Garlits said Parks “never forgave me for that because we ran the race right on his race and you could have shot a cannon up through the stands (at Indianapolis and not hit anyone). They didn’t have enough people to support it. There were lots of other things — it would fill a book. And I intend to write a book someday about it, me and the NHRA and all the different things that went down. I just threaten to do it. I haven’t actually done it.”
He said since Parks’ passing in 2007, “There’s a tremendously different attitude with the new, younger people who are in charge. They don’t hold those old animosities like Wally did. He was like an elephant — he never forgot anything.”
And Garlits won’t forget the 1975 season, which ended with the first of his three NHRA championships.
“I came into the race 400 points behind Gary Beck. Actually, I should have been ahead of him,” Garlits explained. “But he chose not to go to the IHRA Finals, which he was under contract for. He went out to a new race that NHRA had just made up in Seattle. And he won that. That gave him points to get ahead of me. He was going to win the championship if I didn’t win the race, set low E.T. and top speed — and both had to be world records.
“Right off the bat he set the E.T. record. It looked like it was going to be a slam-dunk for him,” he continued. “We put a different engine in the car the next day, set both ends of the record and won the race on Sunday and won the championship. I’ll always remember that as probably my most shining moment.”
As he sat in the office of his sprawling but unpretentious-looking museum in Ocala, Fla., surrounded by his Swamp Rats, and trophies and a lifetime of memorabilia, Garlits’ thoughts drifted back to 1984.
“I had spent several years getting this museum moved from Seffner to here. It took 95 trips with my truck and trailer to get all the stuff from down there to up here,” he explained. “And Art Malone came up and said, ‘Don, let’s go to the U.S. Nationals.’
“He was an old friend of mine, schoolmate and my driver in ’59 and ’60.”
He told Malone he’d call and get tickets and that he thought it’d be fun to go and watch. But Malone said, “No! I’d like to go up there and race.”
They were mere babes then at 51 years old — nothing unusual about that in drag racing. Garlits said he didn’t have a modern race car and Malone countered with, “It don’t matter about that. I’ll buy a modern engine and all the nice pieces and just put it in any one of the cars in the museum and let’s go up there.”
So, Garlits said, “We pulled out ol’ Swamp Rat XXVI, a 1981 car, brought it up to speed and went to Indy. And I mean, we were the laughingstock, two old dinosaurs trying to go to battle with these kids. They parked us out in the dirt — we didn’t have paved pits. And I had an old Chaparral trailer. And on about the third run, I had top speed of the meet. And they knew we weren’t there for the Budweiser. We marched through that field and won the race. And that’s the biggest race of all, the U.S. Nationals at Indy.
“Any racer will tell you if he could win only one race in his career, it would be the one,” Garlits continued. “And I won it again. I had won it a few times before. And Art says, ‘Let’s go to the Finals. There’s only one more race.’ So we went out there and I’ll be darned if we didn’t win that, too. Malone said, ‘You ain’t got any business being retired. Let’s get back in the game.’ So we did.
“And,” he said, “we won the championship in 1985 and ’86. It was a good team. It was the Garlits and Malone team. That 1984 race was a real turnaround.”
It was a partnership solidified in the hospital room in Tampa and another example that Garlits was moving bricks again, defying predictions and beating the odds. And announcer Bernie Partridge was correct when at Indianapolis he referred to Garlits as “Big Daddy.”
Now, “Big Daddy” said he feels time has zipped by quicker than one of his Swamp Rats past the grandstands. He said he’ll wander through his museum and glance around at all the dragsters and awards and wonder, “Where has my life gone? Sometimes I think it was another life. When did I have time to do all of that?”
It’s ironic, for time — from eight-second increments down to three — has been a vital commodity for “Big Daddy” Don Garlits. He has performed in record time. He has been a man ahead of his time. He has made a lasting impressing on the sport big-time. And he has had the time of his life.
Garlits, who turns 88 on Jan. 14, told Ocala Magazine writer Melissa Deskovich in an October article, “I’m sure there will be a time when I’m done, but I’m pretty sure that will be just before the funeral.”