by Burt Levy
Geez, I couldn't figure out what I'd done, you know?
So I left her standing there by the beer keg—steam rising from both ears—and wandered over to where my buddy Cal was tangled up in a major discussion with some of the MG guys about maybe getting himself a few laps in that Ford-powered TC. Boy, Cal could work somebody over so smooth and polite and reasonable that the poor sap never knew his pocket was being picked, his barn burned, and his family sold off into slavery until a day or two later. In fact, some of them never felt it at all. I figured it might be best not to butt in and maybe spoil Cal's pitch.
Truth is, I was feeling pretty tired (after all, I'd really tied one on the night before, and it didn't make sense to do it all over again when the real meat of the weekend activities weren't due to start until early the next morning) and so I left the party early and headed back to Siebken's to get some sleep. But first I wandered out on the eighteenth green for one last look at those magnificent, all-American Cunningham race cars. Boy, they were something, all right. And that's why I made a detour around the food tables to give my own personal "thanks so much" to Briggs Cunningham before I left. After all, there were plenty of guys in the S.C.M.A. who had piles of money to spend, but most of them just bought stuff with their money. Briggs Cunningham made things. You had to respect the hell out of something like that.
Just as I turned to leave, the guy fronting up the band leaned into his microphone and said, "We've got a request from a very pretty lady out there," and rolled into a better than average rendition of "Your Cheatin' Heart." When I looked back, I was surprised to see it was none other than the lovely Miss Sally Enderle making her way unsteadily back from the bandstand.
your cheatin' heart . . . will tell on youuuu. . . .
The music trailed off behind as I headed up the darkened road toward Siebken's, and it was an absolutely perfect sort of late-summer Friday night, what with a hint of fall chill in the air and a wash of silver-blue light beaming down from the fattest damn harvest moon I'd ever seen. And was it ever quiet. So quiet you could hear water lapping against the docks down by the lake and the faint echo of laughter and Hank Williams music from the party. The only other sound was the soft shuffle of shoe leather against the asphalt. It was hard to believe that, in less than twelve short hours, this same silent stretch of Lake Street was going to be lined ten- and twenty-deep with spectators and this same pavement was going to shudder and squirm under the wheels of the fastest, noisiest, hairiest collection of sports cars in the whole blessed country.
I could hardly wait.
Morning came while it was still purplish dark outside, barking through the flower-print curtains with the sound of an MG engine popping and banging and backfiring through the carburetors. Obviously, someone had switched the plug wires around—just for the fun of it, you know?—and now the intended victim was waking everybody and his brother up at four-goddam-thirty in the morning. You got the impression that this individual wasn't particularly, um, mechanically inclined, since he kept shutting it off, waiting a few seconds, and then cranking the damn thing all over again. As if the stupid motor was going to magically stand up, clear its throat, and start to run properly again. I looked over and Tommy was still out cold, so I decided to take a quick run downstairs and see what I could do before this jerk's popping and banging woke up all the racers.
Turned out it was a nice red TD from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and the owner (who looked more or less like he'd been to bed already, but not to sleep) thanked me plenty after I switched the number two, three, and four spark-plug wires back to their proper order. "Hey," the guy said, wavering back and forth like one of those blow-up punch-me clowns, "thangsannawfullot."
"No problem," I told him. "Now go get some sleep."
"Saay, dinneye meetchoo at Gianssdesspair?"
"Yeah, most likely. I was there with Cal Carrington. He was in—"
"I remember," the guy said, drawing back in inebriated awe. "He drove that unnertakerguy's black TD, dinn'he?"
"That's right. Carson Flegley's car. He's trying to work a deal to drive it again in the race Sunday morning."
"Boy, I sure hope he gettsa shot," the MG guy said, pulling himself more or less upright, "but he'll sureashell blow me in th'stinkin' weeds iffy does." The MG guy blew out a long, wheezy breath that smelled of hard liquor and cigarettes. "Still, I kinna hope he gettsa shot, y'know?"
"Yeah." I agreed, wondering just what exactly was holding this guy upright.
