“My name is Roxy Calder. I write about the ghosts that haunt Drag City — racers, fans, and sometimes families who left behind more rumor than record. The Legend of the Sinisters has many branches; the story of “The Back Room” is one. This is another. I never rode in Back Country Bender, but I’ve heard her pipes echo off canyon walls and seen the shadows she cast over two men who started as friends. This is their story, as best as anyone can tell it.”
Chuck Whitcomb and Ray Delaney at age 11 in 1958, ecstatic over finding a Ferrari in a parking lot on a family trip to San Diego.
Chuck Whitcomb was born into polish. His father Frank ran Whitcomb’s Emporium with a shopkeeper’s pride, his mother Dot kept the books and worried the edges of her apron. The Whitcombs projected the respectable face of Wardglenn — good customers, clean windows, a familiar name downtown. But anyone who lingered near the Five & Dime after dark knew better. There was always the other side: the red curtain in the back, the smoke curling out, the sound of men talking too low. Dot smiled during the day, but people whispered she never slept easy. Chuck grew up in both worlds — shelves and registers out front, shadows and rumor in the back.
A newer photo of Whitcomb’s Emporium as it appeared as recently as 1984
By the mid-’50s Frank and Dot had saved enough for their first new car, a modest black 1955 Chevrolet “Two-Ten” 2-door sedan with a 2v V8 and a Powerglide automatic. Dot loved the ease of it; Frank said it was practical. They drove it with pride, but by the time Chuck turned sixteen in 1963, they’d traded into newer models. The Chevy, still straight and serviceable, passed down to their boy. The photo survives in memory: Frank’s hand on Chuck’s shoulder, the black sedan gleaming behind them, the beginning of everything.
Chuck shared that beginning with his closest friend, Raymond Delaney — Ray to everyone, inseparable schoolmate and gearhead brother. Together they yanked the Chevy’s Powerglide, dropped in a 4-speed, punched up the motor with parts scrounged from swap meets and sympathetic pit crews. Summers meant oil-stained hands, midnight tests on county back roads, and long afternoons at Drag City where they apprenticed themselves to mechanics, hungry to belong. Before long, he was on the track at amateur nights.
Not yet shaving! Chuck and Ray on one of their first cruise nights out in the ’55 after turning 16; photo taken by Dot Whitcomb, courtesy of Charles Whitcomb
By the end of high school, Chuck was driving the car under its new nickname: Back Country Bender. No one agrees who coined it. Some say it was a corner worker after the Chevy returned from a dirt-road joyride with more dents than sense. Others mutter Chuck named it himself, bitter after a rough outing. Either way, the name clung. Chuck never did much better than middling at Drag City — fast enough to get noticed, never fast enough to win. He wore the sting in his jaw and fists, grew sullen. Meanwhile, Ray showed promise in a battered ’57 Chevy, also a model “Two-Ten” sedan he bought as a beater from its second owner for $300 and swapped the original “Stovebolt” with a solid-lifter 283 he was lucky enough to score from a freshly T-boned ‘59 Corvette the day it arrived at the local scrapper. When he started outpacing Chuck, the balance between them shifted.
Freshly “nosed” and “decked” and shod with chrome reverses: “Back Country Bender” after earning her name, posed on the street in front of the family business
Home life didn’t steady Chuck. Dot was under strain, pale and tired. Men were seen entering the Emporium late at night, slipping through the back. Frank’s face hardened. No one spoke about it openly, but Chuck carried the weight. He drank more, scowled more. In the summer of ‘69 Ray rolled his ’57 after losing it while dancing through the chicane. The car was a total loss and he spent a few painful nights at Warglenn General, but as a ballsy young man still barely in his 20’s he was out in casts in no time and talking to Chuck about starting fresh, finding another car, maybe something a little newer even though he loved “Tri-Fives.” Chuck, increasingly morose about his results at Drag City and the money he was sinking into his weekend runs with so little return, surprised him by offering up the ‘55. The deal was struck.
