The Billy Flynn Story

                                                             The Billy Flynn Story

                                                                           1956

                                A true story about My friend Billy who became a drag racing legend

                                                       Written 2010 Re-written 08/01/2015

                                                                     Howard Yasgar

     Who ever would have thought back in 1956 that my friend Billy, a seventeen year old kid with messy blond hair and buck teeth, would become a legend?

     But that’s exactly what happened, It appears that after getting out of the service, Billy Flynn became the head driver for the Chrysler Corporation’s experimental car and drag racing team.

     By 1963 I had already moved to Florida, so I didn’t  know what Bill was doing, and I had no Idea of his success.

     Once I learned what Billy had accomplished, it was too late for me to contact him, it was 2004 and Billy had passed away. I never had the opportunity to see Billy in action with his car the “Yankee Peddler”.

     Although I couldn’t shake his hand and congratulate him, I knew that my interaction with Billy in 1956  was instrumental in his career, and in a way that makes me feel good.  Billy didn’t know it but he was instrumental in my career as well. 

     For the people that knew Billy, I hope they find the following story interesting.

     For me, it all started in 1955, when I was 16 years old, and I had just gotten my driver’s license.

     I had purchased a really neat, dark green 1940 Ford convertible.

     One of the first things I did was drive down to Henrys Auto Parts and buy and install a Hollywood muffler.

     1955 it was the beginning of the Hot Rod era, and with that Hollywood muffler on my car, I felt as though I had a hot rod.

     Kids were starting to buy up the older Fords and modifying them, drag strips were becoming popular. The magazine racks were loaded with do it yourself custom car magazines.

     If you had money, Hot rod and custom car shops were opening up.

     A whole new vocabulary came into existence, people talked about chopping and channeling cars,

Installing blowers, they talked about candy apple paint, and flame jobs.

     These were words we had never heard before but were now part of the everyday vocabulary.

     By my buying  that 1940 Ford convertible, I thought it put me right on the cutting edge of hot rod history.

     My 1940 Ford was certainly no hotrod, but I thought it was, and I heard that there was a New Haven hot rod club called the “Road Barons”, I wanted to join them.

     I don’t think the Road Barons were very  happy about me joining up, but I did.

     I attended my first club meeting, and didn’t know a soul, so I took a back seat in the meeting room.

     I was in the back row when I noticed another fellow sitting by himself.

     He was also sitting in the back row, slouched down, his foot was on the chair in front of him, and he looked bored.

     The fellow had sandy blond hair that was uncombed and buck teeth, and he was wearing a black motorcycle jacket.

     My first thought was that I should stay away from him, he looked like trouble.

     After a while I reconsidered and when the car club took a break, I went over and sat next to him and introduced myself.

     He said his name was Billy Flynn, and he lived on Forbes Avenue in New Haven.

     We talked for a while and Billy said he was bored with the car club meetings, he aid they didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.

     I asked Billy what he did for a living and he said he worked for a car agency and he specialized in building engines.

     That caught me by surprise, because at the time I was just thinking about rebuilding the engine in my 1940 Ford.

     I had driven my 40 ford as fast a it would go in second gear until I could hear the rod bearings knocking, so I knew it needed a rebuilding, but I didn’t have the money to have someone do it, or knowledge to do it myself.    

     I attended several more Hot Rod Club meetings and always found myself sitting in the back with Billy, and I started asking him questions about rebuilding my engine.

     Eventually, Billy said, “You pull that engine out and I can teach you how to rebuild it”.

     That evening I discussed it with my father and he said he would help me build an “A Frame” in the yard to pull the engine out. I could rebuild the engine inside our garage.

     About a month prior to my meeting Billy, I had the opportunity to buy another 1940 black Ford coupe which also had a burned out V8 engine in it.

     I had paid fifty dollars for it, it was a beautiful little Black car and I had all the intentions of fixing it up some day, but In the mean time I parked it in my yard.

     I remember making that first telephone call to Billy telling him I had the engine out.       

     When Billy came over to my house, first thing was, he spotted that black 1940 Ford coupe in my

yard and went right over to look at it.

     I told Billy all about my intentions of fixing it up, he said, “Just looking”.

     Over the next several weeks Billy came over to my house in the evenings and instructed me on how to take the engine apart, and how to clean and inspect the parts.

     He went over every detail with me, then he showed me how to properly how to hone the cylinders and how to put new rings on the pistons, and how to measure the crankshaft, and how to install new crankshaft and connecting rod bearings .

