Miss Chicken almost missed the Ival Cooper Memorial at SCMP

Miss Chicken was invited to the 2006 Ival Cooper Memorial Race at the Simpson County Motorsports Park. We almost missed it!! The day of the race, we cleaned the car and managed to get the distributor wet. We could not get the car to crank at all. We cleaned the distributor 3 times and replaced the plugs 2 times and she would not fire. About 2pm we called Mr. Barney Barefield (Owner of SCMP) and informed him of our problems and that we would not be able to attend. About 3PM I received a call from the Cooper Family requesting that we bring the car anyway. What could I say !! We put the car back together and to our surprise she fired right up. I can still hear Dad yelling "Don't touch nothing" !! We loaded her on the trailer and off we went. It came time for the National Anthem and once again she cranked and we made 2 laps around the track with the flag. At intermission they let us take the track again for 5 hot laps. On the 4th Lap she started missing and backfiring so we brought her to the pits and loaded her up. We got home about 1:30am Sunday morning. We pushed it off the trailer to keep from waking up the neighbors. Sunday afternoon we tried to crank it to put it back in the shop and she would not start. I think (hope) we have a cracked distributor cap.

We would like to say "THANK YOU" to the Ival Cooper Family for making that phone call. We had given up on ever getting the car to crank. That call was the motivation we needed to give it one more try.

Also a big "THANK YOU" goes to Barney Barefield and all his staff at SCMP. They were very professional and run a top-notch track. They had a lot of cars and they kept things moving extremely well. Super Job !!