Chapter 27

The season started pretty much the same way as it had the past couple years – a couple races around the Detroit area, then we worked our way south to where we could expect the weather to be a little warmer. We could expect all we wanted, but a week or so later we were in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We'd had a couple fairly decent days, but only fairly decent; most of the time it had been overcast, damp and chilly. "Would somebody please tell me why I think we have to get started the first part of April?" Frank groused over breakfast one morning. "I can damn sure tell you that I can think of other things I'd rather be doing right about now."

"I'll bet Vivian could think of a few, too," I snickered. "But hell, sooner or later the weather is going to turn nice and you won't be able to think of a thing that you'd rather be doing."

"Yeah, but there's no way we should have to put up with this crappy weather," Frank snorted, not rising to my crack about Vivian. "I mean, we could start a month later and we would have a lot better shot at it. It wouldn't even cost us that much. I'm not sure this early spring stuff is worth the effort."

"Other than the fact that all of us were getting a little stir crazy from sitting around Livonia," Spud observed. "I mean, the rest of us don't have anything much to keep us there. Besides, we're still heading south, we're going to run into some warm weather sooner or later."

We had a short jump that day, down to Tullahoma. We pulled in, unloaded the cars and got started with the usual maintenance. After a bit, Spud got together with Dutch and the hillbillies. I was standing close enough to hear him when he said. "Look, you guys. The four of you just aren't running as fast as the rest of the guys, and it doesn't look good to the crowd. We want close racing and you guys getting lapped every time you get on the track looks pretty fucking bush, if you don't mind my French. I'm going to open up your restrictor plates a sixteenth and see if maybe you can at least keep the other guys in sight. I don't like to do it that way, but we can't let this shit go on."

I had to keep my grin to myself. Spud didn't actually lie to them, but there was a lot he hadn't said and he stretched the truth about as far as it could be stretched. And, he was right – it didn't look good for the four of them to be getting lapped all the time. I wasn't sure that only giving them a sixteenth was going to make them competitive, but figured that it might make things look a little closer. Now, I saw why he'd upped everybody else a sixteenth – the four guys were going to give Spud points for cutting them some slack. They'd all been frustrated with running so far behind the rest of us.

I sort of kept one eye on Spud while he changed the restrictor plates. Sure enough, it only took him a few minutes with a couple wrenches on each car. As always, he put a seal on the carburetor bolts to keep things from getting played with.

That night and the next few days pretty well proved that Spud had guessed it about right. The four of them were in no danger of getting into serious battles with the rest of us unless one of our cars was running a little off, but it at least got them up to where they were usually on the same lap with the rest of us. I guess they thought the rest of us must be pretty damn good drivers the way we kept running away from them, even when they had what they thought was an advantage in the engine department. They actually had a few good battles in the consolation heats, and about every third night one or more of them would make it into the feature, although we still more or less ran away from them. They had a few minor accidents, nothing that couldn't be fixed up fairly quickly, but they were all obviously frustrated at their inability to run with the rest of us.

A couple days later we were in better weather, down in Pass Christian, Mississippi, down on the Gulf Coast. Finally we'd left winter behind us and were in some decent weather. We stayed around the coast and south Texas for a couple weeks' worth of shaking off winter. In fact, it turned hot and uncomfortably humid on us, and the locals told us that this was nothing compared to what would be coming when summer really got there. From the stories I heard, it made winter look like it had some advantages. Turning back to head north again seemed like a good idea when we finally did it.

We were back in Livonia along toward the end of May. Once again, Herb's mechanics were providing the pit crew for Runt Chenowith, who had been able to come up with the backing to get a new Kurtis Kraft with a new engine, and he had hopes of doing pretty well with it. That was good news, but to the old timers amongst us the best news was that Squirt was going to be driving his brother's old car – he'd qualified it 24th, not real good but good enough for a rookie run. Herb didn't have quite enough people to cover the pit crew for both of them, so since we had a day off, a bunch of us rode down with them to pitch in. Frank didn't go; I guess he and Vivian had something planned, although he didn't say what.

