Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (9 page)

McGrath and Hinkle arrived at Indianapolis in early May 1954
ready for war. They unloaded a spanking-new, bright yellow KurtisKraft 500B roadster, an updated and improved version of the nowaging Keck car assigned to Vukovich. Bryan appeared with the Dean
Kuzma, a car intended more for the dirt tracks than for the Motor
Speedway, but nonetheless a contender thanks to the man behind
the wheel.

McGrath was fast in practice. An expert engine man, he seemed to
have perfected the use of the explosive engine additive
nitromethane-"nitro" or "pop," as it was known in the garage area. The stuff was so potent than only a few drops in a tank of methanol
were needed to add an instant 50 horsepower. But if used imprudently, pistons would be fried, crankshafts cracked in half, and blocks
shattered. Only a few men, including McGrath, seemed to understand the nuances of its use. With a dollop of "pop" in his car's tank,
he quickly dominated practice, rushing past the vaunted 140-mph
barrier and winning the pole position with ease. His time for the four
laps against the clock was a record-shattering 141 mph.

Meanwhile, there was endless grief in the Vukovich garage.
Broken piston rings became a curse for the crew, and several practice
runs for the defending champion ended with the car being towed
into the pits with a broken engine. Tensions were rising as Vukovich
watched men like McGrath and Bryan rush around the Speedway at
speeds far in excess of those recorded by him and the Fuel Injection
Special the year before.

In frustration, he began to demand that Travers use nitro. Travers
refused, claiming the stuff was an aphrodisiac offering quick bursts of
speed but hurting the reliability needed in a 500-mile endurance contest. Loud arguments could be heard behind the closed doors of the
Keck garage as pressure mounted.

Vukovich finally managed to qualify the car, in nineteenth place,
deep in the thirty-three-car starting field. The so-called railbird
experts among the press and opposing crews claimed that his run
with the old Kurtis was over; newer machinery, the gossip went, and
more audacious drivers were prepared to displace him and end his
brief reign. No one had ever before won the big race starting so far
back in the field. The Mad Russian, they said, was finished.

Not quite. Driving with an intensity and an audacity seldom seen
in motor racing, Vukovich attacked as soon as the green flag fell. His
driving was relentless. He passed cars low in the corners, his left
wheels on the grass; then high, his right wheels nearly scraping the
retaining walls. He was a hunter. The rest of the thirty-two drivers were helpless prey. By the half-way point, he was leading, with only
McGrath and Bryan capable of hanging onto the frenzied charger.

Bryan had long ago learned from Vukovich's style and his fearless,
defiant approach to driving.

It had happened in a midget race years earlier in Vukovich's hometown of Fresno. Bryan had come north from Los Angeles to run at the
local track, where the Vukovich brothers, Bill and Eli, were famous for
their brawling tactics. During the race, Bryan was slammed by Vuke
as they fought for the lead-typical Vukovich intimidation move. But
rather than back off and give way, Bryan slammed back, shoving a
wheel nearly into Vukovich's cockpit. A small war began. Wrestling
for the lead, the pair repeatedly ramrodded each other in a raging
metal-to-metal duel.

When it was over, young Bryan climbed out of his car to see
Vukovich coming at him, his helmet still on. There would be a
fight-a tough middle-weight against a tall, raw-boned kid from
Arizona. Ready for war, Bryan was stunned when Vukovich's face
spread into a toothy smile and he exclaimed, "Son of a bitch. Now
that's how I like to race!" The pair shook hands, and a bond of mutual
respect was established.

As the 500 thundered into its final laps, McGrath had been forced
out of contention by two long pit stops. Bryan was left to fight the
champion with a crippled car. The front spring had broken, as had a
rear shock absorber. The Kuzma had become a high-speed coal cart,
unleashing merciless damage on Bryan's body. The pounding of the
cobbled bricks on the front straightaway caused the seat bolsters to
gnaw at his midriff, opening up bloody welts. His ribs near the breaking point and his hands worn bloody from fighting the steering
wheel, Bryan refused to lift, even when the throttle pedal shattered.
On the verge of collapse from the pain, the pounding, and the violent
shuddering of the wounded car, he soldiered on in second place.
Somehow he managed to keep pace with the flying Vukovich, who held the lead with his unique style, which embodied high-speed
power and grace.

As the checkered flag fell, the pair crossed the finish line almost
nose to nose-except that the struggling Bryan was a full lap behind
the winner. McGrath came in a few seconds later, in third place.

As Vukovich was receiving his winner's trophy and a long kiss from
Marie Wilson, the star of the popular TV show My Friend Irma,
Bryan was sprawled on the floor of his garage, semi-conscious.

His crew called for medical help. The Speedway medical staff dispatched a young nurse to take a look at the wounded driver. When
she entered the dark space, Bryan was lying next to the grimy, oilsoaked Kuzma that had almost beaten him to death.

She leaned over and asked, "How are you feeling?"

Bryan's eyes opened to spot a pretty face a few inches away.
Suddenly a broad smile swept over the grime. "Hey, babe, I'm doing
great! How about you?"

