by Burt Levy
Fact is, I was surprised I didn't feel worse. After all, we'd damn near closed the bar the night before, and that after a long, hot day's drive up from Chicago and not much in the way of dinner. But at least Tommy made me take a quick shower before I flopped into bed, so for a change I didn't wake up feeling like I'd been rolled in oatmeal and road salt the night before.
Truth is, I'd slept better than I could ever remember, and it wasn't just the brandy. There was something about the clean, fresh country air wafting in off the lake and the gently oscillating hum of the old brass ceiling fan that made our room at Siebken's perfect for summer sleeping. And the smell of freshly baked blueberry muffins and hotcakes on the griddle made it the perfect place to wake up in the morning, too. Even with a hangover. Tommy was already up and gone, and as I looked around, I couldn't help but notice what a bright, cheery sort of place it was. Sunlight filtered in through gauzy, flower-print curtains that matched up perfectly with the wallpaper and the comforter on the bed. Fact is, it felt more like a guest room in somebody's house than a hotel room, and I kept thinking that it was the exact sort of room I wanted to share with Julie some day.
I finally rolled out and headed downstairs around eleven, still a tad rocky but not near so bad as that gruesome morning at Brynfan Tyddyn. A quick pants check revealed I still had that crumpled-up twenty Tommy tossed me at the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike, so I went to the dining room and ordered myself a man-sized plate of scrambled eggs, pancakes, toast, hash browns, a side of corned beef hash, and drank two tall glasses of orange juice and about a half gallon of coffee to clear my head and settle my stomach. Siebken's dining room was an airy, happy-looking place with windows that opened up like a sunporch and the smell of homemade bread and cakes drifting in from the little basement-level bakery across the way. No question it was going to be a gorgeous day, what with bright sun peeking through leaves that were just starting to show their first hint of autumn color and a nice, soft breeze blowing in off the lake. There were about a dozen other racing people around the room—some on breakfast, some already into lunch—and I couldn't believe how quiet and relaxed it felt there. But out on the street, you could hear the muffled bustle of activity as S.C.M.A. workers and a bunch of local volunteers piled up hay bales and strung lengths of snow fencing to keep the race cars and the expected crowd of spectators away from each other.
After breakfast, I took a little stroll up Lake Street toward the train station, and I swear you could hardly move what with all the cars and people and tootling horns and all-purpose confusion going on. The State Police had sent a couple cruisers over to help the local cops, but those guys looked as baffled as everybody else. I mean, there was really no place to send anybody, you know? So a couple chamber-of-commerce types made a deal with some nearby farmer to turn his field into a temporary parking lot, and by midafternoon nobody but bona fide S.C.M.A. types were getting anywhere except on foot. But they kept coming anyway, and you couldn't miss the prickly tingle of anticipation gathering on that crowd like static on a thick wool blanket.
From the curb in front of the train station, you could see how the "race circuit" came rolling in on County J, swept hard right around Schuler's Bar, headed through town on Lake Street—past the barber shop and the IGA grocery and the start/finish line right in front of Gessert's Soda Shop—then continued a few blocks underneath the trees and between the lampposts until it made a second-gear left between Siebken's and Schwartz's and disappeared off along the shoreline. I decided to take myself a little hike and maybe see where the circuit went from there.
A couple random MGs and Jags rumbled past as I walked along the edge of the road, obviously out trying to learn the course while dodging spectators and other race cars and all the armband people piling up hay bales and stringing up oil company banners (not to mention the local townfolk who were busily setting up lemonade stands and bratwurst grills and nickel-a-cup beer tappers in their front yards). It was kind of neat to watch all that feverish prerace activity, and yet be able to turn my head an inch or two and see sailboats gliding effortlessly across the water and hear the putt-putt echo of a fishing boat trolling the shoreline across the way. The noonday sun made Elkhart Lake glisten like a silver wedding platter, and no question this was one hell of a perfect location for a sports car road race. No two ways about it.
A flesh-shredding howl suddenly blasted up behind me, and next thing I knew Creighton Pendleton's Ferrari exploded past at 70 or so with bare inches to spare. Why, it damn near blew me out of my shoes! I shook my fist at him, and you couldn't miss Sally Enderle's chestnut hair whipping the wind above the passenger side of the windscreen. She even flipped me a little backhand wave as they disappeared around the bend. Or maybe it wasn't a wave after all. Anyhow, I'm sure they were both laughing their asses off.