A now bearded Chuck and Ray at the Drag City paddock in 1969, Chuck with BCB and Ray with the ’57 he drove until a crash later that year
Ray threw himself into the rebuild with his father Earl and, on occasion, a half-hearted Chuck. They stripped the Chevy to its bones, dropped in a snarling 327 small-block, shot it in AMC Big Bad Orange, fitted mags, and gutted the interior to race specs and redoing the now single seat and the rest of the insides in black. The Bender that emerged was no longer a family hand-me-down — it was Ray’s machine, and Drag City knew it. He wasn’t the fastest man in the pits, but he was steady, fair, and fearless. Crowds warmed to him. He won enough to matter and lost with a grin, the kind that earned respect. He married, settled into part-time racing, and carried a little loyal circle of fans for years.
BCB’s first orange paintjob was “spraybombed” at the Chevron station after hours; later when the mechanical rebuild was complete, Ray would properly strip the car to primer and have it professionally painted in AMC “Big Bad Orange,” a readily available color at the time!
Chuck couldn’t stand it. Watching Ray take the same car that had once been his, hearing the crowd cheer a name that originated under his failures — it poisoned him. Already getting darker and meaner, this turn of events slid him into the bottle. He haunted the pits as a hanger-on, scuffled with strangers and friends alike. His sister Elaine was drifting too, first into the arms of Marty Klein with his Back Room dealings, then into the orbit of Gasahol Records and the rockin,’ slightly scary sound of The Sinisters, Wardglenn’s own Psychobilly band. Chuck turned up at their shows, not as a musician but as a groupie with fists. He shouted their choruses, swung at anyone who looked cross, and went home alone.
By the time “Rabid Ray” Delaney and the Bender were fixtures in the paddock, Chuck was a fixture in Wardglenn’s shadows. The boy who had once tuned a carburetor with his best friend now slouched in tavern corners, drunk and bitter, muttering about what had been stolen from him. Ray drove on, respected and even loved, but the two never rode together again.
And that’s how it is remembered: a car, a name, two boys, and a friendship that curdled into something darker. Back Country Bender still turns up in stories whispered around Drag City — not just as a Chevy with orange paint and a small-block growl, but as a reminder that what begins as joy can end as a ghost.
Chuck Whitcomb today
Some nights, when the floodlights hit the track just right, the Bender still throws a shadow that looks longer than the car itself. It isn’t gone — it’s out there now, orange and loud, still clawing down straights and howling through corners in the hands of Ray Delaney. But every time it roars, you can almost hear the echo of what came before: the boy who first turned its bolts, and the family name that soured under the weight of its own secrets.
“Rabid Ray” Delaney and “Back Country Bender” today
The Whitcombs don’t get spoken of much in the paddock anymore. You hear Elaine’s name in back rooms, wrapped in half-remembered Sinisters songs, and Chuck’s in barroom mutters when someone needs a cautionary tale. But it’s the car — Back Country Bender — that outlasted them all. It runs still, orange paint flashing in the desert sun, as if to prove that not every ghost fades. Some of them just keep showing up on race day.
The cars in this lore are based on 2 of the many Model Motoring ’55 sedan kits I’ve built for my collection of Thunderjets.
“Racing on a shining plain And tomorrow, you’ll be content to watch As the lightning plays along the wires, and you’ll wonder…“
Of course, y’all know that the name – and the spelling – came from the song, my 2nd favorite song by one of my favorite bands of all time (yes, 2nd favorite: “The Chauffeur” from Rio will always be #1). But if you need more than that, then ask around in Wardglenn-especially at the track-and you’ll hear a dozen answers, none the same. Some swear it’s the cool wind that finally comes in October, sighing through the desert after a season of heat, rattling palm fronds across the hardpack like bones. Others say it’s the ghosts — the ones who never made it out of Dead Man’s Curve, the ones still drifting in the dust when the lights go down.
Maybe the Secret is nothing more than the month itself — the light fading faster, the sky turning gold and purple at once, the air crisp enough to make an engine sound sharper and exhaust linger longer. For once the desert remembers it has seasons, and the grandstands glow as though they know it too. Racing in October feels like memory given form, a kind of reunion of past and present that only exists here, only now.
Or maybe the Secret is the spectacle: four weekends of fury packed into one perfect month. Sports cars carving the chicane at dusk, muscle machines hammering Dead Man’s Curve under the floodlights, and a Halloween night that ends in thunder.
