JV Brotherton, Part 1: Early Days, Cars, and Racing
My earliest recollection of speed must have been when I was only 4 or 5 years old, and I had a two wheel scooter. I had several high speed wrecks and many cuts and bruises. My brother drove an ambulance for Fentress Funeral Home in Fort Smith, Arkansas where I was born and lived until 1965. When I was 6 or 7 years old, he would load me up in the back of an ambulance, and we would go to a little quarter-mile dirt track outside of Fort Smith, Flying Saucer Speedway. It seemed like the hopped-up flathead Fords were invincible until a soldier stationed at Camp Chaffee brought an old Chevy with an inline 270 GMC engine and outran all of them for a while. My dad drove a Grapette soda pop truck. Dirt track racing and Grapette soda pop on Sunday afternoon was great; my dad was like the pied piper with free Grapette sodas for all the kids from ten blocks around.
Times were very tough around Fort Smith back then. My dad went through the Great Depression so he was very reluctant to change jobs and try to better himself financially. My mom and dad both worked very hard; we always had something to eat and a warm bed, but little else. Every year, the week before school would start, we would ride the trolley car to downtown Fort Smith to get a pair of new school shoes; they had to last all year.
For some reason, cars and engines were always in the back of my mind. When I was eleven years old, I went to work at Cannon’s Grocery across from our home for 11¢ per hour, 3 hours every weekday and 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Eventually I saved enough money to buy an old bike which was the highlight of my childhood. After about a year, I saved enough money to make a down payment on a new BF Goodrich bike. I would ride my bike to downtown Fort Smith every Monday to make the payment. I called it “downtown payments”. However, I could never muster up enough money to buy a motor scooter when I got older. I guess that’s why I have ten of them now; I should never run out of motor scooters!
I got my learner’s permit to drive when I was 14 years old and actually drove myself when I was 15. I’ll never forget when I broke the transmission in my dad’s car trying to outrun another guy. I dreaded telling my dad, but when I did he told me, “We will take it to a mechanic and see what it will cost you to fix it.” Forty-five bucks at five dollars per week, a financial disaster!
Finally I worked my way up to 80¢ per hour and made enough money to buy an old Model A coupe with a flathead Ford V-8 engine and mechanical brakes. The old car would go fast, but would not stop. It was amazing how you could adapt to a car with no brakes. Eventually I sold the Model A and bought my dad’s worn out 1947 Ford sedan. In 1954, the speed industry was almost non-existent in Arkansas. Hot Rod Magazine and Honest Charley’s Speed Shop catalog were the only source of information. One issue of Hot Rod Magazine had an engine swap article about installing a Cadillac engine in a Ford. I made a deal to buy a 1949 Cadillac engine out of a wrecked car and pay it out for $10 per week. I got the Caddy engine and then bought the swap kit from Honest Charley. Through sheer guts and determination, I somehow got the Caddy engine in the old Ford and actually got it to run. I managed to make average grades, work, and keep the old “Fordillac” running.
My source of income was working seventy hours per week and racing drunk soldiers on weekends when they came to town. The old Ford was ratty, but we managed to outrun most anything until the 1955 Chevy came along and then the jig was up. Before 1955, the hottest engine was a bored, stroked, ported, and relieved multi-carb Ford flathead engine which was relatively expensive. Engine swaps like my old Fordillac were an option. Eventually there were some engine swaps using overhead valve Buick and Oldsmobile engines also. The lightweight 1949 Oldsmobile with the later Olds engine and four-barrel carburetor proved to be, in my opinion, the first muscle car with all OEM parts. This was Arkansas during the 1950s. California was the birthplace and hotbed of hot rodding during this period and was on the leading edge of development.
I had the distinct privilege of having the first Chevy V-8 engine that came to Fort Smith that was not in a car. A school buddy’s dad had a business buying and selling engines out of wrecked cars, and he brought a 1955 Chevy engine to Fort Smith. For some reason he liked me and let me pay the engine out for $5 per week. I even got to take the engine before the bill was all paid. I managed to put it in a 1939 Ford. That stepped my little racing operation up a bit until I went totally financially insolvent. I would race awhile and then work until I could go racing again. I learned a little about cars and engines which was pretty tough because there was not a lot of good knowledge about racing available to an average guy like me. I learned the hard way. Life back then was racing and working to go racing. I was hooked on racing by now and always had a fairly fast car, but never any money. My future was not very bright, but I was too young to know that.
Cylinder head porting was nonexistent in Arkansas until the early 1960s and only done in California. This was a “black art” to us. There were a few camshaft swaps and multiple carb setups trickling into Arkansas by this time. I had the dubious distinction of purchasing the first 300 horsepower heads in our area. These were available on the 1962 Chevy with the AFB carburetor option. Engine balancing, while available, was not too common because of the extra cost. Eventually through magazine articles, there was some head milling to increase compression. One thing I did learn was that a lightweight car was as good as more horsepower. I had a 1940 Ford coupe with no bumpers, no radio, no heater, and everything else stripped to get rid of weight. It was the fastest car around until the 406 Ford and the 409 Chevy came along in 1962. After 1962, I was toast.
Budget rodders like me countered the “high dollar” muscle cars with the early Willys and the English Ford, the Anglia. These were small lightweight cars which were built with small four-cylinder engines. We beefed up these cars to accept more horsepower and better drivetrain which helped us outrun the muscle cars. During this period, NHRA was the dominant sanctioning body for drag racing. They split all these different cars into classes so that for the most part they did not race each other. Street racing on back roads and highways was prevalent and the only way to race. Races would be organized in a manner of minutes and be over in an hour. The primary goal was to outrun someone and be where the police were not. When the police would trap several racers they would take your license and tell you to go to the police station to wait until they had rounded up all the racers they could. These warnings did not have much of an effect; we just found other places to race and had more lookouts. A drag strip finally came to Fort Smith around 1963, and street racing for the most part was over. In all the years of “outlaw” racing, I do not remember any major crashes or injuries which was amazing because although illegal drugs were nonexistent and hard liquor drinking was rare, beer drinking was very acceptable. Luckily, I couldn’t afford beer and cigarettes, so I was the designated driver before the term became popular.
Looking back, it is fun to think that my love for all things fast is owed to a two wheel scooter. Subsequently, my love of racing and want for speed parts turned in to a business that provides the salaries of many families in rural Arkansas.