meantime mr hanks was coloring hours business friends and getting them to help sponsor a dragstrip and safety program he was a real salesman almost before they knew it they were signed up  it didn't take long to freddie and when the night stayed their grand opening and their first time trials and drag races they were really on their way cars they let a successful campaign for driver education in our shop training in high school and right away this began paying off just as it has everywhere in a survey in one state eight hundred one train drivers had five times as many accidents as eight hundred who had received training in school at the same time the un train drivers got seven times as many traffic ticket and why would say every now and then there are guest speakers like the same as ralph the parma who's going to be the greatest racing driver in the past fifty years he always tells the girls in dollars that nobody appreciates and respects careful driving more than a professional drag strip sunday and tried out again some of their wagons this was what i'd been waiting for raghead him self a deal but i never got near the strip they wouldn't let me they check my car over and said it wasn't safe and took me a month working after school on weekends just to get ready to pass a safety test planning to get my chance while we were waiting for them to qualify my car was showed me around explaining how a properly run dragstrip operate there are classifications for all kinds of hot rods but the main one is the ratio of weight to piston displacement this determines the basic engine class it's been classified and second for safety a car is ready to run to get an official number the drivers have to be in good standing to avenge their parents have to ok the sound show up a little too early while the other cars are getting oil changes he just gets changes period one of the cars name the vin then until this shipwreck or from a standing start to one hundred forty two miles an hour in a quarter of a mile you'd be surprised at the number of girls who drank not just driving either they know what's under the hood because they put it there and sell yeah the drag strip was like a circus or a miniature indianapolis hundreds of people were there from town to watch a real big professional deal believe it or not from a standing start something that i guess would be the jet plane down a quarter mile stretch in maybe a man's world but you never know and that ranks in the girl didn't ask any special deal either they went right out and ran against the men designed to they won their share of places  know by the time they called my number i'd become so interested i almost forgot what i was there might have shown i didn't have any doubt about breaking the record the only question i had was by  was right but if i wanted to try a drag race i sure did know i could really show him right on the drag strip with no phony crock out of my way  well there was still a reliability run you'd think by now i'd have had better sense than to go through it but i didn't and i learned another lesson i couldn't even finish my radiator boiled over and i ran out  and i was going to teach them about hot when that nine hundred twenty five tower went by me that did it right then i made up my mind it was the last thing i ever did i had to be one of the night so i got a list of membership requirements for mom the sister she was a club secretary and guess the first thing i had to do i had to learn to drive imagine that after all the miles i drew but after a couple of sessions and they do control my phone on the whole lot more is good safe driving the knowing how to turn the wheel which pedal is again actually there was more i didn't know about driving and i didn't know but that was just the first requirement  next thing on the list was to go six months without a citation or even a warning that really tough first and i made it to leave me i was never so glad of anything in my life as i was to get hold of that little nice membership card but i knew one thing i was a whole lot better and a safer driver than i was before i started working for  then asked me to come outside she said the nights were holding a clinic and wanted me to join them while i was getting the money together i read every book on mechanic side again i got a few ideas too about carburetors mostly i decided to rebuild my car for the reliability run and drank this would give me a better chance to try my car rater ideas and you know something my idea it took me a few months but i finally went to third place reliability and i got a real surprise and they started giving out the trophy how well the city merge and they were a trip to the memorial day race in indianapolis to the boys the club voted most deserving and guess who the nice elected me he asked if i'd be interested in a scholarship for their fact that in mechanical engineering they've given a lot of scholarships to sellers and hard drive cars and a lot of me came top mechanics and designers of course i said ye so i got the biggest kick in my life being of five hundred mile race they'd arranged for of the pomona show me around to this is the toughest race around for a car and then driving a speedy trial and reliability run all at on  it's tough to believe now that that jerk in the flop was me just a few months back before i became a night you see the reckless kid in an old clunker like that one is not a hot rod at all he's a square and i shot ron real hot rodders in organized crime and planning associations all over the country have taken what used to be a ha and turned it into a real hobby and a genuine benefit to the community not just to safe driving driver education either they raise thousands of dollars for charity conducted one drive to the red cross and develop top mechanics and designers or automobile manufacturers as well as testing and proving ideas that are produce better safer cars for everybody so that's the real story of the cool hot r the one time has is that it's become a brand new progressive american hobby