Chapter 7

I followed Hoss into the infield, wondering what I was supposed to be doing next. I figured they'd be loading up pretty quick now that the night's action was over with, and it turned out that I was right.

Hoss headed right over to this big trailer that looked sort of like an auto-hauler, the kind you see heading down the road loaded with new cars, all hooked up to a small semi-tractor. As I got closer, I could see that the thing was set so two midgets could be loaded side by side. On a regular auto trailer there's just two ramps down either side, but there was third one here, a wider one up the middle. There was a ramp leading up the back of it, and Hoss headed right up the ramp. He glanced back to see if I was following and pointed to one side, so I figured I was supposed to take the other side. The top layer bent down low enough that I had to duck my head when I went under it, and it was snug getting the car next to Hoss' – there was only an inch or so clearance.

Hoss shut down his engine, so I did too. I undid my lap belt and worked my way out of the car, as other cars filled in the space behind me. "Jeez, good race," Hoss said. "Let's get back and help move the ramps."

We jumped down to the ground and headed to the back end of the trailer. The low part of the trailer was filled with cars, now, and two or three other guys were joining us. Those ramps were heavy, but with several guys it was only the work of a couple minutes to raise the ramps we'd driven to where we could put cars on the top level, and there were cars already waiting to go up it. It couldn't have been five minutes that the race had been over and all the cars except for the 69 car were loaded. It was over in front of the grandstand, with people gathered around. It looked to me like the driver was signing autographs.

"Come on," Hoss said, "Let's get the cars tied down."

It turned out that tying down the cars was pretty easy – somebody had put some thinking into the design of that trailer. There were some tie-down chains dangling from the ramps that just had to be hooked into some eyebolts on the car, then snugged up with a lever attachment. It couldn't have taken more than a couple minutes to get the cars tied down, and there were guys on the upper level doing the same thing. "Pretty slick," I commented to Hoss.

"Yeah, it works pretty good if everybody works together," Hoss said, only now unbuckling his helmet. "The sooner we get packed up, the sooner we can get out of here. Thank God this is Wisconsin, the bars will be open for a while yet."

Following Hoss's lead, I took off my helmet and peeled out of my coveralls. It had been hot earlier in the evening, but now it was just getting to be pleasantly cool. I was just getting them folded up when Spud came over. "Mel, you looked pretty good out there," he said. "You still want to race with us?"

"Yeah, if you'll have me," I told him. I could see that this was going to beat the living hell out of pumping gas and checking tires for the next few months.

"How long is it going to take for you to get out of wherever it is you're staying and come join us? We're going to be at Baraboo tomorrow night, a place called Moreton Speedway, over the other side and north of Madison; it's about a hundred mile jump."

"I can probably be there," I said, thinking fast. It wasn't going to take me long to gather up my stuff at the boarding house; I wasn't the kind to accumulate a lot of stuff in those days, and I could probably put everything in my old Army duffel bag and a couple cheap suitcases I'd picked up. I paid my rent weekly and it was due in a couple days, so it wasn't going to cost me much to leave. It normally wouldn't be a good idea to leave my job at the gas station without giving some kind of notice, but since I didn't plan on staying on in Milwaukee it really didn't matter that much as I'd been paid that afternoon. "Can't really think of much of anything to hold me down. The only thing is I've got some lines out to some schools for teaching jobs; I really ought to have a place to forward my mail."

"You can tell 'em to forward your mail to you care of Midwest Midget Sportsman Association, Livonia, Michigan," Spud replied. "Vivian sets up a mail package to us about once a week; it usually works pretty good, not that some of us get much mail."

"Good enough," I told him. "If for some reason I don't catch you in Baraboo, where you going to be after that?

"Prairie du Chien fairgrounds, then we're heading off into Iowa for a bit, I ain't sure where," he replied. "Sometimes Frank don't know all that far in advance, either. Hey, while I'm thinking about it, if you happen to pass an army surplus store, get yourself a pup tent and a cheap sleeping bag. We might be hitting some places where there ain't much in the way of places to stay."

"Yeah, Hoss said something about that," I told him.

"Good enough," he nodded. "I better get back to seeing that stuff gets loaded up. If Frank ever gets done arguing with that horse's ass of a fairground manager, he'll probably be over this way if you want to say hi."

"I'm done arguing with that joker," Frank's voice piped up out of the half-darkness. "I got our cut, that's what counts. Son of a bitch was trying to bullshit me about the gate, but shit, I can count."

"Figured it was something like that," Spud agreed. "You could just look at him and see he was gonna try something."

"That's how it goes sometimes," Frank agreed. "Mel, you done good tonight. Spud said you was thinking about staying with us for a while."

"Yeah, I've got to pick up my stuff, but I'm going to try and catch up with you tomorrow."

"Well, glad to have you with us," Frank said warmly. "Spud, any word on Giff?"

"Nothing," Spud shrugged. "I figure we'll either see him tomorrow or we won't. Wouldn't surprise me if we didn't. No great loss anyway."

"Speaking of no great loss," Frank snorted, "You gonna do something about Pepper and Slab?"

"Depends on how bad you want to keep them around," Spud shook his head. "Even with bringing Mel on board we're going to be short a couple drivers. But if they want to pull something that stupid, I figure they're about to lose a sixteenth."

"Sounds fair to me," Frank nodded.

