by Burt Levy
The Pennsylvania Turnpike stretched 105 miles from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, and we covered it in well under two hours (instead of the 2:45 Rand McNally suggested) and that included a lot of in-town stuff north of Philly before we ever hit the turnpike. I couldn't believe we didn't get shagged by the cops, but Tommy was real sharp at spotting the black State Trooper Fords with their gumbrill machines on top, and he always got us hauled down to a reasonable pace so we didn't come swooping past them like a couple of ground-hugging Sabre jets. Even so, one of them pulled us over just outside Harrisburg, but it turned out he just wanted a closer look at the cars. Tommy motioned for me to stay put while he undid the nose on the green car and tilted it up to show the cop what was underneath. The guy was so impressed (as much with Tommy's accent as the hardware under the hood, I think) that he fired up his siren and mars light and led us on an exclusive three-car parade into the town of New Cumberland for dinner. He even turned out to be a pretty neat guy (for a cop, anyway) and you could tell he really got a charge out of those cars and couldn't get enough of Tommy's racing stories. Neither could I, come to think of it, on account of the way Tommy told them. I mean, most guys tell racing stories just to impress you (and anybody else within earshot) and sometimes the harder they try, the more you wish they would maybe go find somebody else to try to impress. But Tommy always made it seem like he never did anything especially brave or daring or clever, but rather that he just happened to luck into the right car at the right time whenever he did well. Which naturally got you imagining that maybe you could've done the same—no problem! —if you'd just happened to be there instead of him at Bridgehampton, Watkins Glen, or even the twenty-four hours of Le Mans.
It was past six when we finally rolled out of Harrisburg, full-up with two excellent fried chicken dinners and two fresh tankfuls of the best gas we could find, ready to take on the magnificent 196-mile run through the Appalachians from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. The wide, smooth, four-lane Pennsylvania Turnpike climbed and dove and swooped its way up steep inclines and scary, bobsled-run descents, and the view was absolutely spectacular, what with the sun inching down into the horizon ahead of us, painting the hillside forests with a rich, golden light and filling the valleys below with deep, purple-tinged shadows. I'd never seen anything so breathtaking in my life. Not that I could pay much attention, since Tommy had the bit between his teeth and was hustling us along at well over 100, slicing clear across two lanes (at least when there wasn't any traffic!) through the corners to make the arc wider so we could maintain our speed. I had to drive my ass off just to keep up! But at least I wasn't clutching the wheel in a death grip anymore. In fact, me and that C-type had gotten pretty friendly by then, and I'd even grown more or less accustomed to Tommy's hellish rate of progress.
Why, 100 miles an hour seemed almost normal.
We arrived at the Breezewood toll plaza just after dark, and I must admit I'd never seen a town anything like it. From a distance, it looked more like one huge, ultramodern gas station rather than any kind of ordinary live-in, go-to-work, church-on-Sunday rural community I'd ever seen. Why, it was nothing but a quarter-mile concrete shelf set right next to the turnpike, and from one end to the other it was all filling stations and motels and burger drive-ins and glass-and-linoleum sit-down restaurants—one right after the other!—all of it bathed in an eerie, lavender-tinted fluorescent light. Why, you could see it for miles as you descended down the mountains, and all those cafes, drive-ins, gas stations, and motels did a cracking business on account of Breezewood was the perfect (and only!) convenient stopping place for quite a distance in either direction. It was also an average motorist's one-day trip out of New York City, so the greater majority of your rank-and-file vacation travelers stopped there. I'd never seen anything like it before.
But we had plenty of gas left in our Le Mans-sized fuel tanks, so we cruised right on past Breezewood and headed for Pittsburgh. Now, the so-called travel experts at Rand McNally figured it should take your average lunch-bucket jerk in his Ford, Pontiac, or DeSoto five full hours to cover the distance between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh—including the normal pee, gas, and dinner stop in Breezewood—but Tommy and me were hell-bent on beating the living crap out of Mr. Rand and Mr. McNally's ideas about just how long it should take to drive from one place to another. So we set our sights on Pittsburgh, a good 100 miles away, and Tommy seemed determined to make it in less than an hour. But he did ease off to a safe, sane, and relatively sedate 80 or so whenever we came up on traffic. After dark, those Highway Patrol cruisers start looking like every other pair of taillights until you're too damn close to do anything about it!
