The Last Open Road

by Burt Levy

  I got in Big Ed's Caddy and decided to tool over by the Doggie Shake and see if maybe Julie was on duty. And sure enough she was. But the place was pretty busy with the after-church crowd, and so Julie had no choice but to give me the brush-off when I waltzed up, planted a sweet little peck on her cheek, and thanked her for cleaning my apartment. "Hey, no problem, slobbo," she said, ruefully eyeballing a family of nine—everything from a craggy old grandmother with her hair in a bun right down to a bawling baby in a fuzzy pink blanket—who had just sat themselves down at the last available table in her section. All the parking stalls outside were full, too, so she had to go to work. I guess that fat little drip Marvin was really keeping an eye on everybody. There was nothing to do but sit myself down on one of those rotating stools and order an oliveburger, some french fries, and a root beer float (which I can't really recommend for breakfast, but it's sort of the Specialty of the House over at the Doggie Shake). While I waited for my food to come up (which it usually does at the Doggie Shake, later if not sooner), I kept trying to get Julie to come over and sit with me. But she was real busy with all the people and more or less ignored me. Even when I gave her my absolute best imitation Clark Gable "c'mon over here, baby" wink-and-nod combination.

  So there was nothing to do but just sort of hang around and wait for the crowd to thin out. Somebody'd left a New York Times on one of the chairs, so naturally I started thumbing through it to see if there was anything about Watkins Glen. Sure enough, there was a sedate little one-column blurb back on page 54, right next to an ad for a new recording of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Don Carlo. Why, a story like that would've made the damn front page of the Daily News!

  Especially if they had some really gruesome pictures.

  Anyhow, the Times story read like this:

  SPORTS CAR RAMS CROWD, KILLS BOY

  Watkins Glen, N.Y., Sept. 20—A seven-year-old boy was killed and at least twelve other persons were injured today as a sports car participating in the fifth annual running of the Grand Prix race veered into spectators on Franklin Street, the main street of the village.

  The accident occurred shortly after 5:35 P.M, as forty cars of foreign make swung into . . .

  "Foreign make?" I muttered out loud. "Haven't those idiots at the Times ever heard about the Cunninghams?"

  "You talking to yourself now?" It was Julie, of course, standing over me with her eyes all bright and cheery and that fabulous movie-magazine smile.

  "Nah," I said, folding the paper so she maybe wouldn't see the story. "I just saw something dumb in the Times is all."

  "I saw it, too," she said, a slow, dark cloud passing over her face. "Did you see it?" she asked quietly. "I mean, did you see it happen?"

  "No, I didn't," I lied. "I was way over on the other side of the track." I really didn't feel like talking about it. Especially with somebody on the outside of the sport. Fact is, it made me feel all dirty and guilty and ashamed inside, like maybe I'd had something to do with it, just because I'd been there and not incidentally helped put together the damn car that killed that poor kid and injured all those people and almost did in my friend Tommy Edwards as well.

  "It must've been awful . . . ," Julie said softly, her voice trailing off.

  "Yeah," I told her. "It was." And then we just kind of sat there for awhile, looking around at everything but each other's eyes. "Hey," I finally said, trying to make a little conversation, "thanks again for cleaning my place up."

  "Somebody had to do it."

  "No, really. That was an awful nice surprise."

  "No big deal," she shrugged. "I just didn't want to pick up some terrible fungus or disease off you from living in that dump."

  "Yeah, I suppose I could use a few lessons about housekeeping."

  "Men are pigs," Julie snorted. "They never know anything about keeping a nice place to live. . . ."

  I had to agree. I mean, she was right.

  ". . . They want you to cook for them and clean for them and wash dishes for them and pick up after them. . . ."

  It sounded like a pretty good deal to me.

  ". . . and then they expect you to be around all pert and pretty and ready to go whenever the heck they feel like it. . . ."

  I could hear her mom's voice coming through loud and clear, and I was starting to wonder what exactly had gotten into Julie, you know? But she was really rolling now, and there was nothing to do but sit back and shut up and wait for her to run out of gas. If you just sat there and kept your mouth shut and nodded every ten seconds or so, it generally took about two and a half minutes.

  You could time it on a watch.

  Sure enough, Julie ran out of steam right on schedule, and then I thanked her again for cleaning my place.

  "Like I said," she shrugged again, "no problem."

  "Well, it was an awful nice surprise when I got home last night. Or actually, more like this morning."

  "So," she said, kind of letting the word hang there, "you think you're finally about through with those races?"

  "Oh, I don't know. It's hard to say. See, I'm goin' back to work at your uncle's gas station tomorrow morning—"

  "I know." You couldn't miss the happy little spark flickering in her eyes, and I must admit it made me feel all warm and safe and cozy inside. Then again, I knew in my heart I was hooked on racing and the excitement of hanging around with all those fabulous cars and crazy characters. I mean, Real Life was just too damn dull and predictable and, well, unimportant by comparison. But there was no way you could explain it to somebody on the outside. Especially when the body of that poor little seven-year-old kid wasn't even in the ground yet.

