by Burt Levy
But I got it handled, thanks to Tommy and Carson and especially Ernesto Julio, who didn't think twice about lending me his new Packard convert so's I could carry the tires down into town for repairs. In fact, he insisted, and actually seemed kind of happy about it—as if the opportunity to do noble, outlandish things didn't come around often enough in this life. "But what if I get it dirty?" I asked, eyeballing the virgin gray leather inside that plum-colored Packard Carribean.
"Oh, hell, Buddy, don't worry about it," he laughed. "That's what soap and water are for!"
And I had to admit, he was right.
I had all the wheels off and loaded in the Packard by the time Big Ed rolled out for breakfast, and I told him to just take it easy for an hour or so and that I'd take care of everything. I mean, the last thing I needed was a loud, monumentally pissed-off Big Ed Baumstein all over me while I was trying to get a big job done in a desperately short amount of time.
I got three inner tubes off Barry Spline (who was none too happy about getting hauled out of bed at 6:30 ayem) and the fourth out of the spare in the trunk. I couldn't just use the spare as it was, on account of Big Ed hit a pothole in Brooklyn a solid lick and bent the rim, and so no way could you use it on a race car. The Atlantic station down on Franklin Street had a mounting stand and a couple tire irons handy and a compressor to supply the air, and I sweet talked the pump jockey into letting me use them even though neither the owner or the resident grease monkey was on hand. "Y'know, I'll get my ass fired if th'boss ever finds out," the gas station kid told me while I worried one of Big Ed's tires off its rim. "Jiminy, I'm not s'posed t'let anybody come in the shop. Not ever. And if—"
"Look," I told him, "this is an emergency, understand?"
"Yeah," he said, not sounding real sure about it, "I guess so. . . ."
After the kid helped me finish the job and load everything back into the Packard, I reached in my pocket and slipped him a folded-up dollar, passing it to him under my palm the way Big Ed used to when I worked on his Caddies back at the Sinclair. "Jeez, thanks, mister," the kid gasped, holding the bill out in front of him like it was a damn sawbuck or something. Truth is, I couldn't ever remember anybody calling me "mister" before.
I had Big Ed's Jag squared away in plenty of time to make it down to the paddock before they closed the roads, and a quick check with Tommy Edwards indicated everything was shipshape with the Chrysler-powered Allard as well. Tommy reminded me to keep an eye on Big Ed and whisper soothing words into his ear every now and then, seeing as how he was obviously getting a serious case of the prerace jitters. You could tell by the way his eyes bugged out and how his stogie was hesitantly wobbling its way from one side of his mouth to the other.
There really wasn't much to do at that point except find a spot along the fencing to watch the races. Along the way, I saw my buddy Cal stalking around the paddock with an uncharacteristic scowl plastered across his face and his hands jammed deep into his pants pockets. I guess Carson Flegley had timidly held his ground about driving the TD himself that weekend, and since the only real practice sessions were the three warm-up laps before each race, there'd be no opportunity for Carson to change his mind and hand the car over even if he wanted to. Cal did manage to finagle a drive in some older guy's XK120 around closing time at the Seneca Friday night, and he was really looking forward to having a crack at a Jaguar. Only now that morning had arrived and the illuminating effects of the liquor had worn off, the older guy was having second thoughts. But of course there was no way he could come right out and tell Cal he was backing out of the deal. After all, that wouldn't be gentlemanly. So he'd come up with some cockamamie story about the oil pressure gauge fluctuating during the drive down to Franklin Street that morning, and while it would be perfectly OK for him—the owner—to blow the damn engine sky-high, he surely didn't want to put an innocent and honorable fellow like Cal in the uncomfortable position of being responsible for a devastatingly expensive repair bill. In fact, those were his exact words: "a devastatingly expensive repair bill," just so Cal would be sure and understand that he was doing it for Cal's own good.
"Aw, don't worry about it," I told Cal. "You'll get plenty more chances to drive in this lifetime."
"Yeah, sure," Cal snorted, turning the ends of his frown down even further.