The truth? The “Secret” is all of it. The chill, the ghosts, the glow, the roar. It’s the way Drag City itself seems to come alive in October, as if the track was holding its breath all year just to exhale here, now, in fire and dust.
The Format
The month stacks up like this:
→ Banzai Runner V opens the month!
Weekend 1 (Oct 3–5): Group A Sports Cars
Weekend 2 (Oct 10–12): Group B Sports Cars
Weekend 3 (Oct 17–19): Group C Sports Cars
→ Then The Monster’s Ball begins and builds all week!
Week 4 (Oct 24–31): Muscle Cars → Final showdown: The Muscle Car Monster’s Ball on Friday, October 31st!
That means the sports car gladiators get three straight weekends to thrash it out before the muscle fleets come rolling in for one single compressed, violent week — capped off on Halloween night itself.
Every October weekend, fans cluster in different vantage points — campers at the Corkscrew, grandstand die-hards at Turn 1, and the rowdy crowd at Dead Man’s Curve even when it’s quiet.
The Contrast
The sports car weekends are tactical, international, and sharp-edged: Porsche, Ford, Ferrari, Lola, Maserati, Jaguar — turning the track into a European-style Grand Prix on California sand.
The muscle week is noise and menace: Chevelles, Mustangs, Chargers, GTOs, Barracudas, and Camaros crammed into a single week-long gauntlet of attrition.
That last week is chaos by design — a festival of collisions, overcooked brakes, overheated engines, and showdowns that spill into the parking lot.
The Calendar’s Poetry
This is what makes Secret Oktober so potent:
Three weekends of continental precision.
One week of American destruction.
All of it funneling toward a single night — Halloween, October 31st.
Drag City runs hot all year, but October is when the legend crystallizes.
So that’s it: October has always been the month when Drag City truly comes alive. The air turns dry and electric, the desert sun falls low over the hills, and the racing calendar compresses into four weekends of fury. In 1986, the tradition was already carved in stone — and as fate would have it, the 2025 calendar matches weekend for weekend.
October at Drag City is just beginning, the air sharpening with that first cool bite and the days bleeding into longer shadows. The crowds are only warming up, the engines only growling their first challenges, but everyone knows where this road leads. Each weekend will pull the tension tighter, each race turning the screw, until the whole month crests in one wild, haunted crescendo beneath the Halloween lights. For now, it’s the sweet beginning — the leaves scraping across the pavement, the smell of fuel and woodsmoke on the breeze — and the secret of October is that it’s only just getting started!
Well dear readers, duty calls again, and as October 1 arrives, I will be out on the plains for work, not to return until late in the week.
My October 1 ritual must thus wait until then, but you know that the arrival of this, the best time of the year, when the weather is prime but before it becomes too cold and too dark too early to have any fun, is one of the busiest times of the year at Drag City!
Stay tuned for excitement, as the “Secret Oktober” series of races is about to begin!
Happy Saturday morning, race fans! Here at long last is installment 2 of Saturday Morning Time Machine! Today’s installment of original fan fiction based on the Hanna-Barbera classics of our youth features Space Ghost, as he arrives on earth to help your intrepid trio of Drag City “track rats” fight off an original villain created just for this story! The actual classic Space Ghost rogue’s gallery (from the 1966 show) includes names like Zorak, Brak, Metallus, Lokar, etc. In seeking to create a new menace, I wanted to follow that sort of naming convention, so here Space Ghost faces off against “Xarvox,” an interdimensional creature that feeds on speed!
I must tell you, dear readers, these SMTM drops are taking a lot out of me; it isn’t easy coming up with original fiction like this even when its short, and as much as I love doing it, I’ll admit I may have overreached: time is at such a premium these days that it’s taken me almost a month longer to finish this than I anticipated. I certainly hope this will not be the last edition of SMTM, but, if it has to be that way, that’s all the more reason for you to enjoy this one!
Feel free to write me with your suggestions on what classic cartoon from your youth you’d like to see featured in a future installment of SMTM, and give me a like if you think this one hit the mark; a little encouragement goes a long way! Now, pour yourself a bowl of Cookie Crisp or Lucky Charms and tune in for Space Ghost — The Fastest Phantom in the Galaxy!
