My
grandfather took me while I was a boy to the Downingtown Iron Works where he
worked. It was cavernous inside. The area was very cluttered with equipment and
worktables. Over to one side was a welder. He was wearing this huge mask with a
rectangular glass-covered slot so he could see what he was doing. Sparks and
streaks of fire were shooting out in all directions around him.
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We
stopped by the cab and he said something to the engineer and his shovel man,
then he told me to climb up. I shook my head. I didn’t like being this close to
that dragon with all its hissing and spitting steam. The cab was high above my
head and you climbed up a narrow metal ladder build into the side. I refused to
climb and blew my one and only chance to ride in the steam engine of a train.
Instead we walked to the back and we took a ride up the rails in the caboose,
which was cool, too. In was a little house on wheels. There were some benches
along the side and a potbelly stove in the center for heat. Brakemen and other
crew would ride in these little lounges on wheels.
Cabooses were not the only non-standard vehicles I got to see
up close and personal.
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The
cars were mostly 1930s models, the kind they make into Hot Rods and Street
Rods. There were two classes, Stock and Modified. Stocks were factory-equipped
autos you could drive legally on the highways. Modified Cars had changes to the
engines to soup them up.
There were several races at every event. They would run four
or five heats, depending on the
number of cars present. The first three finishers in each heat qualified for
the Feature Race. All the cars that failed to qualify in the Heats raced in the
Consolation Race. Sometimes there were two Consolation Races. I believe the first four that finished in these went into the Feature. There could be nearly 25 cars in the feature. Each heat and consolation race was ten laps. The Feature was usually 50 laps and sometimes as many as a hundred.
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I loved everything about the races. I loved the smell of the
fuel and the roar of the engines. I found it exciting. There were a number of
crashes, too, which always enlivened the action. Many pile-ups were quite
spectacular. Cars would roll end over end. Sometimes they would catch on fire.
I saw cars fly into the air and go clear over the guardrails around the track.
The drivers seldom got seriously injured.
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Every week we went I bought another plastic racecar. These
were replicas of those on the track.
I had a lot of toy cars and I would race them
at home. I would do the Heats and everything. I lined my cars up two by two. I
would push the first two cars so they rolled freely ahead, then the next two
and so forth. Some cars rolled better than others and so the lead changed
several times as I gave them push after push around a circle. I pushed them in
the order they stopped each time until my race ended. That is Peppy watching
one of my races.
My dad was a close friend with one of the drivers. His name
was Stan Zeliak. We had pit passes and would go watch the cars prepared. Dad
would often stop and talk with Stan and I got to sit in his racecar sometimes.
I even got to put his helmet on. It was surprisingly heavy and was full of foam
padding. My dad bought me my own plastic helmut. It didn't have foam padding, was very much lighter and if I ever hit it on anything it would have cracked like an old walnut.
My dad considered becoming a driver. He went to the training
classes and the tryouts, but in the end decided against it. I don’t know if he
didn’t like it once he tried or he didn’t do well enough in the tryouts, or more
likely my mother got on him about it.
We attended the races for several years. It was one of the
few activities I ever did with my father I enjoyed, but there was still a
tension between us, which I will come back to later in another essay.
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The school ground races started the year Denny Myers finally
got his two-wheeler.
Denny arrived on his brand new bike and was anxious to get in
the races. He had waited longer than most of us for his bike because his
parents felt eight years old was too young for one. Now at ten he had a bike and so did
his younger brother, Michael, who did get a two-wheeler at age eight. Denny was
probably rankled by this. His two younger brothers didn’t even have to wait
till eight.
It is a wonder his parents didn’t revert to their old policy
after what happen the day Denny showed up at the blacktop with a bike. He rode
a lap with the rest of us, but as he came to the fourth turn he lost control.
He picked up speed going down the small slope and seemingly forgot how to steer
and how to stop. He crashed head first into the support pillar of a basketball
net at the bottom edge of the macadam.
His
bike crumpled and Denny flew over the handlebars, between the two basketball
backstop supports and did a face plant in the grass beyond. He was unhurt,
except for his dignity. There was serious damage to his bicycle. Its basket was
squished and knocked eschew. The front fender was twisted. The front wheel was
bent. His pride was bent as well, which to him was the worse of all.
Gary Kinzey was another boy with bike problems. He was
suffering pedal envy. We boys all had 26 inch bikes. The wheel diameter was 26
inches across. Gary had a 24 incher. In those days size mattered. He was
somewhat disappointed and disgusted that his bike was the smallest among the
pack. He had both his seat and handlebars jacked as high as they would go
(pictured right).
Sometimes we moved our races across Washington Avenue onto
the empty lot next to my grandparent’s house at 424. There was a large cinder
pile to the front of the field. The township used the cinder in winter to give
traction on the streets during snowstorms or when it was icy. The cinder piles
provided hills for our races. We even reached a point where we thought we were
so good that we turned “professional”. Iva Darlington, Judy Baldwin, Michael
Myers and I canvassed the neighborhood, going house to house attempting to sell
tickets to our bicycle races on the cinder pile. A few people actually came out
for it; okay, maybe a couple.
