The Red Smith Reader

by Dave Anderson

  There is a skeleton skyline of scaffolding, mostly unpainted two-by-fours set up astraddle the automobiles and supporting an observation platform perhaps fifteen feet high. Some are professional jobs of structural steel, bolted together and rising as high as twenty-five feet.

  One of the tallest and certainly the most precarious looking consists of two double-length painters’ ladders propped up in an inverted V. Two or three planks thrust between the upper rungs make unsteady perches against the sky.

  The earth is a vast litter of crushed lunch boxes and tattered paper and beer cans and whiskey bottles and banana skins and orange peels and the heels of used sandwiches and blankets and raiment and people. Over everything is the reek of burning castor oil, the incessant, nerve-shattering roar of racing motors.

  This is the Indianapolis “500,” a gigantic, grimy lawn party, a monstrous holiday compounded of dust and danger and noise, the world’s biggest carnival midway and the closest sporting approach permitted by the Humane Society to the pastimes which once made the Roman Colosseum known as the Yankee Stadium of its day (cars are used in this entertainment because the S.P.C.A. frowns on lions).

  The speedway is a rambling, ramshackle plant enclosed by two and a half miles of brick-paved track and the only space not jammed is the nine-hole golf course in the remotest part of the infield. Through binoculars from the press loft, couples can be seen reclining in comradely embrace beneath the trees on the links, but there seem to be no golfers.

  It is said there are 175,000 people here, although gates started to close half an hour before race time. At that morning hour the Purdue University band was on the track giving brassy evidence of the advantages of higher education. At length these embryo Sammy Kayes tied into the national anthem and followed with “Taps,” just in case. Bombs went off. Rockets burst in air, making a heavy flak pattern below cruising planes. James Melton sang “Back Home Again in Indiana” slowly, a full four seconds off the track record.

  The cars had been pushed into place, three abreast in eleven ranks. Their drivers, goggled and helmeted, looked like Buck Rogers cut-outs. The flying start was a burst of thunder, a blur of colors. Since then, it has been an unceasing grind, hour after hour, making the eyeballs ache, the temples throb. Every car has a different voice, none soothing. There is a twelve-cylinder Mercedes said to have been built for Adolf Hitler; it runs with a scream like Adolf s conscience.

  Now, late in the race, the favored lane near the outside, which is called “the groove,” has been blackened with oil. Coming down the straightaway, the cars skitter nervously on this slick, swinging their hips like Powers models. Most of the thirteen drivers still in the race steer to the cleaner bricks inside the strip.

  Duke Nalon stays in the groove, though, and is leading with only fifteen of the two hundred laps remaining. He has the fastest, most powerful brute of a car ever put on this track, but its speed requires a special fuel which gives poor mileage, and now he pulls in for refueling. The crowd gives him a yell, the first time its voice has been heard all day. The pit crew works swiftly, finishes, can’t get the motor started again. The car starts once, dies, and must be pushed back to the pit for more feverish seconds. This is the day’s most exciting moment.

  When Nalon finally goes away, to another small cheer, Mauri Rose and Bill Holland are ahead of him. The race is over; it was lost there at the gas pump.

  BICYCLES IN THE ALPS

  GAP, FRANCE, 1960

  From the summit of the mountain called Col de Perty, misty Alpine peaks stretched away in wave after gray-blue wave, as far as the eye could reach. The morning had been hot in Avignon in the soft valley of the Rhone, but up here, 4,000 feet in the sky, a fresh wind was blowing, stiff and chilling. Col de Perty is a barren knob not close to anything or anybody, yet it looked like the bleachers in Yankee Stadium on a good day with the White Sox.

  From somewhere, by some means, they had come by the hundreds—wide-eyed kids and old pappy guys and wizened peasant women and young guys and exuberant girls waved at the press cars whirring by. A smiling doll had a counter of plain boards set up, where she sold razor-thin salami in yesterday’s bread, and nearby was another hutch offering soft drinks and beer.