Disclaimer:Saturday Morning Time Machine is a non-commercial fan project made purely for fun and nostalgia. All Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears characters remain the property of their respective rights holders; no copyright infringement is intended. Everything connected to Drag City Raceway — its characters, settings, and stories — is entirely original and the sole creation of the author.
The sign as I saw it in 1981, replaced in 1985 as part of the massive roof-raising remodel
About a month ago I did a weekday post expounding on my childhood memories of the Santa Anita fashion Park Mall in Arcadia, California, the neighborhood in which I was a young boy in the late 70s. By the early 80s, my family had relocated farther inland to that hot, smoggy region loftily referred to as the “Inland Empire.” As a result, my “local mall” ceased to be Fashion Park and became the Montclair Plaza.
In June of last year, I published a pair of posts that were bittersweet for me, showcasing my first trip back to that region in 13 years, commenting on the things that had changed and the things that had not. On that trip, I rode with a couple of my friends past what had once been the Montclair Plaza, and we ate lunch at Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus nearby that many years ago was a very different restaurant. I say that because although the shopping area still exists, it has been ludicrously renamed “Montclair Place,” and as one would expect after nearly 30 years, it bears little resemblance to the mall that I knew.
The Broadway anchor store at Montclair Plaza sometime in the late 1970’s: the store was demolished in the 20-teens to be replaced with an AMC movie theater.
But then, the Montclair Plaza was always a dynamic place! I was surprised to learn that it predates Santa Anita Fashion Park by quite a few years: the Montclair Plaza was first opened way back in 1968, I first saw it in 1981, and I’m sure it had changed in that first 13 years, but it was still a relatively small place as shopping malls went, being only one story tall and with three anchor stores.
Aerial view of the Montclair Plaza in 1974: a single-story shopping center
The Sit-Down Era
This image of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor is believed to be the one next door to Montclair Plaza, date unknown; if correct, that would make the building to its left the tire center of JCPenny
In these early days, it had no food park. Before the food court reshaped everything in the mid-’80s, Montclair was dotted with full-service restaurants that gave the place an almost old-fashioned feel. There was a place called the Hollander Cafe that I never ate at, but I always wanted to, but I could never convince my folks to try it: it had an entrance of light blue and white tile that looked very inviting. I have the slightest memory of another restaurant called the Jolly Roger, I don’t know that I ever ate there either, and there was also a Bob’s Big Boy inside the mall, complete with the Big Boy statue… I always thought that was a little odd. Also, in these early days, there was a place called El Poco Candle, which fascinated me because I had never seen a dedicated candle shop up to that point. The place was heavy with the aroma of perfume candles, and seemed exotic to my then 11 year-old mind. Across the parking lot, detached from the mall technically but still a spiritual part of it, was Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor, where birthday parties erupted into parades of sirens, drums, and comically oversized sundaes.
I just caught this view of the mall before it was gone! Though this picture is dated 1970, I remember this clock tower and the slightly scary bird sculptures circling above it. By the time I saw this, the old-school “Penny’s” signage had been replaced with the white “JCPenny” sans-serif we’re familiar with today, but I can still remember this sitting area outside the entrance! All this went away with the massive 1985 re-model
These places didn’t just serve food—they gave Montclair a sense of occasion. They were destinations inside a destination. Which is why their disappearance hit so hard when the remodel came. The food court swept them away, replacing sit-down experiences with grab-and-go efficiency. Hollander’s tiles, Farrell’s sundaes, Bob’s neon glow—all vanished into a sea of plastic trays and fast-food counters.
The Stores That Marked My Childhood
Montclair wasn’t glamorous, but it was utilitarian. My mom might drag me into JCPenney for school clothes, or May Company for towels and linens. I wasn’t thinking about thread counts—I was thinking about escape. The mall was full of sensory markers that anchored my memories.
KayBee Toys was the typical mall toy store of its era: pure excitement, all flashing RC cars, boxed action figures, and rows of board games stacked to the ceiling. In terms of individual stores, by far the happiest memories are of B. Dalton Bookseller. It was here that I bought my first Kurt Vonnegut novels, picked out countless Agatha Christie paperbacks, and thumbed through scores of glossy British import classic car magazines like “Classic & Sportscar” and “Thoroughbred & Classic Cars,” salivating at beautiful pictures and reading fascinating details of the worlds most awesome racing machines in the days before you could dial them up with a few keyboard clicks on the “interwebz.” I spent countless hours in that crowded store with its tall, tightly packed aisles aromatic with fresh paper and binding glue, flipping through Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes collections and reprints of classic Pogo comics from the ‘50s, not yet realizing how deeply those cartoons would root themselves in my memory.
