The Last Open Road

by Burt Levy

  "Its got 'igh-compression pistons and oversize valves and a special, h'experimental camshaft," Barry said proudly, "and the lads who built it figure over three hundred horsepower at the bloody flywheel!" He nudged me in the ribs. "Give or take a few."

  "So," I asked, "what exactly are you planning to do with this thing?"

  "Why, you and me and Sylvester are going to shove it under the bonnet of Tommy's Allard, of course."

  I stared into the big wooden crate, noting how the Chrysler's huge cylinder heads filled it from one side to the other, and how the smooth, streamlined exhausts fanned out underneath, and it occurred to me that this was one hell of a large motor to try and shoehorn in to a two-seater English sports car. Even a great, hulking example like Tommy's Allard. "You sure this thing will fit?" I asked.

  "Well, Sylvester and me did a little preliminary measuring before Tommy ordered the bloody thing, and far as we can tell, it's going to be pretty bleedin' close all the way. Pretty bleedin' close indeed. . . ."

  "Boy, I'll say."

  "Sheeeee-it!" Sylvester sighed, shaking his head. "This gonna be one hell of a fuckin' deal. You jus' wait an' see. . . ."

  And of course it was.

  But Tommy was as excited as I'd ever seen him. "You just wait till we get this little beauty buttoned into the car," he gushed, patting the big Chrysler on one of its massive valve covers. "Then we'll see about those bloody C-types and Ferraris." He was like a kid on Christmas morning, you know?

  But I couldn't see it. Much as I liked and respected Tommy, it seemed to me that his big, chunky Allard was starting to look like a dinosaur compared to the newer cars. Sure, you could always find some way to cram more horsepower under the hood, but you couldn't make an Allard any smaller or lower or lighter—in fact, that big cast-iron Chrysler was going to make it even heavier than before!—and far as I could see, lighter weight and better brakes and niftier handling were the things a driver was going to need if he really wanted to run even-up against the new generation of race cars from England and Italy and West Palm Beach, Florida. But Tommy didn't see it that way. After all, he'd always been the fastest guy in an Allard—won himself a lot of races, too—and no question he hadn't done as well in other cars. So he was developing into sort of an Allard hardcase, and it was blinding him a little to what else was out there. In a nice way, I tried to tell him as much. But he couldn't see it. "Oh, I don't know," he said quietly, smiling down at his new Chrysler FirePower V-8, "I reckon the C-type is better on overall balance. And Creighton's Ferrari is always dangerous. But with this lump of iron between the frame rails, there's one race my Allard will always win."

  "What race is that?"

  "Why, the race to the next corner, of course!"

  Right or wrong, Tommy'd decided if the car could do just that for him, he was a good enough driver to pretty much take care of the rest.

  Needless to say, Julie was less than thrilled when I rang her up to explain as how I was staying on at Westbridge for another two weeks. "Yeah, sure!" she snorted into the receiver. "It'll be two more weeks, and two more weeks after that, and on and on until you're old as my frickin' uncle. You'll see. Those two English jerks are playing you like a damn violin!"

  "No they aren't," I tried to tell her, "it's just we got a whole bunch of work t'get done before the races up at Watkins Glen the weekend of the 19th. I can't just ditch out on them, honey. It's just not right. But it's only two more weeks. Honest it is."

  "Humph," Julie grunted. "And you expect me to believe that? Do I honestly look that stupid to you?"

  "It's the truth," I pleaded. "Really it is."

  But Julie wasn't exactly listening. You know how females can get when they're angry. Especially tough, streetwise, no-bullshit Italian types like Julie. "So," she hissed, "this is the thanks I get for kissing up to my asshole uncle so's he'd hire you back on at the Sinclair. . . ."

  "But I am coming back to work at the Sinclair. Really I am. If you'd jus—"

  "Well, thanks a lot, Buddy Palumbo. Thanks an awful lot."

  "B-But, Julie . . ."