  They had been waiting for two or three hours, perched on rocks or camp chairs or just meandering about. Now a sense of expectancy came over them all as a squadron of cops on motor bikes came around the shoulder of the mountain. Then from the crowd on the highest slope came a buzz that grew into a hum and finally a babble.

  Bicyclists in bright jerseys emerged from behind a rocky promontory. They came straining bitterly, leaning on the pedals, teeth clenched, shaved limbs glistening with sweat—a little group of leaders in single file, then a gap, then a long cluster, then the laggards.

  This was the Tour de France topping the first challenging peak of the Alpine section of the course. There would be more and tougher heights to scale later, but this was enough to split out the men from the boys.

  The Tour de France, now being contested for the forty-seventh time since 1903, is an annual bike race of 2,600 miles around the perimeter of France, over the Pyrenees and over the Alps. Some of the roads are terrifying in a car, but these characters go pumping a hundred-odd miles a day at something like twenty-five miles an hour.

  There is nothing in America even remotely comparable with it. We think the World Series claims the undivided attention of the United States, but there is a saying here that an Army from Mars could invade France, the government could fall, and even the recipe for sauce Béarnaise be lost, but if it happened during the Tour de France nobody would notice.

  Today’s leg was the fifteenth of the course that began June 26 at Lille in the North, took the riders up into Belgium through Brussels and down the west coast, then east to this corner near Italy and Switzerland. Of the 120 starters, 88 had made it into Avignon last night, hoping to reach Paris on July 17.

  In that ancient walled city which once was the seat of popes, there was festival last night but there was also mourning for the loss of a favorite, Roger Riviere from the French team. On yesterday’s run he had plunged off the road, hurtled through a gap in the retaining wall and plummeted seventy-five feet, winding up in the hospital with a broken vertebra and a highly intelligent statement: “You shall see me no more on a bicycle.”

  In the overall time reckoning, he had been second, only one minute thirty-six seconds behind Italy’s Gastone Nencini, who set off again this morning in the yellow jersey of the leader, probably the most coveted, and sweatiest, piece of apparel in Europe.

  This is the order of march in this implausible parade: an hour before the cyclists start, the “publicity caravan” departs, a great parade of sound trucks and shills advertising commercial products. Then a platoon of motorcyclists clears the road for the racers, who are followed by a control car and then a double file of press, radio, television, and team cars carrying the team managers and spare parts for broken bikes.

  Out of Avignon it was fairly level going for a while, with the whole field pumping along in one great clot. In every village, streets were jammed. All along the country roads there were family groups waving and cheering.

  For the first 50 miles of this 110-mile leg, the road climbed gently toward the foothills of the Alps. Then the high hills began, capped here and there by fortifications left over since the Roman Empire. Past a village named Pierrelongue, Albert Geldermann of Holland went into a ditch, crawled out with blood streaming down his left leg, swiftly replaced a bent wheel, remounted, and pumped hard to catch up with the pack. (There is shortwave radio control that brings up a team car or the race’s attending doctor on quick notice.)

  As the narrow road wound through a gorge, a Belgian named Louis Proost crashed against the retaining wall. He remounted but he was badly knocked about, and in a mile or so he had to give up. He wobbled over against the wall and sagged there, crying like a child.

  They went sweating up Col de Perty, went ripping down the far side a
t a bloodcurdling fifty miles an hour, and now the field had stretched out, with five riders in a cluster about a mile ahead of the main pack. Behind the latter were the stragglers, followed closely by a car that is called the camion balai, the “broom truck,” which gathers up the debris.

  Then it was up again around devastating hairpin turns to Col de la Sentinelle and finally down to this village, with a wild sprint down a tree-lined street with Belgium’s Michel Van Aerde beating a Dutchman named Van den Borgh by inches for the day’s lap prize. The villagers milled and swooped and cheered and a dozen radio announcers babbled and a truck rolled by advertising bananas, “the fruit in the yellow jersey.”

  IN THE DOGHOUSE

  1948

  According to the best contemporary literature, red, raw courage is stock equipment in Madison Square Garden, the nation’s most celebrated blood pit. Never was the truth of this brought home more effectively than when the intrepid management covered the entire Garden floor with an expanse of pale green carpet for the Westminster Kennel Club show. This, of course, is written from the viewpoint of one who recently entered the service of a puppy.

