AMSOIL - Repp Performance Marketing, LLC

Sunday Story Time. 2024 Edition. Part 18.

So now we've been racing Jr. Dragsters for a while and we always did this as a Family.

Our first born, Holly always went with us but generally stayed back at the pit and worked on her crafts. She was a 4-H Girl and could do all kinds of old school needlework and loved raising her rabbits.

We did the Brownie through Girl Scouts and Cub through Boy Scouts thing. Both Shannon and I were leaders and enjoyed that time with our kids.

Once we started the Jr. Dragster thing we actually got the 4-H to allow us to start a 4-H Small Engines club but instead of working on Lawn Mowers, we worked on Jr. Dragsters.

The club was called “Students of Speed”. How cool was that!

One day at the track, Shannon wasn't feeling well so I asked Holly to come to the staging lanes and help me get the 4 cars/drivers ready and down the track.

I don't know what Holly saw or felt that day, but she took an interest in what we were doing and wanted to join in on the fun!

Now all 5 of our kids would be racing at the same time! It was a dream come true.

We set her up in the original green car and she kicked butt! That car wasn't the fastest but Holly cut good lights and won the track championship two years in a row.

These Kids were collecting trophies like crazy and we would travel all over the West to race for the coveted "Wally". These were the trophies named after Wally Parks, founder of the NHRA. All the Pros were getting these on TV and when NHRA decided to make them available for Junior racers it was game on!

Holly is holding a Wally she won in that first picture.

Moving these Juniors around was always fun. If you only had one, you could strap it down in the bed of your truck and hang a red flag on the front. With multiple Juniors it was more of a challenge.

We started with a little open single axle trailer that we got with the first junior. While a customer at Siskiyou RV was signing papers in my office he saw the pictures I had of the Kids and mentioned he had an old trailer we would give us. Cool, now we could haul three at a time!

Next, I found a "Stacker" trailer in So Cal of course, on eBay. We made a deal and off we went to Huntington Beach to pick it up.

I asked him what he pulled it with and he said his 6 cylinder Jeep Cherokee pulls it just fine. Good deal, my GMC van with it's mighty 350 V8 should have no trouble with that.

We get to Huntington Beach and this thing is bigger than I thought. I bought an 6 inch drop down hitch and flipped it upside down so it was actually 6 inches higher. The trailer was still too low in the front.

The tires on the trailer held air but that was about it so I drug it around the corner to a tire store and put 6 new tires on it. Thank goodness for American Express!

Anyway, that trailer with the van pulling it would swerve all over the place if I went past 45 MPH. So the normal 12 hour trip became a bit longer at those speeds. But... we were together and had a cool trailer that could haul all of our Juniors at once and would also be great for selling Royal Purple Oil. Good times.

We bought a pick up to pull the trailer and kept collecting trophies every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday!

Back then you couldn't pay the Jr. Dragster winners any money (even though you charged them just the same to race). Quite different today.

It was definitely not normal to have 5 Kids racing 5 Juniors all at the same time! I really missed the boat not promoting that like Enders did with "Right on Track", but we did get a nice write up in the local newspaper.

Fast forward; Both Holly and Jon were getting their regular Driver's Licenses and would soon be too old for Juniors and ready to make the transition to "Big Cars". That would be any car other than a Junior.

Dad was way ahead of them and had plans to put them in some good "Big Cars", a pair of, what else, Pontiacs!

But that's next weeks story!

Sunday Story Time. 2024 Edition. Part 17.

Well now Jon is still too tall for the original green car but as you can see in picture two, David has plenty of headroom in “Showdown”.

We had an extra car and it wasn’t long before another driver decided that everyone else is having fun so why not join the team.

We welcomed our youngest Daughter, Miranda to Repp Racing.

Here’s her words, “I think I just wanted to be more a part of it with you all. I spent so much time out there with everyone, I thought I should experience it firsthand. I also liked the challenge of practicing my reaction times and I wanted to beat the boys at the Woodburn track”.

Now we had to play musical dragsters with Savannah moving up to the Alky burning “Life’s a Dragster” and Miranda taking over “Just KIDing”.

