I followed Hoss into the infield, wondering what I was supposed to be doing next. I figured they’d be loading up pretty quick now that the night’s action was over with, and it turned out that I was right.

Hoss headed right over to this big trailer that looked sort of like an auto-hauler, the kind you see heading down the road loaded with new cars, all hooked up to a small semi-tractor. As I got closer, I could see that the thing was set so two midgets could be loaded side by side. On a regular auto trailer there’s just two ramps down either side, but there was third one here, a wider one up the middle. There was a ramp leading up the back of it, and Hoss headed right up the ramp. He glanced back to see if I was following and pointed to one side, so I figured I was supposed to take the other side. The top layer bent down low enough that I had to duck my head when I went under it, and it was snug getting the car next to Hoss’ – there was only an inch or so clearance.

Hoss shut down his engine, so I did too. I undid my lap belt and worked my way out of the car, as other cars filled in the space behind me. "Jeez, good race," Hoss said. "Let’s get back and help move the ramps."

We jumped down to the ground and headed to the back end of the trailer. The low part of the trailer was filled with cars, now, and two or three other guys were joining us. Those ramps were heavy, but with several guys it was only the work of a couple minutes to raise the ramps we’d driven to where we could put cars on the top level, and there were cars already waiting to go up it. It couldn’t have been five minutes that the race had been over and all the cars except for the 69 car were loaded. It was over in front of the grandstand, with people gathered around. It looked to me like the driver was signing autographs.

"Come on," Hoss said, "Let’s get the cars tied down."

It turned out that tying down the cars was pretty easy – somebody had put some thinking into the design of that trailer. There were some tie-down chains dangling from the ramps that just had to be hooked into some eyebolts on the car, then snugged up with a lever attachment. It couldn’t have taken more than a couple minutes to get the cars tied down, and there were guys on the upper level doing the same thing. "Pretty slick," I commented to Hoss.

"Yeah, it works pretty good if everybody works together," Hoss said, only now unbuckling his helmet. "The sooner we get packed up, the sooner we can get out of here. Thank God this is Wisconsin, the bars will be open for a while yet."

Following Hoss’s lead, I took off my helmet and peeled out of my coveralls. It had been hot earlier in the evening, but now it was just getting to be pleasantly cool. I was just getting them folded up when Spud came over. "Mel, you looked pretty good out there," he said. "You still want to race with us?"

"Yeah, if you’ll have me," I told him. I could see that this was going to beat the living hell out of pumping gas and checking tires for the next few months.

"How long is it going to take for you to get out of wherever it is you’re staying and come join us? We’re going to be at Baraboo tomorrow night, a place called Moreton Speedway, over the other side and north of Madison; it’s about a hundred mile jump."

"I can probably be there," I said, thinking fast. It wasn’t going to take me long to gather up my stuff at the boarding house; I wasn’t the kind to accumulate a lot of stuff in those days, and I could probably put everything in my old Army duffel bag and a couple cheap suitcases I’d picked up. I paid my rent weekly and it was due in a couple days, so it wasn’t going to cost me much to leave. It normally wouldn’t be a good idea to leave my job at the gas station without giving some kind of notice, but since I didn’t plan on staying on in Milwaukee it really didn’t matter that much as I’d been paid that afternoon. "Can’t really think of much of anything to hold me down. The only thing is I’ve got some lines out to some schools for teaching jobs; I really ought to have a place to forward my mail."

"You can tell ’em to forward your mail to you care of Midwest Midget Sportsman Association, Livonia, Michigan," Spud replied. "Vivian sets up a mail package to us about once a week; it usually works pretty good, not that some of us get much mail."

"Good enough," I told him. "If for some reason I don’t catch you in Baraboo, where you going to be after that?

"Prairie du Chien fairgrounds, then we’re heading off into Iowa for a bit, I ain’t sure where," he replied. "Sometimes Frank don’t know all that far in advance, either. Hey, while I’m thinking about it, if you happen to pass an army surplus store, get yourself a pup tent and a cheap sleeping bag. We might be hitting some places where there ain’t much in the way of places to stay."

"Yeah, Hoss said something about that," I told him.

"Good enough," he nodded. "I better get back to seeing that stuff gets loaded up. If Frank ever gets done arguing with that horse’s ass of a fairground manager, he’ll probably be over this way if you want to say hi."

