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This car is a Jelly built for AJ Little of Lawton Ok. in 1974 this are pictures of the car then. If interested in the car call me at (316-776-9222) and I will send pictures of the car now. These pictures are from Mike Monatoboy. Thanks Dwane

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Wayne Nichols

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I gotta tell this story , this is crazy

We were running an old modified in Lawton in 1986, and wanted something newer like the fast guys. We wanted a 4-bar, possibly newer that 1980 that we could afford. Ready to get rid of the 'old' junk and get newer junk.

So we go over to this guys house to look at the car you have posted here, but we find it's a springer too. So we pass on it. There was an older body and chassis out front for a price as well, but it was too old. So we go home, and I look like an idiot for wasting my brothers time.

These are the cars that we passed up

the one above

and the Clinton Gregory car AJ had run in around 1970 to 1972, made the back cover of the NCRA annual! A top 10 car, and I even now have footage of the Gregory car racing.

Oh......and the car we wanted to get rid of? The KOCO #5 that Roy Patton did so well in at Enid, and also took the modified feature win at the 1970 OkC Nationals!

We "thought" we were walking away from junk, but the older I get , the more I could kick myself.

Did'nt Doug Joyner buy the car and drive it after AJ??, the guy mud lapping the car looks like Donnie ???, can't think of his last name, he was a Service Mgr. at Cecil Lawson Buick Caddilac in Lawton and helped AJ for a long time and then when AJ quit he got a crazy idea to become the Pit Steward(just seemed to nice a guy for such a rough job) and did that for a while till Wayne Nichols took over another dealership guy then went and worked at D&R Salvage,liked Donnie and Wayne ,both fair guys.Think Wayne just got over a bout with Cancer in recent years.

J.D.

Yeah it it was Dougs house we went to.

Doug Joyner has got some interesting stories to tell about the old days in Lawton. It turns out he was very close to AJ Little until there was a clash over Doug helping some OkC guys. They patched things up eventually before AJ passed away.

AJ Little was a legit real deal, warts and all. From all accounts I get, he was very loyal to his kids, as best as he could do. Couple that with the temptations that come with being a handsome public figure in 1970's Lawton, ...........well it could get real crazy sometimes and AJ wasn't perfect all the time.

I used to go over to AJ's house out on Lee blvd now and then just to shoot the stuff. Time had taken away the eyes of his youth and replaced them with the eyes of an older wiser man who loved all his kids dearly. But he sure did hate working on late models! LOL.............Only reason he did it was for Mike.

I hadn't talked to AJ in years, so one day on 2006 I was coming back from Wichita Falls pulling a white super, and decided to go thru Lawton and surpise AJ with it. When I got there, his son told me AJ had died that very morning..............None of them had seen a super up close in years. It was kinda eerie that I would show up with one , out of nowhere, the day he died. RIP AJ

I got to know Mike Little, AJ's boy through my dad when he and I worked for Gene Burk Auto Glass , Mike had his Radiator shop on 11th St. and we would go by and fix a leaky windshield Mike had taken on , Mike would have ran open wheel cars from what he said IF they would have left the wings off of them , said they were a crutch and just did not care for them. So that is why he went the Late Model route , cause Beville,Wickens, Creagle and Joe Conway and the Lister Bros. were running them back then in the mid/late 80's, his brother Gary is a good shoe and runs a Modified to this day at Lawton and use to come up to OKC all the time the last few years it was open. Mike son races as well and think Mike races a Modified occassionaly.

Kind of was always a Eugene Hair fan back in the mid 70's when AJ from Lawton and Eugene from Wichita Falls would battle it out every Sat. night in the 70's , fierce rivals and competitors and what you would really call a rivalry, would even spill over in the stands on some Sat. nights at Lawton back then, seen a few of them in the pits and in the stands. Tempers were on a high level on some nights.

Really liked Hair till along came some guy who got the nickname "The Bullet" and he became a real hero of mine then.

Lot's of others had their moments at Lawton back then, Brown,Joyner,Yarborough, Bruner, Howell , Daughtery, Wainscott,Teague,Stinnett,Cates and so on but seems to me those two were the consisitent ones who were always in battle for the points championships. Dammit can still smell the Popcorn and hear those 312 CID Supers racin around that 1/4 mile clay oval.

J.D.

JL Nash too. I keep running into tidbits about JL Nash's shooting from both on this side of the world, and the Lawton side.

Turns out JL's shooting was an accident (they were trying to shoot another guy). JL was coming up the stairs, as he was passed by a man running downstairs. When JL got to the door, the man on the other side (thinking it was the person running out-coming back to kill)-------fired a shot, and then realized it was Nash instead. There were witnesses that could have put the perp into jail, but they were apparently "motivated to forget".

The shooter ended up being run out of town , basically over this and other offenses. He was too well connected to put in jail easily. He ended up with a ton of trouble and is now dead. But even now, for some reason his name has not surfaced. Might be for the best.

JL prolly would of been better than both of them as we were told a couple of times by the promoter Lanny himself at the ol Lawton Iron & Metal business one day and some other Speedway officials at that time , just never had the chance to be. JL could adapt to other tracks quickly , was'nt so much that way with Eugene and AJ.

Heard several versions of the story as well on JL death,one of my Mom's former Boss's at a Carpet store back then in Lawton, ran around with JL some and JL was a bit of a partier from what he told us. Who knows what the real story is?? ,bottom line though is

the guy was a good shoe for sure. They finally tore down that ol 2 story bldg. and the stair case where he was shot and killed near downtown.

Just wonder about some other Lawton racers that ran mostly at Lawton , like Terry Sims, Buddy Johnson Marlow??, seen recently where Wayne Wickens Sr. passed away he had two sons Wayne Jr. who ran a Late Model and Ronnie who ran Karts back when Lanny ran Karts in the infield and some 8 classes on Sat. nights back in the early 80's.

J.D.

Mike Monatoboy trying to find the car

When I saw it, it was orange and the bushes were much smaller.LOL

It happens

This car won the last 40 Laper at Lawton with the 302 Motors, with Doug Joyner's #7 Ex AJ Little's car

The car now

Seems I missed out on the downtube craze of the 70's in these cars and I post it over here because there is a clear defined pic of the car's frame and which I still ask what was the point of it , if it worked well why did they not leave them on the car all the time it ran and speaking of this car.

Guess I missed the downtube craze of the 70's , I sure did not see that many that had them??.

J.D.

Also with saying the downtube helps keep the chassis from bowing up , works both ways in law of physics, it is flexing both ways, so you would also need help in the sagging end of it as well, just not seeing the point in it , one without the other, plus again I guess I missed all those downtubes hidden under the hoods in the 70's.

J.D.