Sure enough, Lillian left us a few days after that. Carnie had hooked her up with some guy that ran some kiddie-sized flat joints; he’d been a good friend when he was younger, and he didn’t doubt that he’d take good care of Lillian. I know I slipped her a hundred dollar bill for good luck, and I’m pretty sure most of the rest of the crew slipped her something, too, just so she’d have the chance to do something else if she decided she didn’t like it.

The truth be told, I think most of us were just about as glad to see her go. She was with us close to three months, and we’d always managed to get along even though one woman among that many men ought to have been a guaranteed recipe for trouble. It always felt like it was just around the corner with her, although really, it never came. I don’t think things could have held out over the winter like it had been, with us staying in the same place, and that really would have destroyed the close feeling we had on the crew that year.

I’ll have to admit that Lillian was the starting place for a few fantasies over the next several months. Don’t get me wrong – I liked her a lot, but I knew right from the beginning that it would have been a terrible disaster to fall in love with her, because she was the kind of woman that could never, ever be faithful. At least she was honest about that. But somehow, even more than the memory of Bessie long ago, she gave me the vision of what it might be like to settle down with a woman of my own, and when I thought about that the idea of settling down in one place didn’t seem quite so unappealing.

Like so many people that I met in those days, I never heard from Lillian again. I hope that she was able to work it out so that she could have a good life. She really was a sweet woman, but liking sex with different men the way she liked it seemed likely to bring trouble sooner or later. I hope she managed to avoid it. Just since I’ve been working on this, I’ve imagined her even older than we are now, living in a wheelchair in some nursing home, but rolling from bed to bed servicing some of the other old farts in the place. I wouldn’t put it past her. I’m not ready for a nursing home yet and with luck it’ll be a while if at all, but I can think of a worse way to go.

Along in there somewhere right around the time Lillian left us, I was driving through some fairly big city jumping from one place to the next – it may have been St. Louis, but I’m not sure, now – when I happened to spot a hock shop that advertised guns. I pulled over and went in, and before it was over with I spent around ten bucks on a police-style snubnose .38 that would conceal pretty decently. The two guys in the car with me were in the store and asked me why I’d done that, and I told them, "Just to be on the safe side in case Dwight shows up again."

"You know, that’s not all that bad an idea at that," one of them, it may have been Rocky, said, and the other one agreed. He turned to the guy that ran the place and said, "You got any more of them?"

Many of the rest of the crew picked up .32s or .38s over the next few days, and we kept them pretty close at hand throughout the rest of the season. We had a fairly different crew the next season, but those of us that had been around when Dwight had been shipped off still kept them handy. I guess it worked out, because we never saw him again, and that was just fine with us. I still wonder sometimes what happened to him; maybe he rode all the way to San Francisco and decided to stay there. Somehow, I doubt it, though.

All that is getting ahead of the story, but just a little bit. That was the fall of the presidential election, Eisenhower versus Stevenson. There’s no way of telling now, but I think if you polled the crew most of us were Democrats, although not real satisfied with the way things had gone the last couple years with Truman. I think that most of us would have voted for Eisenhower if we bothered to vote at all, which I don’t think any of us did. But, there was a lot of election hoopla around, with billboards and whatnot. I still remember the girl that came onto me in the winner’s circle one evening with at least six "I LIKE IKE" buttons on. She was the first honey I picked up after Lillian left us and we had a pretty good time, but I remember thinking after I took her home that none of us had ever referred to Lillian as a honey. She’d always been more than that to us.

I think we were down in Kentucky when the election happened, but I don’t think any of us paid much attention to it. The next morning, we were sitting in some "EAT" place having breakfast when two guys in the restaurant, not any of us, got into a fist fight over the outcome. We just basically stayed the hell out of the way. "Guess Ike won," Frank shrugged.

"Looks like it to me," I agreed.

"Wonder if anything’s going to be any different?" Skimp said.

"Naw, they’re just a bunch of fucking politicians," Scotty shrugged. "They’re all in favor of the same thing: ‘Gimme.’"

"Would be nice if he can end the war, though," Dewey commented.

Spud shook his head. "It’s only going to happen when all the fat cats have wrung all they can out of it."

I think that was about the extent of our political discussion for the year, although I have to think that if Sonny Ochsenlaager had been with us we’d probably have talked about it some more. But no one had heard from Sonny in over a year, and no one had any idea what he might be doing. When we left someone behind us, we moved on. Half the guys on the crew now had never run with him, and it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest if a few more of us old timers moved on the next year.