"I’m done arguing with that joker," Frank’s voice piped up out of the half-darkness. "I got our cut, that’s what counts. Son of a bitch was trying to bullshit me about the gate, but shit, I can count."

"Figured it was something like that," Spud agreed. "You could just look at him and see he was gonna try something."

"That’s how it goes sometimes," Frank agreed. "Mel, you done good tonight. Spud said you was thinking about staying with us for a while."

"Yeah, I’ve got to pick up my stuff, but I’m going to try and catch up with you tomorrow."

"Well, glad to have you with us," Frank said warmly. "Spud, any word on Giff?"

"Nothing," Spud shrugged. "I figure we’ll either see him tomorrow or we won’t. Wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t. No great loss anyway."

"Speaking of no great loss," Frank snorted, "You gonna do something about Pepper and Slab?"

"Depends on how bad you want to keep them around," Spud shook his head. "Even with bringing Mel on board we’re going to be short a couple drivers. But if they want to pull something that stupid, I figure they’re about to lose a sixteenth."

"Sounds fair to me," Frank nodded.

"Good enough," Spud smiled. "Mel, I’ll catch you later or tomorrow or something. I’ve got stuff to do if we’re ever going to get out of here."

"Right, see you later," Frank told him, then turned back to me. "Mel, I’m sorry we haven’t had much time to catch up on the old days, but it’s been a busy evening and that jerk of a fairground manager hasn’t made life much easier. But if you’re going to be with us, we’ll get a chance to catch up some. Right now, I want to get out of here before that joker can think of some other way to try and screw us."

"Do what you have to do," I told him. "I’ll catch you tomorrow."

I took my helmet and coveralls and put them back in the trailer where I’d gotten them, and then looked around to see if there was anything I could do to help. It didn’t seem like it to me; from what I could tell things were getting packed up and ready to go. It didn’t take long before somebody got into the semi and got it running, and people were getting aboard vehicles. I guess that was my sign to do something about getting out of there myself. I headed back over to where my car was parked, got in, and followed a line of vehicles heading for the exit. When we got back out to the highway, the line turned left, heading for wherever it was they were headed, while I turned right to head back to beer town.

It was after dark now, and the streets were quieting down. I knew it was going to be a good hour’s drive back to the boarding house, and I was still hungry, so I kept my eyes open for a diner or something where I could stop to get something to eat. I found one about halfway back, went in, and ordered a cup of coffee and the special, which was something like a hot roast beef sandwich – it tasted good and I was hungry. After the waitress brought me a piece of pie, I sat, sipped on my coffee and smoked a couple cigarettes, just thinking. This had the potential to be a lot more interesting than spending the summer pumping gas, even though I knew I wasn’t really a racer, at least not yet, in spite of finishing third in the feature an hour or so before. But, I thought that I might well be one after spending the summer with that crew.

It was after midnight before I got back to the boarding house. The windows were all dark when I got there, so I tried to sneak in and make as little noise as possible. The old bat that owned the place was not real happy about people staying out late, but she cut me a little slack since she knew that I had a job that sometimes ran late. I got up to my room and opened the window – it was hotter than snot in there from having been closed up all day on a warmer-than-normal late spring day. This was long before the days of home air conditioning, so there wasn’t much I could do but hope that there would be a little breeze from the window. I stripped down to my drawers, turned out the light, and just lay down on the bed, listening to the familiar sounds of the city at night. There was always traffic noise, train noise and whistles, and the occasional siren, but between the heat and the excitement of getting together with this racing crew, I wasn’t in any mood to sleep.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that this was a pretty good idea. It was just as clear as could be that there wasn’t going to be any real big money involved, but it looked like it might be a steady income. Frankly, it looked like it would be fun. I thought I was ready for a little adventure and excitement in my life. I’d spent the last four years in college, studying hard and working part time, and had spent more time working over the summers to help pay my expenses. Prior to that, I’d spent two and a half years in the service, and while it had been an adventure of sorts and I’d had my good times, it had mostly been uncomfortable and a lot of work. Assuming I got a decent teaching job, not some Chicago slum school, it was going to be real easy to think about settling down. It seemed like a good idea to be a little footloose for a while and get some fun in my life before I headed down that road.

