“One thing I’m gonna get is one of them red taffy apples!” Kissel shouted as he rooted around in somebody’s garbage, looking for another can to kick.
“My old man says they stunt your growth, too. That red stuff clamps your teeth together so you can’t grow good,” said Schwartz as he pretended to sink an imaginary basket against a sagging backboard hanging on one of the garages that lined the alley.
“Yeah, well, your old man should know. He’s about three feet tall,” Kissel lashed back, cackling fiendishly, as Schwartz threw a half-eaten potato in his direction.
The next scene is a couple of hours later. My old man, my mother, my kid brother, Randy, and I are sitting around the kitchen table eating meat loaf, mashed potatoes and red cabbage. The old man takes a swallow of his beer and says, “It doesn’t make any difference to me if you want to look at the quilts and raspberry preserves, as long as we get to see the first heat.”
‘Then Randy and I’ll meet you two after the races,” said my mother as she got up to put the coffee on. My kid brother immediately began to whimper piteously.
“You can have a taffy apple,” she said to him from the stove. He stopped sobbing.
“One of those red ones?” he sniffed.
“Any color you want.”
That was enough for him.
“Well, kid….” The old man batted my arm.
“We’ll watch Iron Man Gabruzzi give ’em hell tomorrow.” As far as he was concerned, county fairs were dirt-track races. All that farm stuff was for the birds.
I went to bed happy. My brother and I whispered back and forth about the great stuff that would happen the next day. He was a Ferris-wheel nut who would have been glad to spend his whole life going around and around on a big wheel that creaked. Come to think of it, that’s as good a way to spend it as any.
“I’ll get that son of a bitch yet!” my old mans voice hissed suddenly and venomously through the darkened house.
Gawhang! Whap! Gawhang! Whap! Gawhang! Whap-whap!
My parents’ bed squeaked dangerously as he leaped up and down on it, batting away at his old enemy. Every night in the late summer and early autumn, mosquito squadrons flew miles from the swamp to seek him out. The minute the lights were off, they dove to the attack. Flying in tight formations, they strafed again and again. The old man loved every minute of it. Fighting mosquitoes was his favorite sport. He slept with his personal fly swatter always at his side; he also had a loaded flit-gun, but he preferred the swatter. It was more sporting, somehow.
Whap! Whap! Bang! Something crashed in the darkness.
“Got the bastard!” He laughed exultantly. The battle was over—until the next hot puff of air brought in reinforcements. Our screens served only to keep the more enormous mosquitoes out of the house, allowing the smaller, lither, angrier types free access. During the second lull between attacks, I drifted off to sleep.
ZZZZZZRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGGG!
The alarm clock blasted me hysterically into consciousness. Gray Saturday-morning light filled the house. The old man cursed and muttered sleepily as my mother padded out into the kitchen in her bathrobe and curlers to get the scrambled eggs started.
An hour later, we were in the Pontiac on the way to the county fair. The ill-fated Pontiac was an inexplicable interruption of the old man’s lifelong devotion to the Oldsmobile. He was an Oldsmobile man the way others were Baptists, Methodists, Catholics or Holy Rollers. He later recanted after this episode of backsliding and returned to the fold with the purchase of a 1942 Oldsmobile station wagon that appealed far more deeply to his flamboyantly masochistic nature. A block or so ahead of us, Ludlow Kissel’s battered Nash, loaded with kids and Mrs. Kissel (who weighed 360 pounds and read True Romance), struggled toward the fairgrounds. His Nash laid down a steady cloud of blue-white exhaust that hung over Cleveland Street like a destroyer’s smoke screen. Junior Kissel peered out of the grimy back window, grinning wildly.
“Old Lud is sober. That makes the second time this summer,” said my father as he struggled with the Pontiac, which had started shimmying again. It had bad kingpins.
Ten minutes later, we were out on Route 41, bumper to bumper in the great tangle of cars all headed for the fair. The sun rose higher over the distant steel mills. Steadily, the temperature and humidity rose until the sky was one vast copper sheet. We inched along like an endless procession of ants across a sizzling grill.
In the front seat, my mother fanned herself with a paper fan marked ORVILLE KLEEBER COAL AND ICE—REASONABLE. The flat fan was cut in the shape of a lump of coal. It had a wooden handle. She always kept it in the car for days like this.
“WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING, JERK?” barked the old man, head stuck aggressively out the window, at the driver ahead of us. His neck was red from sweat; his pongee shirt clung limply to his wiry frame; and his drugstore sunglasses dripped sweat as he glared through the heat waves and exhaust fumes at the idiot ahead.
“SLEEPING JESUS, YOU GONNA PARK THAT WRECK OR DRIVE IT?”
“Little pitchers have big ears,” my mother intoned automatically, gazing placidly out her window at a Burma-Shave sign. The old man’s latest curse—one of an endless lexicon—was a new one to me. I filed it away for future use. It might come in handy during a ball game or an argument with Schwartz.
It was now well past noon, but we were getting close. Far ahead, we could see the enormous, billowing cloud of dust that rose from the fairgrounds. Excitement mounted in the Pontiac as we shimmied closer and closer to the scene of action. Suddenly, with a great hissing, scalding roar, the radiator of the car ahead boiled over. Drops of red, rusty sludge streaked down over our windshield and spattered on the hood.
“OH, NO! FER CHRISSAKE, NO!”
The old man pounded on the steering wheel in rage as the lumbering Buick wheezed to a halt. The driver, a beet-faced man wearing a stiff blue-serge suit and a Panama hat, stumbled out of the car and raised the hood. A white cloud of steam enveloped him from head to toe.
“Goddamn it! There goes the first heat. Son of a bitch! Gimme a bottle of pop.”
Silently, my mother opened a bottle of Nehi orange and handed it to him. She passed one back to me and gave my kid brother another. I felt the stinging carbonation sizzle through my nostrils as I guzzled the lukewarm contents.
Ahead, the other occupants of the Buick had gathered around the car and were fanning the hood with somebody’s white shirt. The steam rose higher into the heavens. The car behind us began honking; then others joined in. This only bugged the old man even more. Out the window went his head.
“SHUT UP, YOU JERKS!.” he yelled at the line of cars. They honked even louder.
The Buick was not the only car giving off steam. Several others had begun to percolate in the heat around us. The crowd ahead had begun to push the Buick off the road, like some great wounded whale. There is nothing deader than a dead Buick.
Finally, we were able to squeeze past the stragglers and once again move on toward the fairgrounds. A biplane towing a red-and-white streamer droned over the line of traffic: FISH DINNER ALL YOU CAN EAT $1.69 JOE’S DINER RTE. 6.
We were so close now that the sounds of the fair began to drift in over the roar of motors: calliopes bleating, whistles, merry-go-round music, bells ringing, barkers. Two cops in short-sleeved blue shirts waved the cars in through the main gate and past a cornfield to the jam-packed, rutted parking lot just inside the grounds. Flushed and sweaty, these two men faced the pressing horde of hissing, steaming, dusty rattletraps with the look of men who are struggling with a totally uncontrollable force that threatens to engulf them at any moment.
One blew his whistle in short, sharp blasts that matched every breath he took. With his left hand, he seemed to gather the cars in a steady hooking motion that pushed them on past his right hand, which moved like a piston in the air, shoving the heaps through the narrow gate. The other cop, taller and sadder, stood astride the center line of the asphalt road and glared slowly and delibera
tely at each car as it rolled past him.
The old man, by now totally hot under the collar, muttered barely audible obscenities as we drew abreast of the first cop.
“What was that, buddy?” The cop’s voice was level and menacing, cutting through the racket of the Pontiacs piston slap like an ice cube going down your back on a hot day. Instantly, an electric feeling of imminent danger whipped through the car. Even my brother stopped whining.
“Uh … pardon me, officer?” The old man had turned on his innocent voice, which always sounded a little like he was slightly hard of hearing. He stuck his head out the window with exaggerated politeness.
“Did I hear you call me a son of a bitch, buddy?” The tall cop was approaching the side of the car, his eyes piercing the old man like a pair of hot ice picks.
“Uh … what was that, officer? Sir?”
“You heard me.” A hamlike hand rested authoritatively on the door handle; a heavy foot clunked solidly on the running board. The line came to a halt behind us.
“I’m sorry, officer. What was it you said, sir?”
“Did you call me a son of a bitch?”