I followed the road down another couple hundred yards, curving gently to the right past Fireman's Park public beach, and while I was squinting my eyes to get a better look at the many promising young dairy-farmerette types sunning themselves on the beach, who should pull up silently behind me but a familiar black TD with none other than Cal Carrington and Carson Flegley in the cockpit. Cal was at the wheel, so it should come as no surprise that he crept right up behind me and let fly with the air horns (Carson'd bought himself a set like the ones on Big Ed's Jag) and they had to about peel me out of the trees afterward.
"How y'doin', Buddy?" Cal said through a wicked smile.
"I'll be fine after I take a couple of your teeth out."
"Aw, c'mon. We were just having a little fun."
"Yeah, just a little fun," Carson added like some kind of pasty-faced parrot. Fact is, Carson looked even pastier than usual, and you couldn't miss how he had his arms pressed damn near rigid against the dashboard cowling. Obviously, Cal had been showing him the quick way around the circuit.
"Hey, asshole," Cal grinned, "you lookin' for lost parts or something?"
"Nah. Just thought I'd take a little walk after breakfast t'see what's going on."
"Breakfast? Hell, it's past noon, Buddy. And on a weekday, no less. Why, I always thought you were a blue-collar working stiff."
"Didn't you hear? One of my rich uncles died and left me his whole blessed estate."
"Gee whiz, Buddy," Carson asked, sounding serious as a heart attack, "what're y'gonna do with it all?"
"Well," I said, looking just as serious right back at him, "I reckon I spent about half of it in the bar last night. . . ."
"Yeah," Cal cackled, "and he's gonna buy himself another beer with the second half tonight!" We got a pretty good laugh off that. Even Carson Flegley. Once he got the gist of it, anyway.
"So," Cal wanted to know, "who you with this time?"
"Tommy Edwards. We brought those two new Jaguar C-types out from New York."
"You rat-bastard sonofabitch! You mean you actually got to drive one of them?"
"Sure did," I nodded, modestly digging my toe in the grass. "Tommy and me took off from Westbridge on Tuesday. Just the two of us. And believe me, those things are fast! Why, we were hardly under a hundred from one end of Pennsylvania to the other."
"You lucky bastard," Cal growled. "I'd give my left nut to drive one of those things. My right one, too, come to think of it."
"You're just jealous."
"You bet your sweet ass I am."
"M-Me, too," Carson sputtered, head bobbing up and down.
"So, Cal," I asked, "you got any racing plans this weekend?"
"You know me. I always got plans. . . ."
"Dreams is more like it," Carson sniggered behind his hand.
"Wet dreams is more like it," I added for amplification.
"Ah, screw you both."
Now it was my turn to laugh. "No, really," I said when I was finished, "you got anything lined up?"
"Maybe. One of the MG guys from Detroit built a TC with a Ford V-8 in it, and he's having a little trouble making it go."
"I heard about it in the bar last nigh
t."
"Yeah, that's the one. Seems it doesn't want to go around corners. Or slow down, for that matter. But I think the guy is maybe just a little frightened of it."
"It's scaring the living crap out of him!" Carson nodded enthusiastically.
"Anyhow, a couple of the guys from Giant's Despair recommended he ought to let me give her a try. Just to see if I can do any better."
"I'm sure you would."
"So am I."
Like I explained before, Calvin Wescott Carrington never had any noticeable deficiencies in the balls or confidence departments.
"So, you planning to walk your way around the whole damn circuit today?"
"Can't say as I've really thought about it."
"Well, don't. Hell, it's six and a half miles, for gosh sakes! Your dogs'll be dead tired before you get halfway around. Why don'cha just hop in with Carson and me? We can all take a couple quick laps together. C'mon."
I looked at the big Cheshire cat grin spread across Cal's face and the chalky pallor on Carson's cheeks and I can't really say it sounded like such a great idea. Even though I trusted Cal completely when it came to driving, that didn't necessarily mean I wanted to be a first-person eyewitness when he showed off his stuff. Especially as the third full-sized human being in a two-passenger MG. "I dunno," I said hesitantly. "Doesn't look like there'll be room for all three of us."
