The Last Open Road

by Burt Levy

  I noticed a bustle of taxicab activity and people in fancy evening clothes going through a plate-glass revolving door just up the street, and the marquee sign above it read THE LONDON HOUSE. As I walked up that way, I could hear jazz music pumping out in waves every time the door went around. So I thought I'd maybe duck inside and have a listen, you know? But the doorman took one look at me and nodded for me to just keep moving. Didn't even want to check my I.D. or anything. Not that I had any to show him. And that was the problem coming back from a race weekend. I'd somehow forget that I was just a dumb, underage, blue-collar grease monkey from Passaic, and it always took a few rude awakenings and long looks in the mirror before I remembered who I was again. But I slept real well at the Drake anyway, and even left my clothes inside the hollow front door so's the butler service would wash 'em for me. And you know what? They were back in that door, clean and fresh as hospital sheets, by 7:30 the next morning!

  I treated myself to breakfast from room service and ate my first-ever serving of eggs Benedict at the antique white table over by the window looking out over Lake Shore Drive. It was pretty good, too. And they brought a morning edition of the Chicago Tribune along with my breakfast tray, so naturally I thumbed through to see what they had to say about the races up at Elkhart Lake. I found it eventually, a little half-column item buried on the last page of the sports section, just below a piece about some stupid polo game that nobody on the planet cared about. And this was the biggest sports car race in the whole damn country! Plus it was the first time anybody in those parts got a chance to see the Cunninghams that were carrying the American colors into battle against all the big-time European teams overseas. Why, the Elkhart Lake Police Department estimated the crowd at over 135,000! That had to be more than any other sporting event all weekend. But I guess that just didn't mean much to the Chicago Tribune. Or maybe they simply didn't know anything about automobile racing (except for the Indy 500, of course) and I suppose newspaper reporters don't feel comfortable unless they're writing about something they know and understand and maybe even used to do themselves back when they were little kids and hadn't yet discovered that they weren't really any good at it. Which is probably why that Tribune sports section was chock-full of dumb-ass stick-and-ball stories about the Cubs and the White Sox— neither of whom were worth dogshit that year. But the worst of it was how that tiny little story in the sports section was written. The headline went something like this:

  RACER CRASHES FENCE; 8 INJURED

  So thank you, Hal Foust, Chicago Tribune sportswriter, for picking out the most telling, important, and newsworthy fact of the entire weekend, and then going on to write three full paragraphs about a few skinned knees and bruised elbows and the one stinking broken leg before getting into anything at all about the damn races. Which is probably why poor old Hal Foust's story was buried way at the back of the Tribune sports section. After all, nobody got killed. And a couple bumps and scrapes just didn't rate any large-type headline coverage.

  No question that stupid Tribune story was upsetting my digestion, so I put the paper down, poured myself another cup of coffee from the big china pot, and looked out at the last of the Monday-morning rush hour traffic jam and the swarms of suits and ties shouldering their way along the sidewalks to work. In a strange way, it reminded me of the union stiffs filing in through the front gate at my old man's chemical plant. Only the clothes and the haircuts were different. And so I took a moment to just say "thanks" to nobody in particular for being able to go to the races and work on sports cars until all hours of the night and then sit up here on a damn Monday morning looking down on all those poor slobs who were heading off to do the same damn thing they did last Monday morning and the Monday morning before that.

  I didn't check out until after the traffic cleared, and I must say I was a little flabbergasted at how much it cost to get your shirt cleaned, pants pressed, and eggs Benedicted when you had them hand-delivered to a fancy-ass hotel room overlooking Lake Shore Drive. Sure put a dent in that wad of twenties Tommy gave me for the trip home.

  Still, I was in a hurry to get back and see Julie again, so I pushed it pretty good from Chicago to Fort Wayne and on across the rest of Indiana and Ohio toward Pittsburgh and the beginning of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. But it was a long, long drive, and not nearly so much fun as the trip out from Manhattan. There was an incredible amount of heat coming through the firewall and a cold wind whipping in over the top of the windscreen and I'd lost my Brooklyn Dodgers cap someplace so my face got sunburned all morning and the back of my neck even worse all afternoon. And no matter how fast I dared to drive, it seemed to take absolutely forever to get from each little two-bit farm town to the next, even though I never stopped except to fill up a couple times and do a quick kidney tap in the gas station rest rooms. Even so, it was getting on toward midnight by the time I saw the purple and orange flames of the night-shift Pittsburgh steel smelters licking the sky off to the southeast.

  No question I was tired. But when you've been traveling like that for eleven or twelve hours straight, you get sort of lost in the droning, rolling rhythm of it. Sometimes to the point where it's damn near impossible to head up the next exit ramp and stop. Then I came up over the top of this hill a little after one and there was the town of Breezewood again, sitting down there in the bottom of the valley like a tin platter of fluorescent light. It was built to be a convenient overnight stop about halfway between Chicago and New York, and it suited me fine to use it for exactly that purpose. I found an all-night gas station right next to a little blond-brick strip motel, and the kid inside agreed to keep the Jag in the service bay overnight for fifty cents. He probably would've done it for nothing. In fact, I thought he looked a little too eager, so I lifted up the nose and pretended to check the oil and water, but actually removed the distributor rotor and slipped it into my pocket. It didn't figure you could find spare ignition parts for a Jaguar C-type in the middle of the blessed Appalachians at two in the morning. Not hardly.

