Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years

by Brock Yates

  "Life imitating art," I mused.

  Vuke reeled off three perfect laps. The Fuel-Injection Kurtis, smaller, lower, and narrower than the rest of the entrants, seemed planted to the track, its driver in a long-sleeved denim shirt, leaning aggressively over the steering wheel.

  "Oh, shit, here it comes," shouted a photographer as he attempted to shield his Speed Graphic from the cloudburst that suddenly pounded the Speedway. The torrent sent the bleacher crowd scurrying for cover as the growl of Vukovich's engine rose in the distant back straight.

  "He's gotta lift. That thing will think it's on an ice rink," said Medley.

  "No way he'll finish the lap," I agreed.

  Standing in the monsoon, we awaited the silence signaling that Vukovich had cut his engine and was coasting into the pits.

  Wrong. This was the Mad Russian, not some featherfoot tyro. The Offy's thunder racketed off the grandstands as the car, sluicing and yawing on the rain-soaked bricks, roared out of the mist and skated past the checkered flag, rooster-tails of spray spewing off its wheels.

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  "Holy shit! Now I've seen it all!" exclaimed a reporter from the Toledo Blade. "Nobody ever ran this joint at full speed in the rain. That Vukovich has cast-iron balls, I'll give him that!"

  He also had the pole position for the 1953 Indianapolis 500-mile race, based on one of the most audacious driving exhibitions ever witnessed in the thirty-seven-year history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

  IN A RARE MOMENT OF REFLECTION, THE SPEEDWAY management stood down for part of a day to honor Chet Miller. On the Monday following Vukovich's daredevil drive in the rain, practice was suspended for Miller's funeral services, which were held at the Speedway City Funeral Home nearby. Father Leo A. Lindemann, the Catholic track chaplain, gave the eulogy. It was announced at the ceremony that the Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale, California, planned to erect a water fountain in the seventh hole in memory of Miller, who was a devoted golfer and a longtime member member of the club.

  Six of Miller's rival drivers, including Wilbur Shaw, were pallbearers. Shaw was an icon in Indianapolis. Not only had he won the 500 three times, with a fourth in his pocket until a wheel broke, but he was the Speedway's President. He worked for owner Anton "Tony" Hulman, the Terre Haute sportsman who had purchased the track from Eddie Rickenbacker in 1946. Yale man Hulman's family owned Terre Haute, for all intents and purposes, as well as the Clabber Girl Baking Powder Co. and Indiana's Coca-Cola distributorship.

  Following the funeral service, the engines were back at full cry. As if to take a chunk out of the bear, Duke Nalon was among the first on the track to make some practice laps in the second Novi. To climb into a sister car that had killed two of his teammates and had tried to burn him alive was an act of pure defiance. Nalon was a crafty, lowkey Chicagoan, not given to big talk. Like many Indy veterans, he had abandoned the sport full-time for a job with Ford Motor Company in its aircraft division, and only drove once a year at Indianapolis. Many believed that his deft touch with the evil Novis came as close as possible to maximizing the car's potential. Only one Novi remained. Owner Lew Welch announced that the Hepburn/Miller machine would never be repaired. Enough was enough.

  With Vuke on the pole for the race, he was able to relax as seventysix drivers hammered around the track seeking the remaining thirtytwo positions. He remained reclusive, choosing to confine his limited conversations to Travers and Coon and a few other drivers. Some believed him to be an angry man, full of venom and hatred for strangers, but this was not the case. In private he was affable and easygoing. But he sought no public image and asked for none in return.

  One morning we were hanging around his garage when a writer for Life magazine approached me and asked if I might intercede to arrange an interview. I told him the possibility was unlikely, but that I would ask.

  "Hey Vuke, a guy from Life magazine would like to talk with you. What do you think?"

  "This does my talking," he said, a wry smile crossing his face. He was pointing to his right foot.

