The season started pretty much the same way as it had the past couple years – a couple races around the Detroit area, then we worked our way south to where we could expect the weather to be a little warmer. We could expect all we wanted, but a week or so later we were in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We’d had a couple fairly decent days, but only fairly decent; most of the time it had been overcast, damp and chilly. "Would somebody please tell me why I think we have to get started the first part of April?" Frank groused over breakfast one morning. "I can damn sure tell you that I can think of other things I’d rather be doing right about now."

"I’ll bet Vivian could think of a few, too," I snickered. "But hell, sooner or later the weather is going to turn nice and you won’t be able to think of a thing that you’d rather be doing."

"Yeah, but there’s no way we should have to put up with this crappy weather," Frank snorted, not rising to my crack about Vivian. "I mean, we could start a month later and we would have a lot better shot at it. It wouldn’t even cost us that much. I’m not sure this early spring stuff is worth the effort."

"Other than the fact that all of us were getting a little stir crazy from sitting around Livonia," Spud observed. "I mean, the rest of us don’t have anything much to keep us there. Besides, we’re still heading south, we’re going to run into some warm weather sooner or later."

We had a short jump that day, down to Tullahoma. We pulled in, unloaded the cars and got started with the usual maintenance. After a bit, Spud got together with Dutch and the hillbillies. I was standing close enough to hear him when he said. "Look, you guys. The four of you just aren’t running as fast as the rest of the guys, and it doesn’t look good to the crowd. We want close racing and you guys getting lapped every time you get on the track looks pretty fucking bush, if you don’t mind my French. I’m going to open up your restrictor plates a sixteenth and see if maybe you can at least keep the other guys in sight. I don’t like to do it that way, but we can’t let this shit go on."

I had to keep my grin to myself. Spud didn’t actually lie to them, but there was a lot he hadn’t said and he stretched the truth about as far as it could be stretched. And, he was right – it didn’t look good for the four of them to be getting lapped all the time. I wasn’t sure that only giving them a sixteenth was going to make them competitive, but figured that it might make things look a little closer. Now, I saw why he’d upped everybody else a sixteenth – the four guys were going to give Spud points for cutting them some slack. They’d all been frustrated with running so far behind the rest of us.

I sort of kept one eye on Spud while he changed the restrictor plates. Sure enough, it only took him a few minutes with a couple wrenches on each car. As always, he put a seal on the carburetor bolts to keep things from getting played with.

That night and the next few days pretty well proved that Spud had guessed it about right. The four of them were in no danger of getting into serious battles with the rest of us unless one of our cars was running a little off, but it at least got them up to where they were usually on the same lap with the rest of us. I guess they thought the rest of us must be pretty damn good drivers the way we kept running away from them, even when they had what they thought was an advantage in the engine department. They actually had a few good battles in the consolation heats, and about every third night one or more of them would make it into the feature, although we still more or less ran away from them. They had a few minor accidents, nothing that couldn’t be fixed up fairly quickly, but they were all obviously frustrated at their inability to run with the rest of us.

A couple days later we were in better weather, down in Pass Christian, Mississippi, down on the Gulf Coast. Finally we’d left winter behind us and were in some decent weather. We stayed around the coast and south Texas for a couple weeks’ worth of shaking off winter. In fact, it turned hot and uncomfortably humid on us, and the locals told us that this was nothing compared to what would be coming when summer really got there. From the stories I heard, it made winter look like it had some advantages. Turning back to head north again seemed like a good idea when we finally did it.

We were back in Livonia along toward the end of May. Once again, Herb’s mechanics were providing the pit crew for Runt Chenowith, who had been able to come up with the backing to get a new Kurtis Kraft with a new engine, and he had hopes of doing pretty well with it. That was good news, but to the old timers amongst us the best news was that Squirt was going to be driving his brother’s old car – he’d qualified it 24th, not real good but good enough for a rookie run. Herb didn’t have quite enough people to cover the pit crew for both of them, so since we had a day off, a bunch of us rode down with them to pitch in. Frank didn’t go; I guess he and Vivian had something planned, although he didn’t say what.

