'I always push the envelope': from drag racing to auto repair to running his...

The story starts like a lot of good stories do--with a buildup.

"I used to drag race. The '57 Chevs came out, and they were hot. But I had an old '47 Plymouth, and nobody knew that I had hopped it up. And so I had a bunch of my best buddies with me, and this guy goes, 'You wanna drag that sled?'"

Charley White, now 70, remembers his reply.

"An-y-time." And so they were off, down a long, dusty Eastern Washington road used specifically for such events. As White retells the story from a lounge chair in Bellingham's Beaver Inn--one of his regular haun