"No, really," I told him. "I mean, everybody knows what a super driver you are. You'll get your shot."
"That's easy for you to say," he groused, nudging the gravel around with the toe of his Bass Weejuns. "You're not missing your sister's damn wedding back home just to be up here for the races. Jesus Christ, Buddy, my life may not go much past Monday morning. . . ." And then, without warning, that mischievous old rich-kid smile came out of nowhere and spread across his face like sunlight peeking from behind a cloud bank. "Aw, what the hell," he sighed. "Let's go watch the damn races and see if any of these jerkoffs can drive."
The first heat of the day was the Seneca Cup for "unrestricted" cars, and Cal and me worked our way toward the south end of Franklin Street while the cars assembled on the grid for their three warm-up laps. Most of the heavy runners like the Cunninghams and Tommy's Allard and Creighton Pendleton's Ferrari and the standard-issue XK120s were saving themselves for the big Watkins Glen Grand Prix feature later that afternoon, so you had a field of mostly dinky little open-wheel Formula III cars and some strange hybrids like a Chrysler-powered Lea-Francis special and even a few stripped-down TCs running on alcohol fuel and breathing through Rootes-type superchargers. The prerace favorite was a rather notorious S.C.M.A. regular named George Weaver in a scruffy but blazingly fast 4.5-liter Maserati Grand Prix car he called "Poison Lil." It was from before the war, but under the scrapes and dings that thing was a real thoroughbred. It had a magnificent supercharged V-8 that ran on some exotic fuel blend that made your eyes tear and nose run, and it howled like a squadron of dive-bombers whenever he cracked the throttles open. Then again, the Maserati brothers were machinists by trade back in Bologna, and everything they made was beautiful to behold. Except for maybe some of the welds. But Weaver's car was getting a little long in the tooth by 1952, and there figured to be some serious competition from the silver C-type Ernesto Julio had so generously lent out to Cunningham driver Johnny Fitch for, um, "evaluation."
And that's exactly how the race played out. After three warm-up laps, the cars gathered down the middle of Franklin Street again, and when the Great White Hunter guy brandished the green, George Weaver lit the fuse and that supercharged Grand Prix Maserati took off like a scalded cat, leaving streaks of rubber all the way to corner one! Johnny Fitch was a little more conservative at the start, but began picking up the pace after a little familiarization and was right on Weaver's tail by the end of the third lap. Next time around, the C-type was in front by at least a hundred yards, and you could hear that the hard edge had come off the Maserati's engine note. It went out a lap later with clouds of expensive-looking smoke coming out of the tailpipes (head gasket was my guess) and it really wasn't much of a contest after that, as Fitch and the silver Jag led as they pleased the rest of the way home. But it was really something to watch that guy drive, and even Cal had nothing but admiration for the way he took the exact same line—down to the damn inch! —lap after lap. Fact is, it made you wish Skippy Welcher would've put Phil Hill in the green one, just so's we could've seen those two duke it out head-to-head in identical cars.
Next up was the Queen Catherine Cup for small-bore cars (which made you wonder who comes up with those names, anyway) and although it was a big field and there was the usual cut-and-thrust dicing among the stock MGs, the race for the overall win was once again a real snore. Bill Spear won going away in one of those handsome little OSCA MT4s, and Jim Kimberly (the same one from Kimberly's Korner at Elkhart Lake) finished second in another just like it. They were beautiful cars, those little OSCAs, and I heard from Barry Spline that they were built by the Maserati brothers—the same guys who dreamed up that awesome supercharged single-se
ater we saw in the first race— after they quit working for this big industrialist guy who bought them out when they were going bankrupt for about the fourth or fifth time. But the Maserati brothers didn't much like working for a big industrialist guy—it just wasn't their style, you know?—so the day their contract ran out, they packed up their machine tools and moved back to Bologna so they could live the way they wanted to live, build the cars they wanted to build, and go bankrupt every now and again whenever the mood struck them. Only problem was they couldn't use their own name on account of the big industrialist guy still owned the rights to it. So they called their cars OSCAs (which stood for Officiallizzone Specialliazzone Constructiazzzone Automobillinni or something in Bolognese) and even if they couldn't afford to build big race cars anymore, they built maybe the slickest, quickest, and most beautifully proportioned little ones you ever saw.
