Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder: Chapter 4 – North to Ohio
About This Series
This article is part of an ongoing monthly series on Dragbike.com featuring select chapters from Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder, the 2012 biography by Senior Editor Tom McCarthy. Released throughout 2026 to honor the 30th anniversary of Elmer Trett’s passing, this series chronicles the life, legacy, and impact of one of the most influential figures in motorcycle drag racing history. Each chapter explores Trett’s journey from humble beginnings to global Top Fuel dominance, while also preserving the deeper history of the sport and the pioneers who shaped it. New chapters are published monthly exclusively on Dragbike.com.
Before reading this article, read the previous article posts:
- Series Intro
- Book Intro
- Chapter 1 – Humble Beginnings
- Chapter 2 – The Origins of Mountain Magic
- Chapter 3 – The Teen Years
Chapter 4 – North to Ohio
The August announcement by Elmer to his parents that he would not return to school was his entry to manhood. By doing this, he took control of his life and became the master of his own destiny. While his parents were not happy about his decision, Elmer was quite pleased that he now had charge of his life, and, like his eight brothers and sisters before him, he would now venture off to make his own way. No more schoolbooks, no more being told what to do every waking minute of every day. Soon, he would call all his own shots.
Before that could happen, Elmer would first have to celebrate his 17th birthday so he could legally be of working age to work wherever he wanted. Between August of 1959 and March of 1960, the young Elmer had time to serve around the Trett Residence in preparation for his move north to Ohio: there was always a method to Elmer’s madness. There was precious little he ever did in a frivolous manor.
Before going north to Ohio, Elmer and his favorite partner in crime, Orla Lee Smith, or O.L., as he was sometimes affectionately known, had things to do. O.L. was in fact, Elmer’s nephew, but more importantly, he was a long time best friend when the boys were growing up. Wherever one could be found, the other was not far away.
As the young boys became young men together, the ten years between the ages of six to sixteen cemented their bond for life. They discovered much of life together, and it was only fitting they launched into adulthood together. They planned and schemed for some time to escape Kentucky by heading north to Ohio.
Orla’s father lived in Ohio, so with that in mind, they knew they had a place to stay while they began to make their way through life. While there was some work to be had in Kentucky, there was a lot more work and commerce in Ohio. Going one state north also added a new dimension to the equation they’d never really experienced before: freedom, total freedom.
Once the boys were out on the road, ‘boys will be boys’ became the rule of the day – every day. There was mischief and adventure afoot for the teens about to learn life’s lessons the hard way. Like all teenagers, they were sure they had it all figured out. Life beckoned these Kentuckians, and soon, they were on the move.
In the months from August of 1959 to March of 1960, when Elmer turned seventeen, Elmer spent much of the fall doing chores around the home, wrapping up projects that needed completion to earn travel money, and helping out with whatever needed fixing before he hit the road.
He also spent time trying to settle things with his Momma.
Allie knew this was it for her child-rearing years, and tired as she was after raising nine children, she was never too tired to give love and advice to her babies. She tried with all her heart to talk Elmer out of going to Ohio. “You really need to finish school Elmer,” she told him repeatedly, “Once you’re out of school you can go anywhere you want and get a better job. Ohio will still be there, why rush off?”
Elmer could only look his mom in the eye and, gently as he could, tell her, “Momma, it’s time. I gotta go. I’ll be back from time to time, it’s not that far away, it’s not like your never gonna see me again.” Then those big arms and of Elmer’s would wrap around his mother’s shoulders and she would nod to his wishes. She knew there was no changing his mind. Once a Trett decided something was to happen, that was it. Stubborn and Trett are spelled differently but they mean the same thing.
Allie was quite heartbroken at the departure of her baby. She knew it was the way of the world. Children grow up and move on. Eight children before Elmer did exactly that, but this was different; this was her baby. Elmer was the last child she would ever bear, the last one to leave the nest. “Empty nesting” was not even a term to consider in the nineteen-fifties, there was no manual to help women cope. There was the Bible, and therein, was solace for Allie.
Elmer and O.L. were far from weeping in their preparations for departure. They were headed for adventure and, most of all, freedom. Their first true taste of freedom. Soon all decisions would be theirs; when they went to bed, if they went to bed, when to go to work – or not. Life ahead to them was apple pie, all you could eat. Or so they thought.
