, the moment was no joking matter—towns hit by poverty, some by the economy, some by conservationists.

Force, his family, and many others in the 1960s were put in a bind when these camps closed down due to mills closing.

"There's thousands of acres where the logging camps used to be," Force lamented.

Force took his digital posse up to his old stomping grounds, which first included the area around the Klamath River.

 

 

 

 

​​"It's all changed," Force said, his excited tone falling somber almost instantly. "Logging camps are gone. Came back, the flood wiped it out with logs, the whole town. Bears were still on the bridge, but I go down, and the town is different. My schoolhouse is gone."

Then, the road to Redwood Creek.

"Let me tell you, back then, it was scary to go down roads like this. I said, 'I got to go back," Force said, picking up his Bible he got back in 1957 while growing up in that same logging community. With all the challenges in life, a bit of divine intervention was a big help.

"I was six, seven years old. When I graduated from bible school, we all got Bibles. And my dad wrote stuff in all the creases.

"I go down into Redwood Creek, go to the little red schoolhouse, I try to find the roads. The roads have almost disappeared, but I still see cars traveling. And it says, 'Do not enter, do not go down off the highway going to Redding."

As Force described it, the only ones up there were Indians on the reservation, bears, and, well, his group, wondering if they would survive this trip back to yesteryear.

Then came Klamath Glen.

Then came Carmen Beth Bennett.

Who?

"I was in second grade, third grade, I rode on the bus with her," Force said. "Unbelievable. Cute as could be. It's kind of like my little girlfriend, but I'm like, Noah, my grandson, just a kid - same age."

Force conned one of the crew into walking up to the door of a house believed to be hers.

"So Brent goes up and beats on the door, and this guy comes out, a big guy, wearing a Jesus shirt," Force said. "Well, it was her husband. And I guess she had married and had kids.

"She walks out, she goes, 'John Force."

"Cute as a bug. Looked just like she did. Got this husband who's a preacher now, but she was down in Sonoma living with her two boys and working at the racetrack. She said, 'I never came over [to the pits] because you were just this guy, and I can't go over there."

Force and Carmen built a second-grade relationship, and then one day, Force's family's trailer was gone with no forwarding address.

As quickly as Force moved back in the day, he and his team headed to the next stop - an abandoned Seventh-Day Adventist camp.

 

 

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​"So we go up this road to the Seventh-Day Adventist camp, and we actually had to get out at one point and pull back some old trees that were sagging because I didn't know if one of our big Suburbans could pass," Force explained." I didn't want to scratch it. And we lifted it up and drove under it. We got up there, and we come around this corner, and I said, 'There it is."

The former Seventh Day Adventist Camp was another colorful chapter in the Force Family saga.

"We lived in an old house that got demolished that had bats," Force recalled. "Then my dad bought an old trailer house. It was burned up, and we lived in it for years, and it smelled like burned wood. And I couldn't believe it."

Force was in the midst of the memory lane moment when a pickup truck rolled up.

"I yelled, 'Hey, hey, stop. Stop," Force recalled. "And this guy rolled down the window and said, 'Yeah, what?' Pissed off. I asked, 'Is the Seventh Day Adventist camp still down there?"

"I never said my name. And Brent, they're filming all this. The car door flies open, the back door. And this kid jumps out, and this boy looks like he's 14. He yells, 'It's John Force."

"Here I am in the middle of the sticks, and a kid jumps out and yells, "It's John Force. I can't believe it. I dreamed to this day to get my picture with you."

"And his mom goes, 'Get his picture."

The group riding in the truck circles Force, clearly in entertainment mode.

"I asked, 'So what are you doing down there?"

"He says, 'Well, my great grandma brought us here, not me. The chain of family."

Force, who had seen more than his share of absurdity over five decades of drag racing experience, admitted this situation ranked right up there with getting kidnapped in Mexico (video) or running over the mayor of a small town while repossessing a trailer (video).

Then the kid, who was identified as Grant Williamson, revealed he'd won a Jr. Dragster race the day before at Sonoma Raceway.

The crew eventually made their way to Lake Tahoe, where they dropped off Force with his family for a vacation. For some reason, they needed a vacation too. One can only take Force in prescribed doses.

Force, weeks after the experience, said the trip produced the desired effect.

"If you go over there right now to AJ and say, 'Show me something Force is talking about - it's there on his phone," Force beamed in his proclamation. "He's so proud of it. But we got it all because Brent got it. We got it with cameras and phones and everything. And Brent goes, "The first one with you smooching on the girl. Running into this kid 150 miles in the middle of nowhere, he jumps out and he said, 'Just won a trophy the week before."

"And it's like God is trying to tell me something. I don't know what. There's a reason for... I almost feel sometimes who I am, and I want to do more than what I've done, and I don't know how to do it."

Those who know Force know he'll figure "it" out. It's just what he does without lying and just a little embellishing. Except this time, he didn't need to - there were witnesses.