"Yup, that Cal Carrington fella's really somethin' special behind a steering wheel anna gas pedal, iddn'ee?"
"Yeah, he sure is," I agreed for the third time. "He said he's trying t'get a run in that V-8-powered TC later today, too."
"Y'mean Robby's car?"
"Who?"
"Why Robby! Robby Bernard. He built th'damn thing over'n Grosse Pointe Shores. Not more'n five miles from my house."
"Really?"
"Sure he did!" Then he leaned in close and whispered, "But jus' between youanme, he didd'n so much build it as have th'guy at the gas station do it for him. I think he mostly jus' bought th'parts, y'know?"
"I sure do."
"Iffya want, I think we might fix it real easy so's your friend Cal gets t'drive. I mean, Robby's scared hisself about ghost-white already, an' nobody's even got a full-tilt run yet. I'll put in a good word, no problem. Iss'tha least I can do."
"Hey, thanks," I told him as he plopped unsteadily behind the wheel, "that'd really be swell of you."
"Oh, no," he said, sticking the lever in first, "thank you!"
There was no way I could go back to sleep—especially since the S.C.M.A. armband types were already out in the early-morning half-light setting up flag stations and rechecking hay bales and putting up a few last gasoline company signs. It made me wonder what the hell they got out of it, you know? I went over and talked to some of them—even helped string the big PURE OIL banner over the start/finish line in front of Gessert's Soda Shop—and although they were overworked and underrecognized and making wisecracks all the time about how early it was and how lousy they had it, underneath you could tell they were all happy as hell just to be there. In spite of carping and grousing like some of my old man's union buddies, every last one of them had a spring in their step and a sparkle in their eyes rather than the standard-issue slow shuffle and dead-fish look you normally get out of grunt-level working stiffs. Especially the guys with seniority.
I wandered into the Osthoff and grabbed a free cup of coffee and one of the sweet rolls they had out for the S.C.M.A. workers, and then decided to take myself a little stroll and watch race morning begin. The sun was just starting to peek up all yellow-gold over the eastern horizon, and all along Lake Street local church groups and privateer townfolk were setting up their sandwich, snack, and lemonade stands, and a few early spectators were already straggling in from the temporary parking areas on the outskirts of town. I had this crazy notion to walk all the way around the circuit. Backward, in fact, since I was already pretty familiar with the section between Schuler's Bar and the golf course. So I headed north, past the IGA store and the railroad station and on up that bobsled run of a hill that the faster cars would be descending at three-digit speeds in a scant few hours. You never realize how long and steep a hill is until you try to walk it on foot, and I was out of breath by the time I reached the top. In fact, I was more than ready to abandon the notion of doing the whole blessed 6.5 miles. But I went a little bit farther, just so I could get out of the shadow of the trees and feel the sun coming up clear and fine across rolling acres of prime Wisconsin farmland. Boy, was this ever one beautiful place to hold an automobile race!
When I turned to head back into town, the sight of that blind hilltop with the pine tree growing out of it stopped me dead in my tracks. That's the view the drivers would have as they rocketed up out of the hairpin at Dicken's Ditch, winding out in second, third, and fourth as the road curved gently to the right and strained uphill. The faster cars would be well up
over a hundred here, and it looked like that damn pine tree was smack-dab in the middle of the road on the other side. How a guy could gather up the moxie to flat-foot it over the top was simply beyond me.
By the time I got back into town, the place was filling up with spectators and most all the racers were busily monkeying around with their cars. Every now and then you'd hear one start and settle into a cold, lumpy idle, and most usually it wouldn't be thirty seconds before some idiot was snapping the throttles open and winging that poor chunk of iron clear to the redline—with no load!—before the damn oil was even warm. Some people just have no mechanical sympathy whatsoever. And it's amazing how many of them wind up in racing.