By then we were starting to run out of the fair dates. We still had a few, well down in the south, and we ran a few still dates at tracks, mostly on the weekend, but by then there were beginning to be two and three days at a crack when we didn’t run at all. November dragged on, and finally the weekend before Thanksgiving we ran our last date of the season, at Opp, Alabama. It was an afternoon date, so we loaded up after the race and hauled up to a motel outside Montgomery, spent the night there, and made an easy jump to Chattanooga the next day. Once again, we stayed in the same motel we’d stayed in the last two years, and went to the same steak house for our after season banquet.

I hadn’t been paying attention to the season championship, mostly because Frank didn’t bother to add things up until the season was over with, reasoning that it wasn’t something worth taking an extra risk for. I thought I might be in the top three, since I’d had a flat spot early in the season when things just hadn’t gone my way but had done pretty decently in the tail end of the season. As it turned out, I just edged out Dink by about ten bucks, and Frank said that it had been in the last three races that I’d done it. Scotty Lombard wound up third, but with the exception of John Adorney, who’d only joined us at the tail end of July, we were closer together in money than we’d ever been before. Even Dewey, a total beginner at the beginning of the season, finished sixth.

We started breaking up at Chattanooga. We were pretty close to home for Buck there, only a hundred miles or two across the hills, and we already knew he was planning on heading home for a bit to see what he could do about a ride down south for next year. He and Dewey had been getting along pretty good, and in the last few days Dewey had decided to go with Buck, maybe help him with his car and head down to Florida with him. Buck had said that he probably wouldn’t be back another year if he could come up with a decent ride, but Dewey said that he’d be back unless something came up.

Chattanooga was also a good place for the four New Jersey guys to head for home, so the four of them loaded up their Pontiac the next morning, promising to drop off Buck and Dewey on the way. It must have been pretty crowded for six guys and their gear but it was only a couple hundred miles, so that was something they could put up with. Scotty and Perk said that they might be back the next year, depending on how things went at home over the winter, so we’d have to wait and see.

That slimmed the crew down pretty good. With six vehicles, three trucks and three cars, and nine of us that left some of us driving solo the next two days back to Livonia. That seemed pretty strange after being jammed into the vehicles all year.

Coming back to Livonia seemed a lot more like coming home than it had when we’d been there earlier in the summer. Like the last two winters, there were a few of us who decided to rent a place and batch it for the winter, although it wouldn’t be as comfortable as it had been when we’d had Chick and Hattie living with us. Skimp had already announced that he was going to batch it with his brother for the winter not far away – apparently his brother had been having wife troubles, too. John decided that he was going to move back in with his folks for the winter, although he’d continue to work with the crew going through the cars for the winter. That got us down to Dink, Rocky, Pepper, and me staying together. Vivian had already lined up an apartment for us, a block or so away from where Frank and Spud were going to stay. Apparently that part of the story was going to be a rerun of the last winter, with Frank running Spud out once in a while so he and Vivian could have some time together, so Spud was always going to be welcome on our couch.

Unlike the other houses we’d rented, this place was not furnished, but somewhere Vivian had come up with enough furniture for us to make it through, including four twin beds. None of it was in very good shape so we figured that she’d gotten it at some secondhand store, or something.

As it turned out, there were only three of us in the apartment most of the time. Not long after we got back, Dink called over to his two girl friends from the past winter, and they were overjoyed to hear from him. Apparently he’d been writing them postcards and the like from our travels, and the next thing you knew he was headed over to their place, and we didn’t hear from him for a couple days. When he came back, looking a little worn out, he announced that the girls had asked him to spend the winter with them, and he’d decided that having the feminine companionship was better than putting up with a bunch of farting guys all winter. I couldn’t really say as I blamed him.

We’d already worked it out that Dink and I were going to stay together, so that left me in a room alone, except for the odd occasions when Spud stayed with us, and that was just fine with me. I decided I wouldn’t mind having a little time for rooming by myself; I’d enjoyed it two winters before when there was a bunch of us staying in that little house.

Vivian had managed to rent the same warehouse space we’d had two winters before to work on the cars – the one with the little room that could be heated a little better than the tarped off corner we’d used the previous winter. I helped unload and set the place up right there around Thanksgiving weekend, but I didn’t plan on working in the shop all winter. Skimp was going to be off doing something else with his brother, but Dink, Rocky, Pepper, John, and Spud were going to concentrate on the cars. I promised to lend a hand when I wasn’t substitute teaching.

Chick and Hattie were in their new house by then. It was a nice one if not particularly large, which we got to see when they invited the gang of us out for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m sure that they had us out so they could hear some of the stories from the road, and just touch base with their friends. Of course, none of us minded having a real home-cooked dinner after all the restaurant meals we’d eaten over the last few months, and frankly we’d missed Hattie’s cooking and her smiling face. I think all of us kind of thought that Chick had fallen into it and come out smelling like a rose – there they were, a family with two little kids, a good, solid job, a nice house. Both of them seemed to miss being out on the road, but if you pushed them a little, they did say they didn’t miss it a whole lot; they’d moved past those days in their lives, and I don’t think the lesson was lost on any of us.