And of course, Musicland (later rebranded to Sam Goody)—overpriced, mainstream, with a frustratingly shallow selection. But I still loved it. I can remember standing in those aisles with my freshly buzz-cut hair wearing a T-Shirt with the logo of a band like The Adolescents or Dead Kennedys, knowing I’d never find that kind of music there. Even so, Musicland was part of the ritual!
Although I spent a good amount of time at the mall with my family, I always thought the place was a little underwhelming for the ever-growing wealth and prosperity of the area. All that was to change in 1985.
The Remodel: Montclair Goes Big-Time
Everything changed in 1985. That’s when Montclair Plaza went two-story, added Sears and (the following year) Nordstrom as as new anchors, and suddenly seemed like it was trying to punch above its weight. The escalators, the skylights, the wider corridors—it all gave the mall a big-city vibe, something closer to the L.A. or Orange County centers. What was amazing about this ambitious, multi-year project was that even under this most intense construction, the mall remained open! It was often almost scary to walk through like that, with the floor tiles cracked from falling tools and vehicle traffic and covered with large tarps to hide the damage and the merchandise in the stores sometimes coated with a film of drywall dust, but back in the days before the incompetence wrought by “DEI,” there were engineers clever enough to figure out how to raise the roof and triple the size of a shopping center while keeping it functional! Even more amazing was that the majority of the big construction was finished in under a year, with the second story “officially” opening shortly before Halloween in 1985. The roll-out of anchors and interior spaces stretched into the following year — shoppers were still seeing plywood walls, “coming soon” signs, and construction crews well into 1986. But for a project of that scope, to be completed in that amount of time while the mall remained operational, was an accomplishment I’m quite certain could not be duplicated today.
Image of the Montclair Plaza around 1987 after the remodel was completed, showing how beautiful and upscale it became
Montclair Plaza seemed to finally recognize the weight of its role in the region—not just a stopover for errands, but the gravitational center of the Inland Empire’s consumer life. Montclair felt like it was now competing with the “real” malls. People came from all over the Inland Empire – from Upland, Rancho, Ontario, even as far away as Chino. The place felt alive in a way it hadn’t before—busy, buzzing, crowded on weekends with teenagers cruising the halls in acid-washed denim and big hair, food trays balanced in hand, neon arcade glow spilling out from Time Out.
The transformation from that remodel was nothing short of seismic. The expansion brought a food court, yes, but more than that it was a re-branding of daily ritual. Suddenly, lunch was not a sit-down affair at a Hollander Cafe table with linen napkins; it was trays balanced on your lap, fluorescent lighting, and a chorus of competing fryers. Farrell’s, with its brass railings and birthday sirens, faded into the background and became a burger join called “Fuddruckers,” while Sbarro and Hot Dog on a Stick became the new shorthand for indulgence.
Becoming My Mall
The post-1985 sign at night, across the street from the Montclair AutoPlex, a series of massive car dealerships with such strong lighting that this entire stretch of the 10 freeway was lit up like mid-day in the middle of the night.
Once I got my driver’s license and my first car, through the late ’80s and into the mid-’90s, Montclair Plaza became my mall. Not because it was perfect, but because it was the backdrop to that formative stretch of life. The perfume fog of Cinnabon, the smell of Sbarro pizza mixed with the stink of cigarette butt-filled ashtrays creeping into the air once the food court took over.
One little side trip I want to take is that there are some things I don’t remember-which always frustrates me, and one of things I’ve been pondering lately was the restaurants that surrounded the mall, not really a part of it but close enough to share the parking lot, so part of the overall “mall experience.” Farrell’s closed not long after my family arrived in the area, and it seems to me that that may have been the building that shortly thereafter housed a briefly popular “upscale fast food” burger joint called “Fuddruckers.” At almost the same time that this chain started popping up all over the I.E., an almost identical competitor showed up called “Flakey Jakes.” The two restaurant chains were so similar that it was almost impossible to tell them apart inside.
