D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
F
or those of you thrill
seekers who enjoy storm
chasing (or think you might)
I recently discovered Tulsa, Oklaho-
ma, can be a prime hot spot for ac-
tion – just ask anyone who camped
out overnight on Thursday during
the PDRA Summer Drags this past
August! I usually have better luck
steering clear of developing super
cells, but this one was unavoidable,
mainly because I was certain I was
going to make the trip to Oklahoma.
It was going to take much more than
a phenomenally horrible weather
forecast to change my mind!
I visited Tulsa a couple years ago
and always looked
forward to returning
someday...this just
wasn’t exactly what I
had in mind. PDRA
officials eventually
had to pull the plug
on the entire event, so
I loaded up the Drag
Illustrated Sprinter
and made a relatively
short, two-hour drive
across the state line
to Missouri to visit my
old friends at Mo-Kan
Dragway. Tucked away
in the southwest town
of Asbury, this vintage
quarter-mile facility
opened in 1962 under
AHRA sanction, and
remained as such until
the sanctioning body
dissolved in the mid
1980s. Mo-Kan would
elect to operate as an
unsanctioned outlaw
track for nearly the
next 30 years before
IHRA persuaded them
to join the fold in 2014.
Mo-Kan Dragway has several en-
during personalities that have been
attached to this fabled facility for
many years. Carl Blanton bought
the lease to Mo-Kan back in 1999
after he spent many years racing,
and being involved with photogra-
phy and racing journalism. His son,
Craig, oversees much of the track’s
operation these days, although Carl
is still very much a fixture. Then
there’s Mike Hodge, who’s been
working the starting line ever since
he and his brother, Jerry,
came to work here togeth-
er back in the 1980s. This
fabled facility is now in its
55th season, and Carl lik-
ens its appeal to that of
a local bar and grill that
folks depend on always
being there. For certain,
it’s a laid-back, friendly kind of at-
mosphere, and if you ever make the
trip to visit Mo-Kan Dragway, be
sure and see Anna and Brianna over
at the concession stand and order
a “Mud Hole”, which is a Mo-Kan
original. Don’t ask what it is, just
order one! zine you now hold in your
hands would likely not
exist! As the story goes,
a 21-year-old lad named
Wes Buck just happened
to be the track manager
of Eddyville back in 2005
when a couple of brothers
from nearby Fort Dodge
came to film a documentary about
the track. The Haldin brothers, Wy-
att and Dave, also entertained the
idea of starting a drag racing news-
paper to go along with their film-
ing efforts, and it was at Eddyville
Raceway on that fateful weekend
that the Haldins met Wes and first
Well, I left Asbury, Missouri,
on Sunday evening and knocked
around the Midwest for a couple
days before landing in Oskaloosa,
Iowa, to visit a track I’ve wanted
to see for over a decade. In case
you’re not aware of the important
role that Eddyville Raceway Park
played in the launch of Drag Il-
lustrated magazine, it’s one of
the more amazing twists of fate. If
not for this neat little eighth-miler
located in southern Iowa, the maga- began discussing the possibilities.
A short time later, while sitting in a
restaurant in Des Moines, the three
of them hatched a plan to launch
what they decided to name “Drag
Illustrated”. Obviously, the road
was filled with several twists and
turns, and their original “newspaper”
idea eventually grew into what many
consider to be the premier publica-
tion dedicated to the sport of drag
racing.
As for my first visit to Eddyville, I
couldn’t have picked a better week-
end to make the trip, with the sched-
uled World Fuel Altered Nationals
on tap, as well as added entertain-
ment from the Ozark Mountain
Super Shifters, a popular clutch-
car group that tours the Midwest
with an awesome array of manually
shifted race cars. Wes’s uncle, W.R.
Buck, affectionately known as “Dub”,
is a member of this organization and
wound up winning the race! Dub
and Wes’s father, Eddie Buck, field
an awesome 1968 Camaro that’s
motivated by a 600-cubic-inch, all-
aluminum big block Chevy that’s
anchored to a Lenco 4-speed. The
car runs 4.60s and is
among the most popu-
lar entries in the Ozark
series.
W.R. had to wrestle
the Camaro in the
thrilling finals to get
around the Ford Mav-
erick of Craig Hejda,
because when Dub
dumped the clutch,
the car immediately
started drifting left,
and by the time he was
reaching for the third
stick, he was right up
against the wall as
the Camaro began to
dance around on the
top end! So help me,
the man never even
cracked the throttle.
Instead, he man-han-
dled the car back into
the groove, aimed it
for the finish line and
took the win! It was
a sensational piece of
driving…and a final
round I’ll not soon
forget! I’ve known Ed-
die and Dub for years now and had
never even seen them race, based
largely on the fact we live 15 hours
apart, so it was a pretty big deal that
Wes’s uncle and father wound up in
the winner’s circle at Eddyville, the
track that’s directly linked to this
magazine’s very existence.
While I always enjoy hitting the
open highway and chasing races,
this latest trek across the country
couldn’t have been scripted much
better!
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54 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
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Issue 124