I’ll jump ahead a little and say that Pepper, Rocky, and I missed having Hattie around that winter a lot. None of us were anything much as cooks, except when it involved opening a can and heating the contents, and we could manage to screw that up once in a while. We only had a couple pans and a few dishes anyway, so we ate a lot of pizza and got real friendly with the waitresses at a little hole in the wall greasy spoon a couple blocks away. Sometimes we’d have three meals a day there for days on end.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, I cleaned up real good, got on my suit and tie, and headed out to go around the schools in the area to let them know I was available as a substitute teacher. Not surprisingly, I stayed pretty busy doing that; I missed a day every now and then, but not very many. There were some classes that I was pretty much babysitting, but when it got around to filling in at social studies or auto shop I could actually teach some things. About the only extended time I got off was over the Christmas holidays, and most of those days I helped out at the shop with the guys, except when we went out to Chick and Hattie’s for Christmas dinner.

New Year’s Eve was nothing special. None of us had dates or anything, except Frank; he and Vivian were going to some party and since they expected that they’d wind up at Frank and Spud’s apartment, Spud came over to spend the night with us. Since we didn’t have anything much special planned, we had some bottles and pretty much planned to sit around and play some cards around the card table that served as a kitchen table for us. It was all pretty crappy, and we knew it.

Well, we played some cards, and drank a little, but mostly sat around that little table on our beat-up folding chairs that we’d rescued from some curb a couple years before and carried with us in the box truck ever since. It was pretty clear that none of us were in a party mood. "You know," Spud said, "I’m starting to get a little old for this kind of life. I was thinking I wasn’t, but I look at Chick and Hattie and I wonder some."

"I thought you never wanted to go back to that kind of domestic bliss," Rocky snorted. "You’ve always said you had enough of that with your two wives."

"Well, I had enough of it with them two, that’s for sure," Spud snorted. "Don’t get me wrong, but Lillian sort of put me in mind of them. I mean, fun to have fun with, but pure poison to marry. I never saw that in them and I got my fingers burned."

"Aw, hell," Rocky said. "You couldn’t bear to not go out on the road like you do."

"Yeah, but I’m not all that sure how much longer it’s going to last," Spud shook his head. "I know Frank is getting a little tired of it. He doesn’t want to give it up yet, but Vivian is pulling at him all the time."

"You know, there’s something I’ve never quite understood," I said. "What’s with the two of them, anyway?"

"I’m not sure I know all that much about it," Spud said. "What you have to remember is that Vivian is Herb’s only kid. He’s starting to think about retiring, and she wants to take over the dealership from him. He’s not of the opinion that a woman should be running a car dealership, although I think her mother is the one that’s leaning on Herb about it. My guess is that if Frank and Vivian were to get married, that Frank would be running the place about as quick as could be. The only problem is that would piss Vivian off to no end, and he doesn’t want to get caught in the middle. They’ve pussy footed around that for years, hoping Herb will change his mind."

"Or that Vivian will, I bet," Rocky spoke up.

"Could be," Spud said. "I wouldn’t want to bet on it. She’s one hard-headed woman, but Frank likes her a lot, even though he’s quite a bit older than she is. I know he’s told her he’d quit being on the road if they decide to get married."

"Jeez," I said. "You’d think they could work something out. There’s a lot of money involved."

"Right," Spud nodded. "But you have to remember that there’s a big difference between running things and owning them. I can tell you this much, but don’t you dare tell Frank I said so. He’s not doing too bad running this little operation, and he’s sticking back every cent he can so when the time comes he can buy at least a significant part of the dealership. Sooner or later someone is going to budge, and the next thing you know Frank isn’t going to be going with us anymore. I can run the car end of the business just fine, but all the other business, dealing with the promoters and stuff, well, it’s taken Carnie and Vivian and Frank to handle all of it. I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t want to guess what’s going to happen when Frank and Vivian tie the knot, although I can’t imagine it’s going to be too much further off. A couple years at the outside. I think we’re safe for next year, but I ain’t taking any bets about the year after that."

"Jesus," Pepper said. "It’s hard to imagine Frank all married, settled down and working at a dealership."

"The funny thing is, I can," Spud shook his head. "He’s got just the right balance of businessman and showman it takes to run a big car dealership, and I think he’d fall right into it. But I’ll tell you what, as much as I’ve enjoyed doing this, I don’t think I want to be out on the road without him. Maybe I’ll have to think about settling down a little then, too."

"Yeah," I said. "I can understand. That might be just about the time that I decide to find me some classroom and settle down myself."

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