- [Young] Inside, we have a little bit of extra power here.
This is nitrous oxide.
- Oh, I can't help but comment on it.
That's an explosive gas you have in the trunk of your car.
(both laugh)
Welcome to Show and Tell.
I'm Dylan Thuras, the co-founder of Atlas Obscura.
And this is a series we started during this time
when we're all experiencing a global pandemic,
and we are stuck at home.
And we thought maybe this was a good moment
to get in touch with people who are stuck at home,
filled with interesting things,
who have wonderful stuff in their houses
that they can share with us.
So today, we're gonna be talking with Al Young.
And Al is a lot of different things.
Al is a racecar driver,
a dragster driver,
he is a many decades-long teacher and educator.
And I believe he's also a Kung Fu master.
That is a cool, cool set of things to be.
So, without further ado,
I would love to welcome Al to the show.
Thank you for joining us, Al.
- Thank you for having me. All right.
- I'm embarrassed to say
I know very, very little about cars and car racing.
I only learned to drive three years ago,
four years ago.
I'm 37.
You specifically do mostly drag racing,
is that, is that right?
- Yes I do, yeah.
- The idea is that you go from, you know,
standing still to very fast very quickly, right?
'Cause it's a short track.
Is that part of the thing?
- A quarter mile, 1,320 feet.
It imitates starting with a stoplight.
Two guys paired up together and they're gonna race.
Initially it was, whoever got to the finish line first, won.
(car engine revving)
N/T drag racing was developed that,
you can take your own car,
hop it up anytime you wanted,
and then the way that it was raced,
is that you were paired up with another person,
and that other person, if they're faster than you,
they had to give you a handicap.
And if you were faster than them,
you had to give them a handicap.
And you wrote how fast you think you can go
the quarter mile on your windshield,
and then they would electronically figure out
how much of a handicap you would take.
So ideally, if both people were honest about
what they put on their windshield,
if you both left the line the same time
you would both end at the finish line at the same time.
But it never works that way.
Always one person's either fast,
you know, either quicker on the line,
or their car was tuned better and they were able
to go exactly what they said they were gonna go.
- Yeah.
- You go faster than what you say your handicap was,
then you're out.
Unless the other person lied too.
- I see. That's very interesting.
Okay, so you were gonna show me some stuff today.
- Yes. - About this world
from your various worlds.
So, I would love to see the first thing
you wanna share with me and hear all about it.
- This is a National Hot Rod Association Wally,
which would be equivalent to a Motion Picture Oscar,
and it's awarded for national champions,
division champions.
This one is a special one,
this is a Hall of Fame.
And we'll put this quick,
we're talking about an association that has
almost 80 million people fan base.
And I was one of the first people
that drove this kind of car
to be ever inducted into the Hall of Fame.
And I'm very very proud of this.
And it makes me feel it.
Well, it gives me a great sense of accomplishment, you know,
and to be recognized by your peers, it's a big deal.
- It must feel very good to have sort of a
confirmation of your accomplishments.
When maybe that hasn't been the easiest thing
or I don't know. It hasn't been the easiest thing.
- Which brings me to the next object.
- Okay, great.
- I was like awarded this last year,
and in the same year several months later,
I was inducted
into my high school Hall of Fame.
And that's my high school.
And this is the one that I'm really proud of.
(laughs)
And in particular, because
here's my high school transcript.
And I don't know if you can see it.
Well, I graduated with a 1.6 grade point average.
- Okay, yeah.
- And even with A's and B's in auto shop, and wood shop,
and metal shop, I still got a 1.6 grade point average.
You see, you can tell how much I struggle.
But I was able to finally graduate,
I got straight A's at the community college,
and got into the University of Washington.
Majored in English literature.
(laughs)
- And you've gone on to become an educator.
So I would love to hear about that, too.
I mean, 'cause that's a pretty dramatic transformation.
What would you say to a young person,
I'm sure you've run into people like this
a ton in your teaching work,
but what do you say to a young person
who's maybe struggling with the same kind
of things you struggled with,
focus, attention, channeling their energy.
How do you give them advice?
- I usually say 'You got to work your ass off.'
You really do.
It's a lot of work, it's never gonna be easy.
You know, and you just have to accept that
and get a kick out of who you are.
- I'd love to keep seeing the things that you're sharing.
What's another thing you'd love to-
- I went to Bonneville Raceway, you know,
which is at the edge of the Bonneville Salt Steppe Flats.
You know, I knew the 20 miles to there,
the Chinese had finished
their section of the railroad.
And they met at Promontory Point.
And there was a Golden Spike Ceremony.
You know, and I just said, "You know, this is great."