I found Tommy, Chuck Day, Phil Hill, and Ernesto Julio having themselves a big country-style breakfast over in Siebken's dining hall, and what with the place being mobbed with racers and officials and Skippy Welcher making a complete pest of himself by corralling every passing waitress so he could complain about how slow the service was and how his melon wasn't ripe and how they'd only cooked his sunny-side-up eggs on one side, well, it took us damn near forever to finish our meal. I had a thick blueberry waffle that was about the best I ever had outside of my mom's kitchen (who knows, maybe even better) and some swell corned beef hash with an egg on top. Boy, did that ever hit the spot! There's something about the night air in that particular corner of Wisconsin that makes you want a monstrous, heaping, Sunday-style breakfast every single day of the week.
There was a drivers' meeting behind the Osthoff at eight ayem, and naturally it started a half hour late and you couldn't hear what anybody was saying, what with a few race crews doing a little last-minute engine tuning not fifty yards away and several hundred little private conversations going on all over the place. The gist of it was that the S.C.M.A. was real pleased to have everybody there, and that—above all—they wanted a safe weekend. Everybody knew the event was under a microscope after the crowd-control problems and the near-disastrous Porsche crash at Grand Island.
Practice started a half hour late at 10:30, and we had Tommy and Phil right up toward the front in the C-types so's they wouldn't get caught in the MG T-series traffic. And I gotta admit, those two Jags looked pretty damn swell as they pulled out onto Lake Street and roared away, their race-tuned sixes blaring like the meanest, mellowest horn section you ever heard in your life. The stream of cars behind them just went on and on, charging one after the other out of the Osthoff parking lot like snarling animals through a cattle chute. If you knew your engines, you could even close your eyes and pick 'em out by sound. An MG. Another MG. A Jag 120. A Crosley-powered Siata. Another MG. Another Jag. Creighton Pendleton's howling Ferrari. The lumpy, inboard motorboat burble of Eddie Dearborn's Cad-Allard. But something was missing. Sure enough, those three Chrysler-powered Cunninghams were sitting patiently off to the side, ticking over at a deep, grumbly idle, obviously in no hurry to join the last cars trickling out of the parking lot. It took me awhile to catch on, but then I understood. They were waiting for the wail of the first cars to come echoing downhill toward Schuler's Bar about four and a half minutes later. Only then did the Cunninghams clunk their heavy-duty truck transmissions into first and rumble out onto the circuit in close formation—with five whole miles of open track in front of them instead of bogged down in a bunch of traffic. Made a lot of sense, you know? Then again, these guys had the legs on everybody when it came to experience and teamwork.
After the first lap, I kind of moseyed my way up to the hard left in front of Siebken's for a closer look-see, and it was pretty interesting to watch all the different driving styles through there. I was happy to see that Tommy and Phil Hill were running in close company, well out front of the main pack, and for awhile it even looked like they were maybe closing the gap to the Cunninghams. Those C-types were obviously quick as the dickens, but it looked to me that Tommy was trying a lot harder, getting it full-lock sideways and damn near nicking the hay bales every time through. But damn if Phil Hill wasn't hanging right with him, lap after lap, looking so smooth and unruffled that you wondered if they'd somehow swapped paint-jobs. I mean, we knew the green car was the faster one, didn't we?
Too bad that Phil Hill character didn't seem to know it.
Creighton Pendleton was his usual controlled, arrogant self behind the wheel, and you got the impression that his 4.1-liter V-12 had a little something in hand for our 3.4-liter C-types on this long, fast racetrack. In fact, he seemed to be gaining on them once he got through the slower cars. Just as promised, Tommy's friend Eddie Dearborn was pretty damn exuberant with his Cad-Allard, and that MG monstrosity with the Ford V-8 under the hood looked clumsy, nose-heavy, and darty as all getout. In fact, Robby Bernard pulled it in after a half dozen laps with the engine steaming and the brakes about gone, and you couldn't miss that he looked pretty relieved to have it safely back in the paddock.
No question the most impressive cars were the Cunninghams, looking solid, powerful, and totally unperturbed as they rumbled around the circuit in formation, carving through traffic with ease and leaving everybody behind at the end of the long straightaways. Somebody said they were topping 150 on the fast downhills into Kimberly's Korner and Dicken's Ditch. Eventually, pros Fitch and Walters eased away from Briggs himself in the second roadster, but not by much. Then again, you could tell they were nowheres near flat-out yet, wisely saving the last few r.p.m.'s and inches of pavement for Sunday afternoon, when it counted.