Those of us from the MMSA had missed Indy last year, but those who had been there all remembered it from the year before. It was always a delight to see that crowd and be a part of that event – they always called it "The Greatest Spectacle In Racing." That was dead on, especially in those days. Once again, I got to handle the starter at the call of "Gentlemen, start your engines." It was the same car I’d started two years before, except that Squirt was driving it now.

The race was pretty good. Bill Vukovitch won it and nobody was about to touch him. Unfortunately, Runt had engine trouble early on – the Offy, while powerful, wasn’t always the most reliable thing out there – but Squirt ran well in Runt’s old car. He wasn’t as fast as some out there but outlasted them pretty well. He was two laps down when the race ended, and finished eleventh, which he was pretty happy with. He wasn’t sure he would run it again, since he’d put about everything he had into making the effort, but at least he could say that he’d done it, and done it better than his brother.

Of course, as we headed back to Livonia that evening, the car was all full of Spud talking about how he wanted to run that race someday, and I figured we’d be seeing him in a race car again about as soon as he could manage it. He figured he had a few more years before he got too old, so I wasn’t quite ready to write off the idea as something that would never happen.

As in past years, we ran a few races around the Detroit area before we got back on the road again. We raced the next night, but Dutch didn’t show up to race. In fact, he never showed up again. While we were gone he told John that he was tired of running at the ass end of the field and didn’t want to get caught doing it locally. That left us short a driver, but we could do without – we’d done it often enough before.

One of our first stops after leaving Livonia for our summer swing was Schererville, Indiana, which is right on the Illinois border a little south of Chicago. Normally we wouldn’t run that close to a big midget circuit like was in the Chicago area, but from what I was to find out later the track owner had got into a yelling match with someone from the local midget circuit and brought us in for a couple evenings to show them that they weren’t the only fish in the pond. Whatever it was, we had a good crowd, and not just for us – there was a good group of hot rods there that evening, and we were only there to add some class.

Because of the tight schedule, we ran only two heats and a consol before the feature, instead of the usual three heats. I was leading along toward the end of the second heat, coming up on Hap and Junie but still a ways from lapping them. I don’t know if it was the fact that they were so far behind or what, but they were both really driving hard – too hard, as it turned out. I found out later that they’d been all over each other all through the heat, even though they were way behind. Apparently, Hap had cut Junie off and Junie was pissed off about it, and was trying to get back at Hap. In any case, Junie banged Hap a pretty good one and got Junie loose. Junie managed to save it, but in the process of saving it banged Hap right back. I could see they were having a pretty good duel, so I was just as glad that we were on the white flag lap and I wouldn’t have to tangle with the two of them trying to lap them.

Even though I watched it take place, I’m still not quite clear what happened. As near as I can figure, Hap must have banged Junie again and got him sideways, but when Junie went sideways Hap wasn’t ready for it. He wound up T-boning Junie pretty hard. Now, normally a T-bone looks bad but if both the cars are going about the same speed it usually isn’t that bad. This time it was – I don’t know if it was a bump in the track, or how Hap hit Junie, or what, but the next damn thing I knew Junie was rolling down the track sideways in a barrel roll, maybe six or seven times, I wasn’t counting. Anyway, somehow Junie’s car caught Hap’s car and set it to rolling, too, just going the other way.

I stood on the brake as Spud threw the red flag. I was peeling out of my seat belt when I came to a stop right between where the two cars stopped with the rest of the guys in the heat right behind me and a bunch of people running our way. I headed over to Junie, since he was on the side of the car where I got out. I didn’t know much first aid other than what I’d learned in the Army, but I could tell he was cold-cocked, was bleeding pretty bad but was breathing and had a pulse. I sure as hell hoped that someone that knew what the hell they were doing showed up real soon.

Thank God someone did. "Get some pressure on that bleeder," I heard a woman’s voice say.

"Shouldn’t we get him out of this car?" I asked.

"Not unless it’s on fire," she yelled. "If he’s got back or neck injuries, we could paralyze him for life."

I glanced up at the back of the car, to see that the gas cap wasn’t even dribbling. We didn’t have safety fuel cells in those days, but the wisdom of only having those two-gallon tanks in those cars paid off right that instant. While the woman worked on Junie and some others came running up, I checked the car over to see that it wasn’t leaking any gas at all. "No fire danger that I can see," I told her.

