It didn’t matter, it was long and dark and no side streets came into play until way past the finish stripe painted across the street one quarter mile down. Not precisely 1320 feet but close enough. In addition the two lanes we used for racing was separated by a large grass medium creating a huge gap from the two lanes heading the other direction on the other side. It’s as if it was designed just for street racing! We tried explaining that to an officer or two but they would just kept on writing.
Ideal it was, legal it wasn’t. On any given night there was one thing that would make us dash to our hot rods and scatter from the scene.
It was the sound of Tom McEwen’s Chevy approaching.
[caption id="attachment_3628" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Grissingers Drive-in, Atlantic and San Antonio Dr., Long Beach, CA.[/caption]
Long before he staked him claim as a drag race legend, he did his racing at our little makeshift venue on Cherry Ave. And he ruled the roost. The first time we laid eyes on this guy he rolled up in a brand new 1955 Chevy Tudor. It was painted that blue and white two-tone, the post model. It was rumored to be the very first one delivered in Long Beach, and it was one mean machine. It had this strange whistling sound that we figured was how they all sounded since this was the first time for any of us up close and personal to Chevy’s newest and baddest. Tom did say it was stock, but we all said that. In reality it was hiding an Iskenderian cam and almost unnoticed was a set of Headman headers. That whistling sound was coming from a McCullough blower. I swear if someone showed up to race at our spot with a second engine hanging out of the trunk the owner would say, “Came from the factory like this.”
I remember somewhere in 1956 there was a rumor floating around that McEwen no longer had that ’55 Chevy. It was gone. Did he crash it? Is he OK? We soon learned what happened – he now has a ’56 Chevy. Ah Geez. This puppy had the Corvette motor from the factory, which now was the 283 c.i. (replacing the 265 c.i. that came in the ’55), his trademark Isky cam and Headman headers plus a set of dual-quad carbs.
It gets worse. The next year he shows up in a ’57, which had all the speed features as the ‘56. Now who does this? A ’55 in ’55, a ’56 in ’56 and ’57 in ’57. Who else had each one of those Tri-Five Chevy’s during that period?
He did have some competition though at Cherry Ave. Joe Pisano, who would become a force at Lions as part of the Pisano Bros., had this mean looking black 1957 Chevy and would give McEwen all he wanted. One thing we never bothered to ask Joe was whether it was stock or not. That would be tantamount to asking Mickey Thompson if he liked his job as head of Lions Drag Strip.
Only in Long Beach probably. Why not, after all we did have what most would say years later the greatest drag strip ever.
I just assumed they meant Cherry Ave.