"Aw, c'mon. We'll make room. And I'll take it nice and slow. Honest I will."
"Honest?"
"Cross my heart," Cal promised, crossing his heart. So I climbed in and Carson did his best to make his skinny little body even skinnier and we took off. "You know what's great about this?" Cal asked. "If I slide off the road and get us killed, we got our own undertaker on board to take care of things."
"I guess that's why I like hanging out with you, Cal. You always think ahead."
"Well," Cal shrugged as he wound the MG out in second, "somebody's gotta look after things. . . ."
Thanks to normal traffic and all the racers out learning the circuit and the armband types piling up hay bales, Cal could never really get up a good head of steam. For which I was thankful. But it was awesome anyway, and I could only imagine what those roads might be like under flat-out, balls-to-the-wall racing conditions, when you could use both lanes and not have to jab the brakes because you were about to ram the back end of a hay wagon. From Fireman's Park, the circuit continued to bend gently around to the right, kind of easing and then tightening again as it passed under the trees in front of the Quit-Qui-Oc Golf Course and Pine Point Resort on the other side. They called that section "Wacker Wend" after a wealthy Chicago-based S.C.M.A. racer named Freddy Wacker, who helped fire up the idea of bringing sports car racing to Elkhart Lake back in 1950.
The road curved slightly left out of Wacker Wend and climbed an easy hill past the entrance to Sharp's Cottages, then it was hard on the brakes for a 90-degree right-hander into a diving, climbing, roller-coaster corkscrew combination through Hammil's Hollow, followed by a long straightaway past the old country schoolhouse where even the tiddlers got up to some mighty impressive speeds. A downslope at the end got the cars going even faster, and then hard braking for another 90-degree, T-intersection right. It was called "Kimberly's Korner" after Gentleman Jim Kimberly, another obscenely rich S.C.M.A. racer who was buzzing Wisconsin in a light plane with Freddy Wacker when they "discovered" Elkhart Lake. Kimberly's Korner led to another long straightaway where the more powerful cars could tickle an honest 150 (!!!) as they whizzed past Hayssen's Farm and the electrical power station. At that point, the road made a lazy, downhill swoop to the right, followed immediately by a tighter uphill sweep to the left, and Cal allowed as how a good MG driver could take the whole section flat-out in top without lifting, but that it'd be a real white-knuckler in a Jag or an Allard. "It's places like this," he explained matter-of-factly, "that separate the real racers from the ribbon clerks. You gotta keep your foot down and thread that needle—lap after lap!—and it's places like this where you see the difference between the duffers and the Real McCoy."
"You do?"
"Absolutely. Hell, it's easy to be a hero in second gear. But take a really fast bend—where you gotta stay cool and smooth and hold your line even when your hands feel like strangling the damn wheel—that's where you see what a driver's really made of. Know what I mean?"
Yeah, I knew what he meant. Only knowing it and being able to actually do it were two entirely different things. And always will be.
After that fast, hair-raising right-left combination came a little more upgrade and then another long, downhill slope through acres of rolling farmland with a gentle kink near the bottom and a hard hairpin right at the end, just across from the entrance to Broughton Marsh. Ahead was yet another long straightaway, but steep uphill so you couldn't muster the kind of speed you could on the other two. You were climbing toward this peaked crest in top gear—totally blind!—and the only thing visible on the other side was this huge pine tree sticking up like it was planted smack-dab in the middle of the damn highway! Cal said you had to just aim straight for it and keep your foot down on the loud pedal, but I knew I could never go over that crest flat stick without grabbing a quick security stab on the brakes! The cars would get all up-on-tiptoe over the top, then plunge into a sweeping, gut-wrenching, right-left-right bobsled run through the forest into town. I couldn't imagine what that stretch might look like at racing speeds. Especially since there were trees and fence posts and country mailboxes and plenty of other ugly stuff just a few feet off the roadway. It looked scary as hell, and it seemed impossible that the faster cars could average over 100 (!!!) on that 6.5-mile loop around Elkhart Lake.
Wow!