Back then, it was all a kind of sideshow to me—the way businesses seemed to move in pairs, like synchronized swimmers. Farrell’s fading out while Flakey Jake’s and Fuddruckers popped up, each one a mirror of the other with their self-serve topping bars and wood-paneled “upscale burger joint” decor. It was funny in a cynical teenage way: I’d look at them and think, you’re all going to crash and burn anyway.
Of course, I didn’t understand the machinery behind it yet. I didn’t know that when a fad fizzled, the investors—the people who ought to have taken the hit—would usually walk away cushioned by tax write-offs and paper losses, while the workers were left jobless and the buildings shuttered. Back then, I only knew the surface spectacle: shiny new signs in the parking lot, lines out the door, and the eerie déjà vu of two chains that looked so similar inside you could barely tell them apart.
Interior of a Fuddrucker’s somewhere in America…but they all looked the same, so it might as well be Montclair!
Both chains are gone now, of course, but if you walk in to a Red Robin today, you’re basically seeing the same thing.
Another nearby eating establishment was a place called “The Big Yellow House.” Apparently this was another short-lived chain – their schtick was that their buildings looked like big old country farmhouses on the outside and interior decor themes were similar to Cracker Barrel today, and I recall that when that place closed in the early ‘80s, that building was vacant for years until it finally became mediocre Italian place called Sarafino’s. That didn’t last long either – a year, two tops – and then it was a Chinese place called “3-6-9 Shanghai.” I don’t remember what it was after that – last time I was in the area it seemed like it might now be a Mexican restaurant, but I can’t be sure as the amount of construction over the last 25 years has masked a lot of what I remember. As for the building that was Farrell’s and may have later been Ruddfu-er, I mean Fuddrucker’s, fortunately one of my best friends who still lives in the area to this day remembered that that was the building that was actually bulldozed some time in the late 80’s after the roof was raised on the mall. Torn down and paved over: man, now that’s what I call gone!
Montclair was flawed, a little generic, but it was woven into the fabric of who I was becoming. When I look back now, I realize that what I really miss isn’t the mall itself—it’s the life it represented. A time when working-class families like mine still had enough to spend a Saturday shopping, grabbing lunch, and letting their kids roam in relative safety.
Then and Now
The surprisingly pretty upper-level parking entrance to the store that was Sears had an art-deco inspired look; It was originally all white and not as garish as this later color scheme.
And yet, what sticks with me is less the food than the psychology of the place. The mall ceased to be utilitarian. It was no longer where my mom dragged me for Penney’s slacks or May Co. towels; it became a place where teenagers were expected to orbit endlessly, feeding quarters into arcade machines, loitering in record stores, staging little dramas on those broad tiled walkways. For the first time, Montclair Plaza began to feel like a stage set designed for our restless performances.
It wasn’t glamorous—never that—but it grew into something louder, shinier, more aspirational. That low one-story building with its anchors became a proving ground. You could trace the entire cultural weather system of the mid-80s by who was standing under the skylight: mall-wave kids with feathered hair, denim jackets gone pale at the elbows, girls carrying shopping bags that doubled as fashion accessories.
After the fall: the empty and abandoned Sears store sometime in the early 21st century: sad to see such a part of my childhood that I remember brand new left to decay like this
Today, the mall has been structurally altered again, and I suppose its current handle, “Montclair Place,” is supposed to sound more “hip” or something. It’s been re-skinned, re-tenanted, re-branded. But the ghosts are still there if you know where to look. Every time I think about it, I can still see the diners sitting in the interior facing windows of the Hollander Cafe’s tile surrounded entrance, still hear Farrell’s birthday drums, still see the statue of Bob’s Big Boy with his burger held high. Montclair may have been utilitarian, maybe even a little underwhelming—but it was a part of my formative years, that pre-internet age that is rapidly fading into memory. And that, dear readers, is why I write this blog, and-I would like to think-why you might read it: to try to preserve some of these memories from the time before digital cameras; so we can remember the cultural stew in which the generation of rebels and malcontents that are “X” was spawned.
As it appeared recently before the lame rebrand to “Montclair Place.” Looks like the Nordstrom, in place since 1986, is stlll doing business.
