Chapter 32

We hit a stretch along in there where we ran mostly rodeo rings for a couple of weeks. I'll tell you what, that was real different from being on a regular track. The rodeo rings were small, and we never really got up a lot of speed but it sure seemed like we were flying in a space that small. It seemed to be a little strange to be out there under those big western skies with all that open space and running in such a small and constricted space, but usually it worked out all right since there were usually pretty good crowds and pretty close in. There were some of those small towns where we'd been the only outside entertainment in town for years, and sometimes it seemed like we'd just about have the whole town out for the race.

I used to enjoy running those rodeo rings for some reason, at least partly because I did pretty well at them. A lot of the guys didn't; Arlene never took to them very well, for instance. You could always be pretty well assured of a fast and furious race, at least partly because we ran multiple heats of only four cars. These were pretty short, so if you were going to come from the back to the front you had to be doing it right now. You spent a lot of time turning, and turning a pretty tight corner. There wasn't much time to accelerate between the corners, either, even though we accelerated pretty quickly from running in first gear. There was an art to running a track that small, no doubt about it.

Looking back on it, it makes me wonder why we didn't tear up the cars pretty bad, or maybe kill someone at rodeo rings. We were always pretty close to the crowd, there wasn't much room to race, and the fences between the cars and the crowd could still have been more substantial, even though they were usually board fences meant to keep a Brahma bull out of the crowd. As I recall, we never hurt a car very bad and never hurt a person.

The tracks were so small we had to have the pits outside the track, so we often got to watch the heats from a spectator viewpoint. The typical rodeo ring had fairly soft dirt, so that meant that when you power slid through the corners you would raise a huge cloud of dust, and sometime it was hard to see where you were going if you weren't the one in front. It was incredibly dirty for the spectators, but most of them knew what dirt was and were thrilled to see the show. I recall standing up against the fence watching another heat run, with Arlene and a couple of the other drivers standing there with me, and after one heat we were just covered with dirt, just from standing there watching.

Let me tell you, the hose on that water trailer was an awful welcome thing once a rodeo ring race was over with, and one of the down sides to winning was that you were often the last one to get to it. Even then, it was only enough to hold you until you got a chance at a bath or a shower.

I remember one of those times especially well. I don't remember where it was that we were running, but there was a little river right down next to the rodeo ring, and for whatever reason we got even dirtier and muddier than normal, considering that normal was pretty bad even if we were running on a regular track. It was also very humid that evening, and off in the distance you could make out the lightning of a far away thunderstorm. Over the course of the race, when we were standing outside of the track, I think every one of us made mention of the fact that as soon as the race was over with we were going to go jump straight in that creek.

It turned out that we weren't the only ones with the same idea. I think it came straight to half the spectators as well. It was pretty dark when the race ended, but a ton of people headed off toward the creek while we were loading up. By the time we got over to the creek there must have been a couple hundred people in it, and much to our surprise most of them were nude – it was a huge skinny dipping party! Well, we joined right in, of course – it was darker than somewhat except when a distant bolt of lightning lit things up a bit, and then not much. I know I was more than a little surprised to see Arlene right out there in the middle of us, wearing no more clothes than she'd been born with. Let's just say that while I didn't get to see a whole lot there was no doubt that she was a woman. We stayed out there for a long time, just enjoying the cool night air and the cool water on our bodies after what had been a hot and dirty evening. It was one of those memories that stick with you for a lifetime.

I recall asking one of the townspeople if that sort of thing happened very often. He said it was the first time he'd ever heard of such a thing happening. This spot was a well-known swimming hole and got used pretty often to cool off on a hot day, but usually people wore swim suits or the like, rather than just going in with bare butts like were all over the place that evening. But there was yelling and hollering and screaming, splashing and teasing – people were having a good time. They'd gone to the races to have some fun and as it turned out they'd gotten more than they bargained for. When you got right down to it, that was the business we were in – helping people to have fun.

It was almost certainly a weekday night, because we were almost always in a place where they had a bigger track on the weekends. I suppose that night turned into some kind of legend in that little town, and I'll bet that some preacher sounded off about it to beat the band the next Sunday. It had been a long time since I'd been in a church, but I can still just about close my eyes and imagine the preacher raising hell about it. And, I can also imagine some old men sitting around the café forty or fifty years later recalling how they saw Mable bare naked the night the racers came to town back in oh, about 1953 or so. And, as far as that goes, I can just about imagine Mable sitting on the far side of the café smirking at how she teased all the boys in town that evening back when she was young and good-looking and loved to have fun, still amazed that she'd been so brave or crazy to have done such a thing.