Third place in the Queen Catherine Cup went to that West Coast guy Roger Barlow in his blue Simca special, but he was way back and more or less cruising around on his lonesome. Fact is, except for a little MG dogfight halfway down the pack, the only interesting thing was watching our buddy Carson flog his black TD around. He was well toward the rear of the field, of course, and that got Cal to muttering about how he should've been out there instead. But I pointed out that at least Carson wasn't dead last (in fact, I think he may have had as many as five or six cars behind him, and at least half of those were running on all four cylinders!). Besides, he'd managed to keep it on the road, and you'd have to say that was a real improvement in his driving style. Better yet, he finished the damn race—his first ever!—and even managed to pass another car right there toward the end. As you can imagine, Carson was floating a good two feet off the pavement when he climbed out of his steaming TD afterwards, and I don't think I ever saw a face as happy and proud and satisfied with itself as Carson Flegley's when he pulled his helmet off. Why, he could hardly talk, and there was even a timid little swagger in his step as we headed over to get ourselves some ice cream. Cal Carrington even bought (can you believe it?) and that really put the icing on the cake. Carson had a grin hung across his face like it was hooked on his ears, and you could tell that—at least for those precious few moments of his life—he had indeed become the brave knight who slew the ferocious dragon, the courageous private who single-handedly saved the whole platoon, and Rita Hayworth's favorite leading man . . . all rolled into one!
Things were running more than an hour behind by the time the cars pulled out for the big Grand Prix feature race, and, what with all the people milling around on Franklin Street and the general confusion getting the cars lined up and the reports coming in from the corners that there were spectators wandering across the racetrack, I kind of wondered how they were going to get everything back in order for the race. The three Cunninghams filled the first three grid positions, and I was thrilled to see my guy Tommy chuffing out to take fourth slot on the outside of the second row. But the joker in the deck was two rows behind, as none other than our favorite lunatic Skippy Welcher pulled up in his newly acquired C-type, waving to the crowd and flashing his gold-tooth smile and revving that poor Jag's engine like there was a special trophy for bending valves on the starting grid. Directly ahead of The Skipper (and looking plenty concerned about it!) was Creighton Pendleton in his blood red Ferrari, and next to him was Phil Hill in the other C-type, staring straight ahead with no expression on his face at all. He almost looked mean, you know, but it was really just concentration. Phil Hill knew the Cunninghams and Tommy's Chrysler/ Allard and even Creighton's 4.1 Ferrari had a lot more suds than his "little" 3.4-liter Jaguar, and, what with the steep grade up Old Corning Hill, there was no question he'd be lucky to just hold position for the first half lap or so. You could see the wheels turning under his pudding-bowl helmet as he went over the track in his mind, trying to figure out exactly where and when and how he might sneak past those guys.
It was a good ten minutes before they got the rest of the field lined up, and Big Ed Baumstein was one of the last. He actually should've been five or six rows up from the back based on engine displacement, but Charlie Priddle and his armband brigade decided it might be better to start him at the end of the field where he couldn't do much damage, and for once I had to agree with the wisdom of their decision. In fact, it was a pity they couldn't do the same with Skippy Welcher.
I walked over to see if Big Ed needed anything, but he was pretty much past talking by that point. He had on this shiny, fresh-out-of-the-box racing helmet without a scratch on it (the sure sign of a rookie) and he'd even had it painted the same creamy ivory-white as his car. Truth is, that's about as far as I ever saw Big Ed go in terms of color-coordinating his wardrobe. He was wearing a pair of those split-lens aviator goggles, too, and through the glass you could see that the look in his eyes was both fearsome and desperate.