Now here I'm a Chinese guy,
you know, racing here at Bonneville.
And sure enough, I won that one.
This is an interesting story, because
I'm gonna show you two pictures.
One of the things that everybody seems
to recognize is this picture.
This is the completion of the Golden Spike.
And you'll notice that there's no Chinese in the picture.
Even though half of the railroad
the central Pacific was built by the Chinese,
about 14,000 of them.
But they were not here.
My parents, for the 100-year anniversary
of the Golden Spike,
they went there to represent
the Chinese community of America.
And their friend Phil Troy was there
to present a plaque and give a speech.
You know, saying for a hundred years,
we were finally recognizing the Chinese had done something.
At the last minute, they canceled him.
They said, we're not gonna have you speak.
John Wayne is here.
So we're gonna have him speak.
You know.
- Good representative of the Chinese community there.
- So they had to go back, you know, very, very disappointed.
You know, that they were not recognized.
Last year, at the 150th anniversary
of the Golden Spike,
my sister, Connie Young Yu,
was asked to speak there.
And she represented.
This picture was in the New York Times.
So, there's a big difference here between
the picture that was done 150 years ago.
And we retook the pictures.
And these are all descendants of people
that worked on the railroad.
These are all descendants of railroad... and my mother,
I'm a direct descendant.
- Wow, can you tell me a little bit about building,
is that your newest car?
- Well, okay.
I built this car
to go around the United States and do Route 66.
And we ran, my wife and I love it.
We went across the United States in this car
built in 1973 from the Road Runner.
And we ran out of places to go in the United States.
So we said, 'Why not go to Europe?'
We went to Europe.
And the reason I went to Europe is because
the largest car show in the world is in Europe.
That's part of it.
- It's a lot of cars.
(laughs)
- It's over 20,000 cars and over 100,000 people go to it,
and it's in Sweden.
- How does your wife feel about all of this?
So she's been along,
- She really wanted to go.
- Oh good.
So yeah, I would love to,
And we've been talking a lot about cars,
but I would love to see some cars.
- Sure.
- And I'm gonna ask a lot of foolish questions.
'Cause I know very little about cars, really.
I don't know my, my Chevy from my
I don't even, can't even think of, from my Chrysler.
So yeah. I would love to see
what you've got in your garage though.
And hear about it.
- Okay, first I'll show you where my race car is now.
The car that you see behind me,
directly behind me, is the car that I took to Europe,
the one that I built.
And that's the Plymouth Road Runner.
And let me show you a few things about it.
This is a very unique car.
It took me longer to build this car
than any race car I've ever built.
And I've built over five race cars.
Okay, so I'm going to flip it over here
and you can take a look at it.
- What does it mean to build a car?
What do you start with?
- [Young] Everything on this car is customized.
You know, and it's made for a particular reason.
If you can, if you notice here,
there's two ignition boxes.
There's two coils.
- I'm gonna trust you on that.
- [Young] I have two fuel systems.
I have two cooling systems.
- What?
- [Young] I have two electrical systems.
- How does that all fit the normal space of, like,
shouldn't, I feel like all the room
is taken up by one system?
How is there space to have two of everything?
- [Young] You just make it work.
- Wow.
- I'm talking about bringing a car across country,
you know, and to other countries.
That's almost 40 years old.
You know, and so, I had to go through my head,
every possible thing that could break down.
You know, so I just went through,
and I visualize these horrible places
where I could possibly be on the side of the road,
rainstorm, hail going down.
I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with the car.
So, every time I thought of that,
I did something to the car
that would anticipate the problem.
So I kinda patterned it after an airplane.
You know, the small, you know,
single-engine airplanes,
everything's redundant.
You know, so you can't have your motor
go on a single-engine airplane.
You know, you can't have the ignition system,
so you have to have everything double.
I did the same.
- Wow, why don't they just build all cars like this?
I want a car with two of everything.
So that when it breaks I just flip the switch
to the other side.
You must really love working on cars.
It must be really fun to sort of have these cars.
I can just talking to you,
I can hear the excitement and the joy you got
and even kind of figuring this problem out.
- Yes.
(laughing)
It was a real challenge.
You know, and there'd be times on one section
in one part of the car
that I'd be there for weeks, thinking it.
You know, and,
but I really enjoy it. Yes, you're right.
- Yeah, what a nice thing to get to spend your time doing.
That's awesome.
Well, thank you so much for showing us
all of these incredible things
and telling us about your life.
It's been great to have you.
- Thank you so much.
It's really been fun, you know,
and talk about getting me animated in this,
in this period of time.
And our new world here.
- Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day.
- Thank you very much.
- Thanks for watching Show and Tell.
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