  A visit was made to the Garden for the dual purpose of schneering at the other dachshunds and admiring the ladies who are led across the ring by the toy breeds. It is a scientific fact that the ladies tethered to the tiny toys are invariably the most magnificent members of the species. No exception was taken in this case; the smallest pooch noted was towing the largest handler, a celestial creature measuring seventeen and a half hands at the withers, deep of chest, with fine, sturdy pasterns.

  Apparently the dog business, like any other, is a matter of ups and downs. For example, Walter Foster, who used to handle the imposing boxer, Ch. Warload of Mazelaine, winner of best of show last year, showed up in the toy class this time as handler of a pug named Abbeyville Personality, which wasn’t even a ch. Whether going from boxers to pugs represents progress or decline is a matter of opinion.

  Strictly speaking, dog show fans are not sport fans at all, but claques. Thus a terrier man will beat his palms raw when the Boston, Ch. Mighty Sweet Regardless, is in the ring, but would die before he’d emit a peep of applause for any other breed. The lady customers are less discriminating. They squealed with joy over all the toys and strained their stays for a Yorkshire named Ch. Little Boy Blue of Yorktown, whose weeping-willow coiffure suggested a set of old-fashioned portieres.

  There was also considerable enthusiasm when a lady working a large white poodle rushed back and forth across the ring at a pace which ladies usually reserve for catching a bus. With the puffball of ermine keeping pace at her heels, she looked like somebody fleeing an avalanche of snow.

  A personal favorite in the nonsporting group was a bulldog named Ch. Michael Pendergast, who looks exactly like Babe Ruth in his prime, even imitating the Babe’s jaunty waddle. However, spectator sympathy was clearly with the defending champion, Mighty Sweet Regardless, and there was no denying that this is a comely bone-polisher with the strut of a drum major.

  Chances are the judge makes up his mind the first time he runs his eye over the group and goes through the interminable mumbo-jumbo which ensues just to get the crowd wheed up and to prevent the also-rans from hollering that he gave their pets the brush.

  In this respect, the judge of the nonsporting group, a Dr. M. Ross Taylor, proved himself a ch. among chs. He was imperious; he was painstakingly studious; he was profoundly authoritative of mien. He had splendid conformation—broad shoulders, white hair and an erect carriage—and was beautifully turned out in an ensemble of rich brown.

  One was inclined to hope that he would, in the end, award first prize to himself. But after what seemed a positive fit of indecision he gave the duke to Mighty Sweet, whereupon the crowd howled approval and a phalanx of photographers rushed forward, flash bulbs popping. At this point a tour of the basement was begun with a guide who knows about dogs. All contestants are housed downstairs in stalls awaiting their appearance on the show floor. The guide paused before a stall occupied by a dog and a slight, sandy man wearing a loud sports jacket.

  “This,” the guide said, “is a liver hound with a light chestnut horse player.”

  “Afghans,” the guide said, gesturing down a row of stalls containing gray, furry, floppy things sprawled out and dozing. You could see why they’re called Afghans. They look just like those knitted businesses which wives keep folded on the couch for taking afternoon naps under.

  The guide was pleased to come upon a dog voraciously eating a copy of the show catalogue, price $1.25. “Very rare breed,” he said, “called a comma hound, or copyreader. Look what he’s done to that first paragraph.”

  JAPANESE BOMBARDMENT

  SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA, 1942

  The Japs knew exactly what they were shooting at when they shelled the Elwood oilfields near here last night.

  Those weren’t token shells fired at random just anywhere along the coast merely to furnish an audacious punctuation of President Roosevelt’s radio address.

  It was not blundering accident that led the submarine into the little cove below the bluff where derricks, storage tanks and the Barnsdall absorption plant stand.

  That is old, familiar ground to the enemy. For years before the United States embargoed oil shipments to Japan, Nipponese tankers used to put in there and take on cargoes from the loading platform.

