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Chapter 16
It was incredible to be sitting in Frank Blixter’s office in his Ford agency after being out of contact all these years – it seemed like they’d fallen away in a flash.
"So, what happened to the MMSA?" I asked.
"That got a little complicated, too," he shrugged. "Like I said, we were really juggling things at the time. I spent most of the winter going back and forth with the guy Jerry had come up with to buy it. His name was Ron Bush. You know how that goes. Bush wanted me to just give it to him, and I needed every nickel I could get out of it. To top it off, Jerry warned me to not actually transfer anything until this guy’s check cleared, if you know what I mean. We finally settled on a price that was really more than it was worth, and sure as hell I had trouble getting the check through the bank. It wasn’t until after it did that I had Spud take him to the warehouse where we’d stashed the cars and stuff."
"Carnie . . . I mean, Jerry hit it right on the nose, huh?"
"Oh, yeah, he doesn’t miss many tricks. Never has. Well, by that time most of the winter had gone by. Spud and I had agreed not to spend any more money on fixing up the cars than we had to since it wasn’t long after we got back from the 1954 season that it was clear that we might not be going on the road again the next spring. We just kept them parked all winter. So, as it worked out, Spud and Dewey and Pepper agreed to go out on the road with this Bush to show him the ropes, so to speak. That didn’t work worth a damn. Bush came up with his own drivers, all right, but they were truck drivers and like that, not a racer among them. He and Spud fought like two cats in a burlap bag, and they didn’t make it a month before Spud said, ‘Fuck it,’ and walked away. Dewey and Pepper went right with him, and for practical purposes, that was the end of the MMSA."
"Darn shame," I shook my head. "It was a good deal while it lasted."
"That it was," he agreed. "I didn’t pay any attention after that, since I was up to my ass in alligators getting my feet under me at the agency while I tried to keep up with Vivian’s ideas. But I got a lot of calls from people we’d dealt with for years complaining about this Bush joker. The tracks dumped him within the first few months, but he kept it going on fair dates for a while. But well, then, you remember that Frenchman that ran his car into the crowd at Le Mans back in 1955?"
"I remember reading about it," I said.
"I’ll tell you what, when that came down I was so happy to be out from under the MMSA it wasn’t funny. There were a lot of fairs that didn’t want to take the risk of having race cars right in front of the spectators, or couldn’t get the insurance, and well, after everything else that asshole Bush had saddled himself with, that was about the killer. I didn’t find out until quite a while later that some bank showed up and repossessed the whole deal, and Bush was glad to let them have it to get out from under it. They wound up scrapping everything for pennies on the dollar. I wish I’d known about it, I might have been tempted to buy some of that stuff back. There were some good race cars and parts there. The MMSA cars wouldn’t have made frontline regular midgets, but with a little work they could have been turned into some pretty decent hobby cars for guys that just wanted to mess around."
"All gone, huh?" I shook my head. "That’s kind of a shame. I mean, those days are in the past, but it would at least be nice to know that they’re still around."
"Well, mostly all gone," Frank shook his head. "You remember that pile of spare parts out in my uncle’s barn? It’s still there; in fact, it’s a little bigger than it was, since that asshole Bush didn’t want to take all of the spare parts collection. There’s one complete car – well, more or less – out there, although pretty well banged up, and there are enough parts to get started on fixing it. Hell, there might be enough parts there to build a second car. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. My uncle was bothering me just the other day about getting his barn cleaned out, but I haven’t figured out what to do with it. Maybe just scrap it, I guess."
"Jeez," I shook my head. "I wouldn’t mind just looking at that stuff, just to remind me of the old days."
"Hell, I haven’t been out there in several years myself," he shrugged. "I probably ought to take a run out there some time just to see what’s left and how much of a pain in the ass it’s going to be to get it cleaned up." He glanced at the pile of paperwork on his desk. "The hell with it," he said. "This shit can wait. It’s too damn nice a day to be sitting inside. Let’s take a run out there. Hell, let’s take a convertible. This is a ragtop day if there ever was one. Maybe we can stop for lunch some place."
"I’d like that," I said. "It’s good to see you again, and I have to admit to some curiosity about what happened to some of the other guys."