I met up with Tommy, Ernesto Julio, and the two C-types later that afternoon in the parking lot of the Osthoff, where just about everybody was waiting in line for the S.C.M.A.'s technical inspection. Ernesto's California driver was nowhere to be seen, but he had his mechanic along to open the hood and such so he wouldn't get dirty. Not that he was a sissy or anything, but nothing looks worse on a billowy white silk shirt than a grease smear or a fresh palm smudge of exhaust pipe dust. His mechanic was a smooth-cheeked, crew-cut young Californian named Chuck Day, who chewed big wads of bubble gum and stood in a perpetual concave slouch. He didn't say too much, and I wasn't real impressed when I heard he was one of those West Coast hot-rodder types who run souped-up old Fords out on the dry lakes in the California desert. I mean, what was the point in that? Especially compared to racing Ferraris and Jaguars clear through the night at exotic places over in Europe. But Tommy seemed to get on with him real well, and I began to understand when I discovered he was also Ernesto Julio's personal airplane mechanic. I mean, this guy didn't look a day over nineteen! But apparently he'd done a tour in Korea taking care of Sabre jets for Uncle Sam, and you had to be impressed with stuff like that.
Anyhow, we got to know each other a little while we were waiting for the armband types to crawl up, over, under, and around each and every car like it was the first damn Jag 120 or MG TC they'd ever seen in their lives. Not that it wasn't important, since they were checking stuff like tire wear and wheel spoke tension and making sure nobody had any serious oil leaks or loose parts that might fall off and wind up squarely in the lap of the next poor fish to happen by. In other words, they were going over stuff that any self-respecting wrench would've checked and double-checked before even rolling out of his home garage. But you could never take that sort of thing for granted. I mean, I'd worked on Cal's TC, remember?
Tommy thought tech inspection was more or less a bunch of bullshit. He figured it was your bloody responsibility to make sure your machine was raceworthy, and he especially didn't like the part about the seat belts. Thanks to a brand-new rule, the S.C.M.A. tech crew was making sure every car had a set of seat belts, and furthermore that those belts were absolutely, positively anchored to the frame rails. "If I'm about to go tumbling ass-over-teakettle down the bloody race track, the las
t thing I need is a large chunk of iron strapped to my backside." A lot of drivers felt the same way—that you were better off getting thrown out and taking your chances on your own. So some guys never bothered to fasten them when they sat down to drive, even though the regulations were pretty damn specific about requiring them. The tech people also checked your driver's gear, making sure you had a proper helmet and goggles and leather-palmed driving gloves, and finished up by dipping everybody's driving outfit in a big washtub filled with a smelly borax solution that supposedly rendered them flameproof. Or at least more flameproof than they were before.
Tech was going particularly slowly because we had the standard-issue S.C.M.A. Major Flap About Something going on to gum up the proceedings. In fact, we had several (hardly surprising, since this was the big East-West shoot-out and we had Charlie Priddle types from all over the country gathered together to make mountains out of every available molehill). The first big controversy was about Magnafluxing certificates. Now Magnafluxing is an excellent testing procedure developed by the aircraft industry to find cracks and flaws in ferrous metal parts—including cracks and flaws that may not be visible to the human eye. Anyhow, some well-meaning but thoroughly misguided people on the S.C.M.A. competition committee decided it would be a grand idea for all the hubs and spindles and steering knuckles and such that make up a race car's suspension to be Magnafluxed on a regular basis. Just to make sure there weren't any hidden cracks that might cause a wheel to suddenly part company with the car (like the one on Cal's ratshit TC did at Bridgehampton). Now this was actually a pretty good idea, but it didn't take into account that you had to dismantle everything and get the parts all squeaky clean before you could send them out for Magnafluxing. Not to mention that you had to wait a few days (or sometimes longer) for them to come back. And then you still had to reassemble everything and run fluid back through the brakes and reset the alignment and whatnot before you were done. Which was of course no problem for the big-buck guys with hired mechanics and spare cars to drive while the work was being done. But it was a real problem for the poorer rank-and-file racers who used their MGs and such for daily transportation. Which made you wonder why the S.C.M.A. competition committee suddenly decided to require Magnafluxing certificates for every single car at Elkhart Lake. They spelled it out for everybody to see in very small print in the fifth paragraph of the supplementary regulations on the back of the entry forms. Problem was, a good two-thirds of the cars showed up without the necessary paperwork.