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The Nitro Joint Drag Racing From A Different Perspective
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No Time To Lose! - The Nitro Joint

TV Tommy Ivo

No TIME, to LOSE!

“Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

From the debut album by CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY, 1969 

There are more than a few things in this sport of drag racing that are just ‘known’ to us, and so we will flip Robert Lamms lyric a tad. What if non-racing people don’t understand us? Do we really care? The answer is uhm, no, not really. Be they the nuances of the rule books (trickier in the ’70s, when there were three different major sanctioning bodies) or one tracks protocol as opposed to another, we have a lot of balls in the air. (pretty cool considering we aren’t a stick-and-ball sport, see what I did there?) But this month we shall touch on what ‘we’, or the hard-core of us drag racers know, as “IVO-TIME”. 

Tommy Ivo, better known as ‘TV Tommy Ivo’, is a larger than life figure in this sport of ours. I’m not going to sit here and repeat what many books and magazines have already written about this man. But I am going to share a couple first hand encounters though, and will lead off with this bombshell. It is MORE than feasible that without TV Tommy, I would not be here today. (insert Foley-artist sound-effect of screeching tires and automotive collisions) “WHAT?? Chicago, are you saying he’s your DAD?!?” Oh, heavens no, what I mean is, see this story begins….

In 2007, a friend from work (Kent, ftr) was going to a huge car event in St. Louis. He told me that the promoter had booked TV Tommy Ivo to appear. With time against me, I ran home and grabbed a shot out of my albums, and ran to the ‘quickie-kiosk’ at the photo department of the local drug store. Of note: said machines was built for speed, not quality, and as such the 8x10s uhm, ‘stunk’. (another word comes to mind, it rhymes with ‘ducks’) But my Buddy was leaving that afternoon, so I hand him the copys, ask him to see if TV will personalize mine ‘Chicago Jon’, and hope for the best. Now, a little history, not on Ivo, but myself. 

Exactly where WAS Chicago Jon Productions at this point in time? Much like a fine bourbon, it was on the rocks. I began my run working for Broadway Bob, rolled that into the U.D.R.A., and at their suggestion made another move. Said move was becoming the ‘Waynes World’ of drag racing for Northern Illinois, hosting my own TV show for fourteen years. There’s an old joke in this sport, HEY, you know how to end up with a nice little pile of money in Drag Racing? Begin with a great big GIGANTIC pile of money in the first place! (radda-boom-crash) So, as I had a stranglehold on “broke”, I was just biding my time, showing up here and there, but did not really have a clue as to what was next. As it turns out, what was next was Kent showing up at work on Monday, with the 8×10 in one hand and a phone number in the other. Breathless with excitement, he tells the story that Ivo LOVED the photo, and wants me to call him right away! And this, race fans is how we rotate back to the subject of living on ‘Ivo Time’.             

Tommy Ivo lived a gypsy life on the road, where time was relative. He carried ‘blackout-curtains’, because sometimes your night of sleep might begin at 10 in the morning. And to this day, he basically sleeps most of the day, and gets up around 3pm, hence ‘Ivo time’. And so, I begin a week of calling the west coast, after having gotten home from work. (having to give myself a quick lobotomy first, so I won’t sound like a burnt-out crab to this perpetually happy fellow) And since he’s a ‘pros-pro’, you don’t start dealing chin music to get to the point. If he feels like telling ten stories that have nothing to do with the matter at hand, sit back, learn and count your blessings. Finally on day three, we get to the photo. There is a book being put together, and Tommy loves my shot from Byron Dragway in 1982. It is one of the rare shots of himself in his back-brace attending to the car. (Tommy screwed up his back testing at a track with a bumpy shutdown area) Said car was a restoration of his four engine ‘Wagonmaster’, the former Showboat. (an accidental name, coined because of a Hot Rod photo spread done while he was still in costume filming the My Little Margie TV show) He would like to use the photo in the book, may he? Well call me a biscuit and drown me in butter, I’d like that very much, please and thank you! I set about getting a primo copy made up, ship it to California, and hope for the best…     

Should have quit when I was the biscuit. Oh, that’s a tad harsh, but here’s what happened, in two ‘acts’ as it where. Just because Tommy liked it, it didn’t mean the guy doing the BOOK liked it. My shot fell victim to ‘Star power’, as Tommy next to his car was not as cool as a photo of Tommy next to Shirley Muldowney. (while he was wearing the brace) TV did a lot of the stunt driving for the motion picture Heart Like A Wheel. Ah, such is life, couldn’t get worse, right? Like in a horror movie, this is where I get to say, “I’ll be right back”. A couple years back, some hockey-puck website shows up with MY PHOTO on the cover, and of course they have the gall to be all, “Look-what-WE-did, me-me-me, mine-mine-MINE!!” The internet is sometimes like the proverbial ‘Genie in a bottle’, once something escapes, good luck trying to right the ship….

That photo of mine at the top? Taken at Great Lakes Dragway in 1979 and TV is being heaped (aka: dumped) on by other jet racers, as it is his first season running that category. Knowing the role of ‘true freshman’ he takes the beating with a smile, a moment I file away, as a valuable lesson in life. And in keeping with this ‘TV-adjacent’ story, we’ll revisit the 2007 aspect of my story. Remember the part where I didn’t know what the next chapter for CJP was going to be, well we were big fans of Charlie Sheens sitcom. And in the fall of 2007, episode eight (Is There a Mrs. Waffles?) his character is struggling with money, until he bumbles into writing kids songs, telling his knucklehead brother “Hey, you know how I got into jingle-writing?? Neither do I! Something just showed up!” While talking to Tommy, I was silently thinking…’Book, eh??’. The seeds were planted, and I began typing up stories, and sending pieces off to basically everyone in the business. Some of the (many) rejection letters had helpful advice, I listened, I learned, and hopefully I’ve gotten better. Life is a long and winding road, just because you don’t know where you’re going doesn’t mean you just sit on the couch! As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “Life is an adventure, not a destination.”

Thanks for hanging out, I AM Chicago Jon, time to say CC-YYAAaa!!!!!

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