"Don’t know myself, a lot of them," he said, reaching for the phone and hitting several numbers. "Perry, Frank," he said. "Have we got a ragtop sitting around with dealer plates on it? . . . Well, how about setting one up? . . . Yeah, that’d do fine. See you in a few." He clicked the hook on the phone and dialed another number. "Joyce? Mel and I are going to take off running for a while. If Viv calls, tell her that Mel Austin showed up out of nowhere, we’re busy going over the old days." There was a pause. "Well, if I don’t get to it today, I’ll get to it tomorrow. We’ll be leaving in a couple minutes if something absolutely can’t keep."
The conversation went on for another couple minutes, mostly talking about business details. In spite of a huge change in his life, there seemed to be a lot about Frank that hadn’t changed. He was still a friend, I discovered a little to my surprise; I wouldn’t have bet on it. It was good to see that he’d made something of himself, not that I’d ever figured that he wouldn’t have.
After a few more moments, he was off the phone. "I swear," he said as he put the receiver in the cradle, "Most of my life consists of doing what women tell me to do. If it isn’t Vivian, it’s Joyce, or Alice, our bookkeeper. I’ll tell you what, Mel, there are some good things to say for just being out racing. I don’t have much to do with racing anymore, except for giving small-bore sponsorships to some local short track racers, but I sure miss being out on the road and looking forward to the next race."
"There are times I miss it, too," I admitted. "I’m sorry I never thought to try to get back with you sooner, but Arlene and I had pretty well agreed that we were going to turn our backs on racing and just stay away from it, or we’d just find ourselves getting sucked in again. I really didn’t want to look you up for a while for fear that I was so addicted that you’d suck me right out of a good teaching job into the seat of the 66 again."
"You made your break, and you made it at a good time, as it turned out," he sighed. "It’s a damn shame that we’ve been out of touch, but that’s over with, now. So, I take it you’re not doing any racing?"
"No, not really," I said. "There’s a kids’ go-kart league around, a pretty casual thing, I guess, but both the boys need to be a little older before I get them involved with it. I was involved as a track official at the local track for a while, but that turned sour. While I was doing it, I managed to make a few hot laps in economy stock cars, so maybe I haven’t totally lost the touch."
"The bug is still there," he smiled. "You may have hidden it, but it’s still there. Let’s go check out this Mustang that Perry’s rolling out for us."
We got up and headed out of his office, then out a side door, where we discovered the young salesman who had greeted me at the door just pulling up in a blue ’64 Mustang convertible with a black top, which he put down as we stood there watching. "Boy, that is some sweet car," I shook my head. "It’s hard to believe that it was built by the same people who came up with the Edsel a few years ago."
"Yeah, no fooling," Frank replied. "We got a real hard push from the company about the Edsel, and the minute I laid my eyes on the first one I realized that it was a fire hydrant waiting for a dog to come by. But it wasn’t long before Ford got on the performance bandwagon, and they’re putting out some pretty decent cars these days. I think they got this one right. Would you like to drive?"
"Yeah, sure," I said. "I haven’t had a chance to yet, although I’ve wanted to give one a try."
Frank glanced at the vehicle’s description sheet. "Great, this is one of the hot ones," he said. 289 with a four barrel and a hot cam, 271 horsepower. This thing will get up and scat, probably better than one of the old midgets."
"Frank," I sighed, "Perry’s already tried to sell me a car today, and now you’re trying, too."
"Good," he smiled. "That’s his job, and it’s mine, too. Boy, this is a long way from that old ’37 coupe you used to have, isn’t it?"
"I still have it," I grinned. "The first year I was in Bradford, I set the Auto Shop II kids to working on it. We’ve pretty well restored it to like-new condition. I don’t drive it much, but it sure brings back the old days when I drove it all over the country. I think I got a pretty good deal out of it for five bucks, which is what I paid for it originally."
"Yeah, but how many times did you rebuild the engine?" he laughed. "As I recall, it was always in one of two conditions, just rebuilt and needing a rebuild real bad."
"That was all those MMSA days’ miles we put on it," I said, opening the convertible’s door and getting behind the wheel. "I seem to recall that you were involved with that."
"Yeah, we put some miles on," he agreed as he got in the other side. "Perry, Mel here is the best driver I ever had back in the old days. I imagine we’ll be out a while since we’ve got a lot of old days to rehash."
"I think ‘best driver’ is stretching the blanket a little bit," I told him. "Frankly, I think Squirt Chenowith was the best driver I ever saw in the old midgets, and Arlene wasn’t half bad."