  Tired as I was, it took me a long time to doze off to sleep, on account of I still had the rumble of the highway pumping through me and the no-longer-mellow growl of that barely muffled Jaguar six vibrating in my ears. But I must've fallen asleep eventually, because I remember waking up early the next morning when some dumb tourist cut off a big eighteen-wheel Diamond-T and the trucker leaned on his entire collection of air horns to register his displeasure.

  It was not the sort of noise you could sleep through.

  There was no drifting back for a few more winks once I was awake, and I really wanted to be on my way again. I was maybe even a little homesick, you know? Which sounded pretty nuts on account of I was hardly ever home even when I was home (if that makes any sense) but somehow it was nice just knowing it was there in case I ever took a notion to drop by. Plus I really wanted to see Julie again.

  So I checked out and walked across the lot to the station where I'd left the C-type, figuring I'd maybe drive an hour or two before stopping for breakfast. But right about then a Ford pickup come rolling up the westbound ramp, and hitched behind was a flatbed trailer with a dirt-track sprint car on top. You could tell they'd been driving all night, on account of it was well past sunup but they still had the headlamps on, and when the rig made a big, wide turn and pulled up in front of the Cozy Cup Coffee Shop, I decided maybe I'd go over and have a slug or two of java and a chocolate-covered doughnut myself before heading east again. So I whipped the C-type around in a fast, screechy arc and brought it up to a perfect halt right next to the tow rig with the dirt-track sprint car hitched to the back.

  I always thought those oval-track cars were neat, and no question I had more in common with the dirty-fingernail types who hung around that kind of racing than all the rich playboys and black sheep of wealthy families you found on the sportycar circuit. The flatbed trailer had a Texas plate on the back and the sprinter on top was painted a garish bright red with metallic blue trim and white pinstriping. Kind of sharp, actuall
y, but it didn't take much inspection to see it had a lot of rough miles on it. It wore a big, gold-leaf "77" on the tail and the name "WINSOME SPECIAL" spelled out on the hood in matching letters. There were clods of dried clay and fresh oil spatters all over the nose and windscreen, and when I looked inside the narrow, low-cut cockpit opening, I couldn't help but notice how the driveshaft ran directly beneath the driver's seat—right under the family jewels!—and they had the shifter on the outside because there simply wasn't any room for it inside the cockpit. The steering wheel was enormous and mounted close and upright so the driver could really lean his shoulders into it. No question it took a lot of moxie to climb into a thing like that and sling it around a rutted dirt oval like a damn rodeo rider on a mean bull. So I took special notice of the smaller gold-leaf lettering below the cockpit that read: "Sammy Speed." What a perfect name for a racing driver!

  Two guys in jeans were staring at me and the C-type through the front window of the Cozy Cup, so I went in, sat down next to them, and ordered myself a cup of coffee and some French toast. One of them was short and wiry, with brown, leathery skin and those special, longdistance fighter-pilot eyes with lots of crow's feet at the corners. The other guy was kind of pale and pudgy-looking, and right away I figured him to be the mechanic. "That's a pretty nice rig you got out there," I observed, just trying to make conversation.

  "You think so?" the pudgy guy grinned. "Tellya what. We'll swap it fr'that sweet little foreign job you just rolled up in. Right here and now. Whaddaya say?"

  "Well, if it was up to me, I just might," I told him. "But it's not my car."

  "Do tell." He'd already sussed I was just another wrench-twister.

  "Yup, just taking it back home for a friend of mine. An Englishman, actually."

  "That an English car?"

  "Sure is," I told him. "It's an XK120 Jaguar competition model."

  "I've heard of 'em. Won that big twenty-four-hour race over in France, didn't they?"

  "That's right," I said, really impressed.

  "I never seen one before. At least not in the flesh. How'bout you, Sammy?"

  The wiry guy with the leathery skin shook his head. "Can't say as I have."

  "Well," I explained, "they're really something. I'm just bringing this one back to New York from the races up at Elkhart Lake."

  "Where?"

  "Elkhart Lake. Up in Wisconsin."

  "I never heard of it," the pudgy guy allowed, pulling the last half of a used five-cent cigar out of his pocket and lighting up. "You ever heard of it, Sammy?"

  "Can't say as I have."

  "How long is the track?" the guy with the cigar wanted to know.

  "Six and a half miles," I told him. "Up over hills and down through valleys and all over the whole blessed countryside."

  "Isn't that something!" the guy said, shaking his head. "You ever run on a track like that, Sammy?"

