Drag Racing on The Concrete

DRAG RACES – From the mid-1960s to about '75, drag races were conducted in Kingwood Township, just south of Fairview Road on a stretch of Route 29 known as The Concrete, recalled Tom Spencer, who used to live on Upper Twelfth Street. The rest of the highway was asphalt.

Sonny Silva of Holland Township, who raced between 1967 and '73, painted start and finish lines across the pavement a quarter-mile apart. “I used a roller and light blue paint, pretty much just poured it out of the can and then rolled it. My lookout failed to warn me that a car was coming and (before the rolling could be done) he drove through the wet paint. It was a dark blue '65 Mustang. I thought it looked good two-toned!” Silva recalled.

“Most racing was done on the weekend, but there was the occasional weekday, especially if someone got a new car or engine and wanted to try it out,” he said. “A lot of racing was done after most of us came back from the stock car races at Flemington – still hepped up on horsepower, or after Jimmy’s custard stand closed (for the night) in Holland Township.”

Sometimes a contest would arise from a social event. After a high school graduation party in 1967, Bob Adams, at the wheel of a maroon '65 Chevy Impala SS 396, and a rival drove to The Concrete. At a critical moment during the race, a herd of deer ran onto the highway. Silva recalled, “He killed five deer outright, hitting them so hard that venison was strained through his radiator like a meat grinder, and hair was stuck in every crevice of the car.”

As many as 20 cars might participate in a night, said Spencer, and the competitors were 17 to maybe 25 years old. Several of the guys known as the Bench Boys participated along with other Del Val students or alumni, and others, said Spencer.

Dick Aller, who raced his gold '67 Chevelle SS 396 in 1970-72, said “There was a group of guys from Springtown, Pa., that would come over. We kind of didn't get along with Pennsylvania; that was Ford country. Over here was Chevy country. We also had a group of guys that came from P'burg to race us.” Other fast cars came in from Bloomsbury and Flemington.

There was no prize money, but $10 bets were common. The guys brought lawn chairs and girlfriends. “The road was straight as a die there,” Spencer said, “so you could see whether anyone was coming before you raced.”

One of the guys would stand between the two cars, and drop his arms to start the race, or they used Pete Madsen's improvised green starting light, which was powered by a 12-volt battery. There was no need of a judge at the finish line because that's where the spectators would sit in their lawn chairs.

“We'd only get up to about 90 miles an hour,” Spencer said. He didn't remember any crashes.

Silva said, “The fastest car in Frenchtown in '67 was Myron Blunt’s blue 396 Chevelle. (The 396 refers to cubic inches of combustion space inside the engine's cylinders, and 396 was big.) He traded that for a dark-green '69 Camaro with white interior, which was suspiciously fast. Rumor had it that it had a 427-cubic-inch engine.”

But generally, there was no dominant car over-all, said Spencer. One car, like Ronnie Gelegonya's gold '64 Chevy Nova, would be the fastest, “but then someone would go out and buy something for his car and it would be fastest for awhile.”

Some other hot cars, as remembered variously by Spencer, Silva and Aller, were Mark Bristow's '55 primer-gray Chevy Nomad, Dickie Hollar's jade-green '69 Camaro, John Philkill's red V8 Ford Falcon, Spencer's own blue '69 Camaro, Kyle Phillips' blue '66 396 Chevelle, Mike Osborne's gray ‘68 Plymouth Roadrunner, Glenn Sherman's ‘57 and ‘60 Chevies, Rich Miller's ‘57 Chevy and ‘66 Olds 442, Dave Gano's ‘67 SS 396 El Camino, Don Schaible's blue '65 Chevelle and his brother Pete's red ‘67 SS 396 Chevelle, and Rich Tharp's black’65 Mustang. “Occasionally, the Breithoffs from Upper Black Eddy would bring their big-block Fords across the river,” Aller said.

Silva's own cars were “a light-blue '64 Chevelle before I got out of high school, and a salmon-pink '57 Chevy that was owned by half the people in Milford/Frenchtown at one time or another. After returning from Vietnam, I first had a dark-green '69 Chevelle SS 396 that I traded in for a new, blue '71 Chevelle SS 454 at Pastore Chevrolet.” It got 4-5 mpg.

Jerry Case said he and his brother Rob each had gold '67 Chevelles with 396-cubic-inch engines.

“After leaving The Concrete, some of us would stop at Cooley’s gas station in town – not for the cheap gas, but to re-inflate our rear tires that we had deflated in order to get better traction,” said Silva.

Between races Spencer would stop in the Frenchtown bank's parking lot to use the good lighting there to make adjustments. He said Police Chief Ray Smith, frustrated by a lack of jurisdiction in Kingwood, would growl, “I know what you're up to.”

When state troopers, who did have jurisdiction, came by, the motorheads would adjourn hastily. But eventually the continued police attention prevailed, and the races were discontinued, said Case.

Spencer became an auto mechanic in 1977 and has been proprietor of Tom's Garage in the old Pastore Chevrolet building since 1986.

* * *

The photos are of Pete and Don Schaible under the hood of a Chevy, Dick Aller and his gold '67 Chevelle, and Pete Schaible doing a burn-out to get the tires of his red big-block Chevy nice and sticky.

From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"