  "Don't you 'b-but, Julie' me, you low-life, bullshitting jerk. Oh,.sure. You just couldn't wait t'get back here to Passaic so you could come to work at my uncle's gas station and we could start spending a little time together. . . ."

  "Julie. Please! Listen to me! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL BE BACK AT YOUR UNCLE'S GOD DARN GAS STATION ON MONDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 22ND—BRIGHT AND EARLY—AND IF I'M NOT, MAY GOD ALMIGHTY STRIKE ME DEAD WITH A LIGHTNING BOLT!"

  "Just remember this, Palumbo," Julie snarled into the receiver. "If He doesn't, I will!"

  It's a good idea to take Julie seriously when she says stuff like that. For your own safety, you know?

  So now all Sylvester and Barry and me had to do was wrestle that monstrous Chrysler into Tommy's Allard and have it ready to roll in seven days so Tommy could drive it up to Watkins Glen Wednesday morning. And if that doesn't sound like an absolutely monumental task, you have obviously never attempted to change anything on an automobile from the way the manufacturer of record originally intended. Suffice it to say that we spent almost every minute that week buried elbow-deep in Tommy's Allard, doing our best to take care of all the countless mechanical mismatches and "clearance problems" that come with every engine swap. Although the general profile of the Chrysler's oil pan would more or less fit between the frame rails, certain of its other dimensions were trying to occupy space already filled with rather solid chunks of automobile. And of course none of the motor mounts were in the right place and the linkages didn't match up and the water pump outlet was on the wrong side and pointed in the wrong direction and, well, you get the idea. Fact is, we never could've got the job done if it wasn't for a Polish-born machinist from Brooklyn named Roman Szymanski.

  Roman Szymanski was already a minor legend around East Coast racing garages by the summer of 1952. He was a pale, tubby-cheeked guy with thinning hair and thick bifocals, and he could be difficult to understand on account of he spoke so softly and only knew a few hard-object nouns and some of your more basic present-tense verbs in English. I guess he left Poland in 1938 with little more than the clothes on his back, and worked his way up to owning a tiny, back-alley machine shop in Brooklyn where he made parts for all kinds of industrial machinery. But then he got "discovered" by some local repair guys (including the Muscatelli brothers), who found out he could do valve jobs and bore cylinder blocks and regrind crankshafts and weld up cracked water jackets and straighten bent cams and rethread stripped stud holes quicker and cheaper and better than anybody in New York. Then somebody from Frick-Tappet Motors got him to make motor mounts and bell housing adapters and such for a few weirdass engine swaps, and all of a sudden Roman Szymanski found himself in the racing business. I guess he enjoyed it (although you couldn't hardly tell, since Roman never seemed to smile or frown or show much emotion) but he sure never had to hunt for customers after that.

  I was over by his shop several times that week while we fought with the engine installation on Tommy's Allard, and it was amazing how he could look at something you were trying to do—like, fr'instance, mating up that Chrysler V-8 with the three-speed Cad/LaSalle transmission in the Allard—pull at his eyebrows for a couple minutes, take a few measurements, and in a day or two come up with exactly what was needed to get the job done. His lathes and drill presses were all pretty old and mostly German (in spite of the fact that he didn't care much for the Germans—not hardly!), but they were neat and clean and he kept them in perfect running order, and Roman could take those machines and make you damn near anything. Even with Roman's help, Barry and Sylvester and me ran into lots of problems. Like getting the exhaust pipes to clear the steering gear and getting the throttle linkage so it opened all four carburetors the same when you stepped on the gas. and cutting a few holes so the hood would close over those four little chrome-pot air cleaners. Plus we had a bunch of other customer cars to get ready and the green C-type to square away for its new owner (whoev
er it was), and meanwhile I was running back and forth to the Sinclair in Jersey so I could spin wrenches on Big Ed's Jaguar in the middle of the night and all day Sunday. He'd sweet-talked the Old Man into giving me a key, and I had to work my ass off to straighten out all the idiotic stuff that other mechanic had done. The main problem was the thermostatic actuator again, but the guy obviously didn't understand about that and tried to compensate by leaning out the carburetors. He even changed the damn jets! But I tracked it all down and got it fixed, and even reset the valve clearances (which is one hell of a job on a Jag twin-cam!) and adjusted the timing chain and then finished it off with new plugs and points and a razor-sharp tune-up. Then I test-drove it into Manhattan on Monday morning, and spent the next forty hours or so putting all the final little five-minute finishing touches on Tommy's engine swap.

