The Last Open Road Read online

  the Last open road

  Burt "BS" Levy

  THINK FAST INK

  OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

  Author Page

  BS Levy

  Nobody writes about America's love affair with automobile racing like BS Levy because no other writer has lived it like BS Levy. A lifelong motorsports addict, he has worked in the business fixing cars and motorcycles, selling exotic cars (during which time he had a Rolls-Royce convertible stolen from him at gunpoint on a test drive!) and running a sports-car repair shop. Fulfilling a lifelong dream, he began racing himself in 1970 at the wheel of a shopworn, $600 TR3. Following countless hard and yet oftentimes hilarious lessons (and switching to a better prepared Alfa Romeo) Burt began winning races and local championships. He had a brief "pro" career in 1985-86 and also filled in as a stunt driver when the movie The Blues Brothers was shooting in Chicago.

  Burt began writing about racing in 1982 as "a way to get my hobby for free," and quickly fell in love with the world of Vintage Racing, where he found he could "write" his way into into the famous old Ferraris, Jaguars, Cobras, Cunninghams and such he'd grown up lusting after from the far side of the fences. He's proud of the reputation he's developed as "the world's foremost ride mooch," and you can see some of the fabulous cars he's driven and raced on the website at www.lastopenroad.com. Burt continues to race competitively, is often engaged as a banquet speaker and racetrack color announcer and still serves as a racing instructor several times each year for local racing clubs.

  Burt's insightful, hilarious, sometimes poignant and occasionally outrageous columns, books and stories have won him an enthusiastic audience worldwide. They've also earned him critical acclaim in the literary world. His books are included in the curriculum of several high school and college level English classes, and he regularly gives presentations about his experiences in the writing and publishing world to aspiring writers at colleges, schools and libraries.

  Summary

  "In Palumbo, Levy has created a salt-of-the-earth character whose simple approach to life and folk wisdom make him an unassuming and yet engaging hero. Levy is a marvelous storyteller." Publishers Weekly

  "Recalls to mind Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield." Road & Track

  "Fast pace and Buddy's likeability makes this 'road' a winner." USA Today

  "Outrageous and funny. Levy knows how to put his readers in the shotgun seat." The Toronto Star

  "A breakthrough, giving racing fans quality literature of their own." On Track

  "Splendid characters weave in and out of a tale that features classism, elitism and racism; that is about triumph and tragedy, and right and wrong. A rich compelling story that deserves a wide audience." Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  "Funny, sensitive, insightful. Something for every taste." Vintage Motorsport

  "Tough, funny, down-to-earth: Even people who don't much care for cars and racing can understand the obsession by the time they're finished." Fox News

  "The best fictional motorsports writing ever encountered." Atlas F1

  Picked by England's Classic & Sportscar as one of the top 20 motoring titles of all time.

  $2500

  Published by THINK FAST INK Oak Park, IL

  Dedication

  FOR CAROL AND ADAM,

  MY WONDERFUL FAMILY.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to my friends: Art Eastman, John Gardner, Bill Green, Bill Siegfriedt, Jim Sitz, David Whiteside; my brother Maurice, and the late Brooks Stevens for their invaluable assistance in researching this book.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: THE OLD MAN'S SINCLAIR

  Chapter 2: BIG ED'S JAGUAR

  Chapter 3: JULIE

  Chapter 4: MANUAL LABOR

  Chapter 5: BEATEN WITH A CLUB

  Chapter 6: THE BUG BITES

  Chapter 7: AUNT ROSAMARINA'S RACE SHOP

  Chapter 8: GIANT'S DESPAIR

  Chapter 9: THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF A RACING WRENCH

