Hughie Callen and his son, Shawn, have been racing together since 1995. Their first car was a street driven 1972 Chevy Chevelle powered by a blown 350 with two Holley carburetors. While they did good with the car, by mid-1997 the Callen’s had become tired of leaning over fenders and crawling under the car, so they decided to look for an altered to race — a car that would be easier to work on, much faster and a lot more fun. After all, for this family, fun is a major reason for racing. Besides, when he was younger, Hughie had on one occasion gotten to join the crew with the High Heaven AA/Fuel Altered, for the Jackson Bros. — Les and Cal — of Denver, Colorado, and remembered how much easier it was working on their car than any other he’d raced.

One day in January of 1998, Hughie came across an altered for sale in National Dragster magazine. When he contacted the owner he learned that it was a “roller” (complete car without an engine or transmission) and that it was located in Denver. Because he and Shawn now lived in Alaska, Hughie called his old friend, Les Jackson, and asked him if he’d mind visiting the owner to see if it was everything the seller said it was.

As soon as he returned home, Les called Hughie and excitedly told him that the car was, in fact, Jackson’s old car, High Heaven, and that everything did check out. Satisfied with Les’ news, Callen immediately contacted the car’s owner and started making plans to purchase it and get it up to Alaska.

As soon as the altered arrived in Anchorage in March of 1998, the Callen’s began putting the car together using the engine out of the Chevelle. Because the powerplant was a small block Chevy Mouse motor, Hughie and Shawn decided to call it Mighty Mouse. But when they went to have the logos and lettering made they learned that what they wanted was copyrighted material and that the sign company would not make it for them without permission from the copyright owner who, as it turned out, was Paramount Studios.

Undeterred, Hughie contacted Paramount explaining that he would like to use the Mighty Mouse logo and name on their race car, and that they were not interested in selling Mighty Mouse merchandise. Lo and behold, Paramount came through and gave them the rights to use the Mighty Mouse logo and name on their race car.

Their debut race with Mighty Mouse was on May 16, 1999, at Alaska Raceway Park in Palmer, Alaska. Their best elapsed time that day was 9.16 at 147 mph. Five years later, in May of 2004, they switched to Hilborn injectors with alcohol. Their best time and speed with this variation of the car was 7.48 at 179.9 mph. The Callen’s ran that combination for another three seasons until September of 2007 when Shawn was offered a business opportunity and moved to Boise, Idaho. Soon after Shawn had moved, Hughie and his wife Jackie, Shawn’s mom, paid a visit to Shawn. While there, they fell in love with the area and soon had a new home built nearby.

By now the race car had sat idle for about a year, but beginning in 2009, the Callen’s started racing Mighty Mouse again; only this time in Boise. While they enjoyed competing at nearby Firebird Raceway, they weren’t fond of the round-robin style of racing with 150 competitors at each event. It had again become all work and they were exhausted. So in 2010, the decision was made to restore the car back to the original Jackson Bros. High Heaven Fuel Altered as a tribute to two of the best racers and racing friends anyone could possibly have. 

Because the Callen’s have chose to finance the entire operation themselves, their first order of business was to sell the engine out of Mighty Mouse to a good friend of Hughie and Shawn’s back in Alaska. That done, restoration began with building a new engine in January of 2010. In May they began the chassis work and in September the body work. The restoration was completed in March 2011, and to celebrate, they flew Les and Cal Jackson to a small party to unveil the car. Everyone involved in the restoration was there, and as luck would have it, Mike Peek, the original chassis builder from Denver, happened to be driving through Boise and made a stop to join in the celebration.

After the get together, Hughie and Shawn delivered the car to the Boise Roadster Show where the car won five awards, including the “Wild One” award, one of the event’s top prizes. But the car wasn’t built for show; it was built to race, and off to the races it went.

Shawn updated his license to Advanced E.T. in 2012, carding an easy 7.03 at 194 mph in the quarter-mile, clicking it off at 1,000 feet. Since that time, the Callen’s have been testing and running a limited schedule. Because they require a prepped track, the team has competed only sparingly, although they expect to increase their track time in late 2013 at the NAPA Auto Parts Halloween Classic XX at Firebird Raceway in Boise, ID and the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield, California. The Callen’s plan to do some exhibition racing in 2014 by adding the NHRA Mile High Nationals in Denver, a Western Colorado Dragway date, and any match races they can sign, significantly ramping up their track time with the wild, short wheelbased machine.

High Heaven AA/FA: Then and Now

In an age of tube chassis and aluminum engines, High Heaven is a different animal. Right from the start, the Callen’s have kept the build as close to the original car as possible; not only to be era-correct, but as a tribute to Les and Cal. This job has been made easier because Les Jackson had saved the plans, specifications, and even the templates that were used in the construction of this car back in 1974.

That year, the Jackson Brothers used a stock, tall-deck, 427 cubic inch big block Chevrolet engine block and a stock Chevy 427 forged crankshaft along with Howard rods, Venolia pistons, stock Chevy heads, a Competition Cams camshaft, and Crane push rods and rockers to complete the long block. The intake valves were stock Chevy pieces and the exhaust valves were Donovan Stainless Steel. A Cragar aluminum intake manifold held the Littlefield 6-71 blower and Hilborn four-stack upright injectors in place, while a Mallory Super Mag and related parts ignited the fuel. A Donovan SS exhaust system finished it off.

After tipping the car on its side during a run, the Jackson’s went to an iconic Enderle bug catcher injector and ‘zoomie’ headers. They ran this engine on 75 percent nitromethane and estimated the horsepower at 1,500.