  But, like Barry explained as he punched the starter button and that big, honking Chrysler burbled to life early Wednesday morning, "H'its always the first 90 percent of a job like this that takes the first 90 percent of the time . . ."—we watched Tommy climb behind the wheel and charge off toward Watkins Glen in a thundering cloud of rubber smoke—" . . . but h'it's that last 10 percent of the job that always takes the other 90 percent of the time."

  17: THE GLEN

  THE MORNING we left for Watkins Glen I tooled Big Ed's Jag out of the Westbridge shop about 10:30 and drove across the George Washington to pick him up over by his scrap yard. It was a big, ugly place spread out over a couple of acres with a few rusty tin buildings and a high wood fence around it. But there must've been good money in buying and selling used industrial scrap, or Big Ed could never have afforded that monstrous house of his with the two stone lions out front. He had his bag ready so we were out of there in minutes, but we still had to stop by my folks' so I could grab a quick shower and snatch some clean clothes off the ironing board in the basement.

  My mom was home and it was really nice to see her—even for just five minutes—and of course she fussed about how nobody in the family got to see me anymore. Right in front of Big Ed, too, so it was kind of embarrassing. But then she insisted he have a cup of coffee and try some of her famous Dutch apple pie, and there was really no way Big Ed could refuse. So he had to sit there and listen to my mom ramble on about how those darn blue jays were picking on all the poor little wrens and chickadees around the bird feeders out in the yard, and also about how worried she was about her favorite downy woodpecker on account of she hadn't heard him drilling holes in the telephone poles for several days. There was really no stopping her once she got started, but what with all her kids more or less gone (or just in and out for a few minutes) and my old man being a genuine five-star grump and not much of a conversationalist, my mom was almost like The Skipper when she got a run at a fresh pair of ears. But she was bright and pleasant, and no question her apple pie made listening to her pretty easy. I even took a slice along for the road.

  Big Ed took over driving, and he was pretty damn impressed with how well the Jag was running. "Boy, you got this thing like brand spankin' new," he grinned, unwrapping another fancy Havana cigar. "What was the problem with it, anyway?" So I tried to explain to him about the starting carburetor and the thermostatic actuator and what the other mechanic had done wrong, but you could see I'd lost him before the end of the first sentence. But that was OK, since I was plenty tired and didn't feel much like talking. So I just laid back against that soft red leather, pulled my old Army blanket up over my shoulders, and drifted off to the sound of the tires on the highway and the rolling purr of that smooth-running Jaguar six.

  We followed the same route Butch Bohunk and I took back in August on our way to Grand Island, and like always, it didn't seem as long the second time through. Besides, it was a beautiful early-fall sort of day, and it was nice just leaning into the seat back with the afternoon sun on my face and that green wool blanket pulled up around my chin. I thought a little about Julie and going back to work at the Sinclair, but mostly I remembered how it was on that Saturday morning back in May, sitting in this exact same seat in this exact same Jaguar while Big Ed and me headed out to Bridgehampton for the first sports car race either one of us had ever seen. Jeez, it seemed like ages ago, only at the same time like it was just yesterday. Or maybe the day before. The big difference was that now the yellow-orange fall colors and the smell of harvested fields and burning leaves were in the air instead of the fresh wet green of springtime.

