Drag racers turn backroads into Texas speedways
June 22, 1997They scatter like roaches when the police lights come on.
Hundreds of people — some who want to race some-who want to watch — are packed into a south Dallas parking lot waiting for the next illegal street drag. But as the police approach, a teenager dressed in baggy jeans and white T-shirt signals their arrival.
“Five-0, Five-0, Five-0,” he shouts piercing the midnight air with ‘a phrase from the ’70s police television show Hawaii Five-O.
Engines jump to life. The darkened street is quickly awash in an eerie glow of hundreds of headlights.
Illegal street racing — the kind of pickup drag challenges immortal-lied in films like American Graffiti and Grease — didn’t disappear with the muscle cars of the ’50s and ’60s. The game is played out weekly on dimly lighted side streets and back roads of the Metroplex. Several locations in south Dallas seem to be the hots spots of the day for dragging. But the participants come from across the Metroplex. Young and old, yuppies, mechanics and cowboys, driving everything from a Mercedes-Benz to rickety trucks hauling souped-up stock cars
“I love the adrenaline, the sound of the engine, just the rush” says a Grand Prairie teenager dressed in a crisp button-down shirt and jeans. He and his girlfriend travel to Dallas every weekend to watch and sometimes participate in the races “I just turn on my car and it gets me going.”
Louie McKee a 24-year-old Arlington man who travels to Dallas several weekends a month to watch, says racing is more than a late night hobby — it’s a lifestyle.
“People sit there and chitchat about cars and things they have done to their cars,” he said “This guy might have tweaked his car this way or another way and this guy may have rebuilt his car
“There’s a fascination with speed.”
That fascination romanticized in movies on occasion turns deadly, police say. Although police do not keep statistics on street racing fatalities, there are the stories of illegal racing turned tragic.
On April 20, Zelmo Warr, 46, of Fort Worth, was testing his modified Ford Fairlane in the 10800 block of Interstate 35E about 2:30 a.m. The car hit a curb, blew out a tire, skidded sideways and rolled. Warr was thrown from the vehicle and died on the road.
But police say they are powerless to stop street racing. The penalties for racing they say are weak.
“It’s a game to them,” Dallas police Sgt Frank Gorka said. “I issue tickets to those caught racing and to anyone with obvious violations.”
But, realistically, racers view police as part of the fun. “We add to the game,” Gorka said. “That’s all it is to them. It’s more serious to us. We realize that their lives are at stake and maybe the lives of an innocent person.”
Fueling the fire
On a recent Friday night, hundreds of young men and women gather at a favorite drag site. By dawn Saturday, they have run through an informal circuit of illegal drag race strips. Some do it for the rush, some for money made in side bets.
The arrival of the police just stirs the pot, forcing the crowd into long lines of Mustangs and Camaros, Jeeps and pickups, all heading in a well-orchestrated procession to the next stop, the next race.
Watching a race isn’t illegal. But catching those who race is difficult, Gorka said. So Gorka wades through the stream of vehicles looking for missing license plates or other minor violations and pulls a single vehicle over.
Each ticket takes about 30 minutes to write. That’s long enough for the crowds to form elsewhere and watch at least one more race before Gorka or another officer arrives to scatter them to another location.
“If they are really out here, we try to assign one or two officers to handle it but it takes away from our regular patrols,” Gorka said. “This has been going on for a long time, years and years.
“They find a place not heavily traveled on a weekend and start dragging.”
On one early Saturday morning, a crowd gathers along an empty stretch of road that lies between a set of warehouses in southwest Dallas. A stream of cars squeezes into the parking lots near the giant overhead screens of the Astro drive-in theater.
One car, a Mustang, separates from the pack in the parking lot and spins to a noisy halt in one lane of the two-lane road. A second Mustang, its stereo pumping a bass line, rolls up alongside. The two cars jockey back and forth, a mechanical conversation of challenge.
“I started coming here years ago,” said a twentysomething spectator over the roar of the two gunning engines. “I’ve raced a few times, but mostly I come out here to watch the thrill of raw horsepower.”
A young man jogs from the crowd and walks between the two cars. Stooping down, he exchanges words with the drivers and backs up to stand between their front fenders.
He raises his arms and the crowd leans forward He flings down his arms, and for an instant, both cars are still. Then their tires rip across the pavement toward a finish line just a few hundred yards away.
The race is over in a matter of seconds. No one but the drivers are sure who won, and few care.
Completing the circuit
The drag races in southern Dallas seem to rotate among three sites. Two are buried deep in the heart of a complex of warehouses. The third is on a public stretch of road that passes along Westmoreland Road in front of a church and near a school.
Races on the six-lane divided road in front of the church run a little differently As many as four vehicles squeeze into the three lanes on one side of the road and prepare to race. Behind them the lanes are filled with a half dozen cars coasting at a slow speed to prevent passers-by from accidentally getting involved. The cars lined up to race roll slowly forward and then honk their horns twice. They take off on the third honk.
Of the three locations, this seems the most dangerous to some of the drivers, many of whom refuse to race there. Once, a passing truck happened upon the beginning of a race and coasted by in the far right lane, the driver apparently unaware of the eyes watching his slow progress along the road.
The drag racing usually starts a little after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays with the racers and spectators roaming between the three sites in search of the biggest crowd. By the first full rotation the crowds are all in sync and the arrival of police sends everyone to the next stop in the circuit. By 3 am Saturday, the crowds have run the circuit four times and a carnival-like atmosphere radiates in front of the church.
McKee said people come from as far away as Waco to participate in the racing and it’s not always just for fun.
“The ones’ who have really fast cars only race for money,” he said. “I’ve heard two people talking about racing cars that they had at home and the bet was in excess of $5,000.”
McKee said he believes the police presence just forces drivers onto more traveled roads.
“I think they should let them go on racing here because these people are going to go out and kill people if they are racing in the more public streets and on the interstate,” McKee said. “If they leave them here, they will hurt themselves if they hurt any — not a family in a Suburban with 10 kids.”
Applying the brakes
Dallas police Lt Ed O’Bara acknowledges that drag racing isn’t as dangerous to the public as highway racing but it still poses a threat to the public.
“One of our tasks is to prevent people from injury themselves and the bottom line is they are violating the law,” O’Bara said.
And the only way to stop the illegal racing is to stiffen the penalties for those who violate the law, he said.
Racing is a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200. O’Bara wants it made a Class B misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1000 and up to 180 days in jail
“Then we could go zero tolerance, and they hate that,” he said.
Gorka said there’s only one way to put a stop to the street racing: “Put 800 people in jail in one night and you can stop it.”
But the Grand Prairie teen who races the Dallas streets says nothing can stop him from racing.
“I’ve been coming here to race for about three years,” he says. “It’s more exciting to race on the streets. You hang out with friends and race and then the cops come. You run, but it’s like it’s set up.
“It’s dangerous but we’re going to do it anyway”
Part one of a two-part series on speeding on public roads. Read the second part here.
This story originally ran on June 22, 1997 in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