One of the special things about running in those races was that a lot of the towns had never even heard of such a thing as a motel or a tourist court. We had to actually camp out some, but very often we'd get invited home with some of the spectators to spend the night. It was always fun to sit around someone's house, telling tall tales and being treated like we were really a big deal, and really, it was something that didn't happen very often. We almost always got treated to a big farm breakfast out of one of those invitations, and it was another chance to tell some stories about racing and the gypsy life we led. It was pretty far from the day to day life in a small prairie town, and I suppose we managed to make it seem pretty glamorous. From growing up in a small town like that I knew it sometimes gets awful lonesome, and I often wondered how many of my stories led to kids from small towns heading off to the big city and the bright lights.

One day along toward the middle of that Upper Midwest swing we were heading from South Dakota down to Kearney, Nebraska, and it struck me that I wouldn't have to go very far out of my way to go through Hartford. I hadn't been in Hartford since I got home from the Army in 1946, and to be honest I didn't feel like I'd left anything there that would give me cause to go back. But I did feel like I ought to at least try to look up Mr. Vogt, my old principal who had talked me into going to college. I hadn't made a lot of use of that college degree so far, but I figured that the time would come when it might prove handy.

We tended to switch riders around a lot that summer, so we didn't get too tired of the same person. Sometimes when you're together in a crew like that you get awful tired of the same people all the time and shifting things around helped out with that a little. Sandy was riding with me that morning, so when we stopped for breakfast, I asked Sandy if he'd mind riding with someone else on down to the next stop so I could take care of some personal business. I told Frank and Spud that I'd catch up with them, and when we got on the road again I headed on down toward Fremont County.

After a while things got real familiar, and I started to recognize things that I'd known for many years. There was no way in hell I was stopping at the farm. I still was pretty burned at the way I'd been treated when I got back from the Army, and I was afraid if I walked in there it would just be cause for another fight and even more bad feelings than there already were. I didn't even care to let anybody know where I was or what I was doing, except maybe for Mr. Vogt.

Hartford is a small town. It probably wouldn't have been big enough to support an MMSA race, even on the ball diamond, unless we were halfway between two dates and needed to kill an evening some place. It had happened plenty of other places, but it hadn't yet happened there. Being a small town, I knew where Mr. Vogt lived, and I drove right straight there. There wasn't anybody home, but I thought I might just hang around a bit and try again in a little while.

There wasn't a lot to for me to do in Hartford to kill time, and except for Mr. Vogt there wasn't anyone I particularly cared to see. About the best thing I could think of was to head down to the Hartford Café and have a cup of coffee, and realized that there was a chance that Mr. Vogt might be there anyway.

The place hadn't changed much since I'd last been there not quite seven years before. It was pretty empty, and wherever Mr. Vogt was, he wasn't there. Who was there was the waitress, Mavis Hackenberg – well, at least it had been Hackenberg in high school although it seemed likely she was married now. She had always been one of the prettiest girls in school, but she looked a little weathered now and had put on a few pounds. "So, Mavis, how you been?" I asked. I wasn't as afraid to talk to her now as I had been back when I'd been the poor boy in high school.

"Mel!" she replied brightly. "It's been years. What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Oh, this and that, traveling a lot," I told her, trying to down play things a little. "I was heading down to Kearney and thought I'd look up Mr. Vogt."

"He was in earlier, but it's been a while," she told me. "Can I get you something?"

"Cup of coffee, I guess," I said. It hadn't been all that long since I'd had a pretty decent breakfast, so I didn't have any reason to be hungry. "So what you been up to?"

"You're looking at it," she sighed, glancing around the nearly empty café. "It's a job, I'll give it that."

"So did you and Gene ever get married?" I asked. Gene Roland and Mavis had been the hot couple all the way through high school, and it was always one of those understood things that she was taken, no matter how much any of the rest of us would have liked to have been able to go out with her.

"Yeah, we did, for all the good it did me," she said, sounding both bitter and exasperated. "He took off on me a couple years ago, leaving me with two kids. Said he was going to look for work in California. I haven't heard a word out of him since, the weasel."