Speeding around Kansas: Paul Flynn recounts drag racing career

Apr. 10—People can see the four-stall garage if they're driving east on Old Highway 40. It is the northwest-most building among the decrepit limestone structures that used to be the home of Garden Place Nursery. The property is right next to the highway about a quarter mile east of Abilene. The garage's roof is rusted with a few panels missing. Inside and in front are an assortment of forgotten items. An abandoned skid steer. Some toy monster trucks. Several beams of wood. Trash and some rusted metal frames. At some point a fire spawned, as burnt items and grass lay strewn in an oval on the right side in front of the garage.

Sixty-six years ago, Paul Flynn stood perpendicular to the garage, posing for a photo. He stood behind his friend Wade Phillips, who sat in a drag racing roadster. The vehicle was red and had painted in silver lettering several messages. "A/R" read toward the bottom, signifying the vehicle's A-modified class.

First experiences

Flynn is a through-and-through Abilene native. He grew up, went to school and lived for most of his life here. He first started racing on dirt roads and pastures around Abilene after returning from serving in the U.S. Navy. Through a friend of a friend, Flynn entered a race at a track in Herington. He raced with a model A roadster he traded for with a motorcycle.

"I upset (the roadster)," he said. "Nothing but a seatbelt, just a regular GI belt. Threw me out of the car. When I woke up, I was in a hospital over in Herington. Not in a hospital, but in a waiting room ... My brother put me in his car and brought me home. I had just been semi-conscious apparently, banged my head. We didn't have a helmet or anything."

After that incident, another local racer, Jerry Hafner, asked Flynn to be his mechanic. Hafner raced a 1935 Ford. While he was more a gardener than a mechanic, he learned nevertheless.

Another of his first races was at Cejay Stadium that used to stand in Wichita. The stadium was torn down in 1957, and baseball fields are there now.

Wade Phillips used to drag race on his own, racing a run-down car. In 1955, he recruited Flynn as his driver. Their first race together was at a strip southwest of Salina. Phillips was also an Abilene local. His dad used to own a gas station where the Kwik Shop at the intersection of NW 14th Street and Buckeye Avenue is currently at.

The first NHRA race

One of Flynn's proudest accomplishments is being one of the competitors to trophy at the first National Hot Rod Association drag race, in Great Bend in 1955. Competitors from as far out as California came to compete. With Flynn's mechanical abilities and Phillip's driving skills, the two Abilene natives won trophies for top speed and top miles per hour in the B-modified roadster class.

"We had to pay extra to get into the pits, but we thought it was worth that," Flynn said. "So that we could go in there and see some of the good cars."

His first two trophies are still in Dickinson County. One is at the Kansas Auto Racing Museum. The second is with one of Flynn's sons.

"Wade was so open all the time and enjoyed people," Flynn said. "He would take that big trophy to show to the civic clubs around town. Nobody would believe that I had been a race car builder or driver. I still remember that."

Back at home

For his full-time job, Flynn helped his father with the family business, Garden Place Nursery. Healso ran Paul's Speed Shop as his own small endeavor. In the day, he worked with plants, and at night he'd work on his roadster in the stall, sometimes with friends.

"Originally, before my father got the front built for display for Garden Place Nursery, we put fertilizer and stuff back in those stalls, and eventually as he took it out and sold it," Flynn said. "I had several old cars back there in those stalls."

Notable Races

After their first NHRA official drag race, Flynn and Phillips decided they liked drag racing, and dedicated their weekends toward the sport. Moving forward though, they were no longer new faces.

"One day we went down north of Tulsa (Oklahoma) to a little drag strip we heard about down there," Flynn said. "When we got over to the pits, these guys came over, and they said, 'oh, that's the same car that beat us at Great Bend.' So they wanted to race us again, but they didn't want to wait until eliminations that day. They said, 'come over and we'll race you now.' I said, 'oh no, let's wait.' 'No,' they said, 'we'll race you now.' So we did, and we beat them again because they were complaining that something had been wrong with their motor or something."

Despite their success at the NHRA race, they did not like racing in the B-modified class. In the winter of 1955, the two built a new, A-modified roadster. They raced with the roadster for the rest of their drag races.

Another race took them out to Kansas City. They met a guy with a brand new roadster with a Chrysler engine. Flynn's car also had a Chrysler engine. Later that day, they won against the new roadster.

"Wade had been so outgoing, he went and visited with that guy about his car and told him about ours and had fun doing that," he said.

In future NHRA races Flynn participated in, Flynn said the NHRA appointed him and a friend in Salina onto the tech crew to inspect cars before they raced.

In a race in Salina a week before the NHRA national championship in 1956, Flynn said the roadster's pressure plate against the clutch exploded as they tested it. Why it exploded, they never found out. The explosion took out the back end of the Chrysler engine. After that incident, Phillips and Flynn increased the thickness of the driver's protective shield from one-eighth inch to one-quarter inch.

"All these pieces because of that shield dribbled out on the ground," he said. "We picked them all up carefully, took them into a machine shop in Abilene to see if a guy could weld it back together. He did, that same week... I couldn't believe it."

Unfortunately, because of his responsibility of tech crew, Flynn didn't have time to put the pressure plate back in. So while he stayed up late arguing with racers about rules and regulations, one of Flynn's brothers and a friend, Lowel Griffis, installed the pressure plate and successfully tested the car. They won a new Pontiac engine that year. Flynn and his friends eventually put the engine in a 1940 Ford Coupe, which he wanted to be a show car.

Flynn said he and Phillips never won any money. They just received trophies, products and certificates to prove they won.

The mechanic and his drivers

Flynn raced in four NHRA championships, from 1955 to 1958. Wade Phillips raced Flynn's car for three of those years. In 1958, he to joined the Army. Brian Phillips, Wade's brother, said Wade was stationed on the East Coast near Boston, Massachusetts, as a supply clerk. Wade Phillips died in 1991 at the age of 56.

Two other people raced for Flynn: Lowel Griffis and Paul Nutdrive. Griffis drove for Flynn only in 1958 after Wade Phillips went into the military.

Parting ways

When Flynn decided to end his racing career, he placed an ad in Hot Rod Magazine for his roadster. A couple men from Alabama purchased it. The two seemed mostly interested in the Chrysler engine, but Flynn never found out why or what they were going to do with the motor. Flynn never saw the roadster or the two men again.

"My father was getting older too," he said. I kind of managed (Garden Place Nursery) for him."

Nowadays, Flynn lives with family at his home west of Abilene. His hobbies include watching Kansas State University basketball and birds outside his front window that come to a bird feeder and bird bath.

This story is part one of a two part series about Paul Flynn's memories of drag racing in Kansas.