  In fact, Vukovich's entire mind and body were able to talk racing at a level of intensity seldom seen in the sport. He trained vigorously for the ordeal, both back home in Fresno and at the Speedway, where he ran the 2.5-mile track each morning and flailed away steadily on an exercise machine mounted in his garage. Like many drivers, he had fashioned a steering wheel mounted on a shaft connected to a friction shock absorber. Twisting on the wheel developed upper-arm and shoulder strength, a critical component in controlling a nose-heavy, one-ton race car at speed during an era when power steering was only available on a few luxury sedans. Born in Alameda, but raised in Fresno where his immigrant father had run a small vineyard, when he was sixteen he and his two older brothers were orphaned and had raised themselves on the tiny spread on the edge of town.

  He drifted into the world of motor racing before the war, fascinated by the fierce competition and lured by the possibility of making a living away from the hardscrabble farm. He made little impact prior to his military service in World War II, but returned a stronger, brighter, more focused competitor; and by 1950 he had won the national midget racing championship in the face of fierce competition from masses of hungry, restless veterans like himself. Vukovich's dream was to race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Mount Olympus of the sport, and he took an instant liking to the foreboding rectangle. He felt no fear of the place.

  For others it was not so easy. John Fitch was a P-51 fighter pilot, prisoner of war, and an expert sports car driver with the top-notch Cunningham team. He had just won the arduous Sebring 12-Hour endurance race and had returned to Indianapolis, his native city, where his father was an executive with the now-defunct Stutz motor company. He planned to race in the vaunted 500, but like many, this courageous and skilled driver simply could not get comfortable in the vast arena. After attempting to run competitively in two different cars, he left quietly to return to the amateur sports car world, whose drivers Rodger Ward and other pros lampooned as "strokers and bro- kers"-i.e., rich playboys lacking the cojones to run with "real" men.

  This was surely unfair, although in Fitch's case, it was true that he was unable to exceed 129 mph in a new Kurtis roadster while forty-six-year-old Bill Holland, who had been suspended from the Speedway for two years after running a so-called outlaw (unsanctioned) race, easily qualified the car at 137 mph. Holland, a former winner of the 500, was clearly someone who had no trouble running the big track at record speeds. Yet Fitch's career in motor sports would be long and distinguished, despite his failure to crack the mental barrier at Indianapolis.

  Somehow an eastern Brahmin was at a massive disadvantage in professional automobile racing. Of the thirty-three men who made up the starting field in 1953, more than half were native Californians. Eight had either won the 500 or were destined to win it during the fifties.

  All were working-class Anglo-Saxons, with the exception of Vukovich. All had been trained in the crucible of competition like the booming midget racing leagues, where competition was carried on around the Los Angeles basin seven nights a week, or in the crazed California Roadster Association, where wheel-to-wheel hot-rod racing took place at the elemental level of survival of the fittest.

  They were hardly boys of summer. Of the thirty-three, only two, at twenty-four years of age, were young enough to play major league baseball in their prime. A few others were in their late twenties or early thirties. Three were in their forties, bringing the average age to twenty-eight. All had been in racing since their teenage years, bouncing around the dirt and asphalt bullrings of the nation, honing their skills behind the wheels of lethal, unhinged semiwrecks owned and campaigned by local gas station and garage owners, all dreaming of a shot at Indianapolis. All had suffered injuries ranging from broken noses and teeth and cheekbones, to horrific arm bruises from flying clots of dirt, to multiple fractures and burns. Many were unmarried, content to live out their lives drifting from racetrack to racetrack, with cheap hotels an
d tourist homes offering the only respite from the noise and violence. Weeks on end might be spent sleeping in the backseat of a car towing a race car known simply as "the Ford motel."

  A man of Fitch's background, where gentlemanly amateur motor sports was the fashion, could not easily adjust to the fanatic level of driving to be found among the Californians. So it would come to pass that Golden Staters like Johnny Parsons, Oklahoma transplant Troy Ruttman (absent from the 1953 starters due to an arm injury), Vukovich, Bob Sweikert, Sam Hanks, Rodger Ward, and Jim Rathmann would win at Indianapolis while gentlemen sports car racers, the "teabaggers" and "strokers and brokers," were resigned to secondary status, at least in the deadly game being played out each May at Indianapolis.

  As an example of how unforgiving professional racing at the Indianapolis level was: among the thirty-three men who started the 1953 Indianapolis Motor Speedway International Sweepstakes (the official name of the event), seventeen would die in racing accidents. Another would be permanently disabled. Four would meet death at Indianapolis, while the rest would die at various dirt track and asphalt speedways around the nation. By contrast, in Fitch's world of sports cars, death and injury were both rare. The racing speeds were slower, and the environment was more relaxed.

