I was at least 16 years old when I first laid eyes on the place , because I drove my 1984 Pontiac Grand Prix ( complete with glass t-tops ) to Darlington for a national event . I remember the trip well , because my car ran hot and cracked a head on the way home , no thanks to the temperature warning light , which was undoubtedly taking the evening off .

Meanwhile , Jeff got to experience Darlington sooner than I did , since his dad took him when he was still in middle school . The finals were rained out on Sunday , so the Miles family returned on Monday for the exciting conclusion , and Jeff ’ s dad let the kids skip school , which only added to the excitement ! “ I remember it well , including where we ate breakfast that morning in Orangeburg … the place is still there and I think about it every time I pass by it ,” Jeff says .

As for the race , Jeff says they were all pulling for Del Worsham to win Funny Car , but instead , he went across the finish line on fire and lost . The sights and sounds of that weekend are forever etched in his memory , and we exchanged one story after another as we recalled our early experiences from Darlington . Close to 40 years later , Jeff would end up buying the track !

When I returned home from my most recent visit , I hastily disappeared up to the attic to shuffle through my archives from the early 1990s . I found a treasure trove of photos , many of them I shot with black and white print film from my days of working for my local newspaper . When I say the early 1990s

was a magical time , you ’ d just about had to have lived through them to understand the impact . For starters , IHRA launched Pro Modified in 1990 , and the first national event of the explosive new class happened at the Winter Nationals , held , of course , at Darlington .

As I sifted through boxes of pictures , I found one of Ronnie Sox , with parachutes in full blossom as he crossed the finish line . Sox was a Pro Stock legend ,

but the newly-launched Pro Modified class was so mystifying it lured him out of retirement , and he commissioned chassis builder Tommy Mauney to build the Comet for his grand return . I was fortunate enough to be in the early stages of my drag racing media career just as Sox was returning for his second chapter .

To add to the excitement of this era , sportsman racers from my local tracks were winning national

events and even world championships while touring with IHRA . That ’ s Frank Teague ( who to this day lives a few miles from me ) launching his Dodge Daytona in spectacular fashion , and featured on the front page of the Lenoir News-Topic ’ s Sports section , dated September 18 , 1992 . The file photo was one I shot earlier that year at Darlington , and it was used to illustrate Teague ’ s national event victory in Epping , New Hampshire ,

with hopes of also doing well when the tour returned to Darlington for the U . S . Open Nationals . Get a load of the sink-clogging mop of hair I had in those days !

Fast-forward to my most recent visit to Darlington , Jeff said he had something for me , and I nearly fainted when he handed me an unopened pack of IHRA trading

cards from 1990 . Oh sure , I felt like a moron tearing open the plastic of a sealed time capsule from 34 years ago , but seeing those cards was a need I can ’ t explain , and besides , Jeff told me he had plenty more , which is pretty amazing in itself .

I picked out my four favorite cards from that pack to include in this column . Ed Hoover ’ s Super Shops Camaro not only won the first IHRA Pro Modified national event in history , but Ed also brought the car to my local Hudson Drag Strip for a match race back in the day . And how about a blast from the past with Tommy Mauney ’ s trading card … the one year he drove the Williford Racing Trans Am in Pro Stock and won the world championship ! Wayne Bailey ’ s card kinda hit me hard , remembering how we tragically lost him in a Top Fuel crash at Red River Raceway near Shreveport , Louisiana .

Shuffling through the stack a little further , I came across Harold Denton ’ s card , and couldn ’ t help but smile . He lived a long , full life and accomplished great things in drag racing . He was also a huge supporter of Drag Illustrated , and told me how much he loved the magazine practically every time I saw him , right up until a few months before he died this past March at age 85 . Looking at his card , I was transported back in time to 9-21-91 , when I was standing on the starting line at – you guessed it , Darlington – when Denton drove Jim Ruth ’ s “ Party Time ” Pro Stock Trans Am to the first sub-7-second blast in IHRA Pro Stock history when he clocked 6.98 … and the place went nuts !

Jeff emailed me an IHRA media guide that published every record , national event winner , and notable piece of history you can think of , and it would take several columns just to scratch the surface of the role Darlington played in that biography . For certain , that era of drag racing has come and gone , but if you were around to see it unfold in real time , I believe you ’ ve got some of the best memories drag racing has to offer . DI