As winter wound down in March of 1960, Elmer and Orla Lee made ready for Elmer’s birthday in preparation for their escape. Letters and phone calls were made to Ohio to Orla’s dad’s house to verify they had a place to stay while they got a foothold in Ohio. It would be a while before they had a place of their own, with jobs and transportation to count on. Their joint venture was bold, to say the least, but they were unafraid.
The Ohio years for Elmer became the cauldron of development before his transformation into the world’s fastest man on two wheels. For the next decade, Elmer became his own person. For those ten years, Elmer attended a new learning institution for the completion of his adolescent education: The School of Hard Knocks.
There was a plethora of jobs that came and went during his decade of maturation; laborer, kitchen help, bar back, bouncer, gas station attendant, truck driver, mechanic – the latter was the most frequent, and most relevant. While Elmer’s dad had a college education in engineering, Elmer’s education as a general repair mechanic gave him an advanced understanding of all things mechanical.
Cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, even bicycles came into the hands of this journeyman repairman. The diverse background of repairing everything from farm implements to speed boats gave Elmer the advanced education he sought; not just about how things worked, but how to make them work better and go faster. Elmer liked it faster.
While his first ventures into speed began on the back roads of Kentucky, his real education in speed came more into focus in Ohio. There, barroom wagers and gas station bragging rights were the norm for speed demons in the nineteen-sixty’s era.
Street racing to settle bets was a given during this time frame. In Elmer’s early twenties, he knew every straightaway and back road escape route north of Cincinnati. It made no difference to Elmer if a race involved cars or motorcycles; if he could lure someone into a bet, it was on. He liked to go fast and winning extra cash in the process just sweetened the pot.
In the late 1960’s, Elmer owned a white 1966 Chevelle with the SS396 big-block Chevy motor, which was widely popular at the time. It’s no wonder he took a liking to the brutish Chevrolet engine; its design was really a V-8 version of his beloved Harley Davidson motorcycles. With Elmer’s love and knowledge of Harley engines, his building an SS396 motor for a drag car was like a duck taking to water. It was a natural progression of high performance.
The rules for making a Chevy go fast are the exact same mechanical requirements that make a gasoline-powered Harley Davidson go fast; seal up the combustion chamber tight as possible with good ring seal and valve seating, up the compression ratio, beware of rod-stretch, clearance the valves, don’t spin the motor too fast with RPMs. This was high-performance racing engine basics 101; “There’s no substitute for cubic inches” was the knuckle-dragging mentality that dominated the thinking of the day.
He soon learned that atomization and fuel mixtures greatly influenced performance and ignition timing. Soon, Elmer was building motors of all kinds that could either win a bet from the gas station parking lot, or bring better gas mileage to his car.
Buying his 1966 Chevelle and beefing up the performance of the motor required not only a lot of work for Elmer, but good employment to accompany his new interest. Working at various gas stations gave him not only steady income, but a place to work on his street/strip car after hours. He didn’t know it at the time, but his efforts now were the blueprint for his lifestyle for all his remaining days: create a high-performance machine, beat people into submission with it, sell it and his skills, then make a bigger, faster machine. Repeat as necessary.
It’s important to note that motorcycle drag racing sanctions were not well-formed in the mid-sixties, but organized car racing and automobile clubs were very popular in this era of American Hot Rodding. The NHRA, or National Hot Rod Association, was just turning age ten around this time and drag strips were just starting to come into vogue around the mid nineteen-sixties.
The closest drag strip to Elmer’s stomping grounds in Ohio was not actually in Ohio, but just over the state line in Kentucky. Thorn Hill Dragway in Morning View, Kentucky, is near Kenton, Kentucky. The track was a one-eighth-mile drag strip facility with Spartan-like features. The track had a traditional “Christmas tree” to start a race with, but after the finish line, you were on your own in the shutdown area. If you ran out of track, what you saw was what you got.
It was rumored in the early days of drag racing that the straightaway, the actual drag strip, was a landing strip for moonshiners during the prohibition era. Whether or not this is more urban legend than fact remains unclear, but what is clear is some of Elmer’s earliest days of drag racing began at Thorn Hill Dragway.
The track actually opened in 1953, and the one-eighth mile racing surface was a lot safer than any of the back roads, no matter how flat they were. In addition to the Christmas tree to start races, Thorn Hill Dragway had an ambulance on call as well. No one really cared if they had to pick corn from their teeth if they crashed, as long as the driver and car could be saved. The facility was located less than ten miles from Cincinnati, not far off of I-75, just over the Ohio state line into Kentucky.
