erasingcreditcarddebt.org

I’m here to tell you that Jimmy “The Shoe” Harrington got his nickname honestly. This story I am about to tell is both a tribute and a factual account to a man who was capable of driving and winning with any kind of  car whether it was a four-cylinder Yugo [if he could fit in it] or a death-trap Nova, which he did fit in one night.

So let me tell you about this car we built purposely for grudge racing on some of the back streets around here in Jersey.

Usually around here if I built a car, and people find out about it, I cannot get a race.

So I really wanted to find a race really bad, so I went out and found a rusted-out, s***-bomb Nova. It was a six-cylinder Nova that I bought from an old lady here in town, rotted out quarters and everything. It was a real beauty.

We put a 406 in there with steel heads and painted it Chevrolet orange. We did our best to make it look stock and if you opened the hood, it was the biggest piece of s*** you’d ever seen. The only dead giveaway was that there was nitrous oxide all over this thing.

You could only get a nine-and-a-half inch tire under it with an old flapper bar. It was very important that we kept this car looking as non-threatening as possible. The roll bar was essentially pop-riveted to the floorboard with silicone made to look like a welding bead.

There were three nitrous systems on the car because you couldn’t always leave the big one on all the time. You had to leave on a little one, shut that one off and get on another one. We had three switches and we duct-taped them to the bench seat of the car. There were so many switches and wires that it would have made an electrician suffer a heart attack at first glance.

There ain’t no way I’m going to drive this piece of crap death mobile. We tried a driver or two but no one could handle it.

Like a knight in shining armor, our driver just happened to walk through the door one day. It was Jimmy Harrington and he accepted the challenge without hesitation.

I gave him the rigged up driving instructions, if the tires break loose, you have to flip this switch. If that happens, you have to turn this knob. I think you get the picture here. But in that mess of wires and switch, Jimmy was like a fine tuned musician picking a guitar working those switches.

It’s been said before, there are drivers and there are passengers, and he was certainly a driver.

As it turned out, he was the only one capable of driving this piece of crap the entire track. He had it figured out in a few runs and bear in mind, while this is going on, he’s gotta shift this thing and steer. You had to give him credit, he drove it.

We went to test in E-town and they wouldn’t even pass it through tech. They had a tech guy there we called “Meatball”. Meatball didn’t like our car. We went to Vinny Napp who told us, “As long as you are bringing people in here to watch it, I’ll get you through. Just be careful.”

Meatball wasn’t having any of that.

He took his argument to Vinny who told him, “Leave those guys alone because you will end up in a trunk and dumped somewhere you don’t want to be.”

The car wasn’t supposed to even go ten seconds and ran a 9.40. This was back in 1988.

So we took the car over on Long Island and hung out at a hot dog joint. We can’t find a race until this Brian Prins guy comes along.

He brings a race car that ran 9.80 and agrees to run us. He trailered the car I would like to add.

So we shut the highway down, so the cops couldn’t get to us and there were about 500 spectators there to watch Jimmy the Shoe race Brian.

Harrington, or Harry for short, wins the race big time just as the cops descend upon us.

Harry takes off down the road and ends up in a neighborhood where he’s the minority. So we have the flatbed riding around trying to find him and he’s nowhere to be found in the pitch dark. Cops are everywhere.

Come to find out Harry had pulled the car down into the older lady’s driveway and she wasn’t keen on seeing a rather large white boy running around behind her bushes. He had jumped out of the car and ran, figuring as ugly as that Nova was, it would never be mistaken for a street racing car.

Well, the lady comes out of the house with a shotgun to investigate.

And I swear to you, only Harrington could pull this one off.

Within ten minutes of that meeting the gun-toting grandma had Harrington in the house, and even made him a sandwich. Are you kidding me? We’re out there trying to find him and that car and he’s in the house, laughing it up and eating a sandwich.

He had convinced her that he wasn’t feeling well and had to park for a little while and needed something to eat.

I don’t care what you say; Harry is the only one who could have pulled that off. The rest of us would have been shot at hello.

Police sirens all around, we’re searching frantically and he’s eating a ham sandwich.

When he finally walks out of the house WE SPOTTED HIM.

Here comes Harrington out of the bushes, can’t miss him … armed with a half a sandwich, waving at us. The lady is out there just a smiling.

We got the flatbed in there and loaded the car and got the heck out of Dodge.

When I tell you that no one else could have pulled that off but Harry, that’s no BS. He was that kind of  special person and never met a person that he didn’t consider a long lost friend. He was honest and genuine. That’s why when we won the last round of the War Stories, I knew a dedication to Harry was in order.

And, I’m sure when we go down there and match race Christian later this year, just as I am about to stage, I’ll look up and I’ll see ole Harry up there on a cloud, waving with one hand, with a ham sandwich in the other.

 

Posted in: www.competitionplus.com

Related posts:

1. Resveratrol Side Effects the True Story If you have been spending anytime on the internet in the past few weeks, you have no doubt received countless...
2. The Real Deal on Hoodia Gordonii and Side Effects Ask 10 people what they think about hoodia gordonii and you will probably get 10 different answers.  For some, Hoodia...
3. Omega 3 Supplements Side Effects You Should Know About Let’s face the facts. Despite substances being beneficial to our health, they are potentially dangerous to our bodies if we...
4. Omega 3 Supplements Side Effects You Should Know About Let’s face the facts. Despite substances being beneficial to our health, they are potentially dangerous to our bodies if we...
5. An untold Tragic Love Story The bitter fate in love of Many Philippine Girls Most Philippine girls may be perceived in the dating world as empowered or constantly seeking and yearning for affection but...