Outside of that, the darkness didn't make any difference to Tommy. Not at all. But it sure as hell bothered me, barreling headlong into this endless, churning blackness and trying like hell not to lose Tommy's taillights (which sometimes got so far ahead they turned into two little rat's eyes that threatened to vanish into nothing if I didn't keep my foot in it). Every now and again we'd come to one of those amazing tunnels the Pennsylvania Turnpike engineers carved clear through the mountains, and all of a sudden the exhaust noise would quadruple—exploding off the walls!—while the death-ray yellow glare through the plexiglass headlamp covers raked through that tunnel like streaking, electrified halos, damn near showering sparks off the concrete. Then we'd burst out on the other side and all the noise and light would blast off into space again. I have to admit charging through those tunnels gave me the willies (not to mention taking blind curves at 90 with nothing but a tender little strip of guardrail between me and the yawning black emptiness on the other side) and I remember wishing once or twice I had Cal along to take the wheel, on account of I was getting a little tired and sloppy and not incidentally scaring myself silly.
As you can imagine, I was wrung out like a used dishrag by the time we rolled into McKeesport, just a little southeast of Pittsburgh, soaking wet from perspiration with my bottom half damn near melted off from the heat coming through the Jag's fire wall and my top half just as damn near frozen. But of course I didn't notice any of that while we were driving—no time to think about it, you know?—and it seemed like we were barely crawling as we grumbled down the exit ramp at a meager 45 or so and headed into town. I swear I could've gotten out and walked alongside, it felt so blessed slow.
Tommy found us a little tourist motel just off the turnpike, and although the DELUXE CABIN ACCOMMODATIONS advertised on the sign in front turned out to be six tiny, white clapboard sheds not much bigger than your average outhouse, at least they were clean and even had a few geraniums planted in window boxes to make them look sort of homey. A young, pimply-faced attendant came barreling out like his shirttails were on fire the instant he got a load of Tommy and me tooling up in the C-types. "Jiminy!" he gulped. "What the heck are those things?" So I explained to him as how they were the very latest and fastest Jaguar racing cars in the whole damn world, built way over in Coventry, England, and how we were on our way to this big race in Wisconsin—just breaking them in with a little cross-country run, you understand—and furthermore how the guy in the green car was none other than Tommy Edwards, one of the top racing drivers in the whole blessed universe. I was kind of pleased at the way the guy's jaw dropped another notch with each new tidbit of information, as if it was a hydraulic jack and I was working the handle. But I could tell from Tommy's expression when I went into the part about what an Internationally Renowned HotShoe Driver he was that it was maybe about time for me to shut up. "Look here, sport," he said to the pimply motel guy standing in front of us with his mouth hanging open like a dead carp, "you think you might have a place for us to sleep tonight?"
"Huh?" the guy said, looking back and forth from Tommy to me to the two sleek Jaguar C-types and back to Tommy like the whole bunch of us had just beamed down from outer space.
"A room," Tommy explained. "You know, like those over there. We'd ever so much appreciate a place to clean up and get a good night's sleep."
&nbs
p; The guy sputtered for a moment, trying to get his thoughts together and jaw back up to normal speaking position, but then he exploded in all directions like a busted radiator hose. "S-Sure!" he gushed. "Y-You bet. Why, y'can have my room if you wannit. It's a little bigger'n the others, see. Even has a kitchen in it. I got food in the icebox, too." He looked around over both shoulders and added in a whisper, "I even got a couple beers in there."
That sounded pretty good to me, but Tommy wouldn't hear of it. "No need for that," he told the kid, "but thanks anyway. Ever so much. One of your regular cabins will do quite nicely." Then Tommy turned to me and asked, "You don't mind bunking together, do you, sport?"
"Suits me," I said, feeling pretty special that he didn't mind bunking with me.
"Tell me," he asked the motel guy, "you think there might be a secure spot where we could park the cars overnight? They're quite valuable."
"They're the only XK120C Jaguars in the whole country," I added (as if the motel kid had any idea what that meant).