Elmer’s interests in drag racing at this time were as much recreational based as they were capitalistic. Bet your friends and fellow racers who is fastest, but most of all, rebuild their equipment after they blow it up, then charge for the services. Making money was at the root of his recreations. Elmer was nobody’s fool.
Elmer always had one eye on performance with the other on making money. He knew the two were joined at the hip, but in the beginning, having money to pay bills was paramount to who was fastest on any given day. This equation would reverse itself one day, but in 1968, getting paid was more important. Elmer did what he had to do to pay the bills, like driving trucks for a living.
It was during one of his dump truck driving forays he unfortunately encountered Nero the dog. This fateful encounter would play a significant role in his future and that of his protégé years later. To this very day, Nero is still talked about.
Elmer was passing through a small town one day when a local dog that loved to chase moving vehicles attacked Elmer’s truck. Elmer had a full load of dirt in the machine and poor brakes. That combined to hinder his stopping abilities when he needed it most. The result was, when Nero got to close to the tires, Elmer could not stop in time to save the dog-gone-dog. Results: dog gone. Elmer had a load to deliver and he drove on that day.
Soon thereafter, Elmer stopped in that town when he needed gas one day. As he walked into a gas station one hot, sweaty, afternoon, he stepped to the counter to pay for his truck’s gasoline.
When he did, a local patron pointed his finger, “That’s him.”
The woman behind the counter looked at Elmer then back again at the old man by the beer filled ice chest. She spoke to the old townie, “You sure?”
Elmer stopped cold in his tracks, looking at them both. “What?”
The old man spoke first. “That’s him! That’s the guy that killed Nero.”
Elmer had a lump in his throat. “What are you talking about, I ain’t killed no one?”
The stone-faced woman spoke next. “The dog. The town dog, Nero. No one owned him, but we all fed him and that was our town dog. You’re the guy who ran him over last week. Ain’t that right?”
Elmer stammered a bit. “Ma’am, I don’t mean no disrespect, but that dog got under my wheels and with a couple of tons of dirt in my truck, there’s no way I can stop that quickly. I’m sorry.”
“That’s him, I told ya. He’s the one killed Nero,” spouted off the triumphant townie with a disgusted look on his weathered face.
Elmer just shook his head. “Sorry about that,” and he moved on, but never forgot about Nero, who got too close to his power. It was a lesson he’d teach later in life to a dear friend who also got too close to Elmer’s power.
The Ohio years for Elmer were a decade where he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. In 1960, he was a seventeen-year-old kid. Ten years later, he was a twenty-seven-year-old young man, twice married. As Elmer was getting on with his life, one thing remained a constant while everything else was evolving around him; where Elmer went, his motorcycles went with him.
In 1969, when Elmer married Jacqueline Schooley, his life was on a solid path that revolved entirely around daily motorcycling. Jackie recalled the first day she met Elmer. “You couldn’t love Elmer and not love motorcycles; that’s all he had for transportation at the time.” Elmer, Jackie, and her daughter, Gina, created a life that evolved around motorcycles beginning in 1969.
While Elmer’s work ethic kept him busy at whatever he had to do to pay the bills and feed his family, his efforts as a motorcycle mechanic always brought him viable income. It was no small wonder when he eventually ended up working for a Harley-Davidson dealership in Hamilton, Ohio.
The Trett Family eventually settled in Oxford, Ohio, just ten miles from the HD dealership. Through Elmer’s work associations, his life came into focus. His street racing days were at an end, and suddenly, the drag strip was becoming not only his playground, but his playground.
In 1970, Elmer was beginning to hot-rod Harley-Davidson motors for drag racing, as well as doing street bike repairs at work and side jobs at home for extra profit. When Elmer was barely thirty years of age, he had already had over twenty years of mechanical experience. More importantly, Elmer possessed not only above average mechanical aptitude, but by now he had started discovering the dark arts of engine building; how to tulip valves, narrow valve stems, bore engines oversize, but keep them looking stock, increase compression ratios, camshaft timing.
A stock Harley-Davidson Sportster engine in 1969 was barely making 60 horsepower. Elmer learned how to double that power output, and from the outside of the motor, the untrained eye would never know the engine had been tampered with.