"Good. Now let’s try and keep these idiots from injuring him worse," she said in a voice that made it clear that she was not about to take any shit from anyone. I glanced over at her – up to this point my attention had been mostly on Junie and the car – and discovered that she was wearing white coveralls and a driver’s helmet. I thought that was a little strange but since she seemed to know what she was doing I wasn’t about to argue with her.

A couple of the guys who came running over did want to argue with her that we needed to get him out of the car before it caught fire. She told them to back the hell off in some of the hardest tones I’d ever heard come from a woman’s lips, finishing with, "Look, you jackasses, I’m a registered nurse and I know what I’m doing. You want this poor bastard in a wheelchair the rest of his life?"

Eventually, we did get him out of the car, but carefully, doing just exactly what she told us to do. They actually had an ambulance in the town, which wasn’t common for those days – we were pretty much used to the funeral home hearses when an ambulance was needed, which thank God was rare for us. We really hadn’t had anyone hurt bad since clear back in the first year I was running, when Shorty Notwicki got stove up in that crash at Independence. However, the ambulance wasn’t at the track, the normal thing for those days, and it took a while to get there. Anyway, once we got Junie out laying on the track, this gal took off for the other car to see what needed to be done there.

It was quite a bit. This was the 53 car, Dink’s old car, and it had just been pounded. The car had been crushed down onto Hap’s legs; he was out cold, but at least was alive. Several guys were working with hacksaws and such, trying to get enough of the car cut away from him to be able to get him out – this was also before Hurst invented the Jaws of Life, but fortunately, due to that nearly empty two-gallon tank, there was no fire danger. Well, this gal bulled right in and took charge before the guys trying to get Hap out of the car hurt him any worse than he was. The ambulance actually got there and had Junie loaded before they were able to cut enough of the car away to get Hap out.

By the time they were on their way to the hospital, a wrecker had hauled Junie’s car – the 57, that Hoss Korodan had once driven – off into the infield, and was waiting to hook up to the 53. Spud, Frank and I were right by the ambulance. "Uh, Miss," Frank said, "I’d like to thank you for what you’ve done for our guys."

"Can’t talk now," she snapped. "They’re lining my heat up. I’ll catch you later." She was gone that fast, headed to a Ford hot rod sitting not far away.

"Shit," Spud shook his head. "And she’s a driver, too?"

"Looks like it," I told him. "I was wondering what she was doing wearing that helmet."

There were some bits and pieces of the cars laying around; Frank, Spud, and a few of the guys started picking them up while I got back in the 66 car, started it up and drove back to the pits. I parked it near the wrecks of the 53 and 57 cars, got out, and went over to where Frank and Spud were looking at them.

They were a mess. "I think we can get the 57 going with a few days’ work," Spud said hopefully. "The 53, well, Frank, you still got PeeWee’s phone number? Maybe we could just have it hauled back to Livonia and have him work on it. The mechanicals are pretty sound, I think, but the frame’s bent to hell and it’s going to need a lot of new sheet metal."

"Hoss could probably handle that," Frank said thoughtfully. "Really, since we’re only a couple hundred miles from home it’s not a bad idea. But man, I hope Dink doesn’t see what happened to his old car."

"If he does, he’ll probably have those girls of his sit on us," Spud snorted. "Well, now we’re short three drivers. It ain’t quite as bad since we’re going to be short one car, even counting the 27."

"There is that," Frank agreed.

"Spud, I hate to say this," I said, "But I think maybe you overdid it with the restrictor plates. Those two were pissed at being too slow and were driving way over their heads."

"True, but they were assholes," he snorted. "I was getting about ready to black flag the both of them but thought we could make it through the heat. I was about ready to can the both of them and probably would have before this if we hadn’t been short a driver. The problem was that if I canned them Buckshot would probably take off with them, and that’d leave us even one more down."

"That would be a shame," I nodded. "Buckshot was about the best of the four."

"Yeah, if he wasn’t hanging around those assholes he’d probably be all right," Spud replied thoughtfully. "Maybe we’ll get a chance to find out. But you’re right; if he stays with us I think I’ll have to give him a sixteenth."

We hadn’t been paying attention to the other racing going on around us, but in the back of my mind I heard the track announcer say, "And, you guys better watch out on the track. We’ve got a woman driver in this race, Arlene Pewabic in the 34, and you know what women drivers are like."