"You just leave them right there, sir," the kid gushed, kind of snapping to attention and fussing to get his shirttails tucked in. "I'll keep an eye on 'em for you. Glad to help. I even got some towels out back in the linen box. They're not dirty or anything. I can put a couple over the seats if you'd like. For the dew. . . ."
"You sure it's not too much trouble?"
"No, sir!" the kid said, grinning like an idiot. "No trouble a'tall. Heck, I'm stuck here in the office all night anyway. It'll give me something to do."
And so Tommy and me left the two rarest, sleekest, most valuable Jaguars in all of North America parked on the gravel drive outside that little motel office in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and headed off to bed. As Tommy unlocked the cabin door, I glanced back and saw the motel guy pulling a chair out of the office and setting it down on the gravel right next to the Jags, and I wouldn't be surprised if he spent the whole damn night there. In fact, after he waited an hour or so to make sure we were asleep, I bet he even climbed over the door panel of one of those cars (no way you could find the latch-pull on a Jag if you didn't know where to look) and sat himself down behind the wheel. It's hard to resist an opportunity like that—especially for some teenage motel clerk from McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
One of the things you have to get used to if you're going to pursue a career as a Full-Fledged Professional Racing Mechanic (or even a part-time Full-Fledged Professional Racing Mechanic) is that you wind up sharing a lot of strange, unfamiliar rooms—not to mention other, less formal sleeping quarters—with a bunch of strange, unfamiliar people you don't really know all that well. Truth is, it can make you pretty damn uncomfortable. But bunking with Tommy Edwards was no problem at all. He insisted I wash up first, and when I came out with a terry-cloth towel wrapped around me, he had this little silver flask set out on the nightstand with two small silver shot glasses beside it. "Have a quick snort of brandy?" he asked, pouring both of them right up to the top. "Cheers," he grinned, and clinked the glasses together. "You did a pretty fair job out there today, sport."
"Aw," I said, looking down at the carpet.
"No, really," he said, tossing back his brandy. "Nicely done."
"Thanks," I told him, taking a slow sip off the rim of the other shot glass. The liquor tasted all crackly-hot like a wood fire, and it must've been some pretty expensive hooch, on account of it didn't burn my gut too much on the way down.
"Now finish up and let's get some sleep." So I drank the rest and Tommy screwed the two silver shot glasses back on top of his nifty silver flask and headed into the bathroom. I waited until the door closed to take off my towel and find a pair of undershorts to sleep in, but I guess that's only normal, you know? And it occurred to me, as I eased between the sheets, that Tommy was about the only racer I'd met who could take just one drink and pack the bottle away—with plenty left!— instead of continuing to knock 'em back until the whole damn thing was gone. By the time he came out of the shower, I was fast asleep.
Tommy roused me about 6:30 on account of there was heavy overcast and he wanted to get some miles in before it rained. "I reckon we'll have breakfast in Ohio," he allowed as we carried our stuff out to the cars. The motel guy had kept towels over the seats all night— changing them every now and then like field dressings on a wounded soldier—and it looked like he'd spent quite some time wiping the cars down and even polishing them a little, since you could smell fresh wax and there wasn't a single bug splat on either one. Tommy wanted to give him a little something for his trouble, but the guy wouldn't hear of it. In fact, he insisted on giving us free coffee and half of his morning sweet roll.
"Say, sport," Tommy asked as we were about to pile into the cars, "feel like swapping mounts for a spell?"
"Huh?"
"You know. You take this one and I'll try the silver one."
"Sure. Why not."