     Billy had advised me to buy adjustable valve lifters to replace the original valve lifters that were in the engine. I ordered them from a hot rod parts magazine.

     After waiting two weeks, the new lifers came in the mail, I went to install them and they wouldn’t fit in the engine.

     I panicked, I just knew they had sent me the wrong parts, and after I had  waited  so long, so I ran up stairs and called Billy.

     In a panic I called Billy, and I explained the problem to him.

     Billy said, “Put the new lifters in your refrigerator freezer, and wait until tomorrow to try them”,

I did what he said, and the lifters had shrunk and fit perfectly into the engine.

     Billy knew all these tricks of the trade, and he was happy to teach me.

     By the time the engine was completed, Billy and I had become really good friends, he had come to my house in the evenings and met my family and I had gone several times to his house on Forbes Avenue.

     I noticed that every time Billy came over to my house, he till went over and looked at my black 1940 Ford coupe.

     Finally, I knew it was coming,  Billy asked me to sell it to him.

     He said he was building a new hot Ford flat head racing engine and that 1940 Ford would be the perfect car for it.

     I didn’t want to sell it, but it was Billy, and I owed him, so I relented and I sold it to him.

     That was back in 1957, and after I sold him the car I didn’t hear another word from Billy for several months.    

     One day, I picked up the New Haven Register, and there was a big picture right on the front page. It was my 1940 Ford coupe, and it was wrapped around a tree on State Street in New Haven.

     Sitting in the middle of  the street was Billy’s souped up V8 engine.

     The engine was just sitting there, it had Edelbrock finned aluminum heads on it and 3 carburetors.

     It was just sitting there, like some one  had carefully removed it from the car.

     That car crash had been so violent that it ripped the engine right out of the car and set it in the middle of State Street.

     The article said that the accident occurred on a Saturday afternoon and the driver Billy Flynn was taken to grace New Haven Hospital, with injuries, but he was expected to survive.

     I cut the article out of the paper to save it.   

     I was too nervous to call Billy, so I waited about two weeks before I called him at his home. I was afraid of what his parents would say, I didn’t want to hear it.

     But I was surprised when Billy answered the phone.

     I said holy shit Billy, what the hell happened.

     Billy said, “I had just finished building an installing new really fast racing engine in your 1940 coupe, and I invited a friend named Vernon Carlson to come with me to make a test run.

     “We were going down State street wide open at about 100 miles an hour, and it started raining.

     “The next thing I know this nut Vernon, turns and yanks out the ignition key, and he throws it out the window”.

     “Billy said, as you know, when you remove the ignition key the steering locks up, so here we were going 100 miles per hour in the rain and I can’t steer the car”.   

     “All I could see was a big curve coming up, and then all I remember was I was standing on the brake pedal and hitting the tree sideways at about ninety miles an hour”,

     Billy said, “I remember waking up in hospital”.

     Billy said that no one ever asked him if there was any one else in the car with him and he never mentioned it.

     He said he was told many hours later that when the tow truck came to pick up the engine and  smashed car, they saw his spare tire up a hill on the porch of a house.

     When they went to retrieve the tire they found this guy Vernon laying in the bushes and he was still alive.

     I asked Billy if the Vernon was still alive? Billy told me he didn’t know and he didn’t care if he never saw the guy again.     

     I asked Billy, what was up next, and he said, he was going to enlist in the Navy.

     He was afraid that charges that might be filed against him because of the accident.

     After that I lost contact with Billy, and I had no way of knowing that he would become a celebrity, driving for Chrysler Corporation.

     It wasn't until 2007 when I met some folks that had known Billy, they said he had an automotive shop in West Haven Connecticut, and he had died of cancer.

     After that I Googled Billy Flynn, on the Internet, and I read that he was a paratrooper, so I guess he went into the Army and not the Navy.

     Google had all the stories about Billy’s car the “Yankee Peddler”. There was also a live interview with Billy and I saw his hair was combed neatly and the buck teeth were gone.

     In the interview, Billy said that he and Chrysler had experimented with lengthening and shortening the wheel base on the Yankee Trader trying to change the cars center of gravity.

     He said that’s what started the “Funny Car” craze in drag racing.   

     I kept that picture of Billy’s wreck for a long time.

     Billy had taught me how to rebuild engines and from that I went on to learn to rebuild other automotive parts.

     Eventually I made a career rebuilding automotive parts.

     Thank you Billy Flynn.