Harriman Drag Strip

This was an outlaw track in the full sense, with no sanctioning body for its entire life and very little attention to rules. It sat on flat ground near the Emory River in otherwise hilly country, had no guardrails and had been Liles Airport before it was a drag strip. Paul “Mushy” Mashburn remembered going every Saturday as a 17-year-old with his high school friend Barry and Barry’s older brother Dale, who raced a ‘55 Ford. The two boys were Dale’s pit crew but rarely came through the gate. They hopped out about a quarter-mile before the ticket booth and ran along the corrugated fence to the river, where the owners had built the fence out over the water. Waves had worn a big hole under it, so they slipped beneath and around it onto the wooded bank inside the track, then came out of the woods zipping their pants as if they’d only stopped to relieve themselves. By then Dale had parked in the pits and was sizing up the competition. Classes depended on several things, but for Dale the carburetion package mattered most, so once he saw who was running what, he called out which manifold setup to get from the trunk. Barry fetched it and handed him tools while Mashburn pulled the hubcaps and knock-offs and emptied the trunk of extra weight. Then they jacked up the car and bolted on the bigger slicks before standing back, proud and out of breath. Mashburn said Dale won more than he lost, and those wins were some of his best memories.