  "I dunno, Julie," I said, giving it my very best Detached Professional voice, "I been working on an awful lot of those cars lately, you know?"

  "I sure as hell do!" she said with an unfunny laugh. "That's why we never see each other anymore. You're always down at that damn dealership in Manhattan at all hours—supposedly working on cars—and we don't even go out for a damn Coke or a movie on the weekends 'cause you're always off to hell-and-gone for the races." She wasn't really mad at me, but it wouldn't be like Julie to pass up a free opportunity to give me some shit. It's one of those involuntary reaction things like farting and sneezing they teach you about in science class.

  "Well, I wouldn't worry about it too much," I told her, circling around the subject. "Racing season's over until next spring, and I'm planning to plant myself smack-dab in the middle of your uncle's service bay and go to work. Hell, it'd be nice to have some real damn folding money for a change."

  "It sure would," Julie agreed, visions of sit-down restaurants and tuxedoed maître d's dancing in her eyes. "We could do a lot of stuff on two incomes."

  That one flew right by me. But that's because I was picking my spot to zoom in for the kill. "That's why I think I should keep working on sports cars when I move back to the Sinclair. We could make a pisspot fulla money off of them. Butch thinks so, too." Not that I had actually asked him about it (or even spoken to him in quite a long while) but I was pretty damn sure that's what he would've said if I'd bothered to call him up and ask.

  "But no more racing?"

  "Well, that depends," I said, kind of backpedaling. And then I told her about the fat wad of tens, twenties, and fifties Barry Spline stuffed into his pockets every race weekend. You could see Julie seemed pretty interested in the money, but she was still real suspicious about racing. Like it was another woman or something, you know?

  "That means you'll be away all the time," she said in a perfect New Jersey whine. "What's the point of making money if you're not around to spend it?"

  I had to admit, there was a certain obtuse logic to her argument. But that was my opening. "Well, seeing as how you work there part-time yourself, I was thinking maybe you could go to the races with me sometimes. As my sort of, you know, assistant."

  "Oh, sure!" Julie snorted. "My mom'd really go for that. . . ."

  "But it's business. . . ."

  "L
ook, Buddy, both you and me and my mom and uncle know exactly what kind of business that is. Monkey business. Do I look stupid to you or something?"

  "Well, no . . . ," I told her. "A'course not, Julie. It's just—"

  "Listen to me, Buddy Palumbo. And listen real good." She leaned forward and stared me right square in the eyes. "I like you, Buddy. I like you a lot. And I'm really looking forward to having you around the station again and maybe goin' out on dates and stuff on the weekends." She inhaled a long, slow breath. "But I'll be damned if I'm gonna wind up five or ten years down the road in a stinking little apartment in Greenwich Village like your sister Mary Frances, with some damn beautician or dental assistant for a roommate and nobody to go out with but a bunch of leftover creeps while my friends have nice church weddings and move into decent houses and start raising families. You understand me, Buddy?"

  Obviously, Julie had done herself a lot of thinking on the subject while I'd been busy with racing. "Gee whiz, Julie," I told her, "we're just talking about a couple lousy race weekends here, you know. . . ."

  "Forget about it, Buddy. Just forget about it. I like you an awful lot, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let myself turn into one of those tramps who go around passing out free samples. Not Julie Finzio. Not in this lifetime. I wanna be able to look Father Dominico right in the eye when I come out of confession. . . ."

  "But that's supposed to be, you know, confidential, isn't it?"

  "They recognize your voice. Everybody knows that."

  "And anyway, you hardly ever go to church except on Christmas and Easter. At least not that I've seen."

  "Yeah? Well, maybe I oughta start. In fact, I'll be there next month for my friend Serafina Massucci's wedding"—all of a sudden everything made sense!—"and it wouldn't hurt you one bit to be there with me!"

  "Oh, s-sure," I stammered. "I'd, uh, love to go."

  "In a pig's eye."

  "No, honest, Julie. Really I would. . . ."

  And that's how I wound up at a big Italian church wedding in Passaic, New Jersey, on Sunday, October 26th, instead of down in Albany, Georgia, with my racing buddies at the S.C.M.A.'s first-ever SOWEGA event at Turner Air Force Base.

  Truth is, the S.C.M.A. was lucky to be able to hold any kind of races after the well-publicized disaster at Watkins Glen. Naturally the press made a big deal out of it—including a grisly two-page spread in Life magazine—and, seeing as how it was an election year, everybody with a hat in the ring and a soapbox to stand on was coming out against road racing in a big way. After all, it was an easy target. The state of Wisconsin decided to enforce a law they already had on the books banning contests of speed on public highways, and that was pretty much the end as far as the races around Elkhart Lake were concerned, while the enormous media outcry about the tragedy at Watkins Glen threatened to shut down that event as well. The only way they could keep running at the Glen was to set up a new circuit way out in the countryside where they could maybe control things a little better. In fact, there probably wouldn't have been much sports car racing at all in this country if it hadn't been for a tough, cigar-chomping Air Force general named Curtis LeMay. General LeMay was head of the Strategic Air Command, hated Commies, owned an Allard, and traveled in high-powered social and political circles where he rubbed elbows with the kind of rich, influential bigwigs you generally found cluttering up the paddocks at S.C.M.A. race events.