  Chapter 10: GRAND ISLAND

  Chapter 11: HOME GAMES AND ROAD GAMES

  Chapter 12: CROSS-COUNTRY BY C-TYPE

  Chapter 13: ELKHART LAKE

  Chapter 14: YOUR CHEATIN' HEART

  Chapter 15: A NIGHT ON MICHIGAN AVENUE

  Chapter 16: ANOTHER HOMECOMING

  Chapter 17: THE GLEN

  Chapter 18: DEATH IS NEWS

  Chapter 19: THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

  1: THE OLD MAN'S SINCLAIR

  MY NAME'S Buddy Palumbo, and I guess this stuff all started back in the spring of '52, when I was working as head mechanic at Old Man Finzio's Sinclair station in Passaic, not a year out of high school. Actually, I was more or less the only mechanic working at the Sinclair back then, on account of Old Man Finzio wasn't exactly what you could call a whiz around a set of tools. Which made you wonder why he picked the garage business in the first place. But you couldn't just flat out ask him, "Hey, jackass, whyd'ja ever wanna go inta the garage business?" because he'd spit right in your eye. Old Man Finzio was one of those mean, scrawny old farts who walk like there's no oil in their joints and kick stray dogs just for the fun of it. And he always managed to have a three- or four-day growth of stubble on his chin. All the time. Which made you wonder sometimes how he did it. I mean, you either shave every couple days or it eventually grows out into a beard, right? But not Old Man Finzio. No sir. It was one of those Eternal Mysteries, like they talk about in church.

  Now don't get me wrong, the Old Man was pretty sharp about running his gas station, and no question he knew a thing or two about automobiles. He just wasn't any good at fixing 'em. Didn't have the hands for it. Or the patience. Oh, he could change a tire OK, or maybe flush out a radiator, but he'd get stuck—and I mean stuck! —on jobs a real mechanic could breeze right through without even thinking about it. Especially if he hit a frozen-up bolt or a rounded-off nut hidden away under an exhaust manifold or water pump pulley where you couldn't hardly get at it. Or take a simple brake job. Often as not, he'd get one of the drums wedged all catty-wumpus on the axle, and naturally the harder he tugged, beat, and levered on it, the worse it got. Why, he'd squint and sneer and spit at that brake drum, cussing a blue streak through the few teeth he had left, and pretty soon he'd be reaching for the cutting torch. Within minutes, he'd have the whole damn business glowing bright cherry red and be wailing away like a country blacksmith with the biggest damn sledgehammer in the shop. By the time he was done, the brake drum, wheel studs, and mounting flange would be junk, and sometimes he'd even get the wheel cylinders. So you can see how important it was for the Old Man to have a decent mechanic working for him at the Sinclair.

  Old Man Finzio's gas station was right down the street from my folks' house in Passaic, and I'd pass it every day on my way home from school. Usually, I'd stop by after classes and just kind of hang around for a few hours. Maybe even help out a little here and there. I don't really know why, but I always liked watching automobiles get fixed. It fascinated me how cars were made of all these strange-looking chunks of metal and snaky rubber tubes and endless strands of copper wire, all of it carefully pieced together like some enormous jigsaw puzzle. And if all those bits and pieces were bolted together just right, you could twist a key and it would come alive and turn into a living, breathing, ready-for-street-prowling steel animal. But the best part was when a car stopped working—when it died —a sharp mechanic could bring it back to life again. Good as new. Maybe even better. A guy could feel pretty damn swell about something like that.

  This tough, crew-cut ex-Marine named Butch Bohunk was chief mechanic at the Sinclair back then, and for my money he was sharp as they come. Especially when it came to Fords. Butch had a beat-up old Ford himself (I think it was a '40, but you could hardly tel
l from the rust), and I swear he kept that heap running by just thinking about fixing it. Honest he did. I don't know if you've noticed, but automobile mechanics generally drive the sorriest-looking cars on the highway. Like the old story about the shoemaker's kids, you know? That's because mechanics understand precisely what's wrong with an automobile and consider it a matter of professional pride to see just how long they can keep it running on mechanical sympathy alone.

  Fact is, Butch's Ford was so raggedy that Old Man Finzio made him park it out behind the building where the paying customers couldn't see it. I remember Butch took me for a ride across town one afternoon, and I swear the wheel was shaking so bad he could hardly hang on. "Gee whiz, Butch," I asked him, "what the hell's wrong with the steering?"

