WENDOVER, UTAH – Father knows fast.
My dad, . He wanted a car to drive before he was old enough to have a license. He would hustle from , throw pillows onto the seat of a Ford, and cruise past his friends begging for rides.
That was the first time he went fast, racing back home before his father, Herb, and mother, Olive, noticed.
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“I guess,” he said, eyebrows raising, “I love the thrill of it.”
, choking up as he attempted to set his seventh world speed record at the age of 83, the enormity of the moment and his journey struck me.
I was 10 months old when I first set foot at a racetrack in Castle Rock, joined by my identical twin brother, Tracy, and mom, Linda, in the pits. My first memories of my dad were from nitromethane burning my eyes, starting his car at the playground for the entire Morton Elementary student body, and stories in Hot Rod magazine. There he was, pictured engulfed in flames in the late 1960s after laying down one of “the most spectacular fire burnouts ever captured on film.”
Mom never worried when Dad was behind the wheel, though her mother did.
“Your grandma (Ruth Noxon) didn’t like me dating him because of how fast he drove,” she said. “But I never once thought of telling him to stop. I went into our marriage with eyes wide open about his love for cars.”
He wrecked his second dragster at Thunder Road on 96th and Tower Road. His arm dangled outside the cockpit, his shoulder separating as the car rolled three times. That should have stopped him.
“It only made me want to do it more,” he said.
He won his first Division V Top Fuel championship in 1970, the year I was born. He delighted in showing folks up north that Pueblo packed a punch. A Pro Comp title came in 1976.
There were 45 victories in all, at Marion, S.D.; Brainerd, Minn.; Amarillo, Texas; Winnipeg, Canada, and seemingly every quarter-mile in Colorado. My brother and I viewed the world every summer through the window of a dualie truck and the sounds of Bob Seger eight-tracks.
We just assumed he built and tuned the engine like the Hot Wheels we carried with us, not appreciating the determination required to teach industrial arts at Pueblo Central High School during the week, then drive through the night on Fridays to reach the track.
“I was his student, and he was always a supportive teacher. He knew I was a hot-rodder kid, so he brought me onto his crew at 16 years old, and my parents didn’t mind that I was traveling the country,” said James Urbina, now a world-renowned golf course designer. “He was relentless. He worked harder than anyone else, and it made all of us work harder. I was lucky to be part of it.”
The checkered flag dropped on his career in 1982 when he won his last Top Fuel race at Bandimere Speedway. He cracked six seconds, hitting 250 miles per hour. Along the way, he picked up the nickname “Groundhog” from how he hopped out from under fixing a car, and “Fast Eddie” because, well, he won a lot of races.
He quit after 16 years to coach youth and high school sports, teaching himself the fundamentals through books, VHS cassettes and clinics. I remain grateful for that decision, because it carved out a life for me, first as an athlete and later as a journalist.
“I enjoyed it,” he said. “And if I would have continued racing as you got older playing, I would have been gone a lot. And thatap not a good formula to stay married.”
Nobody who knows my dad believed he was finished. MPH is his DNA.
The years that followed included Hall of Fame inductions into the Greater Sports Association in Pueblo, Colorado Motorsports and Pueblo Central.
But this was my dad in retirement.
He built, sometimes with help, 40 roadsters. He dabbled in Formula Ford road racing, then shifted his focus to Bonneville in 2001.
Passion and enthusiasm blend in Utah with a community of car enthusiasts desperate to reach the fastest speed possible on the salt. Competitors have been making the pilgrimage in earnest since 1949 — bikers, roadsters and jet-powered streamliners. It was where my dad had lunch with Anthony Hopkins while they filmed “The World’s Fastest Indian.”
Walking onto the flats is like leaving this earth. It feels lunar. When the sky reflects off the sky and mountains on the salt, the mirror effect creates the illusion of the ground becoming the horizon.
It is so hot. The only place you can sunburn the inside of your nose. The glare is blinding. The engines loud. Gasoline spices the air. A day at the track is like an afternoon at the beach as an astronaut sweating in goalie’s equipment.
I loved it. So did my brother, Tracy.
“He is the reason I am still passionate about motorsports,” Tracy said. “To be here, it is exhilarating. A dream. Something I wasn’t sure would ever happen, and I will never forget.”
