Chapter 3

There were five more C heats to run and two consolations before we got around to the B heats. Frankly, some of them stank to high heaven but some were pretty good. There were maybe a dozen spins and some minor wrecks – nothing serious, thank God, and as I recall only one or two Jeeps were damaged enough to have to drop out.

Then it was time for the B heats. Just to make life interesting, Frank and Spud had announced that the starting order for the B heats was going to be by car numbers again, but in reverse order. That meant I was starting in the outside of the back row, with Goober on my inside. I guess both Goober and I had the same idea – try to pick up some positions by sling-shotting the start – in other words, hanging back a little and dropping the hammer before the flagman flies the green. You have to time it about right or you get egg all over your face. It was my first real try at that little stunt. I headed outside, while Goober dove inside. I'm pretty sure that we were four wide when we went by Spud, and he really should have thrown the red flag but he was too busy diving for cover. All of a sudden I saw a hell of a cloud of dust and someone getting sideways, so I dove even further to the right, clear off the track, but I kept my foot in it. As soon as I was past the wreck I cut hard left back onto the track and tucked in behind Goober, who had cut the corner way tight to avoid the wreck.

The wreck was bad enough that Spud had the red flag out as we came to the start-finish line. Goober braked to a stop and I stopped right behind him. Fortunately nobody was hurt and none of the Jeeps were banged up too bad, but a couple were too beat up to continue, so there were only six of us lined up single file.

While we were lining up, Spud came over to me and said, "Austin, you idiot, get your ass up on the high line and stay there. I think he can outturn you down low, but you can outrun him up high."

"Kinda figured that," I told him.

"Listen to me, run high," he said, and turned to finish up the lineup.

I tried to slingshot Goober on the restart but he wasn't buying it – he was a sharp cookie. I was right behind him on the restart, but went high right in the first corner and stayed there, while he took the low line. Since he had the shorter route he pulled ahead of me in every corner, but since I was already going faster I'd catch him in the straight. We got to the point where we were running side by side, sometimes with him ahead, sometimes with me ahead, and we were running the hell away from the field. In fact, we were lapping the field. We split one car on the back stretch of the next to last lap, both passing him at the same time, him low and me high, of course, then another on the front stretch. We come up on a third in the last corner, and he was running a low line – way low, in fact. Goober tried to go to the high side of him but I was already there, so he had to lift a bit and that got me into the lead at the checker, by maybe half a Jeep length.

"Hey, man, one hell of a race," I yelled to Goober as we shut the Jeeps off, close to side by side.

"Ayah, 'at was one raat mean son of a pup," he yelled back.

We sat and shot the shit while they put together and ran the other half of the B heats. The guy in the 24 car – I don't think I ever knew his name – started in the back of the field and just worked his way through it. He was in the lead by the time there were three laps left, and he had maybe a quarter of a lap lead when the checkers flew. He was clearly the class of the field in that heat, and Goober and I agreed we were going to have our hands full with him.

We took a little breather there, mostly to give the guys from the second B heat a chance to get settled. During the wait, Frank and Spud took a couple of Jeeps that hadn't made it into the feature and went out for their grudge match, with Carnie handling the flags. It was a damn close race. They started side by side, exchanged the lead a half dozen times in the ten laps, and finished with Spud's front bumper a good foot in front of Frank's.

Then it was time for the feature. I had the pole position, with the 24 car outside me and with Goober right behind me. I had the inside line – and I had the hot rod. In a real race you'd start rolling, but here it was a drag race to the first corner – and I had a Jeep that would accelerate through the gears a little better than everybody else's. Because of going up through the gears and the inside line, I had pulled out a good car length on Goober and less than that on the 24. I wanted the high line because my Jeep worked better up there, and the guy in the 24 wanted to be down low because normally that's the preferred line. Of course, Goober was also down low and wanted to stay there. The 24 couldn't power past me, but dove down inside just as soon as I got a bumper thickness in front of him. He misjudged it, though, diving into a space that Goober was already occupying. His left rear banged into Goober's right front, and both of them spun right there. Even in that short a distance the three of us had pulled out enough in front of the field that there was room for the other cars to get around the two of them. Nobody was hurt and neither of them even came to a full stop, although I imagine there were some cuss words exchanged while the yellow flag flew.

Since they got moving, although at the tail of the field, we ran under yellow for a couple laps to get things sorted out – laps under yellow didn't count – and then we got the green again with a single file restart. This time, I had a clear field with nobody arguing the first turn with me, so I just got up in the high line and let 'er roll. I wasn't pulling out that fast, but I could see over on the other side of the track that there was some action going on and I figured Goober and the 24 were going at it – when the whole field is made up of dark green Jeeps it's hard to tell who's doing what to who. I found out afterward that Goober and the 24 worked up through the field while trying to lay bumpers on each other, and it was one slam bang race that completely overlooked the fact that unless something happened they were unlikely to catch me. Of course, with about ten laps to go they got three wide in a place where there really was only room for two, and the 24 spun again, putting him back several places before he could gather it up – the field had stretched out by that much and I had already lapped a couple cars.

So, the yellow flew again and the field bunched up, with Goober back in about third and the 24 car several cars farther back. Again, when the restart came I got up high, while Goober managed to get under the guy that had been running second. While he was getting around him, though, I was winding it out, so I had maybe thirty yards lead and managed to extend it a little each lap while the 24 was fighting back through the field again. However, he only made it to third and wasn't really closing on Goober when the checkers flew.

Even with the hot rod Jeep, the victory wasn't easy, but I'd won it. It was a thrilling way to finish up V-J Day, and the troops had been treated to some pretty good racing. After the race, at the start-finish line the general presented me with staff sergeant's stripes, and a trophy – actually, a polished Jeep piston mounted in a rough chunk of Okinawan hardwood. Somebody, somewhere around headquarters knew how to do engraving and had the tools to do it with, because on it was lettered "Okinawa-Pacific Stock Car Champion, 1945."

That trophy sits on my mantle today, and I'm looking at it as I tell this. It was a big day for me, but in light of later experiences I can't help but cringe at the thought of racing in open Jeeps, without even a notion of a roll bar, wearing steel pots for helmets, in a field of absolute rookies. Why the hell it wasn't a slaughter is beyond me. Believe it or not, my real speed secret for winning the race wasn't the hot rod Jeep – but the fact that I wore a seat belt to keep me from sliding around in the seat so I could concentrate on powersliding the corners better. Some seat belt, too – an Army web belt pulled out to its full length and wrapped under the seat. I learned something from that, too.

But we were young, and we were stupid. We either thought we were invincible or considered with the war our lives didn't matter all that much. It seems dumb as hell now, but I sure would like to be that age again, knowing what I know now.

And so, I got out of the Army, went home and got into racing for real ... not hardly. In fact, I didn't get to do any of those things anytime soon.

As soon as the war was over with there was a great clamor in the states to "bring the boys home." In fact, it had already begun, and people were already being brought back from Europe at a fast rate, although many of them had been retained in case they were needed in the Pacific, which, of course, had turned out not to be the case.

Of course, some people had been out there a long time, while others, like me, hadn't been out in the war zones much at all. To keep things fair, the Army worked up a points system to rough in the order of who got to go home when. You got so many points for time served, so many points for time overseas, for medals earned and for the number of children you had. I didn't even bother to add up my points because I figured that if I did I might discover I was eligible for discharge in, oh, 1952. When the initial cutoff was announced on September 1, you could go home if you had eighty-five points. As I recall, Frank had ninety-some points and a good quarter of the division was over the cutoff. You had to have an adequate replacement in place when you left, and Frank decided that I was adequate. He was gone by the end of October.