…Coastsider.com reports that Caltrans officials at a press conference yesterday announced that Devil’s Slide will reopen on August 4th.
Praise the Lord!
Our gratitude is overwhelming…Thank you to the engineers and working guys at the Slide who beat the schedual, thank you to all the officials for whatever role they played.
Hey CalTrans, one more thing….the poor slugs that sit on Hwy 92– two-three hours per day– may not even get this good news…How about spreading the word on all the printed signs and new electronic boards that give the number of minutes to and from Hwy 280 & Hwy 1….
…And one last thought: If on August 4 there is a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Slide’s reopening– in addition to the smiling bureaucrats and politicians– PLEASE make sure a couple of commuters are represented at the ceremony, too.
(Photo: Commuters raring to go when the Slide reopens).
P.S. Re-opening of the Slide is a headline story in the San Mateo Times
We’re delighted to learn that financial reimbursement is being made by the feds to some local non-profits whose resources have been stretched because of the closure of Devil’s Slide.
That’s great–but, as usual, the commuter doesn’t seem to count.
Let’s examine the cost to the commuter:
(1) Never have gas prices been so high.
(2) A car/truck is one of the most expensive items a family or individual owns.
(3) There’s wear and tear on the vehicle. Repairs to be made.
(4) Time lost sitting on Hwy 92
(5) Stress leading to illness (A well known county cardiologist, with homes on both sides of the hill, says that sitting in traffic on Hwy92 , is one of the huge factors that can lead to heart attacks).
And how do you measure the significant cost on the family?
Don’t forget not everything is measured in dollars. I’d just like to see one time– the worn-out, beat-up, poor sucker who is stuck on Hwy 92 for torturous hours every day–be first on the list of assistance.
(Photo taken in front of Half Moon Bay Bakery, Main Street).
I was driving south on Hwy 1 near Safeway when I pulled up beside one of the Coastside’s “solutions” to the closure of Devil’s Slide.
There might have been more than one passenger but I don’t think so. Seconds later another one of these Parking Company of America jitneys pulled out of the shopping center. This one was empty for sure.
Hopefully, more folks will use these buses–otherwise we’ll just have more vehicles adding to traffic on Hwy1 In that case the $160,000 put out for the service might better have been allocated to finishing the repairs at Devil’s Slide a minute and nine seconds faster.
The day of the match race finally arrived and the stage was set for the two biggest names in the sport, Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme, the only two men to win drag racingâs triple crown.
At 6:15 a.m. that Sunday, cars blocked traffic on Highways 1 and 92. The Half Moon Bay air strips huge parking lot was packed. Parked cars spilled out on entrance roads in all directionsâa great turn-out and tribute to these world-class athletes.
â15 thousand people showed up,â? Don âBig Daddyâ? Garlits told me in 1998. âThey came to see their man, Prudhomme, beat âBig Daddyââ?.
(Remember the trophy was already etched with Prudhommeâs name).
The race was run in three heats: two wins got the trophy and the $5,000 purse.
Garlits easily won the first heat but Prudhomme came back with a magnificent effort in the second heat.
On the scene was a reporter from Drag Racing Magazine. âNow the drama was really tense,â? he wrote. âWe had just watched two-thirds of the best match race we had ever seen.â?
Now came the final deciding heat. A quarter-mile, 7-second rush of acceleration.
The magazine reporter wrapped it up:
âThe two cars were perfectly matchedâ¦.The two giants of drag racing pushed down the lanes for the final chapter of one of the truly great moments in the sport.â?
And with the starting flags, Don Garlits was gone. He grabbed the lead, over a full car lengthâit was impossible for Prudhomme to catch him.
Don Garlits had defied the race experts who said he couldnât win.
âIt was the most important, most satisfying victory of my career,â? Garlits told me. After he won the race he said, âI drove 50 miles before I remembered that I forgot to get my $5,000 prize money. Jim McLennan was waiting for me at Half Moon Bay when I returned. He grinned and said, âWe wondered when youâd be backâ.â?
Jim McLennan, a former Woodside resident, lived in San Francisco when I interviewed him in 1998. The Half Moon Bay Bakery’s Mark Andermahr proclaimed that âDon Garlits is the most famous drag racer in the world.â? Don Garlits operates the very successful Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida.
Three years after the famous race between Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme, the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip closed its gates forever.
(Photo: The Half Moon Bay Airport where the drag races took place).
(Photo: Don Prudhomme with Half Moon Bay Drag Strip “Theme Girl” Tammy Thomas)
For Coastside kids, now adults, the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip remains a fond memory. In the late 1990s I interviewed Mark Andermahr, owner of the Half Moon Bay Bakery on Main Street. A fervent fan of drag racing, Andermahr had turned the walls of the bakery into a museum of historic photos honoring the old drag strip and its heroes.
In the 1960s, Andermahr told me, he and his friends hitchhiked to the drag strip, perching themselves atop the roof of a barn at the south end of the drag strip.
âAll we could see was the end of the race when the parachutes opened,â? Mark said. They looked like little dots getting bigger.â?
(The âparachutesâ? helped slow down the super-fast dragsters).
The races took place every other Sunday, the price of admission 90 cents. Jim McLennan âcould hardly wait for race dayâ? when he got behind the wheel of his 1936 Ford pick-up truck and headed from San Francisco for the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip where he opened the gates and awaited the crowds.
