SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!

Over all the years I was growing up in Wisconsin, their AM radio ads never changed, not even a little: frenetic, loud, with a stream of information coming so fast you could sometimes only pick out "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! GREAT LAKES DRAGAWAY UNION GROVE WISCONSIN!" If you also grew up in Southeastern Wisconsin or Northern Illinois, you know these ads for the local drag strip, too. There was no escaping them. To this very day, sometimes I will just randomly think or say "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! UNION GROVE WISCONSIN!" for no reason at all. "Big Daddy Don Garlits" and "Shirley Cha Cha Muldowny" are also in my repertoire.  I like that.

I never went to Great Lakes Dragaway then, because everyone said it was so loud it would blow your ears out, and even though my dad was way into cars, he wasn't into that kind -- too lowbrow from him, bah. My secret lust for late-'60s muscle cars was fully realized in the mid-'80s when we purchased what appeared to be an immaculate white 1968 Pontiac Firebird. This was the world's stupidest vehicle to own while living in the De Paul area of Chicago. It was fartingly loud, and every single time you even touched the accelerator a teeny bit, your head would whip back from the power, and there were no headrests, of course. Now place that in crushing urban stop-and-go traffic, and you have a rather comical scene. YOINK stop YOINK stop YOINK stop. The poor car wanted to run wild and free, and could not. It was unhappy, and got sick often. The Firebird's mortal event occurred going north on I-94 one afternoon: just as it was opened up past 70 MPH, the entire transmission dropped out of the car onto the road. Thankfully, no one was hurt. My sympathetic dad sent down a flatbed truck to bring the poor beast up to Wisconsin, where it was repaired and sold forthwith. The next car was a brand-new white Toyota Camry wagon which seemed like a miracle of stability. But it sure wasn't as fun.

So for you folks who recall, gearheads, nostalgia fans, aircheck groupies, or weirdos, here's a little mashup vid made from old found YouTube footage from Great Lakes Dragaway, a GLD unedited radio spot aired on WOKY in Milwaukee, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers play it out.