It took another twenty minutes before they got all the crews and wives and girlfriends and photographers and hangers-on cleared out of the way, and when the Great White Hunter guy circled the green flag, those big engines fired up and down Franklin Street, fluttering the flags and banners and reverberating off the shop windows. Then the starter jerked his arms skyward and the field roared away for their three practice laps. We heard them snort and grumble through the hard righthander past the Atlantic station and thunder up Old Corning Hill, fading off into the countryside. And then it got all hollow quiet, even with thousands of spectators lining the street eight- and ten-deep along both sides. Why, you could even hear the rustle of a slight breeze through the early-fall leaves and the gentle flap of the red, white, and blue cloth pennants they had strung up between the telephone poles and even the birds chattering to one another up in the trees.
It seemed to take forever for the three Cunninghams to reappear at the far end of Franklin Street, all tied together and accelerating brutally out of the last corner. Briggs was on the point, and you got the notion that neither Phil Walters or Johnny Fitch was about to take a dive inside and try to outbrake the boss. At least not during practice, anyway. A little ways back was Tommy in our Allard, working hard on finding an empty bit of pavement so he could try out the new engine on his own rather than mixing it up with other cars. Creighton was right behind him, probing to find out what the Allard had and where it was weak, and you could see Phil Hill was doing exactly the same as Tommy, working on an open piece of track where he could come to terms with what the C-type could do for him at a place like Watkins Glen. The really good drivers are always thinking and plotting and planning ahead about what they're going to do after the flag drops. The other guys just go!
Like Big Ed, for example, who was still way back at the tail end but obviously giving it everything he had. He was winding that poor engine right up to 6500—maybe even more!—and shifting like he was trying to rip the damn lever out by the roots. So it was no huge surprise when he didn't come around at the end of the second practice lap. I just hoped the damage wasn't too serious, seeing as how Big Ed's Jag was supposed to be my ticket home when the racing was over.
"You think he blew it up?" I asked Cal.
"Well, if he didn't," Cal allowed, "it wasn't for lack of trying."
The field formed up down the middle of Franklin Street at the end of the third and final practice lap, and I ran out real quick to see if everything was OK with Tommy's car and find out if he knew what happened to Big Ed.
"She's running like a bloody rocket," Tommy grinned. "But I didn't want to show my hand to the three blokes in those white cars up ahead."
"You think you can actually take 'em?" I asked incredulously.
"I don't rightly know," Tommy said with a wink. "Let's just say we'll have a little something on tap for them when the bloody green drops. You'll see. . . ."
"Did'ja see Big Ed?"
"Oh, he's all right." Tommy paused to check his gauges. "Although I don't know if I can say the same for his car. . . ."
"Oh?"
"He's got it parked on the downhill to the
stone bridge. Looked like an awful lot of smoke and oil. Think he might've dropped it into first instead of third there for a moment. That's all it takes, you know."
"Yeah. I know."
Shit.
Then one of the armband people rushed up to shoo me away, so I grabbed Cal and we started bulling ourselves a path toward corner one. We really could've used Big Ed right then, and I had to think he would've been better off there with us, too, instead of out on the circuit with a busted Jaguar. We only got about halfway before the green dropped, and you couldn't really see much through the crowd as the pack thundered past in a tumult of splattering exhaust and swirling rubber dust and cars streaking by one after the other like a rocket-powered freight train. Brake lights flashed as they slowed hard for corner one, feinting and darting for position, and then the noise wailed up Old Corning Hill—louder and more desperately than before—and faded into the distance until it was deathly quiet all over again. I remember a large gray cloud inched stubbornly in front of the sun just then, and the temperature seemed to drop eight or ten degrees in an instant. There was nothing you could do but look back and forth at the people packed along the snow fencing and wait. . . .
It was the three Cunninghams of course, roaring out of the last turn one-two-three and rocketing down Franklin Street. But Tommy's Allard was on them like a shadow, and there was no mistaking the move when he pulled out and passed one—right in front of us!—and made it stick all the way through the first turn. "He's GOT 'em!" I whooped, clutching Cal's arm.