I had to just sit with the bottom of my feet propped up on the dashboard and rest my fingertips on my kneecaps to stop the risk of starting a scratching frenzy by brushing anything up against my itchy skin. And just to add insult to injury, we had to go all the way to Alton, Ill., to race the next Saturday night, but the show must go on, and ‘Tarzan’ had to handle the helm for the entire trip all by himself. I really did a good job of dousing myself with it. “This, of course, ended badly, with a horrendous rash from nose to toes. That's right - no one ever accused me of being the sharpest knife in the drawer.
LADY TARZAN PATCH
But, as Murphy's Law would have it, I ran off into the woods to put the suit on and stood smack dab in the middle of a big patch of poison oak to accomplish the task. So I borrowed a rubber diving suit, and I put it on. “But with me being breath and britches at the time (before I grew my Buddha belly), that cold Sound water was the next thing to frozen ice to me, having no blubber isolation on my poor bones to keep me warm. “Probably the most memorable incident that ever happened to me on a personal level with ‘Tarzan’ was the time we were racing in Seattle and all the racers up there took the two of us out for a little water skiing and a barbecue on a wooded edge of the Puget Sound on the Monday after the race. I thanked my guardian angel and started to snore. They called back to the hotel for help, and after my going down there and finding out I couldn't get them out, I went back to the room thinking I was glad I didn't go with them. “Then there's the time at Indy, where he, Don ‘The Beachcomber’ Johnson, and Mike Kinne when out of the town, sprinkling M80s about the downtown area and ended up in the slammer. There would've been a couple of big holes in my life if I hadn't met both of them. But then again, he shot a big hole in my piggy bank at the same time. That eventually ended our traveling together, so he shot himself in the foot in that way. “Tarzan … Where do I start? Or better yet, what can we print!!! There’s the fact that he picked up my ex-wife Inez, at Indy one year and introduced her to me. Because he’s just waking up when most of us are laying down to sleep (“Ivo time”), I asked him to share his memories of “Tarzan” via email, which he graciously did, as always (Thanks, TV!). Naturally, I couldn’t resist reaching out to Ivo for his comments.
LADY TARZAN DRIVER
In 1975, Austin drove the Bluegrass Shaker Funny Car and finished second in the NHRA Division 3 championship points that year, but a massive engine explosion and fire near the end of the season left him with burned hands and no ride, which helped him decide to retire as a driver and stay involved as a crewmember for various teams.Īustin went to work at Raymond Beadle’s Chaparral Trailers in Dallas, where he learned to build trailers for a lot of his racer friends. In 1972, Austin drove Greg Scheigert’s Hot Tuna Top Fueler until he crashed the dragster at the 1974 Gatornationals and Scheigert retired from racing. His first trip down the dragstrip was in club member Ted Worby’s supercharged Chrysler Hemi-powered AA/Gas dragster.Īustin acquired his tree-swinging nickname as the result of his long-haired and physical appearance and strength - his 9-to-5 was a bouncer at a local Valley bar - and his unique voice.Īustin tuned Arnie Behling to the Top Fuel victory at the 1971 NHRA Summernationals and also toured regularly with “T.V.” Tommy Ivo. (The ND photos were in the process of being boxed up for the move more on that later.)Īustin grew up in Southern California’s car-crazed San Fernando Valley and was a member of the Throttle Merchants car club. 8, after complications from a stroke at age 80, and my pal Steve Reyes was kind enough to send me the images that accompany this section. Right after his passing, I assembled a brief bio of Austin, who died Oct. So much has gone on over the last few months that there’s not room for all of it, but there are a couple of things that I wanted to include, chief among them the passing of John “Tarzan” Austin, another of the legendary colorful characters that made the 1970s interesting and entertaining. As soon as the racing season is over, I should get back to a more regular schedule. Fuel star Jimmy Ige once kindly admonished me that I shouldn’t have to explain if I didn’t have a column each week, but I feel like I’ve built up such an appreciative and engaged audience that I feel guilty when I can’t churn one out every Friday. Between running six national events in eight weeks, a bunch of travel, my “streamlined” staff, producing the biggest issue in NHRA National Dragster history (244 pages!), and the process of the big headquarters move, it’s been a frantic two months.ġ970s SoCal Jr.