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It gave me a whole new idea.
I
came back to our bike races and upped the bar. I called it the “Ditching Club”.
The rules were simple. Pedal around the blacktop and try to bump every other
bike out of the race. I was pretty good at this madness. I had no fear of
falling or of hitting another bike. I usually won. I knew just where and how to
hit my opponents to make them tumble over. It was glorious. For a time I was a winner! There were skinned
knees and blood galore. My bike was a moving collection of dings and dents, but
usually it was moving. (Pictured left, my ditching bike still with its fenders,
Summer 1952.)
I decided to go from stock to modified. I removed my fenders
and painted the bike with this bright red, green and white paint. When my dad
came home and saw the bicycle the only thing he said was, “It looks like a
nigger’s.”
Okay, I though we were never to use that word. What went for the rest of us didn't always go for dad.
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Yes, in those days even Black and White corpses didn’t lie in peace together.
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We would go to even more questionable places. After all, the Gates
of Hell were only a short distance from the quarry and the hills were alive
with haunted houses. (I suppose that should be "dead" with haunted houses?) We
would explore them all.
EXERPT FROM "GRAY"
Stu
stood. He felt better. His head cleared and his stomach settled. He had a sense
that time had skipped ahead on him, that he had blacked out briefly, but if he
did, it seemed to have helped. He turned toward his vehicle and saw something
shiny out of the corner of his eye.
He
skirted the car, ducking to the other side of the drive where there was an
embankment of rock and scrub brush. He eased along this natural shield until he
could see around the bend of the driveway. From here he saw a car
sitting squarely in the center, the blue-green
Chevy he had been pursuing. It looked deserted.
He
put a hand to his holster, unsnapping the restraining strap with his thumb. He
listened. There was no sound. Things were as still as death on a late winter
night. He stood and his heart thumped against his shirt. The thumping was
distracting, annoying. He felt like his heart was too big for his ribcage. He
tugged his uniform blouse from his chest as if that would relieve the annoying
thump.
He
saw grass move to his left, a bit further down the drive but not as far as the
car. He stared across to where he saw this movement but could not pick it up
again. His heart thumped louder as he turned his head. He thought it was
audible, that anyone nearby would hear the beating heart as if it were a drum
beating the tempo of a coming parade.
He
heard something now to his right. It wasn't loud, wasn't much of a sound, but
unnatural to this place he was certain; not the sound of bird or insect,
perhaps an animal, perhaps a hare or groundhog or opossum, just above him, and
not far, perhaps just beyond this bend. He caught a fleeting glimpse of
something lying on the side of the hill where it could view the driveway
between here and the car, where it could see anyone who approached along the
driveway and ambush them.
Stu
backed up. Another wave of lightheadedness hit and he had to squat down on one
leg. He sat there on his heel, gasping in air until the dizziness left once
more, then moved back to where the embankment slanted level with the driveway
beyond his own car. He climbed through the bushes and crossed the embankment from
the top.
From
here he had the sight advantage. He could see the lane below and the quarry
ahead, but more importantly he could see across the lower hill along that
stretch of driveway. Behind one thicket was a patch of shiny black. It was a
well-shined man's shoe just visible in a patch of bare dirt.
He
pulled the service pistol free of the holster and stepped several yards, which
took him above that shoe. He was closing on the man when the shoe moved and the
man jumped up to face him. They stood no more than three yards apart.
The
man had gray hair and wore a dusty gray business suit. The man had a look of
utter shock on his face and from where Stu stood the man's eyes seemed empty
and watery until he realized the man had gray irises. The man had a stick or
rod in his hand, but no gun.
"Freeze
where you are." Stu yelled.
The
man did not move, but he had been standing stock still anyway. The man did not
drop the rod.
"Put
down the stick."
The
man did not move, did not drop the stick or rod, did not so much as blink.
"God
damn it, put down the fucking stick." On the last word, when he said
'stick', his voice wavered. A pain shot across his back between shoulder blades
ten times worst than before. The pain turned inward and cut through to his
chest.
Stu’s
legs wobbled unsteadily on the angle of the hill and his lower foot slipped on
a rock while his left leg slid away from him and he stumbled. He tried to
counteract the slide, to regain balance, but as soon as he made this sudden
move the pain blazed across his chest and down both arms. His eyes seemed to
explode and all he could see was a great spray of red, then his eyes cleared
and he was still standing, still in pain, although it had reduced itself to a
dull ache. Stu had his gun pointed across at the gray man except the gray man
was no longer where the gun pointed.
Stu
spun; trying to locate the guy and when he did the pain stabbed him in a
thousand places at once. He fell, tumbling to the bottom of the hill, coming to
a stop on the driveway. He couldn't move against the pain that shot through
him. All he could do was lay where he had landed, clutching at his chest with
his hand. He thought he still had his gun in the other hand, but he could not
feel that hand and wasn't certain he hadn't dropped the gun during his fall.
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