I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep that night, what with everything running through my head. I went down to breakfast and told the old gal that owned the place that I was moving out, I’d gotten a job that was going to keep me on the road for a while, and where to forward my mail. A little to my surprise, she said I’d been a pretty decent boarder and wished me good luck. It didn’t take me long to get my stuff packed up and moved down to the Ford, and at that I threw some stuff out that didn’t seem worth the hauling. With that done, I swung by the gas station and told the old boy who owned it that I’d gotten a job out of town. He said at least I was nice enough to tell him and just not show up for work, which I’d been considering.

There was an Army/Navy surplus store not far away, and I decided to head on over there. Back in those days after the war there were a lot of places around that bought up stuff the military had no more use for at a few cents on the dollar and made a good profit on the turnover. I picked up a sleeping bag and some shelter halves, along with the tent poles and pegs and a few other items; I don’t think I spent five bucks on everything. I knew from my Army days that sleeping in a pup tent was no damn fun, but it would do in a pinch if I didn’t have to do it too often. I tossed that in the back of the Ford, and headed down US-18 toward Madison and Baraboo.

These days, it’s Interstate Highways almost all the way, but this was back in the two-lane road days, and there was any number of little towns along the way. You didn’t much more than get back up to fifty before you had to slow down for another little town, with lots of stop signs and twenty-five or thirty-mile-an-hour limits – and then I had to go right through the center of Madison, too, where I picked up US-12 north to Baraboo. So, it took me close to four hours to drive what wasn’t any more than a hundred and twenty miles or so. I stopped along in there at another little diner for lunch, and along in the middle of the afternoon I stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of Baraboo to ask where this Moreton Speedway was. It turned out it was several miles out of the far side of town, so I headed on out there.

Moreton Speedway turned out to be an actual race track, a quarter-mile job that was pretty flat in the corners. It had a run-down look to it, like it had been built cheap and there hadn’t been a lot of work put into the upkeep. I was to find out that a lot of dirt tracks looked like that – mostly you get a lot of flying dust and dirt in the air from the cars, and it tended to make things look shabby pretty quickly. It was really rare to run across one that was clean and well-kept. I drove into the infield, parked with the MMSA vehicles, and looked around for Frank or Spud. There wasn’t any sign of them, but I soon spotted Hoss.

"You came after all, didn’t you?" he grinned. "I figured after last night there was a fifty-fifty chance you’d know better."

"Naw, it was either this or pump gas all summer," I told him. "Frank or Spud around?"

"Spud went looking for a junk yard to find some parts," he said. "Frank went to find a phone so he could bullshit with Vivian a bit, probably see where we’re going to be next week. Spud said if you showed up I was to get you going with all the little details."

"Might’s well get started," I said. "So who’s this Vivian?"

"Oh, she’s the gal that runs the office back in Livonia," Hoss smiled. "Nice gal, smarter than you and me put together, and a looker, too. Actually, I think she’s the real boss of the organization and just lets Frank front for her. I know Frank don’t win a whole lot of arguments with her. Anyway, Spud said that he didn’t think Giff was gonna come back, so if you want the 66 car, it’s yours. It’s probably the best one that doesn’t have a driver right now."

"Fine with me," I shrugged. "If these cars are supposed to be pretty much alike I suppose it doesn’t matter."

"Well, yeah, they’re supposed to be all pretty much alike but some of them are more of a pain in the ass than others," Hoss smiled. "Now, the deal is that every driver is more or less responsible for the routine maintenance and checking out of their own car. If something major breaks or gets bent badly, then everyone pitches in to work on it. There’s a pretty good selection of spare parts in the box truck, even a spare car, but it ain’t none too good. You have to keep the car washed and polished, Frank don’t like them being dirty and looking like shit."

"He didn’t much like it when he was running an Army motor pool, either," I smiled. "I know how that works."

Hoss led me over to where the 66 car was parked – it had been unloaded from the trailer before I got there. He went over it a little with me, pointing out some things that had to be checked every day, like oil and tire pressures, the tires themselves, stuff like that, all pretty routine stuff that it didn’t take much of a mechanic to figure out.

"One real important thing," Hoss told me, "Is that you can mess with the carbs if you feel you need to, but you can’t take ’em off unless Spud says it’s all right. If you have to take one off he or Frank will most likely be there watching you."

"Why’s that?"