So, this is where my dad finds himself on a warm Friday morning. Black fire suit and helmet on, waiting his turn to zoom his 1929 model A roadster down a five-mile track with a painted blue line for centering and fingers crossed replacing Blue Cross as an insurance policy.
At 83, really? You want to do this?
“He has the disease. And there is no cure,” said Dennis Sullivan, president of the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association. “It gets in your blood. And if you break a record, you become obsessed with keeping it.”
My dad first set the standard in the C/Gas Roadster class in 2016, going 236.1 mph. He upped it five more times, the last at 258.8 in 2021. The prize is an annual red cap for lifetime entry into the 200-mph club and a plaque or trophy, depending on the event.
“Or basically,” he said with a laugh, “an attaboy.”
Now, he was back, seeking to exceed 262 mph.
This is my dad. No dream is too big.
“He is an inspiration. This is not as easy as it looks,” said Sean O’Brien, a competitor and friend from Windsor. “You don’t build one of these cars and think you know what you are doing. It humbles me every day out here.”
I figured age would serve as a central theme of this story. And he was the second-oldest driver here as far as we could figure.
But the thing about the Salt Flats is that they are timeless. The 9 a.m. drivers meeting near Bonneville Bob — a ceramic chicken with a Colonel Sanders doll in its mouth — featured dozens of competitors who have been here for 30, 40, and, in some cases, 50 years.
Still, he is in his 80s. I made the mistake of asking my dad about butterflies.
“I don’t get nervous,” he said. “If you get scared, you don’t have any business in a race car.”
His concern is always the engine, the alignment, a new part. How will everything perform? This symphony of speed requires help. And my idea of fixing something is pushing control-alt-delete.
His trusted crew of cousin Carl Spencer and Jeff and Curtis Kosley, make this possible.
They are gearheads, engineers. Carl rattles my dad’s cage – “I love to give him a hard time” – and the Kosleys, affectionately known as the Beaver Brothers because of their busy nature, are constantly tuning this and turning that.
“We have been building cars with mini sprint, mini stock and the (Pike’s Peak) Hill Climb in our neighborhood,” Jeff said. “And we carried it on with him.”
Curtis provides the color. “Ed’s a character. How many 83-year-olds drive a car 260 miles per hour? He just lives for it.”
So many emotions about my dad surface after a final fist bump and an anxious trek to the three-mile mark for better viewing. Most notably, pride and appreciation.
There are folks his age who cannot navigate a cul-de-sac, let alone this land rocket.
“And when he does something, it is to be the best,” Urbina said. “He’s not there just to compete.”
We settled in next to a radio to hear the AM broadcast. The announcer was distracted and uninformed. Luckily, we were staring at the track and saw an orange bullet getting closer.
It was him. Photos snapped. Smiles widened. And prayers followed.
In the distance, a cloud of dust appeared. The broadcast explained that he spun out, turning 540 degrees at an exit velocity of 250 miles per hour.
My dad never backs down from a fight, even one with a 361-cubic-inch engine. He feathered the pedal and steered out of danger. When we arrived on the scene, the side panels were buckled in, tires were covered in salt, and he was furious.
“I am fine,” he said. “Just really disappointed because of all the work the guys put in. The track conditions made it difficult. Between the four- and five-mile marks, the car was starting to float. Itap like punching it on ice. I wasn’t sure if I was driving the car or if it was driving me.”
He apologized for not setting the record. But my coming to the Salt Flats was never about that.
It was about being a kid again, honoring his legacy, his life’s road map.
He asks me if I want to drive the car, and my answer is always yes. But it is better left to the grandkids because of my age — which is just as funny to write as it was to say it to him.
He is aware of his limitations. And my mom worries about his reaction times. Several of those he grew up racing against have passed away.
A few days later, it becomes clear his fever for going fast remains on boil. Talk of tinkering becomes more narrow about switching classes and setting another record.
“I think this engine is going to get retired, and then we can get another one,” he said. “I don’t know… why do I love it? It was always a thrill to win a race. And people like accolades. If you ask a quarterback about throwing a touchdown, itap kind of the same thing. It is pretty (damn) cool.”
Fast Eddie. My father.
He makes me slow down and think, and realize, other than being a husband and dad, there is nothing that has shaped my life more than being the son of a fearless race car driver.