McLennan remembered a press conference he scheduled at Half Moon Bay, inviting radio and television stations to cover a mock race matching his homemade âslingshot dragsterâ? that could go up to 150 mph against Art Arfonâs âGreen Monsterâ?.
Arfonâs dragster with a painted monster baring its teeth on the front end was funny to look at but it was awesome, loaded with a gas-eating jet engine that reached speeds of 170 mph.
âThe media didnât come to the press conference,â? McLennan said. âThey didnât know where the drag strip was!â?
Back at the Champion Speed Shop in Colma a KPIX-TV cameraman and reporter arrived, apologizing for their failure to get to Half Moon Bay.
âCan you show us the mock race now?â? the reporter asked.
Game for anything, McLennan called Colmaâs police chief, who said, âSure, go ahead. You can run the thing, just put a couple of guys on the street to stop the traffic on the El Camino.â?
âWe did it,â? McLennan said. âArt came down the street in the âGreen Monsterâ.â?
He gave it the gas, and the noise was incredible. Two parachutes stopped the âMonsterâ? at the El Camino but the noise was so loud âthe phones were ringing off the hook at Colmaâs City Hall.
McLennan also made valuable contributions to the safety of the sport. Through conversations with a San Francisco Airport fire official, he helped develop a âpro-helmet, fashioned out of fiberglass material, protecting the driver from burns. Northern California dragsters were the first to wear the new âfire suit,â? McLennan said.
Using brakes to slow a dragster going 150-plus mph did not do very well so McLennan experimented with parachutes.
Crouching in the truck bed of a pick-up, McLennan tossed out a 20-foot chute tied to a chain but he says, âIt wrecked the tail gate and everything else.â?
Eventually he used a triangle parachute attached to a nylon âroll cageâ? which resembled a back pack. McLennan was among the first to use parachutes to slow down a dragster.
NEXT: THE BIG MATCH RACE BETWEEN DON GARLITS & DON PRUDHOMME
(Photo: Don “Big Daddy” Garlits standing behind his dragster with Jim McLennan, wearing striped shirt in the background)
For the uninitiated, drag racing is a lightning speed contest between hot rods racing side-by-side.
In the 1960s, to reach maximum speeds of more than 200-mph in less than 7 seconds, dragsters fine-tuned their engines, modified body shapes and experimented with exotic, flammable fuels.
In the drag racing world, âSeven seconds is an eternity,â? Jim McLennan told me eight years ago when he was in his mid-60s. McLennan was also the veteran of 2,000 races and the former owner of the legendary Champion Speed Shop in Colma (south of San Francisco).
âBack in the early 1950s when I was known as a hot rod kid,â? McLennan said, â I cruised in a â51 Chevy loaded with a powerful Oldsmobile engine. I was at Melâs Drive-In when a young man called âthe Greekâ pulled alongside me in his â41 Buick with a Cadillac engine.â?
âWanna drag?â? challenged âthe Greekâ.
The hot-rodders negotiated the site of their âoutlaw dragâ? before settling on the straight-away of the âUpper Great Highwayâ? near San Franciscoâs Ocean Beach.
San Franciscoâs avenues were used because âthere was no place to dragâ?, McLennan told me. âThe street machines were going faster and faster and it was getting out of hand.â?
Sometimes the âoutlaw dragsâ? took place as early as 5:30 a.m. to avoid getting âtaggedâ? or arrested by police.
Jim McLennan was 25 when he changed careers. He opened the Champion Speed Shop on Mission Road near the Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.
Inside the concrete âtilt-upâ? building where the smell of oil permeated the air, McLennan did tune-ups—but what he relished was building hot rods from scratchâand he was so good at it that the phone rang constantly until closing time, 9 p.m. On the other end of the line were young hot-rodders asking questions about engines, ordering special parts, inquiring about the date of the next drag race.
McLennanâs Speed Shop became the nerve center for drag strip devotees.
It was one thing to build fast engines, it was another to actually own a drag strip and thatâs what Jim McLennan wanted.
He wanted to own a legal and safe place where amateurs and pros could compete. Imagine his excitement when he learned that the 3000-foot long, 60-foot wide asphalt covered auxiliary air strip at the isolated Half Moon Bay Airport was for rent.
McLennan snapped up the opportunity but he realized that attracting spectators might not be easy. He would have to overcome the fact that few people knew how to find the remote, sparsely populated Half Moon Bay.
…To Be Continued…
. Photo courtesy Mark Andermahr, HMB Bakery (When you go to buy bread or pastries, enjoy the many dragster photos on the walls of the HMB Bakery on Main Street)
The Coastside sky was an endless milky white as 29-year-old Don âBig Daddyâ? Garlits towed his âSwamp Ratâ?, the strange looking, low-slung drag strip racing machine, into the isolated Half Moon Bay Airport.
Bold block lettering on the multi-windowed tower announced that Big Daddy had arrived at the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip: Where World Records Are Broken.
It was 1966 and 1500 drag strip fans, young and old, gathered to witness the highly publicized battle of the year–a quarter-mile, 7-second rush of acceleration– between arch rivals Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme.
Garlits, a Floridian, was always a star attraction, a âhired gunâ? that brought in the crowds, wherever he raced. But this time Garlits had had a bad year, losing important races on the East Coastâbut eveb worse he heard from a reliable source that the big trophy had been etched in advance with Don Prudhommeâs name.
As the day of the big match approached, excitement soared among the dedicated group of drag strip fans.
Who would win the giant trophy and the $5000 purse?
Did the trophy really already bear Don Prudhomme, the Southern Californian’s name?