"Yeah, but you were with me for years and won three championships," he said. "Squirt was only with us for a couple months, but I’ll agree, he could flat drive those things."
"I wonder what ever happened to him." I observed as I started the car. It came alive with a roar; it idled rough, but you could tell just from the sound that there was a serious engine under that hood.
"Oh, he’s still around the last I heard," Frank said, speaking a little louder over the engine noise. "He drove for Spud several years, and then I guess he decided to hang it up. He was running some short track in New Jersey the last I knew."
"You’re going to have to tell me where we’re going," I told him. "I remember being out to the barn plenty of times, but things have changed so much that I’m not sure if I could find it in less than half a day."
"No problem, go right out of the driveway," he said. "I’ll keep you going."
I dropped the four-speed into first and let up on the clutch. That car was ready to go, and it was ready to go right now. I sort of pussyfooted out onto the street in front of the agency, and then giving in to the racer under my skin, I floored the Mustang.
Frank was right; that thing was hot. There was a hell of a squall as the back tires lit up – that thing had power to burn. I was already over the speed limit, so I just dropped it from first to fourth. "Holy shit!" I said once I had it back under control.
"Yeah, right," he said. "Believe me, you aren’t the first person to light up the tires on one of these things right out of the driveway. In these days of four-hundred-horse engines, 271 doesn’t seem like a whole hell of a lot, but those big side oilers are mostly in things like Galaxies that weigh a ton or so more than this thing. But this isn’t hot. You want hot, we had one of those Shelby AC Cobras with the 427 in here for a while. That’s what a sports car is supposed to be all about, except for the fact that we had cops stopping off to write speeding tickets while it was sitting on the showroom floor."
"I can believe it," I shook my head. "That’s a lot of engine in a car that small. I haven’t ever seen one in the flesh, but in the pictures that’s one hell of a sexy car. So, what happened to Spud, anyway?"
"Oh, he’s around, too," Frank said. "He’s got a shop down in Indianapolis where he builds cars, mostly sprint cars and midgets, and the odd modified. He also built half a dozen Indy cars, but he said he’s not going to get into all the hassles of these new rear-engine cars. Can’t say as I blame him, either."
"So, did he ever get to drive the 500 like he used to talk about?"
"Oh, yeah," Frank smiled. "After he walked out on that Bush joker, he drove right down to Indy, and even took Pepper and Dewey with him. Runt and Squirt were there, and as usual they were looking for hands, so they hung around for a couple weeks. Squirt still had that old car his brother ran back in ’51, and it just couldn’t hack it against the more modern stuff, not that Squirt didn’t give it a good try. But, he wrecked it pretty good in practice before qualification started. Spud wound up buying the wreck from him for a song, engine and all. He trailered it up here, left it at the old agency for a couple weeks while he rented some warehouse space, and went and hunted up Peewee, you remember him."
"Yeah, sure, a magician with a torch. That kid could weld!"
"Sure could," Frank smiled. It was just a little hard to talk; the engine was noisy, and there was a lot of traffic noise. But it was pleasant to ride around with the top down on that car, talking about the old days. "Anyway, after the race, Spud worked for me as a line mechanic for a while, but in the evenings and on the weekends he and Peewee put together most of a new chassis for that car. He did quite a bit of work on the suspension. He modified the Offy engine so it could run lying down, to get a lower profile, and did quite a lot of other work on it. It was a whole lot better car than Squirt’s old one. We helped him out with a little bit of sponsorship, and headed down to the race in ’56."
"Did he do all right?"
"Pretty well," Frank said. "He qualified into the middle of the starting field, but was about four laps back when he finished in the mid-teens. I was in the pits, of course. Well, he got out of the car and he was just plain beat to shit. ‘Well, now you’ve done it,’ I asked him. ‘You going to do it again?’"
"‘Shit no, I always said once was enough,’ he said. Well, Squirt was there; he’d crashed out early, and before they got out of the pits Spud and Squirt had worked out a deal for Squirt to drive it the next year. Well, right after that Spud decided to start his fab shop, and he decided to put it outside of Indianapolis, so he and Peewee have been there ever since. After last spring, Spud said he could see the handwriting on the wall with these rear-engine cars, so he says he’s decided to get out of Indy racing. Besides, he says his fab shop is going so well that he decided he didn’t want the aggravation. We still see each other now and then. He got married a couple years ago, to some woman that already had a couple kids, and much to my surprise he’s still married to her."