  Medley and I ate dinner the night before the big race with a few journalists at a little downtown steak house called St. Elmo's, famous for its mouth-frying shrimp cocktail sauce and tender beef. We planned to rise early and be at the trackside long before the prerace festivities got underway at ten o'clock. But I was awake far earlier than expected, when a hot breeze rolled into my bedroom. I checked the clock: 3 a.m. and already it was stifling. Unless a cold front arrived, Indianapolis would be blanketed in insufferable humidity by the time the green flag fell.

  The cavernous grandstands were slow to fill, the throng (estimated at two-hundred thousand) perhaps sensing that a late arrival would minimize exposure to the heat. By ten o'clock the thermometer outside the Associated Press hut read 88 degrees. A steamy layer of soft nimbus clouds hung over the track, and people were already dabbing their foreheads with soaked handkerchiefs.

  The Purdue University marching band was a traditional performer at the prerace ceremony. It would accompany Martin Downey in his rendition of local favorite "Back Home in Indiana." The program went according to plan until a pretty blonde drum majorette keeled over with heat prostration. She was followed by four band members, who went down like tenpins in heat-induced faints.

  The cars were rolled out of their garages and pushed onto the front straightaway, there to be swallowed up by a sea of sweating pit crewmen, VIPs, journalists, and track officials. The drivers, sensing a long, hot ride, were wearing polo shirts, ignoring fire protection in favor of simple ventilation.

  Whistles blew and a battalion of track guards wearing blue shirts and yellow ties-a uniform resembling the Indiana State Highway Patrol began to clear the grid.

  Only the cars, their drivers, and the crews stood on the bricks. Then came the world-famous words from speedway boss Wilbur Shaw: "Gentlemen, start your engines."

  Starters whined. Engines blurted into life. A cheer swept through the grandstand. William Clay Ford, the son of the founder of modern automotive transportation, eased onto the track at the wheel of his white Ford Sunliner convertible pace car. Ford slowly accelerated to lead the field on a pair of pace laps. Vukovich's gray Fuel Injection Special was flanked by fellow Californians Freddy Agabashian in the Granatelli brothers' Kurtis-Kraft roadster and Jack McGrath in Jack Hinkle's narrow, bright maroon, upright dirttrack Kurtis.

  Meldley rushed off to the first turn with his camera, hoping to get some early race action. Dripping sweat, I made off to the pits to await any emergency stops.

  The race started. Deafening thunder as the field pounded past and slashed out of sight. A minute later they reappeared, with Vukovich already well out in front. Lap one of two hundred.

  Four laps and a yellow flag. Caution. Andy Linden, a burly ex-navy boxer from Manhattan Beach, had started fifth among the fast guys, but had lost control in the second turn and slammed into the wall. I headed for the infield hospital, where the chief doctor, C. B. Bohner, had set up a small army of physicians, nurses, and ambulance drivers to handle the inevitable crunch of injuries among the massive crowd and the competitors.

  As I trudged through the infield, I passed a row of bizarre scaffolds that had been erected along the main straightaway. They looked like medieval assault towers, built out of spindly pipe frames used as temporary construction and painters' platforms, and enterprising fans had erected them for better race viewing. Though they were guywired, they looked over-packed and dangerously wobbly. A year later, one such structure would topple, killing several people. The towers were subsequently banished from the Speedway.

  Seven tents had been erected around the infield hospital. Already a cluster of cots was occupied by victims of the rising heat. Nurses were applying cold packs and offering water to patients as the ambulance hauling Linden arrived. He staggered out, apparently not seriously injured, although an ugly burn on his right arm needed treatment.

  The thermometer on the door frame of the hospital read 91 degrees. It was not yet noon. Linden's wife arrived, crying hysterically. It was the wives who had it worst of all.

  Beyond the rickety towers and the grandstands, the deathly roar of the engines was omnipresent. I could see flashes of color as the cars arrowed past through breaks in the crowd. It was clear that Vukovich was in the lead and unchallenged.

