To a degree, all bosses have asshole capability. Don’t tell me different. I’ve known too many working class types who can back it up with hammerheaded reality. From years with this man, I can say that Wally was not an ASSHOLE. I can’t tell you how many times he called me into his office with opening sentences like, “Chris, at your earliest convenience, I need to see you in my office.” JEE-ZUS help me. Fired in a second. No, he graded me on merit rather than my SDS background.
And I can tell you, there were times where he backed off and would let me, Jim Edmunds and Les Lovett get away with something that he personally was not fond of. But as Chris Martin, if you fostered a good argument, he was not above hearing it out, and he would concede to a degree.
One example and then only a small but sincere ramble.
He was kind of a square, but no living human being that I’m aware of, including my heroes Garlits and Chris Karamesines, ever loved cars, car mechanics, car innovations, and successful achievement under adverse conditions more than Wally.
We fought, but I can say he told me what an admirer he was of Don Garlits, Bill Jenkins, Bob Glidden, Karamesines, Prudhomme, McEwen, Kenny Bernstein, and even Jim Tice, Ben Christ, Ed Kohn, Gil Eaton, and even nasty old Larry Carrier. In fact, he told me a story how he and Tice decided to surprise (I think) engine builder Ed Pink. Given NHRA and the then-potent AHRA’s Grand American program, they both showed up laughing and elbowing, leaving a stunned audience to watch these two supposed “enemies” exit from the stretcher. I believed him when he told the story because he did it within the framework of what made drag racing move forward. Were they good for all of us? He really felt that way.
I now sit in a funk wondering if Hot Rod magazine founder Parks would read this and belch. Man, I can hear him say, “and this is your idea of a good story. Well, Chris ….” He was far more a journalist, in the correct sense, that I ever hoped to be. Awwww … but what the hell ….
Let’s leave it at this: He gave me a life. Sure, I knew the stats and the who did whats, but he helped me weld it into a job where I’ve made the best friends of my life and seen almost the country up close and personal.
Behind his back, I used to call him “lizard neck,” when I got mad after a verbal ass-kicking that for the most part (not always) I might’ve had coming. He ignored obvious differences and instead based any managerial-type decisions on what was good for drag racing. He messed up more than once, but seriously imagine drag racing if he and the NHRA crew hadn’t shown.
Would it have been better? I’m not so sure, looking at the eventual fate of sports as we see them now. Those types of decisions will not be coming from the attitude that made Wally obsolete, and is now the norm. It will be coming from straight up profit-and-loss, the same material basis that I felt has contributed to what we have now. Retch! Retch! Retch!
Mr. Parks. To you, well, I said it earlier, I can’t thank you enough, despite getting as mad as we might’ve gotten at times. Let me close in a way that I know and it’s coming straight from the bruise in my heart.
So, let’s trip out for a second. Let the “Burned Out Looney”(as you and Les would refer to me on occasion) make you an offer.
When you get where you’re going (and it won’t be heaven or hell … I have it on good advice that they don’t exist,) you might run into the faceless elevator boy. Down or up? Ask for Mickey Winters, Mike Mitchell, Chuck Phelps and Canned Heat band member Richard Hite. The people in the middle of the pool with all the whores …
It’s my way of saying I owe you.
Maybe these drunken rants will get through in a good way. I can’t thank you enough for the life that you provided to me. Happiness, legitimacy, and a career I wouldn’t have traded for a million bucks in the rope-a-dope world that we see and live now.
You were a man among men and as alive as I would ever hope to be.