"Good enough," Spud smiled. "Mel, I'll catch you later or tomorrow or something. I've got stuff to do if we're ever going to get out of here."

"Right, see you later," Frank told him, then turned back to me. "Mel, I'm sorry we haven't had much time to catch up on the old days, but it's been a busy evening and that jerk of a fairground manager hasn't made life much easier. But if you're going to be with us, we'll get a chance to catch up some. Right now, I want to get out of here before that joker can think of some other way to try and screw us."

"Do what you have to do," I told him. "I'll catch you tomorrow."

I took my helmet and coveralls and put them back in the trailer where I'd gotten them, and then looked around to see if there was anything I could do to help. It didn't seem like it to me; from what I could tell things were getting packed up and ready to go. It didn't take long before somebody got into the semi and got it running, and people were getting aboard vehicles. I guess that was my sign to do something about getting out of there myself. I headed back over to where my car was parked, got in, and followed a line of vehicles heading for the exit. When we got back out to the highway, the line turned left, heading for wherever it was they were headed, while I turned right to head back to beer town.

It was after dark now, and the streets were quieting down. I knew it was going to be a good hour's drive back to the boarding house, and I was still hungry, so I kept my eyes open for a diner or something where I could stop to get something to eat. I found one about halfway back, went in, and ordered a cup of coffee and the special, which was something like a hot roast beef sandwich – it tasted good and I was hungry. After the waitress brought me a piece of pie, I sat, sipped on my coffee and smoked a couple cigarettes, just thinking. This had the potential to be a lot more interesting than spending the summer pumping gas, even though I knew I wasn't really a racer, at least not yet, in spite of finishing third in the feature an hour or so before. But, I thought that I might well be one after spending the summer with that crew.

It was after midnight before I got back to the boarding house. The windows were all dark when I got there, so I tried to sneak in and make as little noise as possible. The old bat that owned the place was not real happy about people staying out late, but she cut me a little slack since she knew that I had a job that sometimes ran late. I got up to my room and opened the window – it was hotter than snot in there from having been closed up all day on a warmer-than-normal late spring day. This was long before the days of home air conditioning, so there wasn't much I could do but hope that there would be a little breeze from the window. I stripped down to my drawers, turned out the light, and just lay down on the bed, listening to the familiar sounds of the city at night. There was always traffic noise, train noise and whistles, and the occasional siren, but between the heat and the excitement of getting together with this racing crew, I wasn't in any mood to sleep.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that this was a pretty good idea. It was just as clear as could be that there wasn't going to be any real big money involved, but it looked like it might be a steady income. Frankly, it looked like it would be fun. I thought I was ready for a little adventure and excitement in my life. I'd spent the last four years in college, studying hard and working part time, and had spent more time working over the summers to help pay my expenses. Prior to that, I'd spent two and a half years in the service, and while it had been an adventure of sorts and I'd had my good times, it had mostly been uncomfortable and a lot of work. Assuming I got a decent teaching job, not some Chicago slum school, it was going to be real easy to think about settling down. It seemed like a good idea to be a little footloose for a while and get some fun in my life before I headed down that road.

I didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, what with everything running through my head. I went down to breakfast and told the old gal that owned the place that I was moving out, I'd gotten a job that was going to keep me on the road for a while, and where to forward my mail. A little to my surprise, she said I'd been a pretty decent boarder and wished me good luck. It didn't take me long to get my stuff packed up and moved down to the Ford, and at that I threw some stuff out that didn't seem worth the hauling. With that done, I swung by the gas station and told the old boy who owned it that I'd gotten a job out of town. He said at least I was nice enough to tell him and just not show up for work, which I'd been considering.

There was an Army/Navy surplus store not far away, and I decided to head on over there. Back in those days after the war there were a lot of places around that bought up stuff the military had no more use for at a few cents on the dollar and made a good profit on the turnover. I picked up a sleeping bag and some shelter halves, along with the tent poles and pegs and a few other items; I don't think I spent five bucks on everything. I knew from my Army days that sleeping in a pup tent was no damn fun, but it would do in a pinch if I didn't have to do it too often. I tossed that in the back of the Ford, and headed down US-18 toward Madison and Baraboo.

These days, it's Interstate Highways almost all the way, but this was back in the two-lane road days, and there was any number of little towns along the way. You didn't much more than get back up to fifty before you had to slow down for another little town, with lots of stop signs and twenty-five or thirty-mile-an-hour limits – and then I had to go right through the center of Madison, too, where I picked up US-12 north to Baraboo. So, it took me close to four hours to drive what wasn't any more than a hundred and twenty miles or so. I stopped along in there at another little diner for lunch, and along in the middle of the afternoon I stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of Baraboo to ask where this Moreton Speedway was. It turned out it was several miles out of the far side of town, so I headed on out there.

Moreton Speedway turned out to be an actual race track, a quarter-mile job that was pretty flat in the corners. It had a run-down look to it, like it had been built cheap and there hadn't been a lot of work put into the upkeep. I was to find out that a lot of dirt tracks looked like that – mostly you get a lot of flying dust and dirt in the air from the cars, and it tended to make things look shabby pretty quickly. It was really rare to run across one that was clean and well-kept. I drove into the infield, parked with the MMSA vehicles, and looked around for Frank or Spud. There wasn't any sign of them, but I soon spotted Hoss.