  "Aw, I got me a busted shock and a bent rim on the left front, and it's just about finished off the damn tie-rod end." He fished a cigarette out of his pocket and calmly lit up—just to show me it was nothing to worry about, you know? Come to think of it, that cigarette lighter was about the only thing on the whole damn dashboard that worked.

  Anyhow, we're flying down this side street in Newark with everything wobbling and shaking so bad you couldn't hardly focus, and I had to swallow a couple times before I finally got up the nerve to ask, "Jeez, Butch, isn't this sorta, you know, dangerous?"

  "Naw," he grinned, taking himself a long, deep draw through a fresh Pall Mall, "not unless the whole damn wheel falls off."

  General opinion around Passaic held that Butch was a pretty mean article, mostly on account of he'd get into bar fights and scrapes with the law every now and then when he drank, and recreational drinking was something he did on a pretty regular basis. But Butch always treated me right, no matter what anybody else thought about him. He was a burly, beat-up fireplug sort of guy, with tattoos all up and down his arms and a nasty scar down his forehead from the front of his Marine crew cut clear through the arch of his left eyebrow. Damn near took his eye out, whatever it was. Sometimes when he was working on a bolt he couldn't see or pouring oil into a crankcase, Butch'd get this strange, faraway look and tell me the story of how he got that scar. It was always something different (so I knew it was all bullshit, right?) but they were some pretty neat stories anyway—each one uglier and gorier than the last. Old Man Finzio said the real scoop was that Butch's wife, Marlene, came after him with a meat cleaver when he staggered in around sunup one ayem with his shirt buttoned wrong.

  Marlene was a short, dumpy, white-trash girl from Tennessee with stringy red-orange hair, a beer belly that made her look pregnant all the time, and one hell of a nasty temper. Butch always called her "my mean Marlene," and was she ever. Fact is, I could never figure what made Butch want to marry her in the first place. Or stay married to her, for that matter. I mean, they didn't seem to like each other, you know? But then there's just no figuring guys when it comes to women. No sir. Not that Butch Bohunk was any damn Prince Charming. He drank and he cussed and he brawled, and when you get right down to it, most women don't want anything to do with mechanics in general.

  Especially after they've taken a good long look at your hands.

  Married or not, Butch was pretty much a loner, and that made sense because there were all sorts of people Butch just flat out didn't like. He didn't like rich people because they were rich, and he didn't like poor people because they were poor. And he didn't much care for bosses, managers, noncoms, lawyers, librarians, insurance salesmen, tax accountants, niggers, kikes, krauts, polaks, wops, japs, chinks, a-rabs, beaners, or college-professor types. In fact, about the only people he could tolerate at all were grunt-level working stiffs like himself. Unless they were union men. Butch didn't have much use for trade unions, either. All of which made him a pretty hard guy to get along with. Especially after he'd had a few.

  Although you never would've thought of Butch as a religious type—not hardly!—he believed in a sort of redneck, blue-collar code of ethics that strictly divided what a man did from what a man didn't do. Not that it was ever written down anyplace on a set of stone tablets. It was just something a guy like Butch knew. Which was probably why he got in so many bar fights, because one of the key things a man didn't do was back down when somebody yanked his chain. Even if that somebody was six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier. Or smaller, but packing a meat cleaver.

  Truth is, I learned most of what I know about fixing cars from Butch. He didn't so much sit me down and teach me as just let me watch and maybe help out now and then by grabbing him a wrench or maybe holding a bolt while he ratcheted off the nut on the other side. He'd been a hard-hat diver in the Marines—you know, the guys with the bulky rubberized-canvas diving suits and the big brass helmets?—and always bragged about how they sent him all over the world because he could weld a perfect bead underwater. Believe me, that's not an easy thing to do. And though he bitched about it constantly, you could tell Butch really loved life in the Marines. That's where he learned how to duck a sucker punch, throw a knife so's it'd stick in a wooden door, find the back way out of any bar, and cuss a blue streak in five or six different languages.