I shook my head, and Frank told me to take a right at the next light. "Just out of curiosity," I asked, "Who won the season championship that last year?"
"Dewey wound up taking it," Frank smiled. "Oh, that’s a story."
"That he won it?"
"No, after you and Arlene left he pretty much had things his own way, which didn’t surprise anybody. Well, anyway, after he got back from Indy in ’55 he decided that he was going to go home and see his folks."
"I knew he had some, but he never talked about them much," I commented. "I always figured he was on the outs with them."
"Well, sorta," Frank laughed. "You remember that his brother was killed in Korea in the early days, and he said once that he didn’t want his mother to lose any more kids to that war?"
"Yeah, I remember," I nodded. "He always said he’d go if he was called but he wasn’t going to stick his hand up?"
"Well, that was what he did," Frank laughed again. "We always just thought he never got called. Turns out he was called and called and called again – but he’d never bothered to leave a forwarding address at home, and just decided to stay gone. I guess the local draft board was mad as hell about it, but they could never find him and his folks had no idea where to look."
"So he was a draft dodger?" I smiled. "That’s one way to do it."
"Worked for him," Frank laughed. "So anyway, he went home, and here’s this huge stack of mail that had accumulated over the years, and right in it were several old draft notices. Well, he went down to the local draft board just as innocently as you please, and said he was sorry, he’d been on the road for several years, but he reported just as soon as he found out about it."
"So they threw the book at him, I presume?"
"No, but they sent his butt right to the reception station. Well, he didn’t really mind that much, he was willing to go and there wasn’t a war on right then. Then, to everybody’s surprise, most especially him, he flunked the physical. High blood pressure."
I couldn’t help laughing. "All that running and hiding for years, staying away from his folks and like that, and he busts the physical," I said, shaking my head. "I’ll bet he felt about two inches tall."
"I would have figured that myself," Frank smiled. "But he said that if he’d taken the physical in ’51 he probably would have passed it, so maybe it was worth the effort after all."
"Might be at that," I grinned. "So, what’s he doing now?"
"Line mechanic over at the import place, working for Jerry," Frank said. "I tried to take care of the people that stuck with me through the hard times. I’ve always been a little sorry I couldn’t do that for you, but I guess things worked out all right."
"Actually, they pretty much did," I told him. "It turned out that Bradford has been a pretty good place for Arlene and me. We’re doing all right financially, nothing spectacular like some Ford dealer I know, but we’re not hurting. I’m doing something I really like, and so is Arlene. A few years ago we bought a big old farm just outside town. I don’t farm it, but the lease I get on the land goes a long way toward making all of the payments. I like working with the kids, and I’m feeling like I’m teaching them something. I’m not dissatisfied with the way things worked out, Frank. I just wish I could have been a little more plugged in to what’s happened over the years."
"Yeah, I wish you had, too, but that’s the way it worked, I guess."
I’ll have to admit to being just a little bit angry at myself. I’d spent ten years and more barely over a hundred miles away from Frank and Vivian, and I’d never bothered to drive over and see if I could pick up a trace of them. I guess I’d always sort of figured that they’d cut me loose after the crash at Bradford and just plain left me behind, not thinking or caring. I knew that was wrong at the time but I still couldn’t help but think it, and that attitude had lots to do with why Arlene and I had turned our backs on racing in general. I had always feared getting sucked back into the MMSA, but after a year or two that wouldn’t have been an issue, even with not knowing what I’d found out in the last hour. But I hadn’t taken the effort, and it bothered me that I hadn’t.
"So what happened to some of the other guys?" I asked, trying to cover up my discomfort.
"A lot of them, I don’t know. Go left at the next light. Hoss got out of panel bashing, he’s an insurance claims adjuster. I see him every now and then. Rocky is still working at the Buick place; I’ve tried to hire him away, but he’s the service manager there, now. He raced local short tracks for a while, got out of it for a while, and the last time I saw him he was talking about building him another Sportsman. Pepper was a line mechanic at the Ford agency for a while, but he got hurt real bad in an accident on the street and still doesn’t get around too well. Vivian decided to give him a tryout as a salesman over at the import agency, and he did real well. She and Jerry decided to promote him to closer a couple years ago, and that’s worked out well, too, maybe even better. Let’s see, who else did you know?"