  General Curtis LeMay turned out to be the savior of sports car road racing here in the States. And the way he pulled it off was nothing short of amazing. See, the Strategic Air Command had these bomber bases scattered all over the countryside—mostly out in the boondocks where they were safe from prying Commie eyes—and he convinced his buddies at the Pentagon that it would be a swell idea to hold road races on the runways of those Strategic Air Command bases as motivation and entertainment for the men in the field. And believe it or not, they went for it!

  Now running on airfields was nothing new. Most of the tracks over in England were actually leftover airfields where B17 Flying Fortresses and Arvo Lancasters and such used to take off for raids on Germany. Here in the States, they'd run airport races on the runways and taxiways of the Convair Airfield in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and another in a driving rainstorm up in Janesville, Wisconsin, plus a couple more out on the West Coast. Not to mention that big twelve-hour contest down in Sebring, Florida. But it was difficult to do, what with having to shut down the entire airport for a day or two and rerouting air traffic to make it happen. At least, it was difficult for anybody except a guy like General Curtis LeMay, who could get it handled with a couple quick phone calls once he had the rest of the brass hats in the Pentagon on the bandwagon.

  And that's exactly what he did.

  In fact, General LeMay worked out a deal where "his" airmen did all the work setting things up and manning the corners and keeping an eye on the crowds as part of their normal duty, and that naturally raised a few eyebrows on Capitol Hill. Letters started pouring in from Concerned Citizens wanting to know why Their Tax Dollars were being used to put on sports car races for a bunch of spoiled rich kids and wealthy bums instead of keeping their eyes peeled for the advancing Commie Menace. But General LeMay wasn't the kind of guy to run from a fight or back off once he had his mind made up, and he countered all the flack by charging spectator admissions and funneling the money into "hobby rooms," which were shops where his off-duty servicemen could pursue a little R 'n' R wrenching on fast, powerful automobiles so his ace pilots could show those lah-de-dah sportycar guys a thing or two next time they rolled into town.

  At any rate, the SOWEGA event (which stood for Southwestern Georgia, and was not a hog call) was the first of the S.A.C. races, and they pretty much became the meat and potatoes of the S.C.M.A. racing schedule for the next few years. Some of the drivers—and especially the really good drivers—complained that the flat, featureless airport tracks were Mickey Mouse compared to the daunting hills and swoops and beautiful (if occasionally too close to the roadside) scenery at places like Bridgehampton and Elkhart and Watkins Glen. But the airport tracks were safe, and that was a huge improvement from the open road circuits. If you went off, about the worst that happened was you plowed through a bunch of pylons or hit a stack of hay bales. Or just kept going, since the runways were generally five or even six lanes wide instead of the scant two lanes you had on country roads.

  By far the most important difference was that you could control the spectators at a S.A.C. race and keep them a meaningful distance from the cars. Sure, they couldn't get down close anymore, where they could feel the howl of a twelve-cylinder Ferrari or the thunder of a V-8 Allard as they hurtled by with the throttles wide open. And, though you could see most everything at an airport circuit (at least if there were grandstands or something so you could get up high enough), spectators had a hard time appreciating the speed and cornering action on those wide, flat, empty-looking runways.

  But at least it was safe.

  Even if it took all the poetry out of it.

  19: THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

  AS PROMISED, I showed up at the Old Man's Sinclair bright and early Monday morning, wearing a nice clean pair of coveralls (thanks to Julie, natch) and a pretty good attitude, too. That didn't last long, since Old Man Finzio was mean as ever and wanted me to start on a nasty-looking muffler job on some out-of-work meat cutter's '49 Nash. He was about the third or fourth owner, and you could tell that neither he nor any of the previous owners owned a garden hose or scrub bucket in decent operating condition. Or at least they never used them on that Nash. One look at the interior was enough to make you want to stop buying meat.

  It made me realize how much I'd taken for granted all the hidden benefits of working on sports cars, and especially ones that were raced regularly. Except for the odd shitbox like Cal's raggedy TC, they were almost invariably neat and clean and free from rusted-up bolts and thick, smelly layers of sludge on the undercarriage. Racing cars were usually kept in the kind of condition
that Big Ed insisted on for all his cars, and working on them made you forget about all the greasy, corroded, ill-maintained, broken-down crud wagons that John Q. Public drove to work every day. At least until you had to pick up a ratchet wrench and a cutting torch and tried to put a muffler on one, anyway. It didn't help matters any when that flatbed semi showed up with Tommy's wrecked Allard and Big Ed's blown-up Jaguar lashed on top. I wanted to drop what I was doing under that shitty Nash and start tearing into Big Ed's Jaguar right away. But Old Man Finzio wouldn't hear of it. "Yew jes' finish that job yew got already," he rasped, tugging out yet another bent-up Camel. "Them damn furrin' contraptions of yers kin damn well wait."