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I use it to remind myself to never forget where I came from, and never let anyone stop me from chasing my dreams. That was my employee number at the car dealership. All my race cars since then have been numbered 949. This fueled me to never take no for an answer. My service manager, and several of my co workers told me that I would be back begging for my job in less than six months. I remember my last day at the car dealership. It was a huge risk for me, but like everything else in my life, I was all in. Before long I needed more money for parts, so I started a Tool business. I can’t count the nights that I would work all day, then work on motors till 4 am. Sleep three hours and go back to work. I just worked harder at it than everyone else. I would grudge race at Darlington, Sc on Wednesday nights, Jackson, Sc Thursday nights, Orangeburg, Sc on Friday, fix the truck on Saturday and race at Dorchester, Sc on Sunday nights. I got faster and earned a reputation locally for not taking shit from anyone, as well as being faster than I was supposed to be. I continued to spend every penny I had on racing with little to no regard for the future. Making decent money for the first time allowed me to start building bigger and better engines. In my early 20’s I was a master technician at a local car dealership. Stay at the track all night fixing it so that I could drive to school the next morning. I would sneak over to Jackson, Sc on Thursday nights and take all the exhaust out from under it, put slicks on it and tear it to hell. If it didn’t make it fast, I didn’t care. No seat belts, carpet, radio, or any of the normal car stuff. I found an S-10 truck body and built a small block Chevy and stuffed it between the frame rails. I saved every cent towards building a car and was working two jobs by 16 and going to school.
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I had a full time job at age 14 making about 180 bucks a week. More than once I was kicked out of class for sketching drag cars and not paying attention during school. I spent every waking moment looking through Summit magazines jotting down part numbers and dreaming that I could afford to buy the stuff on those pages. Most kids my age were playing ball and thinking about girls and college. My dad had quit racing for several years, but my passion and dreams had not. But I was going to race cars of my own someday. We were poor, and I had no idea how I was going to do it. Everything around me turned to a blur, yet my path in life became crystal clear. I was in the passenger seat when he dropped it down in second gear and let me push the nitrous button. We took it out on the highway and got it up to cruising speed. To this day I don’t think Ive ever heard something sound so good. Dad pointed me to the arm on the side of the carburetor and told me to rap the motor a couple times. We were in the front yard ( no shops or garages back then) and he started it up and that thing sat there with open headers chopping and loping with that new cam. I was 6 years old and dad had just changed the intake manifold and camshaft in the car. I remember it like it was yesterday the exact moment I was hooked on drag racing. We would race the car at our local drag strip in Jackson, Sc on Thursday nights, and then street race it for money on Saturday and Sunday’s in Hephzibah and Augusta, Ga. It was there just intimidate the competition. So my dad rigged up a purge system on the car using R-12 so that we wouldn’t waste any nitrous. Back then nitrous oxide was expensive, and R-12 refrigerant was cheap. Back then nitrous on street cars was taboo, so he hid the bottle in the trunk and had the activation button on the shifter. My dad had a 1967 Camaro street car with a big block Chevy. I was introduced to drag racing at an early age. The only thing I can ever remember wanting to be was a race car driver. Most boys have at some point in their childhood wanted to be a fireman, or a doctor, or President. I was born in July of 1980 in Augusta, Ga.