"How about Chick?" I asked.
"Oh, jeez, that takes us back a ways," he said. "That man is a magician with automatic transmissions. Back just before Vivian and I wound up taking over the agency, he got into some kind of a shouting match with Herb and walked out the door. The next thing you know, he’d opened his own automatic transmission shop. After we took over, I tried to get him to come back, but things were going great guns with his little shop. Well, one thing led to another and after a few years he decided that he wanted to open a second location, but he needed some backing, and I agreed to help him out. He’s got six locations around the metro area now, and I still have a little piece of the action for old time’s sakes."
"Doing pretty well then, I take it?"
"Oh, yeah," he nodded. "I see him every now and then. If we have any transmission problems we can’t handle I send them to him. I don’t see Hattie and the kids as often, but the last time I saw Carol she was turning into a real heartbreaker. Really good looking kid, but I guess she’s driving her dad about half crazy keeping the boys away. I can see that day coming with Kathy sooner than I want myself. I can see right now she’s going to be hell on wheels with the boys."
"With Elaine being four, I’ve still got a few years to wait before that happens," I said. "I have to admit, I’m not looking forward to it. Mostly, I’m afraid she’s going to run into some kind of kid like I used to be. Well, not when I was a kid, when I was a little older and running with the MMSA."
"Right," he smiled. "Some of the honeys that got picked up in those days weren’t exactly a whole hell of a lot older than Kathy is now, and that bothers me a little sometimes. But sometimes, it works out. You remember John Adorney, don’t you?"
"Oh, yes." I nodded. "The last time I heard from him he was in Hawaii, in the Army. That was while I was still with the MMSA."
"You remember that girl he got fixed up with that last night he was with us, back there in Wisconsin?"
"Yeah, a good looking little blonde with hot pants, about as big as he was. They wound up spending the night together, I guess, and everybody figured that he must have had one hell of a good time."
"That’s what I always figured," Frank smiled. "Well, it turns out that the two of them wrote back and forth to each other for most of the next two years. Then, as he was starting to run out of time in the Army, he invited her to come out to Hawaii to visit him. It turns out he’d been saving his pennies, and he bought her a plane ticket. Well, she came out to visit him, and right there on the beach at Waikiki, he offered her an engagement ring. Now, bear in mind they’d actually seen each other for less than twelve hours before he left, although I guess there were literally hundreds of letters involved. Anyway, she took him up on it, and after he got out of the Army they got married. They’re still married, three kids now. He’s working at Oldsmobile in Lansing the last I heard, making good money. He’s got a Sportsman, races it around some, just to fool around."
"I sort of wondered about some of those girls," I said. "But I guess that was one that worked out."
"I guess so, too," he smiled. "She’s still a looker, too. He got real lucky with her. Let’s see. Skimp is dead, heart attack a couple years ago, right in his living room. Bud Gaborski is still around, I see him once in a while. He races up at Mt. Clemens. I’ve got a little sponsorship on his car. He doesn’t do a lot of winning but he likes racing." He stopped to think for a moment, then continued. "Beyond that, I don’t know much. The New Jersey guys, well, I told you about Squirt. I saw in National Speed Sport News last fall that Scotty Lombard won some sprint car championship. Buckshot runs a Grand National car in NASCAR once in a while, or at least that’s what I read. I guess he’s not exactly setting the world on fire. I haven’t actually talked to him since the end of the ’54 season. That really is about it."
"That’s not bad," I said. "I haven’t seen anybody except Arlene since you guys left us in Bradford that time. I guess the people you know about turned out all right for the most part."
"Yeah, pretty much," he replied. "It’s been a while since I’ve seen some of them. Now that you’ve come out of the woodwork, maybe I’ll have to think about organizing a reunion some time, maybe next fall after the racing season and the new model introduction is over with. You’d drag Arlene up for that, wouldn’t you?"
"Sure thing," I smiled. "She’s going to be real sorry that she missed this trip. You let us know, we’ll find a way to be here."
"Yeah," he said. "It sure would be fun to see some of that old gang again all together, rather than just one on one. I’m sure I must not be the only one to think that, either. Those days are gone, but some of them were good days, and worth remembering."