“Oh, heavens no! Mercy me! Why, good gracious, you must have heard me sneeze. I am troubled with hay fever.” The old man sounded amazingly like an Episcopalian minister.
He sneezed loudly into his sleeve as a demonstration. I had seen the old man get out of many a tight squeak before, but this performance topped them all. I drank it in, knowing that I was seeing a master at work. My mother said nothing through it all, just looked nervously pathetic, which seemed to help the old man’s act.
“OK, buster. Just watch yer lip, y’hear?”
“Why, bless my buttons, officer, I certainly will. Yes, indeed! That is fine advice. Heavens to Betsy, I certainly will.”
With a flick of his wrist, the cop waved us on. The emergency was over. The old man let the clutch out so suddenly that the car jerked heavily twice before lurching forward.
An elderly, toilworn Chevy pickup truck carrying a farmer, his wife, seven kids and a Bluetick hound had stalled just ahead of us. The old man, out of pure reflex, muttered: “Son of a bitch!” Realizing he wasn’t yet out of earshot, he covered it with a loud, juicy sneeze.
It grew hotter and hotter in our little oven as we waited for the farmer to get the Chevy moving again. At last we got inside the chicken-wire fence and past the little box office where they took the old man’s two bucks, the price for an afternoon of untrammeled bliss.
My father shoved his hat onto the back of his head while he fished frantically inside his coat pocket for his pack of Luckies, a sure sign that he was reaching the boiling point.
“Holy Christ, wouldja look at that!”
Ahead of us, waves of heat rose from a long line of motionless cars that stretched toward the distant parking lot. They had the look of cars that hadn’t moved for maybe two hours. People sat on running boards; fat ladies fanned themselves in the shade; kids ran in and out past spare tires and around radiators; and guys with pushcarts selling hot dogs and Fudgsicles moved up and down the line, doing a roaring business.
Two cars ahead of us, a lady was unpacking a lunch basket and spreading bowls of potato salad and jars of pickles on a blanket that she’d laid by the cornfield. A tall man in shirt sleeves and a straw hat chomped contentedly on a sandwich.
“Would you kids like a peanut-butter sandwich?” My mother began rummaging in the paper bag that held our lunch.
To the left of the line of cars was a high board fence plastered with red-and-yellow posters. From behind it, suddenly, surged a tidal wave of deep-throated roaring, followed by clouds of dust and the smell of burning rubber and castor oil. My father hunched over the wheel in excitement. This was his home ground, and he could hardly wait to get in on the action.
SSSSSKKKKKRRRREEEEEE … KABOOM!
For an instant, something blotted out the sun. One of the picnicking ladies stood frozen, holding a bowl of cole slaw. The sandwich eater stared heavenward, his mouth poised open in mid-chomp. The old man, who had just tilted a can of beer toward the sky, stopped short, foam dribbling down his shirt front, eyes bugging out in amazement and delight.
The top of the board fence disintegrated with a stupendous crash and there, gracefully airborne high above the line of jalopies, a bright-blue racing car with a big number 12 on its side arched overhead, trailing smoke. The white-helmeted driver, his green goggles glinting in the sun, looked perfectly calm. It was all in a day’s work. One wheel flew crazily ahead of him on a solo flight.
“JESUS CHRIST! THERE GOES IRON MAN!” the old man yelled as his favorite member of the racing fraternity disappeared in a cloud of dust and oil spray into the cornfield off to our right
A great cheer came from behind the shattered fence as the crowd roared its approval of Iron Man’s spectacular crackup. That’s what they came to see, and Iron Man gave it to them.
As the line of cars inched toward the parking lot, we could see a tow truck dragging Iron Man’s lethal Kurtis-Offy Special back into the fray. Iron Man himself, wearing blue coveralls, sat nonchalantly in the cockpit, waving to the crowd. Dirt-track racers are not ordinary mortals.
“GO GET ’EM THE NEXT HEAT, IRON MAN!” bellowed the old man.
“Boy, ain’t he a pisser?” This was my fathers highest compliment.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” my mother said again.
“Well, he is.” My father knew a pisser when he saw one.
At last we were parked, between an ancient Willys-Knight and a Cord owned by a prominent local Mafia finger man who ran a mortuary on the side as a kind of tie-in.