  Sammy Speed shook his head. "Nope. Can't say I've ever had the opportunity." Then I noticed that special little race driver spark light up in the corner of his eye. "But I'd sure as heck like t'try it. In a minute. All's I'd need is a chance."

  "He would," the pudgy guy grinned. "And I bet he'd do real good at it, too."

  "A car's a car and a track's a track," Sammy Speed allowed. "All's a decent race driver needs is an opportunity."

  "Amen to that, brother," his mechanic agreed. "By the way, I'm Spud Webster and this here's Sammy Speed. You prob'ly ain't heard too much about him yet. But you will. Count on it."

  "That your real name?" I asked. "It's a pretty good name for a race car driver."

  Sammy Speed looked down into his coffee and didn't say a thing. "Aw, don't mind him," Spud grinned. "He's a little embarrassed is all. Aren'tcha, Sammy?"

  "Aw, g'wan," Sammy growled, "leave it alone."

  "His real name is Sammy Slowinski," Spud whispered, leaning in like it was some big government secret, "but he tells people he had it legally changed."

  "Aw, I do not," Sammy snorted, pretending like he was angry. "I just do it for my work, see." You couldn't miss the little twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "I mean, who's gonna hire a race driver named Slowinski, huh?"

  "Yeah," Spud agreed. "It's like all those Hollywood movie stars, you know? They make up names for themselves all the time."

  "Yup," I nodded. "They sure do."

  "No reason why a race car driver can't do the same thing, right?"

  "No reason at all."

  "Glad we agree on that. How'bout you, Sammy?"

  "Can't say as it makes much difference t'me one way or the other," he yawned. "Just so long as I get t'drive some decent cars."

  "So," Spud asked, "how'd you guys do up at that road race in Wisconsin?"

  "Well," I said, kind of backpedaling around the truth, "my driver had a few little problems—you know how that goes—but our, um, teammate from California won the race on Saturday and finished fourth overall and first in class on Sunday."

  "Really?" Spud said, obviously impressed. "What's one of those sportycar races pay to win, anyway?"

  "Ahh, well, actually," I said, trying to properly explain it, "they don't pay anything, see. In fact, the S.C.M.A. specifically forbids prize money at their races."

  Sammy Speed and Spud Webster looked back and forth at each other like something had just gone wrong with their ears. "Then how can y'make a damn living at it?" Spud wanted to know.

  "Well, I make a living preparing the cars and hustling 'em back and forth to the races and fixing 'em when they break."

  "But how 'bout the drivers?"

  "Well, they're generally the ones who pay me t'do it. Or actually, they pay my boss, see, and he takes 85 or 90 percent and gives me what's left."

  Spud took a long drag off the stub end of his cigar and shook his head. "But how do the drivers earn a damn living?" he wanted to know.

  "Well, most of these guys already have money. Lots of it, in fact."

  "So they actually pay to race?"

  "And they can't win anything?"

  "Yup," I nodded. "That's it exactly."

  Sammy Speed shook his head and laughed. "I guess it takes all kinds to make a world, doesn't it?"

  "Well, Sammy," Spud grinned, "y'gotta understand that it's one a'them sit-down-to-pee European sports, see?"

  I guess. . . .

  The waitress poured us another round of coffee, and I decided to ask about their car and the kind of racing they did. "Well," Spud allowed, "we got us an old Diedt chassis with a Meyer-Drake on twin Riley carburetors, and we run about the whole damn Triple-A circuit. Or we will this year, anyway. Next May we'd really like to try and qualify for the Indianapolis 500, but we prob'ly need a little better car for that. Maybe a year-old Kurtis or something if we can afford it. . . ."

  Sammy Speed rolled his eyes, and I got the idea that things were running just a little tight moneywise out on the old Triple-A dirt-track circuit.

  "So," I asked, "where're you guys coming from?"

  "Aw, we just got done with the big mile track up by Syracuse. Jack McGrath won that one. Sammy here finished fifth, I think. . . ."

  "Seventh," Sammy corrected him.

  "OK. Maybe it was seventh. But we don't really have the best setup for those long tracks. Not enough power. And the tires was shot. We were gettin' a little low on tire money. . . ."

  "Yeah," Sammy Speed sighed. "You could say we've hit us a sort of dry patch the last couple races."

  "That's too bad."

  "Hey, it happens to everybody now and then."

  "Yeah," Spud agreed. "I always figured that was one of the big differences between car racing and most other sports."

  "How's that?"

  "The odds stink." He took a final drag off the last half-inch fragment of his cigar and explained. "Now, you take a look at most of your popular stick-and-ball sports, and half the people who play get to go home winners after every game. Half of them! But you go to a car race—especially a big-time event like the Indy 500—
and, even if you're lucky enough to qualify, the odds start out at thirty-three to one and get worse from there depending on how your equipment stacks up."

  "So why do it?" I asked without thinking.

  Sammy Speed looked at me like I didn't have a brain in my head. "Y'do it because someday you're gonna catch a break and get a chance in a really competitive car, and that's when you show 'em all that you belong."