  That's also where he learned mechanics, and believe me, Butch was one of the best. He had a knack for understanding exactly what was wrong with sick machines, and the skill to go in and fix whatever it was without thinking twice. It was quite a contrast to Old Man Finzio, who most usually made things worse instead of better. Sometimes the Old Man'd get himself worked up into a foamy-mouthed frenzy on a job, cursing and beating and heating it up cherry red with the torch, and eventually he'd have no choice but to shuffle over and ask Butch to bail him out. "Hey, Butch," he'd mutter through clenched teeth, "cud'ja maybe c'moverhere an' take alooka this?"

  Butch always pretended like he didn't quite hear the first time, so the Old Man'd have to ask him again. Only louder this time. But Butch'd keep it up until the Old Man was beet red and bellowing right in his ear. Then he'd turn around real slow and say, "Gee whiz, old man, you ain't gotta yell. . . ."

  It drove the Old Man nuts.

  At any rate, I wound up working part-time at Old Man Finzio's Sinclair during senior year, pumping gas and changing tires and helping out here and there, and even though it wasn't steady, Butch'd always slip me a few bucks or make Old Man Finzio slip me a few for my trouble. By the time graduation rolled around, I was fixing most cars all by myself. Hard stuff, too, like clutch jobs and cylinder heads, not just tires and oil changes. Hell, I'd clear twenty-five bucks on a good week. And I was learning a lot about auto mechanicing. Watching Butch taught me how to puzzle things out and make proper repairs, and watching the Old Man taught me, well, what not to do. The better I got at fixing automobiles, the more I enjoyed working at Old Man Finzio's gas station. It made me feel like I could, you know, do something. . . .

  Of course, there was something else that kept me hanging around the Sinclair. Her name was Julie Finzio, and she was the Old Man's niece. Julie dropped by every few days to straighten up the office and help out with the books on account of she had such nice handwriting. She was just out of high school herself, but I never really knew her because I went to Fillmore and she went to Immaculate Conception with the rest of the good Catholic girls. Sure, I'd seen her around town here and there, but I never paid too much attention. But then she sorta filled out after sophomore year—I mean really filled out—and all of a sudden she was OK to look at. Better than OK, even. In fact, she was sort of pretty (in a baby-fat kind of way) with curly black hair, dark, happy eyes, and this wicked red-lipstick smile she picked up off the cover of a movie magazine. Not that I spent all that much time looking at her face, since I was eighteen myself and kept getting distracted by the mysterious new bulges squirming around inside her sweaters. And Julie always knew exactly what I was looking at, and had the mouth to let me know about it, too. "Hey, pop yer eyeballs back in yer head, willya?" she'd snort. "Yer startin' to drool." But then she'd give me a big smile and maybe even lean over the counter a little so's I could get an even better look.r />
  That drove me crazy.

  So did the way she'd wink at me out the corner of her eye or roll the end of her pencil around with the tip of her tongue while she worked on the books. And I loved the way her butt blossomed up like a big, heart-shaped valentine every time she bent over to pick up something I'd, um, accidentally dropped on the floor. Not that Julie was a slut or anything. She was just a nice, respectable, Immaculate Conception girl who liked to flirt and tease around until it drove you right up the goddam wall. Of course, that was more or less the favorite sport of the Italian Catholic girls around Passaic. Even the nice ones. They all want to make sure the old equipment is working. No question Julie's did, because she'd turn me all steamy-queasy inside every time I saw her. I even had this inkling that she maybe really liked me. But I couldn't be sure. You know how it is with girls. And of course Old Man Finzio was always skulking around and giving me the hairy eyeball anytime I started getting too chummy with Julie. The thing I could never understand was how a mean, ornery old fart like him rated a bubbly, hormone-pie of a niece like Julie. It just didn't seem natural, you know?