The Jackson’s also employed a Crowerglide transmission with high gear only, later changing to a Lenco two-speed. They used a Ford nine-inch rear and Summers Bros. rear assembly in both instances. 

As for the Callen’s driveline, luck sometimes has its way, as Shawn already owned a stock, tall-deck Chevy engine block out of a pickup truck from 1975 that had been timed out of a local Alaskan school bus. This same style of block that the Jackson’s had used, except this one was bored .030 over. Once the block was cleaned up, they started looking for parts for the build.

The Callen’s used a Crower crankshaft, GRP aluminum rods, Clevite bearings, Venolia pistons and Akerly & Childs rings for the short block build-up. The cam is a Crower custom ground roller with Crower roller lifters and a Milodon gear drive, and the heads were made by World Products. The heads, referred to as the Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins Signature Series, have rectangle ports with 345cc runners that were ported by Wes King Cylinder Heads. The valves they use are Manley 2.300-inch SS intakes and 1.880-inch Inconel exhausts, held together with Manley springs, retainers and locks. The rockers are Crower Stainless Steel shaft mount rollers and the pushrods were custom made by Manton. The zoomies were custom made by Dennis Blackstone of Blackstone Race Cars.

The intake manifold and 6:71 Teflon-stripped blower are manufactured by Littlefield Blowers. The injector hat is, like the original when last run, an Enderle “Bug Catcher” with an Enderle 1100 fuel pump that supplies the fuel. Because today’s heads flow so much better than those used back in the 1970s, the Callen’s use a fuel pump that’s somewhat larger than the original. 

The ignition system is a Mallory Super Mag 4 with Mallory Pro-wire and Mallory Pro-shield and Autolite racing plugs. Down below is a two-piece billet fabricated oil pan by Jeff Johnson, with a Titan wet sump oil pump. Each time the car is fired, it uses 12 quarts of Valvoline VR-1 racing oil.  

The Callen’s decided on a Lenco two-speed with a 25 percent first gear and a reverser. The transmission is shifted by hand with levers, not buttons (use your imagination!), and the clutch is a Crowerglide three-disc “slider” with a Browell SFI 6.2 bellhousing.  

The rear assembly is a Mark Williams aluminum modular nine-inch full floater with gun-drilled, 40-spline axles, and was set-up with an aluminum through-bolt third member assembly with a 4:30 gear ratio on a Mark Williams spool. The assembly came with Mark Williams disc brakes. Between the flywheel and the rear end is a Mark Williams solid shaft with couplers transferring all of that nitro-burning power.

The Chassis and Body

Rather than put a new tube chassis under the car, the Callen’s opted to keep the original Peek Bros. chassis and have Blackstone Race Cars in Boise update it to NHRA Advanced E.T. specifications in 2009, making it legal to run today at it’s present performance capability. The wheelbase has been kept at 116-inches, which is a bit longer than most altereds of the day, but shorter than many of the altereds being built to race today. For this car, this length seems to work well as the car goes straight more often than not, which is really saying something for a Fuel Altered.

Up front, a torsion bar with a 5-inch drop front axle and Anglia spindles give the car a look of substance.

The front wheels are American Racing 18-inch, 12-spoke — the same hoops that were on the original car, along with a set of Avon Roadrunner 80/90 H18 3.10 H18 tires. The Callen’s have two sets of rear tires and wheel combinations: the show set is 16 x 13-inch magnesium Halibrands with a set of Hoosiers tires, while the set for racing is 16 x 16”-inch Weld American Racing Torq-Thrust Pro double beadlocks with 34.5X17X16 Hoosier racing slicks.  

The original wing used by the Jackson’s was still on the car when the Callen’s purchased it. The body is also the original used by the Jackson’s, and has had roughly nine coats of paint stripped to allow for a fresh start for the retro paint work. Gordon Boven’s Custom Works of Garden City, Idaho painted the car from a limited number of old faded photographs to recreate the scheme Las and Cal Jackson liked most. All of the lettering was done by Bob Shaw of Signs by Smith using those same photos that Boven had used.

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As the car neared completion, Les Jackson gave the Callen’s the car’s original valve covers and exhaust covers that they’d used back in the ‘70s, and even offered Hughie the squirt can he used for priming the engine during start-up. 

Complete and ready to run, the re-born Hugh Heaven weighs in at just 2,060 pounds with the driver, making it light and nimble as the classic Fuel Altereds typically were.

In the End

Although the NHRA did away with the wildly popular, fan-favorite AA/Fuel Altered category in 1974, the Jackson’s had continued campaigning the car on an exhibition basis for several years thereafter, and they held several records with the car before retiring it. In 1976, the car ran a staggering 6.93 in Tuscon, Arizona, and in the same year went 212 mph at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California. Both of these are records that may still stand at those tracks (and will never be broken at Ontario, for obvious reasons).

The Callen’s, with Shawn at the controls, have already surpassed one half of High Heaven’s former bests, laying down a 6.88 elapsed time paired with a speed of just over 202 mph, which was cinched during the same pass at Boise’s Firebird Raceway, High Heaven’s home track.

The restoration of the High Heaven is another shining example of drag racing’s affectionate love for its historic past. New, state-of-the-art race cars come and go, but these legends live on, and our sport is made better by folks like the Callen’s who revitalize long-lost treasures, pouring their hearts, souls, and wallets into these machines to provide fans, young and old, with a little slice of days gone by.