Hoss leaned over and pointed at the joint between a carburetor and the intake manifold. "See that little plate?" he said, pointing at an eighth-inch spacer between the two. "That’s what’s called a restrictor plate. There’s a hole bored in the middle of it, about an inch and a quarter in diameter – I say ‘about’ because it varies from car to car. That’s how Spud keeps all the cars running more or less together. Someone starts outrunning the field a lot and winning too much, Spud’ll yank off the carbs and put on plates with a little smaller holes. Or, if you’re being outrun too much, he’ll put in a little bigger plate to speed you up."

"Sneaky," I grinned. "Looks like the easy way to do it. Knowing Spud, that’s the kind of thing he’d do."

"No fooling," he smiled. "I gotta give him credit for that. Anyway, you see this lead seal here," he continued, pointing at the little wire and lead disc like you see on electric meters. It had a number stamped on it. "You can’t get a carb off without breaking that seal. Spud has got several sets of pliers with different numbers so he can tell if the seal has been messed with. The plates are all numbered and sized, too. He keeps a record of which plate and which seal is on which car, so it’s pretty hard to mess with the system. You don’t always know if he’s changed it, it only takes him five minutes or so, and he can do it out on the road somewheres when no one else is around."

"Ingenious," I smiled. "It’s hard to cheat an old cheater like him. I was standing next to Spud and Frank last night when Spud said a couple guys were going to lose a sixteenth."

"More’n likely," Hoss grinned. "He was talking about Slab and Pepper, right?"

"I guess," I nodded. "That must have been what he was talking about."

"They was asking for it, that little stunt they pulled last night," Hoss replied with a smile. "They’re pretty new, they ain’t really with the program, I guess. We always have drivers coming and going, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a couple new ones on tryout tonight. We’re a couple drivers short even with you here now, so the way we deal with that is that someone runs two cars in the early heats. If they did good in the first car they have to be pretty careful to dog it in the second car without looking too bad, or they’ll wind up making the final in both cars, and then things really get fucked up."

"Yeah, I could see how that could get a little embarrassing,"

"You want to remember that, since it’s usually the new guys that get stuck with the job," Hoss said. "Unless you have trouble with your main car in an early heat, and then it works out pretty good."

We heard a car door slam, and looked over to see that a guy had parked a ’39 Chevy next to my Ford. The guy didn’t look good – he had on a couple bandages, was scratched up pretty good, and was limping more than a little. "Jesus, Chick," Hoss exclaimed, "What the hell happened to you?"

The guy started limping over in our direction. "Aw, that honey I went home with last night turned out to have a husband that come home from the bar early."

"What happened? He kick the shit out of you?"

"Naw, she heard him downstairs, and I went out a second story window into a goddamn rose bush," the guy said with a grin that didn’t quite go with the way that he looked. "Fortunately we was just finishing up."

Hoss shook his head. "Well, shit, you play with fire, sooner or later you’re gonna get burned."

"Yeah, but if I didn’t play with fire a little I wouldn’t have had me that hot little honey last night," the guy replied.

"Your ass," Hoss grinned. "Chick, I don’t know if you remember Mel Austin from last night, he was in the 66 car. He’s gonna be running with us for a while, filling in for Giff. Mel, this is Chick Novesky, he was in the 69 car that went around us last night like we was standing still. What happen, did Spud give you a sixteenth?"

"Must be," Chick shrugged. "If he did I didn’t know about it, but the car seemed like it wanted to get out of its own way last night. If it hadn’t I wouldn’t have met up with that little honey in Victory Lane. Been a while since I been there but it was nice to score her along with a win. Boy, you guys sure hauled ass out of there last night. I was just talkin’ up that honey, startin’ to make a little time, when I looked up and everybody was gone."

"Yeah, Spud said Frank wanted to get out of there so he wouldn’t have to have another fight with the fairground manager," Hoss nodded. "I loaded your car for you."

"Thanks, appreciate it," Chick replied.

Hoss turned to me. "Mel, usually we don’t haul ass out of there that quick. It’s kind of nice to stand around and shoot the shit with the crowd that comes down to the pits afterwards, and once in a while you get lucky like Stud here did last night. That is, if you want to call the way he looks getting lucky."

"Got my ashes hauled; it’s been a while," Chick grinned.

"You gonna be all right to drive tonight?"

"Should be, I ain’t hurt that bad. If I happen to find another honey tonight, I’ll make do."