  It was only because of the gunners’ bad aim that no damage was done.

  All this was common gossip today among eyewitnesses.

  “I’d been expecting it, of course,” said matronly, fifty-five-year-old Mrs. Hilda Wheeler, who watched from her backyard as shells exploded three hundred yards away.

  “You see, when the soldiers were here everyone talked about the possibility of an attack. The boys said the one thing they wanted most was to get a Jap sub, and then, of course, we all knew the Japs had been coming in here all those years.”

  English-born, Mrs. Wheeler and her husband, Laurence, operate a restaurant on the shore side of El Camino Real, California’s main coast highway about a half mile from the craggy beach at this point. The kitchen window looks out upon the wells and tanks.

  Today Mrs. Wheeler stood in the kitchen, her hands folded across her print apron, patiently struggling to help prepare meals for the customers while newspaper men and photographers clamored about her. Her attitude was one of pleased yet quiet excitement as she told her story.

  She had been working in the kitchen when the first shell burst. A deep, heavy boom accompanied by the rattle of gravel against the nearest oil tank. Then the whine. Then the slap of the gun’s report.

  “I saw earth fly up in a sort of fan. Then I realized it was the Japs. I ran out back there to watch.”

  “Weren’t you scared? Didn’t you think of ducking for cover?”

  She smiled.

  “Would you, with all those fireworks going on? It was fascinating. You kept wondering where they’d hit next. I could see the flashes and I thought, ‘Oh, they’re aiming for the tanks and the plant.’

  “There must have been a dozen, maybe more. I heard one whine over the place here. I believe it landed up there in the orange groves toward the hills.

  “I remember that when it stopped I thought, ‘Why hasn’t Papa come outside?’ No, I wasn’t scared. Just a little queer feeling here.”

  She pressed a palm against her waist.

  “Hotcakes, mother,” her husband said, shouldering in from the dining room.

  “Please,” Mrs. Wheeler protested, “no more pictures. I just have to make hotcakes. Why don’t you get someone who’s prettier?

  “No, please, I have a very intelligent son, and he and his wife saw it all and I’m sure they can tell you anything more—

  “Oh well, yes, I had a fine sleep last night. As soon as I knew the soldiers were here, I felt perfectly safe.”

  As she talked, others were telling what they saw. Gerald Otto Brown, forty, a wispy little tractor operator for th
e Signal Oil Company, had driven up from Los Angeles about half an hour before the attack.

  “I was sitting in my car on the company lease near the beach,” he related, “listening to the President’s talk. He just got to the point where he said:

  “‘We have most certainly suffered losses—from Hitler’s U-boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific—and we shall suffer more—’

  “He just reached that when I heard a shot. I asked the caretaker if it was artillery practice and he said no, there wasn’t any here. So I ran up to the edge of the bluff where I could see.

  “I was out on the north point of the cove, about a mile above the sub. I’d judge the Japs were a mile offshore. It was just getting dark, but I could see the gun crews working. There were two of them.

  “Most of the shells seemed to hit the cliff face. I kept thinking what a swell target the sub would have made, just lying there on the surface broadside to the shore.

  “I saw the sub turn and move away. When it got too dark for me to see, it was still on the surface.

  “Afterward I heard a funny thing in Wheeler’s place. It seems there were some customers there listening to the President and they didn’t all run outside. One woman said:

  “‘Well, the President doesn’t seem excited. Just keeps talking through it all.’ “

  Some of the nicest people of lovely, wealthy Santa Barbara drove up the coast today to see the shelling. The soldiers spoiled all the fun, though. Wouldn’t let anybody onto oil company land to see the craters.

  Still, it was a lark. Exciting. Something to talk about. That’s the way the residents of this strip of coast took it; sat through a four-hour blackout when all civilian movement was halted, then went to bed when all-clear sounded at 12:20 A.M.

  Many had no idea what happened. At 5:00 A.M. a tall, young man was encountered in the Southern Pacific Railroad station here. His eyes grew wide when he was shown a newspaper.

  “Well, my gosh,” he said slowly, “now that’s getting right close to home, isn’t it?