Originally Posted by oletruckdude

My stepdad Bob Scadron owned Twin City Dragstrip for many years. He passed away a few years ago. I used to set up the equipment there every wed/fri/sat nights for him. My first legal drag race was there in 1975. I still have the E.T. tickets from that race. I raced there for a couple of years. When we closed for Christmas in 1977 the county passed a noise ordinance. We had no idea. When we showed up in January to reopen we were met by the Hillsboro county Sheriff, who proceeded to allow us to retrieve our equipment then he padlocked the gate. That was the end of Twin city Dragway. Man those were good old days.
FYI, the farmers in the area didn't like the noise and they were behind getting the noise ordinance passed.

Originally Posted by Slo_Si

damn, wish they were still around....bradenton is just too far...

Originally Posted by Dano Moparo

I must have been 15 years old in 1958 when I attended my first drag race at Tri-City Dragway in Oldsmar, Florida. I really don't recollect the event, other than it was a road trip with guys I looked up to who had "hot" cars. We all piled into one of my hero's '48 Chevy coupe and drove the 35-40 miles from the small orange grove town of Largo, located between Clearwater and St. Petersburg.Drag racing has been my life since that day, so the recollection of this one day is cloudy. I do remember I was "hooked" on the speed and especially the sound. The racers consisted of Ed Pantey, Don & Ed Garlits, Bob Langley, Connie Swingle, Hasely Hood, Charley Hogan, Emery Cook, Lucky Harris, Joe Herndon, the Nelson Brothers, and Marvin Schwartz to name a few.

Growing up an only child with loving parents that worked all day in the grocery store business, I was left on my own after school each day. I played Pop Warner football in the 5th and 6th grades and Jr. Varsity and Varsity football from the 7th to 11th grades. I tried basketball and baseball, but the contact sport was a lot more exciting to me.

I would see the first-string players driving neat '55 Crown Victorias and '57 Chevy convertibles all set up with lowering blocks in the rear and glass-packed mufflers that were soaked in oil when new so that over a (smoky) period of time they would become very loud. The sound was music to my ears. They also had all the best looking girls that wore form-fitting sweaters and lots of "crinolines" (petticoats) under their skirts. The fuzzy dice, Merc Cruiser fender skirts, mud flaps, Olds Fiesta and "flipper" hub caps were all the rage in the Tampa bay area at the time.

I was dating a girl whose uncle had a two-motored dragster. How weird! There was a girl from Tampa who had a '57 Chevy with a picture of two cherries on the trunk. Under this was painted, "If you can beat it, you can bust 'em." Man, I had a lot of dreams about that car!

My folks bought me my first car in 1958. It was a nice $300 '53 Chevy Belaire that I immediately modified. It had a 235" 6-cylinder with a 3-speed on the column. Within the first month I swapped motors with the family '55 Belaire 4-door (when they went on vacation), installed a set of Fenton cast iron headers, an Edelbrock 2-one barrel manifold with dual Rochester carbs and an Isky E-400 cam. I used flex-a-pipe to hook-up the two glass-packs and straight "lakes pipes" that exited under the rear axle to be "cool." At 16 years old, the cops hated me. My folks could not understand why I changed a good running car to the loud, smelly, ill handling car that got lots of the wrong kind of attention. It did get me plenty of girls but after blowing up 5 to 15 transmissions that first year (hey, they cost $15.00 each at the junk yard) and having too many girlfriend's parents calling my dad, I sold the car to a friend for $400 and joined the Air Force. I was shipped to Paris, France for my entire tour of duty as (what else) a mechanic in a motor pool....

.....It was the fall of 1964 when I started my new life back in Tampa Bay. I got married, had a couple of kids, had numerous jobs including machinist in an auto parts store, a Coca-Cola route salesman (great job but it literally broke my back), a heli-arc welder for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft and then....a welder/machinist for Don Garlits at his Tampa home shop. I worked with Connie Swingle and Tommy "T.C." Lemmons. I was way over my head but worked my butt off....

John "Mazz" Mazzarella

Originally Posted by P9x25

Good afternoon all --- I am one of the "old" farts, I remember well Tampa Dragway, Twin City, and Sunshine - I will try to post some old photos of those bygone days