“We’ll meet you by the band shell,” said the old man. He was in a hurry to get inside the arena.
“Now, you be careful,” my mother told me, as she did so often. It was a phrase that ran like a litany through her life. She dragged my kid brother off in the direction of the quilt tent. My old man and I headed for the track.
Five minutes later, we were in the stands, immersed in the roaring mob that had come from miles around to cheer the mayhem and carnage on the dirt oval below. I sat hunched next to a gaunt, stringy, hawk-faced farmer who wore a broad-brimmed straw hat low over his eyes. His Adam’s apple, as big as a turkey egg, bobbed up and down in excitement as he watched the racers. He rolled Bull Durham cigarettes automatically with his left hand as his elbow dug into my ribs. His wife, a large, pink, rubbery woman, breast-fed a baby as the races roared on.
Dirt-track racing is as much a part of an Indiana county fair as applesauce, pumpkins and pig judging. Down below us, Iron Man Gabruzzi—back in action, his famous blue Kurtis-Offy a little dented from the previous heat—battled it out with his archrival, Duke Grunion, who drove a battle-scarred yellow blown Ford special, and a field of lesser competitors. Round and round they careened, throwing up sheets of yellow dust laced with the blue smoke of burning oil and scorching tires. From time to time, a car would leave the pack, slewing sideways, and bounce into the rail, trailing even more smoke than usual. The mob leaped to its feet, bellowing bloodthirstily, and then squatted again, waiting for the next near catastrophe. Over it all, the tinny voice of the P.A. announcer kept up a running commentary of feeble jokes and trivial observations. Hot-dog vendors squeezed up and down the rows, passing out the franks as fast as they could slap them between buns.
The old man was in seventh heaven, cheering wildly every time Iron Man moved ahead of Duke Grunion on the far turn to come whistling down the straight, his battered old Offy screaming. The 100-Mile Dirt Track Championship Race is as fiercely fought as any Grand Prix, and in some ways is far more exciting.
The last lap saw Iron Man and Duke battling it out on the homestretch, both sliding high on the banked oval, flat out, with Iron Man zooming across the finish line a half car ahead of Duke. The checkered flag rose and fell; the crowd cheered insanely as Iron Man, waving jauntily from his cockpit, took his victory lap, saluting the crowd. He had won 150 bucks for an af
ternoon’s work in the hot sun.
We filed out of the stands and headed straight for the bandstand, which was at the center of the fairgrounds. Inside my head, the roaring of the race cars continued, blotting out the sound of the crowd. I would be hearing them in my sleep for at least a week. My nose burned from the gasoline and alcohol fumes.
“I gotta have a beer.” Racing always made my father very thirsty.
We stopped at a stand while he guzzled a bottle of Blatz and listened to the other dirt-track fanatics yelling about how great the race had been. I drank a Nehi orange, my fifth of the day. Already my stomach was starting to ferment.
My mother and kid brother were waiting at the bandstand when we finally showed up.
“I gotta go to the toilet!” whined Randy. My brother always had to go to the toilet, especially when there was no toilet around. On either side of us, open sheds filled with rows of soft eyed cows and jostling farmers stretched into the distance.
“Go behind that truck. I’ll stand guard.” The old man had handled this situation many times. My brother scooted behind the truck and emerged a couple of minutes later, sheepishly.
“I wanna see the pigs!” he said.
“So do I,” I seconded him. I always liked to look at pigs, and still do, for that matter. There is something very satisfying about the way a pig looks. They were housed in a tent next to the cows, which were kind of dull. Row on row, the porkers lounged casually, completely at ease with the world. I have never understood why the pig is an animal whose name is used in derision. He is intelligent and kindly, often benevolent, in fact; in short, totally with it.
In the center of the tent, under floodlights, an enormous white hog with black spots graciously accepted the applause of his admirers, GRAND CHAMPION, the sign read, and above his bed of straw hung a large, trailing blue ribbon attached to a blue-and-gold rosette. Below it was a plaque: BIG HORACE. He had eaten half the ribbon. His tiny red eyes peered out at us jocularly. He was a champion and he knew it. Lesser pigs grunted and rooted in pens all around, but Big Horace was the star. We stood silently before this regal beast for several minutes.
Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories Page 4