  We ate dinner at that same little railroad-car hash house in Damascus where Butch and me stopped on our way to Grand Island, and I really can't say why I told Big Ed it was a good place to eat, since I distinctly remembered that the burgers tasted like coal tar. But it was the only place I knew, and lots of times you wind up going back to the same lousy joints time after time just because they're familiar. Anyhow, Big Ed asked for the best thing on the menu and the waitress recommended chicken-fried steak, so we ordered a pair of them. While we waited for the guy in the kitchen to do his worst, I asked how Big Ed was planning to convince Charlie Priddle and the rest of the armband types to let him race. "It's kind of a surprise," he allowed, his cigar rolling from one side of his mouth to the other, "an' I don't want to take a chance and jinx it. You'll find out soon enough." And then he oozed out a mean little chuckle.

  I couldn't wait, you know?

  Our chicken-fried steaks were dry and tough and covered with a muddy-looking gravy that was about the same consistency as gear lube and didn't taste much better. But at least the portions were large, what with huge mounds of tasteless mashed potatoes and about a half pound of canned carrots and peas. On the way over to pay the bill, Big Ed let me know in no uncertain terms that he was going to pick out the restaurants from there on in. And I couldn't say as I blamed him. But in spite of the food, it was kind of neat going back there again, just so I could think back over all the stuff that had happened that summer and how much everything in my life seemed to have changed.

  As we got ready to leave, who should come powering up in a shower of gravel but Skippy Welcher and faithful squire Milton Fitting. But the amazing thing was what they were driving. Believe it or not, those two idiots were in the green C-type from Westbridge—my C-type, for gosh sakes!—and no matter how many times I rubbed my eyes, I couldn't get rid of the frightening, ridiculous, and thoroughly nauseating sight of Reginald "Skippy" Welcher at the controls of the ex—Creighton Pendleton (even though he'd never actually driven it) C-type that I'd personally chauffeured back and forth across half the damn country just two weeks before. To make matters worse, Skippy was wearing a set of those split-panel fighter-pilot goggles and a Union Jack scarf tied around his neck like some kind of Hollywood cowboy.

  "What ho!" Skippy shouted, waving his fist in the air.

  "What ho, yourself," Big Ed answered, staring at the C-type with eyes full of envy. He'd never seen one before. "Say, what th'hell is this thing, anyway?"

  "The very latest and best out of Coventry, my good man!" Skippy spewed through a maniacal grin. "A work of high art. An instrument of destruction. A singing sword!" The Skipper's face was starting to seethe and pop like hot lava.

  Well, as interested as Big Ed was in Skippy's new car, he'd also been involved in enough meandering and unending conversations with The Skipper to know that no automobile on earth was worth going through that again. "Well, see you at the races," he said, fumbling for his keys.

  "Indeed we will!" Skippy replied, snapping off a two-fingered salute and one of his patented gold-tooth smiles. "Tally ho!" he hollered, popping the clutch and tearing off in a hail of gravel with the engine right on the verge of valve float. I swear, the bastard didn't upshift until he was damn near out of sight. And that's when I realized that he never got out to eat or gas up or even take a pee. He'd only stopped on account of he saw Big Ed's XK120 out front, and wanted to make sure whoever owned it had a decent opportunity to fawn and gape and drool over his new toy.

  Big Ed had me take over for the final push up to Watkin
s Glen, heading up Highway 96 out of Owego, then picking up 234 at Van Etten for the last spurt through Swartwood, Alpine, and Odessa to the junction with Route 14 at Montour Falls. We needed gas anyway, so Big Ed had me turn off Highway 14 onto Main Street heading into the town. It looked like your average small-town street, what with a drugstore and a hardware store and a greasy spoon or two, except for the sheer rock wall at the far end of Main Street—tall as a skyscraper!—with a thundering, frothy-white waterfall tumbling down it like the water was pouring out of the sky! Just across the street was a little brick building with columns in front like miniature smokestacks, and inside were the offices of a local lawyer named Cameron Argetsinger who loved sports cars and more or less put the whole deal together to bring road racing to Watkins Glen back in 1948. It was actually the first place the S.C.M.A. ever raced—at least out in front of the public instead of up and down the driveways of their fancy East Coast estates—and just like Bridgehampton and Elkhart Lake, the local shop owners, bankers, and bartenders were only too happy to have them around.