When the drag racing “muscle car” era of the nineteen-seventies began, the very sport of drag racing was in a true golden age for American hot rodding. At that time in American motor sports, the racing adage was, “win on Sunday and sell on Monday.” Every show room of every car dealership in America in 1970 contained a form of muscle car in it that was a drag strip descendent of some form; the Hemi Cuda, the Mustang Mach 1, the Dodge Challenger, the American Motors Corporation AMX, the Rambler Scrambler and the Chevrolet Z28 Camaro were all drag racing related street cars that tied drag racing winnings to sales profits. Elmer began doing the same thing to support his profits beginning in 1970.
Elmer’s very first serious drag bike began construction during the fall of 1970 as a 1969 XLCH Harley Davidson Sportster. He tore the new sporty down and dug deep into the engine, applying all the skills he had at the time. He installed a 4.875 stroker lower end into the crank case, added big boy 3.3125 cylinders to up the displacement, Sifton cams controlled the lift, increased oil flow came from an XLR oil pump, and an S&S carburetor handled the racing gasoline mixture.
This kick start bracket bike sported a four inch wide Avon drag slick in the back and, of course, wide open drag pipes for the exhaust system. Elmer produced eleven second elapsed times, at just over 115 mph, with the bike in the days long before air shifters were invented.
Elmer’s first drag bike tied everything together for him in one nice, neat lifestyle drag racing package: win on Sunday and sell his skills on Monday. His drag bike was a real street/strip bike that he could drive to work when he chose to do so. All of his racing buddies and his street riding friends could see and hear his handiwork daily, but most importantly, they could relate to it.
What he was building and riding was what they were riding on the street, so when they wanted to go faster or have their bike tuned up, Elmer’s phone began to ring. Racing performance equaled profits for the Trett Family.
The home in Oxford, Ohio, eventually became the family business. Working at the Harley dealership in Hamilton was a launch pad for Elmer’s home business. At the dealership, Elmer had access to all the factory tools, shop manuals, and equipment he wanted. He would work all day in the shop or behind the parts counter, then, after hours, he could do whatever he needed to do for his customers’ engines that he was not so secretly hot rodding at home in his garage and basement. Racing was becoming the sales tool to support the family. It was all fun and games until Elmer’s need for speed kicked in.
The Sportster was a great street/strip bike, but at close to 500 pounds, it was too heavy for a race bike. Elmer knew that weight didn’t affect speed as much as it affected elapsed time, but the two were tied together. He knew he needed a lighter bike to go quicker and faster. Elmer soon started making phone calls and, in 1971, he acquired a lay-down dragster-style chassis that weighed next to nothing.
He plugged his 1969 XLCH street/strip motor into the dragster chassis. The new race bike weighed in at barely three hundred pounds. Now, Elmer was lying down on his tummy with his feet behind him while flying down the race track at speeds of over 120 mph with elapsed times in the mid-ten-second range. With this combination, Elmer entered the world of serious motorcycle drag racing.
With his street racing days now officially over, a true drag racer was born.
As Elmer came into drag bike racing, the actual sport of motorcycle drag racing was just getting organized. The NHRA, or National Hot Rod Association, was the largest racing sanction that governed drag racing and they hosted both drag cars and bikes that mixed it up together as they did on the street. Due to the obvious inherent dangers of cars racing against motorcycles, tracks soon segregated the bikes into their own category of racing. In time, this lead to the formation of motorcycle drag racing sanctions. Elmer paid close attention to this.
Elmer started to follow the fastest bikes and racing wherever that lead him. During the 1972 season with his AA/D class gas dragster, Elmer amassed at least seven event wins at various tracks between Ohio and the East Coast. His best known recorded pass on his gas dragster was a 10.63 elapsed time at 127.29 mph recorded at Atco, NJ. He achieved this with the same 1969 XLCH motor he took from his street bike.
By this time, Elmer was totally hooked on his new life, which was a combination racing, family and motorcycles. He had it all. Until he took notice of the big boys, making the big noise that he could not ignore; there is just no sound in the world like a motor running on nitromethane. Once Elmer experienced its call, he and the world of fuel bike racing would never be the same.
The Next Installment of Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder will be released on April 1, 2026 on Dragbike.com
| For those interested in owning a printed copy of the original book, please contact Tom McCarthy. Limited copies are available. |
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