  Word spread through the staff that Carl Scarborough was being brought in with heat prostration. He was a veteran of the so-called outlaw circuits that were unrecognized by the American Automobile Association, and had run the 500 only once before. He claimed to be thirty-eight years old.

  He arrived on a stretcher, looking beet-red. An ambulance attendant came out of the hospital. "He's got a temperature of 103.6. His crew accidentally doused him with C02 trying to put out a fuel fire. Damn near suffocated him. He ain't good."

  Gene Hartley, a kid from Indiana, arrived soon afterward. He had hit the wall, but appeared unhurt. It was getting hotter. Two more drivers showed up on stretchers. Johnny Parsons, who had won the race in 1950, and Jerry Hoyt, a newcomer, were wrapped in wet sheets and given intravenous salt solutions.

  The din went on.

  A male nurse came out. "Scarborough's real bad. They've opened up his chest and are massaging his heart. Three doctors working in teams."

  Another ambulance. Pat Flaherty had gotten woozy from the heat and lost control in the third turn. He was unconscious. After a short interlude inside the hospital, he was reloaded into the ambulance and sent on to Methodist Hospital.

  A reporter from Chicago said, "It's a war zone on pit road. Guys are falling out of the cars like flies. It's over 130 degrees on the track. Nobody can handle it."

  "What about Vukovich?" I asked.

  "Except him. Hasn't slowed a bit. The guy isn't human."

  Father Lindemann, the Catholic priest who had conducted the service for Chet Miller, blew through the crowd and went into the hospital.

  "Bad sign. He's giving Scarborough last rites," somebody said.

  Spider Webb, another veteran, showed up, also wrecked by the heat. Then came Tony Bettenhausen, the former national champion, and Rodger Ward, the cocky ex-fighter pilot. All were wrapped in cold sheets and seemed to be recovering. Would this nightmare never end? Word went around that only a few drivers, including Vukovich, who was far in the lead, could continue without relief. Drivers were piling in and out of the steaming cockpits to the point that no one was sure who was driving what car. Art Cross, an Indiana driver who started the race in a car owned by tiny blond Bessie Paoli, operator of a welding shop in Springfield, Illinois, quickly gave in to the oppressive heat. His car's cockpit was so poorly ventilated that four other drivers relieved him at the wheel during the race. The Springfield Welding Special finally finished second, marking the only time in the hist
ory of the race that five drivers shared in one car's prize money. Several other cars had three drivers, while young Bob Scott carried on for Scarborough. In the face of the choking heat, no one was quitting.

  Linden was back. He had crashed a second time. He had shrugged off his earlier injuries and gone back to drive relief, only to bunt the wall again. Dr. Bohner yelled at Linden for such idiotic behavior. "Hey, Doc, you can't let your buddies down," pleaded Linden.

  Carl Scarborough was dead. It was announced to the press as the final laps unwound.

  Four laps from the end, another yellow flag. Hartley again. Like Linden, he had gone back for more, relieving his friend Chuck Stevenson, who was driving the Agajanian 98 that had won the race the year before. Exhausted and heat-ravaged, Hartley had smacked the wall a second time. Miraculously, he was not seriously injured. Duke Nalon, cautiously driving the remaining Novi, had intentionally spun to miss Hartley and ended up stalled on the track apron. This would mark the final appearance of front-drive Novis in the Indianapolis 500.

  A distant cheer echoed from the grandstands as Vukovich took the checkered flag. He had led all but five laps of the two hundred. Then silence. The engines were dead. Only the rustle of the crowd heading for the gates rose above the stifling breeze.

  A doctor and a nurse rushed toward an ambulance. "Russo and Daywalt," said the Chicago reporter. "Both in bad shape from the heat. Stuck in Gasoline Alley. Too much traffic and crowds. They can't get here. The docs are going to them with adrenaline and salt solutions. This place is nuts."

  I had spent the entire race-all of its insane, boiling, metal-shredding three hours and fifty-three minutes-hanging around the hospital. I had seen little or nothing of the track action, although the endless detonations of the racing engines still rang in my ears. Feeling sorry for poor Scarborough and the chaos he was surely leaving behind for his family, I worked my way back to Gasoline Alley. It was slow going against the tide of spectators heading for the parking lots. My plan was to meet Medley at the Vukovich garage.