Keith makes hot rod hall

Local racer recognized for achievements on the drag strip
 
An Ash Grove native is now a car racing legend. Kim Keith was inducted into the Southwest Missouri Drag Racers Hall of Fame on Saturday, Nov. 20. He has been drag racing for over 50 years.

Racing and cars were “the thing” back in the ‘60s
Keith said he was influenced to go into drag racing, in part, by the era he grew up in.
“Back in the 60s, cars and muscle cars, that was the thing,” he said. “Most men, they loved tinkering with the cars and they were built back in the days where if you had just a little bit of mechanical ability or sense you could work on your own cars and rebuild them and do whatever you wanted, and so, that’s what a lot of guys did.”

First racing event made major impression
What cemented his decision to become involved in drag racing, however, was the time he attended his first racing event at the now defunct Springfield Ozark Raceway when he was about 11. His father, an aviator, was a member of a parachute club, and they were hired to do a jump on the race track’s opening day. As part of the deal, Keith and his family were invited to attend the event for free.
“So, my dad flew the guys down to jump out,” he said, “and my uncle loaded up my sisters and my mom and we went to our first official sanctioned drag race that day and I just, I just loved it. I just was so impressed by the sounds and the sights and the smells. Just everything about the race track, I enjoyed.”
Five years later, Keith would enter his first drag race at the age of 16.
“A good friend of mine, Tom Tipton, he was also interested in cars and engines and stuff, so we decided to fix up my old ‘56 Chevy pickup, we called it souping it up back then,” Keith said. “We changed the camshaft and intake in the carburetor and things, and picked it up a little bit. And we headed to Springfield Ozark Dragway, along with my future wife, whose name was Becky Buckley at that time.”

First race ended in a victory
Keith entered his Chevy pickup into a race called Mr. Stock Eliminator.
“Lo and behold, we won that class first time out,” he said, “and I still remember how much fun that was. You would have thought we won some U.S. national drag race. I mean it was so much fun, and I still remember putting that trophy in the dash of that truck and circling Steak ‘n Shake about five times and going to Shakey's Pizza for a celebration supper.”
From there, Keith said, his involvement in drag racing just grew.
“It was a lot of fun, and … I was always interested in the mechanical end of the engines and working on them and building them,” he said. “That's kind of what got me interested, and we just did pretty good at it, so we just kept getting faster and faster cars.”

More than just drag racing
Keith didn’t limit himself to just drag racing.
“I got involved in circle track racing also,” he said. “Some years we’d run a circle track, kind of concentrate on that, but we’ve always tried to run one or two straight track races a year, just because you know, but we've gotten involved with stock car racing some, too, and so that's taken up quite a bit of our time, and we’ve had pretty good luck doing that also.”

Keith raced several cars over the years
During his years in drag racing, Keith has raced quite a few hot rods. Besides his old ’56 Chevy pickup, he has also raced in a 1969 Camaro Z-28 and a ’56 Chevrolet Corvette that he said “was a cool car” but also a source of major vexation for him.
“I'm not superstitious, but that car could have almost made me that way,” he said. “I just could not get that thing to the Winner's Circle.”
Other cars have included another ’69 Camaro, a Vega he built and a ’57 Chevy that he said he used “for a season.” However, he has one car that he has used for almost four decades, now, and in which he continues to win races.
“I bought this ’66 Chevy II Nova that I've raced for … like 40 years,” he said. “It's a neat car, (and) it was a real low-mileage car that was made into a race car … when it was just a few years old. It only has 17,000 miles on the odometer, so it's been a race car pretty well all of its life.”
While he doesn’t race as much as he used to, Keith is still actively involved in drag racing, and he has a specific type of car that he prefers to use.
“I like running stick shift cars,” he said. “A lot of people have changed over to automatic; they've got them working really well, but I'm an old stick shift guy that likes to rev up real high and pop the clutch in and do some, you know, feel the power of that car lifting the front end off the ground taking off.”

Keith “wouldn’t change a thing” about his drag racing years
While drag racing over the years has taken a toll on him physically, Keith said he has no regrets.
“About all the guys that worked on cars and stuff, they’ve all got carpal tunnel because they wore their hands out,” he said. “One of the deals we all laugh about is (that) we all have had to do all that stuff; we just wore our bodies out from work all day, working hard on whatever business we were doing, then we would come home at night and work …  three or four or five hours on our cars just because that's what we loved to do. So, we just wore ourselves out, (but) I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t care if I am worn out; I’ve had a wonderful time doing it.”