All the drivers were mightily impressed (or perhaps "awestruck" might be a better word) by the circuit at Elkhart Lake. It was big and fast and terribly scenic, and about the only complaints were how narrow it was for passing and how little room for error there was in some of the really fast spots. But that's exactly why ace drivers like Tommy and Cal and Phil Hill and John Fitch and Phil Walters liked it so much. It separated the men from the boys.
In fact, that's exactly why Robby Bernard decided to step out of his Ford-powered MG and let my buddy Cal have a try. That poor guy looked like he'd aged ten years for every lap he was out in that contraption! Cal found me underneath the Westbridge C-type, doing a little between-sessions fluid check and nut-and-bolt inspection. A decent mechanic does that every time a car comes in off the track (and if he doesn't find anything wrong, that just means he did his job properly the last time!). Anyhow, Cal wanted me to take a look at that V-8-powered MG before he went out in it, just to make sure nothing was about ready to snap, fracture, fall off, burst into flames, or blow sky high. I was flattered, of course, but also a little nervous. I mean, who wants that kind of responsibility?
Fortunately, it looked reasonably sanitary, and I figured if Cal could drive that ratty old TC of his without worrying about it, this thing should be a piece of cake. The guy who shoehorned the motor in fabricated some pretty nice engine mounts and the welds looked like something old Butch Bohunk might've done. Why, that Ford fit like it almost belonged, except that it had to run without the side cowlings to make room for the heads and exhaust plumbing. But most of the quicker MGs were running without the side panels anyway, so it really didn't make much difference. The engine had been modified by a speed shop in Detroit, and it had finned aluminum heads and a specially cast three-carburetor manifold from some California hot-rod place named Edelbrock. They were beautifully made all right, but I really wondered if this particular MG needed extra any power.
"How's it look to you?" Cal asked.
"I dunno," I said, giving him about half of an OK shrug. "Looks like they did their homework."
"That's good enough for me," he grinned, and jumped in the driver's seat.
The officials split up the next sessions into "slow cars" and "fast cars," and they stuck Cal in the same group with the Cunninghams and Allards and Creighton Pendleton's Ferrari (not to mention our two new C-types!) and not even Cal Carrington could make that MG V-8 shine against that sort of opposition. But he did pretty good, running about the same pace as the quicker XK120s while having to pump the brakes thre
e or four times before every sharp corner. And then he didn't come around. I feared the worst, but was tremendously relieved when the Ford-powered MG reappeared at the other end of Lake Street, trundling along at little more than walking speed with the right-front wheel crabbed in. He pulled into the lot behind the Osthoff and sailed right past where me and the rest of the MG guys (including the car's owner) were standing. "Help!" Cal laughed as he steered past us again on another slow lap around the parking lot, "this damn thing doesn't have any brakes left at all. . . ."
Sure enough, the guy who built it ran the left-side exhaust a little too close to the master cylinder, and it got the brake fluid so hot it actually boiled (so that's why Cal had to pump the brakes!) and finally the seal gave up and the brake pedal flopped clear to the floor with no effect whatsoever. "Except," Cal explained wryly, "for a fresh little dimple in the seat upholstery on the driver's side."
It happened in the worst possible place—at the end of the long, fast, downhill run to Kimberly's Korner—where the track came up the stem of a T-intersection and there wasn't much of anyplace to go. Fortunately, Cal had the presence of mind to grab a big handful of emergency brake and swing the wheel from one side to the other to slew off some speed before purposely yanking it hard left and spinning the car to use up the momentum. Truth is, he was lucky to keep it from flipping right over! And he knew it, too. But somehow he got away with it and brought the car home with no more than a limp brake pedal and a bent tie-rod from where he tapped a hay bale right at the end of the spin. He was pretty unhappy about that. "Boy, if I'da had two more feet of asphalt—two stinking feet! —I wouldn'ta hit anything!"