Those of us from the MMSA had missed Indy last year, but those who had been there all remembered it from the year before. It was always a delight to see that crowd and be a part of that event – they always called it "The Greatest Spectacle In Racing." That was dead on, especially in those days. Once again, I got to handle the starter at the call of "Gentlemen, start your engines." It was the same car I'd started two years before, except that Squirt was driving it now.

The race was pretty good. Bill Vukovitch won it and nobody was about to touch him. Unfortunately, Runt had engine trouble early on – the Offy, while powerful, wasn't always the most reliable thing out there – but Squirt ran well in Runt's old car. He wasn't as fast as some out there but outlasted them pretty well. He was two laps down when the race ended, and finished eleventh, which he was pretty happy with. He wasn't sure he would run it again, since he'd put about everything he had into making the effort, but at least he could say that he'd done it, and done it better than his brother.

Of course, as we headed back to Livonia that evening, the car was all full of Spud talking about how he wanted to run that race someday, and I figured we'd be seeing him in a race car again about as soon as he could manage it. He figured he had a few more years before he got too old, so I wasn't quite ready to write off the idea as something that would never happen.

As in past years, we ran a few races around the Detroit area before we got back on the road again. We raced the next night, but Dutch didn't show up to race. In fact, he never showed up again. While we were gone he told John that he was tired of running at the ass end of the field and didn't want to get caught doing it locally. That left us short a driver, but we could do without – we'd done it often enough before.

One of our first stops after leaving Livonia for our summer swing was Schererville, Indiana, which is right on the Illinois border a little south of Chicago. Normally we wouldn't run that close to a big midget circuit like was in the Chicago area, but from what I was to find out later the track owner had got into a yelling match with someone from the local midget circuit and brought us in for a couple evenings to show them that they weren't the only fish in the pond. Whatever it was, we had a good crowd, and not just for us – there was a good group of hot rods there that evening, and we were only there to add some class.

Because of the tight schedule, we ran only two heats and a consol before the feature, instead of the usual three heats. I was leading along toward the end of the second heat, coming up on Hap and Junie but still a ways from lapping them. I don't know if it was the fact that they were so far behind or what, but they were both really driving hard – too hard, as it turned out. I found out later that they'd been all over each other all through the heat, even though they were way behind. Apparently, Hap had cut Junie off and Junie was pissed off about it, and was trying to get back at Hap. In any case, Junie banged Hap a pretty good one and got Junie loose. Junie managed to save it, but in the process of saving it banged Hap right back. I could see they were having a pretty good duel, so I was just as glad that we were on the white flag lap and I wouldn't have to tangle with the two of them trying to lap them.

Even though I watched it take place, I'm still not quite clear what happened. As near as I can figure, Hap must have banged Junie again and got him sideways, but when Junie went sideways Hap wasn't ready for it. He wound up T-boning Junie pretty hard. Now, normally a T-bone looks bad but if both the cars are going about the same speed it usually isn't that bad. This time it was – I don't know if it was a bump in the track, or how Hap hit Junie, or what, but the next damn thing I knew Junie was rolling down the track sideways in a barrel roll, maybe six or seven times, I wasn't counting. Anyway, somehow Junie's car caught Hap's car and set it to rolling, too, just going the other way.

I stood on the brake as Spud threw the red flag. I was peeling out of my seat belt when I came to a stop right between where the two cars stopped with the rest of the guys in the heat right behind me and a bunch of people running our way. I headed over to Junie, since he was on the side of the car where I got out. I didn't know much first aid other than what I'd learned in the Army, but I could tell he was cold-cocked, was bleeding pretty bad but was breathing and had a pulse. I sure as hell hoped that someone that knew what the hell they were doing showed up real soon.

Thank God someone did. "Get some pressure on that bleeder," I heard a woman's voice say.

"Shouldn't we get him out of this car?" I asked.

"Not unless it's on fire," she yelled. "If he's got back or neck injuries, we could paralyze him for life."

I glanced up at the back of the car, to see that the gas cap wasn't even dribbling. We didn't have safety fuel cells in those days, but the wisdom of only having those two-gallon tanks in those cars paid off right that instant. While the woman worked on Junie and some others came running up, I checked the car over to see that it wasn't leaking any gas at all. "No fire danger that I can see," I told her.