Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (6 page)

Seven tents had been erected around the infield hospital. Already a
cluster of cots was occupied by victims of the rising heat. Nurses were
applying cold packs and offering water to patients as the ambulance
hauling Linden arrived. He staggered out, apparently not seriously
injured, although an ugly burn on his right arm needed treatment.

The thermometer on the door frame of the hospital read 91
degrees. It was not yet noon. Linden's wife arrived, crying hysterically.
It was the wives who had it worst of all.

Beyond the rickety towers and the grandstands, the deathly roar of the engines was omnipresent. I could see flashes of color as the cars
arrowed past through breaks in the crowd. It was clear that Vukovich
was in the lead and unchallenged.

Word spread through the staff that Carl Scarborough was being
brought in with heat prostration. He was a veteran of the so-called
outlaw circuits that were unrecognized by the American Automobile
Association, and had run the 500 only once before. He claimed to be
thirty-eight years old.

He arrived on a stretcher, looking beet-red. An ambulance attendant came out of the hospital. "He's got a temperature of 103.6. His
crew accidentally doused him with C02 trying to put out a fuel fire.
Damn near suffocated him. He ain't good."

Gene Hartley, a kid from Indiana, arrived soon afterward. He had
hit the wall, but appeared unhurt. It was getting hotter. Two more
drivers showed up on stretchers. Johnny Parsons, who had won the
race in 1950, and Jerry Hoyt, a newcomer, were wrapped in wet sheets
and given intravenous salt solutions.

The din went on.

A male nurse came out. "Scarborough's real bad. They've opened up
his chest and are massaging his heart. Three doctors working in teams."

Another ambulance. Pat Flaherty had gotten woozy from the heat
and lost control in the third turn. He was unconscious. After a short
interlude inside the hospital, he was reloaded into the ambulance and
sent on to Methodist Hospital.

A reporter from Chicago said, "It's a war zone on pit road. Guys are
falling out of the cars like flies. It's over 130 degrees on the track.
Nobody can handle it."

"What about Vukovich?" I asked.

"Except him. Hasn't slowed a bit. The guy isn't human."

Father Lindemann, the Catholic priest who had conducted the service for Chet Miller, blew through the crowd and went into the hospital.

"Bad sign. He's giving Scarborough last rites," somebody said.

Spider Webb, another veteran, showed up, also wrecked by the
heat. Then came Tony Bettenhausen, the former national champion,
and Rodger Ward, the cocky ex-fighter pilot. All were wrapped in
cold sheets and seemed to be recovering. Would this nightmare never
end? Word went around that only a few drivers, including Vukovich,
who was far in the lead, could continue without relief. Drivers were
piling in and out of the steaming cockpits to the point that no one
was sure who was driving what car. Art Cross, an Indiana driver who
started the race in a car owned by tiny blond Bessie Paoli, operator of
a welding shop in Springfield, Illinois, quickly gave in to the oppressive heat. His car's cockpit was so poorly ventilated that four other
drivers relieved him at the wheel during the race. The Springfield
Welding Special finally finished second, marking the only time in the
history of the race that five drivers shared in one car's prize money.
Several other cars had three drivers, while young Bob Scott carried on
for Scarborough. In the face of the choking heat, no one was quitting.

Linden was back. He had crashed a second time. He had shrugged
off his earlier injuries and gone back to drive relief, only to bunt the
wall again. Dr. Bohner yelled at Linden for such idiotic behavior.
"Hey, Doc, you can't let your buddies down," pleaded Linden.

Carl Scarborough was dead. It was announced to the press as the
final laps unwound.

Four laps from the end, another yellow flag. Hartley again. Like
Linden, he had gone back for more, relieving his friend Chuck
Stevenson, who was driving the Agajanian 98 that had won the race
the year before. Exhausted and heat-ravaged, Hartley had smacked
the wall a second time. Miraculously, he was not seriously injured.
Duke Nalon, cautiously driving the remaining Novi, had intentionally spun to miss Hartley and ended up stalled on the track apron.
This would mark the final appearance of front-drive Novis in the
Indianapolis 500.

A distant cheer echoed from the grandstands as Vukovich took the checkered flag. He had led all but five laps of the two hundred. Then
silence. The engines were dead. Only the rustle of the crowd heading
for the gates rose above the stifling breeze.

A doctor and a nurse rushed toward an ambulance. "Russo and
Daywalt," said the Chicago reporter. "Both in bad shape from the
heat. Stuck in Gasoline Alley. Too much traffic and crowds. They
can't get here. The docs are going to them with adrenaline and salt
solutions. This place is nuts."

I had spent the entire race-all of its insane, boiling, metal-shredding
three hours and fifty-three minutes-hanging around the hospital. I
had seen little or nothing of the track action, although the endless
detonations of the racing engines still rang in my ears. Feeling sorry
for poor Scarborough and the chaos he was surely leaving behind for
his family, I worked my way back to Gasoline Alley. It was slow going
against the tide of spectators heading for the parking lots. My plan
was to meet Medley at the Vukovich garage.