Interesting side note, if you look on “Just KIDing” you’ll notice that Miranda is sitting tall in the saddle. I think there was some extra padding in that seat so she could feel comfortable putting all those boys on the trailer!

Here’s something else that we just realized too. She was the only one that had a paying sponsor on the car. That KODIAK decal on the front of her car was a $2500 sponsorship from KODIAK, an RV manufacturer. So little Miranda Mae was already a Professional Drag Racer at 9 years old!

With Jon still needing a taller car and none to be found, we finally had to make the decision to order a brand new state of the art Hardin’s car for him.

I have pictures somewhere of it showing up in the crate at Siskiyou RV World, maybe next week I can post them.

It was awesome with a one piece body and we had the chassis powder coated neon green and Larry Lagan painted the body with House of Kolor color changing paint.

We built a big fast Briggs & Stratton for it and got the fancy clutch and spent most of the rest of Jon’s Junior time learning how to blow stuff up but it was fun!

That car covered the 1/8 mile in 8.10 seconds at almost 80MPH! That’s the quickest time slip I came across but the Boys may correct me.

Well now Jon finally has a car that fits him but we once again have an extra car. It was pretty crazy keeping four of these Juniors running but I was loving every minute of it and Shannon was a great Co-Crewchief too!

We were well on our way to becoming the largest Royal Purple Oil Warehouse Distributor in the country and fate stepped in and found us a driver for our extra car making Repp Racing a Five Car Junior Team!

But that’s next week’s story.

Sunday Story Time. 2024 Edition. Part 14.

So we make the move to Grants Pass. It was eventful right from the beginning.

I load up my open car/cargo trailer with two roll-away toolboxes full of tools, at least a dozen engine blocks (after giving away 3 truck loads of blocks and countless cranks, rods and cylinder heads) and who knows what else. That trailer was heavy!

My van has the entire interior filled with treasures not the least of which are my two Sons, Jon and David.

We head out on the first of three trips with Shannon and the Girls following in the faithful AMC Wagon.

All is well until we start the descent down the Grapevine. I notice the trailer is starting to push me and starting to sway a little. Before I know it, it's really pushing side to side and I have no trailer brakes. I try to speed up a little to straighten it out but to no avail. Now we are gaining speed and it's getting scary.

Shannon is following us and watching this all go down.

There was no saving this deal and so I pulled the boys into the middle of the van and stood on the brakes!

We did a 480 degree spin taking out the back tire and ended up facing oncoming traffic on the side of an embankment.

As the CHP Officer said who ran a traffic break so we could get turned around and off the freeway said, "E-Ticket Ride!"

I'm about to puke from all the adrenalin and Jon says, "that was fun Dad, can we do it again!

I stopped at a gas station and asked if I could leave half a dozen blocks behind and pick them up on my next trip. "Sure" was the answer but of course I never saw those blocks again.

Two more van and trailer loads later and we were "Oregonians".

Cruising 6th and 7th streets in GP was cool but it was taking longer than I expected to get High Performance Injuns back up and running.

We went to the "Tiger Run" in Madras looking for local customers and any swap meet I could find. Machine work was about triple what I was paying in California. This wasn't going to be an easy transition.

Then we got a surprise. Somehow Shannon must have seen me naked and next thing you know, she's pregnant - again!

Money was getting tight, bills were stacking up and so I took a job selling cars.

I worked at Lithia Motors, a Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge dealer for about a month. The longest month of my life. Hated it.

Next I worked for Roe Motors a Pontiac/Buick/Cadillac/GMC dealer. Way better, but still tough to make the kind of money needed to support a wife and four, soon to be five children. Of course it didn't help that I really didn't know what I was doing.

The GTO was back on jackstands because I had to sell the wheels and tires, engine and trans to keep everyone fed.

The picture of us sharing a pizza was a big deal back then!

Our fifth and final baby, Miranda was born February 3rd, 1993.

I stayed at Roe Motors a while longer and made some great friends there. That was the picture of me hanging at the dealership.

Then came the opportunity that has served me very well, selling RVs. But that's next weeks story.