So I hopped into the dark green C-type and Tommy sat down behind the wheel of "my" car and we took off. This time it was easy to fall into that 85- to 110-mile-per-hour rhythm on the turnpike, and I was amazed all over again how stable and solidly planted the C-type felt at speed—just loafing along with a fingertip touch on the wheel— and the only way you could tell how fast we were going was when we zoomed past some off-to-work local in a three year old Ford sedan and scared the poor bastard halfway off the road. In the distance ahead I could see thick gray smoke like an ascending shadow rising off the Pittsburgh steel mills and filtering into the lighter gray overcast of the sky. That of course got me thinking about my old man's union job at the chemical plant. Only this was steel country, and somewhere out there beyond the guardrails, a million stone-faced union guys were punching time clocks at foundries and mills and forges and rolling plants and getting down to work. It sent a shiver through me, and I remember pushing the gas all the way to the floorboards as if I could somehow accelerate away from that feeling and leave it behind. It was guilt, I suppose. I mean, here were all these worn-down guys in worn-out coveralls, shuffling into work like a legion of zombies, what with their clunky tin lunch boxes and thermos bottles of thick, black coffee and morning-edition newspapers rolled up under their arms. And here I was, streaking across Pennsylvania at two miles a minute in one of the fastest, rarest, sexiest, most valuable sports racing cars in the entire world. Fact is, I felt like I'd escaped from something, you know?
The last tollbooth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike was at a little town called Petersburg near the Ohio border, and there were big, dusty-orange road graders and all sorts of construction equipment scattered all over since they intended to one day make that road run clear across the belly of America, like a piece of kite string tied around its waist. But now the four-lane ended a little southeast of Youngstown, and it was a lot tougher making decent time once you got off the turnpike. Not to mention that the country gets ironed down pretty flat once you roll down the Appalachians and head west into the plains. Don't get me wrong, it's still nice to look at—especially the peaceful, yawning farmland and the neat little brick-and-clapboard towns you pass through, what with their homey village squares and solid county courthouses and slender church spires pointing quietly into the sky—but it's not near so dramatic as the mountains in Pennsylvania.
Still, you get to do a lot more actual driving on town-to-town two-lane blacktop than you do on the turnpike, where it's usually just "foot down in fourth and follow the centerline" unless you see a tollbooth or a lurking Highway Patrol cruiser up ahead. On the two-lane, you had to work harder and concentrate, what with slowing for towns and accelerating out of them, braking and downshifting for the occasional tight curve or switchback, and, best of all, pulling out to pass. That was fun in a C-type Jaguar! A quick blip down to third (or even second!) and a hard punch on the throttle were all it took to leave the local pickup yokels, out-of-state family vacationers, and cross-country truckers gasping in your wake. And what a sound when you pulled the cork on that barely muffled Jaguar six! Why, we were passing three, four, even five
at a time, slicing in and out like supercharged fighter planes buzzing a transport convoy. I'd never felt so strong or quick or devilishly clever in my entire life.
I did manage to notice a few subtle differences between the green car and the silver one. Not anything you could actually reach out and put your finger on, but a sort of hard-to-pin-down contrast in feel. That's one of those mysterious things every mechanic understands, even though it makes no reasonable sense: No two cars are ever exactly alike—even if they're built side by side in the same damn factory by the same damn hands out of the same blessed parts bins. And it's especially true of race cars, which tend to be more hand-fitted and are always affected by the old mechanical/genetic "luck of the draw" as far as valve seat finish and timing mark accuracy and friction losses in the bearings and perfectly meshed gears and dead-nuts wheel alignment and a kazillion other tiny details are concerned. Far as I could tell, the green car was just that infinitesimal bit quicker and tighter than the silver one. Not that anything was wrong with the silver C-type. Far from it. It's just that the green car, for whatever collection of minute, accidental, and totally unintentional reasons, wound up feeling the more spirited and athletic of the two. And so it made perfect sense that Colin St. John was selling the silver car to Ernesto Julio to take back to California and keeping the green one for himself. What else would you expect?
Tommy and me stopped for breakfast a little after eight, and over eggs, toast, and bacon, we compared notes on the two cars. I was pleased to discover he'd felt the same things I did and figured "his" Jaguar was definitely the stronger of the two—albeit not by much. Then Tommy pulled out a couple folded-up highway maps and worked us out a route for the rest of the trip. He figured we had a choice of heading north and picking up 224 south of Youngstown or taking a jog south to U.S. 30 near Lisbon. We decided 224 looked like our best bet, because it cut straight across the state all the way to Tiffin, right near the Indiana border, and I felt proud as all getout that Tommy wanted my opinions. Then again, I was the only native American on this trip (not that I had the slightest idea what I was talking about, seeing as how I'd never been much west of Trenton before).