"Why didn’t you take her back to the tourist cabins?" Hoss asked. "They weren’t that bad."

"Come down so quick that I didn’t have a chance to give Rocky the heads up," Chick shook his head. "Considering that fucking rose bush, it probably would have been the smarter thing to do."

Hoss turned to me. "Anybody explain that deal to you? I mean, how we handle the rooms and stuff?"

"Afraid not," I told him. "Like you said, everyone hauled ass out of there pretty quick last night, and I had to head back to Milwaukee and get my stuff."

"OK, what usually happens is that Frank finds a motel or tourist cabins pretty close to where we run," Hoss explained. "He rents it as a package deal; it’s part of the pay. Sometimes it’s two to a room, sometimes four, depending on what he’s found. Sometimes we have to share a bed or one guy sleeps on the floor in a sleeping bag."

"We try to stay pretty steady on roomies," Chick added. "If one of us picks up a honey we try to give our roomie the high sign to stay clear of the room for a while, hang around the bar for an extra couple beers or something. I didn’t get the chance to get to Rocky last night, so I wound up taking the honey home to bang her."

"And you see what happened to him," Hoss laughed, then continued his explanation. "Usually after a race we stop off at a bar or someplace, sometimes there’s food, sometimes not. Meals, you’re on your own, but we get an extra two bucks a day for food. We usually have a good breakfast somewhere around where we stay, make the jump, and have lunch on the way or when we get to where we’re going. Sometimes, not often, we have a long jump and then we’ll drive a lot of the night, then just pull over and crap out for a while, depending. Evenings, you’re sort of on your own, sometimes it’s track food, sometimes it’s a case of finding a little restaurant someplace."

"How about gas for the jumps?" I asked.

"If you’ve got your own car you pay for it yourself. Since you’ve got a car, you’ll probably have a guy or two riding with you most times, since we don’t have seats enough on the trucks for everyone. Every now and then Spud will let you top off from the gas trailer to make up the difference."

About that time Chick decided he’d better get going on his car since it was going to take him a while to get it cleaned up. I thought maybe I ought to get the dirt from the previous night off of the 66 car and give it a good going over, so I went with Chick to see where to get a bucket, soap, rags and stuff. It turned out there was a water tank trailer, so a couple minutes later I was heading back to the car. By then, Hoss had wandered off somewhere, so I set to work on the car, trying to clean things up and giving it a good going over, looking for worn parts and like that. I took my time, partly trying to do a good job, but partly trying to get a feel for what made this car go. I knew I could drive the car, but I didn’t have any idea about what to do to adjust it to make it run better, but figured that I’d pick it up as I went along.

I was down on my hands and knees trying to clean some of the dirt and greasy crud off of some of the front suspension when I heard Frank say, "So you decided to join our little party, I see."

"Looks like it," I replied. "I’m real impressed how you’ve got everything thought out."

"Enough comes up and goes wrong that I figure I want to have what I can running right," he said. "I take it Hoss caught up with you."

"Yeah, he gave me the once-over," I replied. "Seems to be a pretty good guy."

"I think so," Frank nodded. "If both Spud and I have to be gone, it’s usually Hoss that I leave in charge. We’ve got a pretty good group here, but only pretty good, if you know what I mean. I’m glad to have you with us. I know you well enough that you’re not going to act like an idiot."

"I appreciate the thought," I told him. "I get stupid once in a while, just like everybody."

"Yeah, but not that often. I remember you from Okinawa. You were one of the guys I could depend on; I didn’t have to keep an eye on you all the time. When something needed to be done I knew you’d go ahead and do it. So what happened after I left, anyway?"

I told him there hadn’t been a whole lot, how we’d been sweated down into a smaller unit and then sent to the Occupation in Japan before getting shipped home. In a couple more sentences, I told him how I’d been welcomed home, then went to college.

"I sometimes wish I’d thought about using that GI Bill money," Frank sighed. "It’s just that I was too damn crazy to go racing. Maybe I will, one of these days."

"Frank," I told him. "The last time I saw you I never dreamed I’d be anything but a Nebraska farmer or something stupid like that, maybe working in a factory somewhere. I’d never have dreamed that I would go to college, and never would have dreamed that I’d wind up here. You never know what’s around the next corner."

"Ain’t it the truth," Frank shook his head. "Ain’t it the truth."

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