The place was mobbed with reporters and bystanders jammed ten
deep in front of the Fuel Injection Special. The car, smeared with rubber dust and oil, was parked outside. A large victory wreath hung on
its cowling.

I spotted Medley on the edge of the mob.

"Let's get outta here," he said. "The heat's killing me. Vuke's not
around. Must be with the VIPs or the big-time press. You know
that ice cream parlor near the rooming house? Man, I'd die for a
malt right now."

With that, we fled the hellish scene.

It took nearly an hour to poke our way through the glut of people
trying to wedge their way out of the gates and onto Sixteenth Street.
Cars were everywhere, jammed in honking masses. "The main highways for a hundred miles in every direction are in gridlock," said a
Speedway City cop, soaked in sweat as he directed traffic.

We trudged down a tree-lined street in silence. One driver was dead, and many were injured, albeit not seriously, while our rooming
house-mate had won the biggest motor race in the world. Even in the
shade, the heat was unrelenting. Our pace increased as we spotted the
parlor ahead.

Wheeling through the door, we spotted a couple sitting at a corner
table. The woman, dark blonde, was wearing a white sleeveless summer dress. The man, swarthy and well-muscled, was in a filthy, sweatsoaked polo shirt and grimy white pants that appeared to have been
worn in a grease pit.

"Holy shit, that's Vuke!" exclaimed Medley.

"What the hell is he doing here?"

We approached the couple, who were drinking large milk shakes.

"Jeez, Vuke. I thought you'd be over at the Speedway with the bigwigs, celebrating like a real hero driver," I said.

"You can't believe how hot it was out there. Like driving a tractor
in Fresno in July. For the last hundred miles all I could think of was a
cold shake in this place. As soon as I could, I got Esther and we
scrammed. I'll do that hero stuff when they give me my check."

So there he was, the winner of the Indianapolis 500, sitting in an
ice cream parlor, far from the screaming masses, from the press and
the autograph hunters.

Tomorrow his name would be plastered all over every newspaper
in the world and a big payday awaited him at the victory banquet.

By that time we had packed up and headed out on the long drive
back to Los Angeles. Vuke's take was big: $89,496 in prize money,
which he would split with the owner, Howard Keck, and his crew. But
he would also get the Ford Sunliner convertible pace car, a special
winner's wristwatch, a year of free meals from a local catering service,
a tool set, and a cocker spaniel puppy with a case of Ideal dog food.

And one very cold milk shake.

FOLLOWING HIS DECISIVE VICTORY AT INDIANAPOLIS,
Bill Vukovich was content to remain out of the public eye, refusing
the corporate endorsements that came the way of an Indianapolis
champion, and all offers for public appearances. One exception
came when Firestone flew Vukovich and his crew of Jim Travers and
Frank Coon, plus three-time Indy winner and track manager
Wilbur Shaw, to the Big Apple. The occasion: a special appearance
on the Voice of Firestone television show. Harvey Firestone, the scion
of the great tire company family, hosted the trip. Prior to the show
he ordered a cab to take Vukovich, Travers, and Coon on a tour of
the city. Travers recalled, "We told the driver to take us to Broadway.
When we rolled down the Great White Way, I turned to Vuke and
said, `When Frank and I hired you, we promised we'd get you on
Broadway. Well, here you are: Vukovich lifted up his right foot and said, `Cut the shit, Smokey'-that's what he called me-'this is what
got us to Broadway."'

When he quietly returned to his small ranch to help his wife,
Esther, raise their two children, Vukovich's absence from the rest of
the AAA national championship schedule was a disaster for race promoters across the country. They depended on the presence of the
Indy 500 champion to boost the gates at the ten other races leading to
the national title. All were held on fairground dirt tracks, ancient
one-mile ovals that had been designed for horse racing. Most of
them, like the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit, the New York
State Fairgrounds at Syracuse, the Indiana Fairgrounds at
Indianapolis, and the Arizona State Fairgrounds at Phoenix, had been
built between 1880 and 1910.

The dirt miles were insanely dangerous. Lined with board fences
or chain-link barriers, they offered no protection to the drivers.
Shredded wood or jagged steel could easily kill a man on impact. The
clay surfaces were either deeply rutted and layered in powdery, blinding dust or polished to an ice-rink sheen by the spinning tires. Flying
clots of dirt and stones did terrible damage to the drivers, sitting
upright and exposed in their cars. They wore nothing but light clothing, a thin leather helmet, and goggles. Broken noses and jaws, and
shattered teeth were common during the running of the 100-mile
endurance tests, during which the track surface could change radically based on the heat, sunshine, and humidity.