"He better watch it with that shit," I grinned. "I got a feeling that if she heard that she’d jam that microphone right straight up his ass."

"Yeah, she’s a firecracker, all right," Frank nodded. "She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person that’d be willing to take a lot of shit from anyone."

We turned back to inspecting the two cars while the announcer ran through the rest of the racers in the field. Normally, we didn’t pay a lot of attention to the local races, but this time we did – I think because all of us were just a little curious to see how Arlene would do. In fact, all three of us got up in the back of the pickup where we could have a better view of the track.

It was a heat race, ten laps or so, with a fairly big field, maybe sixteen or twenty cars. Arlene’s car was a typical Ford hot rod – actually, I shouldn’t say typical, since roadster racing was dying out in those days. It had been popular right after the war, but for one reason or another most local racing was done in closed cars anymore. There were a still a few places that held out for the older cars, and this was apparently one of them.

It proved to be one of the more interesting local races I’d seen in a while. Arlene started in the middle of the field, but she blew through a couple guys right in the first turn, and was going after the next place in the next turn. The race was slowed for a caution flag after two or three cars tangled back toward the back of the pack, but once the race restarted she was right in the thick of things again. She was up to fifth when she got hung up by a couple guys racing each other hard, but while they were working on each other, she set both of them up and dove under them for two spots. She managed to pick off the second place car before the heat was over with, but it was just too far to get to the leader.

"Man," Spud commented, "I guess she can drive that thing."

"Looks like it to me," Frank agreed. "Another couple laps and she might have won it."

The hot rods pulled in off the track, and the three of us started to wander over to where they were parked, since there was another heat before our consolation. We found Arlene getting out of her car and unbuckling her helmet. With the helmet on, we hadn’t been able to see before, but she was a good looking woman with short-cropped reddish-brown chestnut hair. She was slender, but not thin, and pretty well built. "You see, Dad?" we heard her say to a guy standing nearby, "I can too drive better than Willy."

"Yeah," we heard him say, "But I still don’t think it’s something a woman should be doing."

Apparently this was an old family fight, but we broke it up. "Miss Pewabic," I said. "You drove a terrific race. I loved the setup you did on those guys when you passed for third."

"That was definitely a class act," Frank agreed, and looked down at the hot rod. "Is this your car?"

"No, I just borrowed it to prove a point," she said, bristling a little, apparently more at her father than at us. "Some people I know don’t think that a woman can drive as well as a man."

"I’d say you pretty well showed them tonight," Spud agreed. "Hey, speaking of class acts, we came over to thank you for what you did for our guys. You really seemed to know what you were doing."

"I’ve seen a lot worse," she snorted. "It’s just like driving a race car, you have to know what you’re doing."

"But Arlene," the older gentleman piped up, "It’s not proper for a woman to be driving a race car."

"Dad," she said with some heat, "What I’ve had to do the last two years isn’t something a woman should be doing, either, but I did it. What’s more, I proved I can do it."

"What did you do?" I asked, mostly to head off the clearly brewing confrontation. It was clear to me, if I hadn’t known it earlier, that this was one tough woman.

"I was an Army nurse in Korea," she said. "I’m used to blood and guts, I’m no fragile flower."

"I can see that," I smiled. "Ma’am, we’re all veterans, and our hats are off to you. You did something I would have had trouble doing, and I know from the way you acted earlier that you must have done a fine job of it. I got a feeling that if we were to put you in one of our midgets we’d have our hands full keeping up with you."

"Would you let me drive one?" she asked. "I mean, just to see what it’s like?"

I started to say that Frank or Spud would have to be the ones to make up their minds about that, but Frank beat me to it. "Sure thing," he said. "It’s one way we can thank you. Just not tonight. Those things are a little different to drive and we always like to make sure people have a little practice with them before we turn them loose in a race."

"Arlene, you shouldn’t do it," her father protested. "It’s not right for a woman to do something like that."

"How about before the race tomorrow?" she asked, pointedly ignoring her father, who stood looking at us angrily. We were not helping him, not one little bit. "Say, around three, when they open the gates for practice?"

"Sounds good to me," Frank smiled. "We’ll see you then."

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