Such was the way of men who rode next to death, but refused not
to seize the essence of life in every moment. Bryan was a towering
physical presence with incredible hand-eye coordination. He was able
to adjust his expert dart-throwing skills so that he could pop carnival
balloons, despite the fact that the game's operators had purposefully
made their darts out of balance. He loved outrageous practical jokes,
including his notorious employment of powerful M-80 firecrackers
at unexpected moments.

But Bryan's injuries were too severe for him to run the next weekend at the Milwaukee 100-miler. Because the track had been paved
after seventy-seven years of running as a dirt horse track, and because
the Fuel Injection Special was being retired from competition by its
owner, Howard Keck, Vukovich was persuaded to take Bryan's place
in the Dean Van Lines cockpit.

He qualified the car on the pole, then retired with steering problems and returned to Fresno, where he opened his Vuky's 500 Service station. He had plans to open more around the Fresno area, and often
could be found pumping gas for his customers. He drove to and from
work in one of the two Indianapolis 500 pace cars that he had won.

In the meantime, Bryan regained his health and the Dean race car
seat, where he went on a late-season tear, winning four 100-milers in
a row and claiming the national driving championship with a burst
of audacity that elevated him to Vukovich's top contender for the
1955 Indianapolis 500 title.

In September I returned to upstate New York to celebrate homecoming at my alma mater, the tiny but respected Hobart Collage in
Geneva, a lovely little city planted on the shore of Lake Seneca, the
largest, deepest, and perhaps the most beautiful of the five Finger
Lakes. It had been five years since I had partied my way to a
"Gentleman's C" in English and History, and a reunion with my
classmates seemed in order following my ordeal in Korea. During my
sojourn, friends suggested that I attend a pair of automobile races
that might offer background for a story I was researching for Liberty
magazine on risk-taking in sports.

My first stop would be Syracuse, where the New York State Fair was
staging its annual 100-mile AAA championship race. I drove north
from Manhattan on the newly opened New York State Thruway, a
559-mile toll road that ran the length of the state and would serve as
a prototype for the $101 billion, 40,000-mile Interstate system the
Eisenhower administration would launch two years later.

The Syracuse State Fairgrounds sprawled on the edge of little Lake
Onondaga. The fair had been held each year since the early 1800s and
many of its pavilions, horse barns, and arcades dated to the turn of the
century, as did the one-mile horse track that served as a centerpiece
for the vast acreage. Men had raced cars there since 1907, but like all
the dirt miles it had been designed specifically as a horse track in 1880.

The state fair was in full swing when I arrived. I had to park
miles away from the giant, arched grandstand that lined the front staightaway. I was late and had to rush through the jumble of midways to reach the gate. The carny barkers, food vendors, ride operators, and side-show shills were all barking their wares to the throngs.
The heavy aroma of burgers and fries, sugar cones, and stale beer
attacked my nose. Calliope music belched mechanically from the
innards of the merry-go-rounds, thrill rides, and Ferris wheels that
dotted the luridly colored casbahs.

I reached my seat in the upper rows of the grandstand, protected
from the hot afternoon sun, to find the race cars already lined up on
the track. There were eighteen tall, audacious machines with glistening paintwork and swooping tails. They bore the brands of industrial,
hard-knuckled Americans: "Lutes Truck Parts," "Schaefer Gear
Works," "Auto Shippers," "Federal Engineering," "Springfield
Welding," and "Central Excavating" were painted on their long
hoods-gritty businesses with links to the tough-guy segments of the
American economy, segments that made things, hauled things,
repaired things. All the cars were hand-built, for the most part in the
Los Angeles shops of master craftsmen. They were working-class,
self-taught artisans who could fabricate, through sheer inspiration
and innate technical brilliance, an entire automobile from sheet aluminum, chrome-molybdenum steel, and magnesium bar stockwithin a matter of months. With a muscle-bound, 300-hp
Meyer-Drake/Offenhauser engine packed in their innards, these
beautiful but lethal machines were capable of speeds over 140 mph
on the lumpy straights of tracks like Syracuse.

The drivers lounged against their cars, awaiting the call to action.
They were all young, tanned, raw-boned men with flinty expressions
of faint defiance earned by those who face death on a regular basis.
The same look can be found on the faces of fighter pilots, bullfighters, high-steel workers-those who know they are tougher, braver,
and bolder than normal men and are prepared to die to prove it.

They moved among the gaunt, bare-wheeled machines, occasion ally joking with one another as they checked tires and steering linkages in preparation for the ugly battle that lay ahead.

All were dressed in wrinkled khakis, short-sleeved pullovers, and
T-shirts. They had names like Sweikert, McGrath, Bryan, Reece,
Thompson, Boyd, and Parsons-Anglo-Saxons from the California
suburbs and backwater middle America towns, where automobile
racing served as a way out, like boxing for ghettoized big-city Irish,
Italian, and black kids of the day.

Among them was a nail-hard ex-marine from Bellmore, Long
Island, and a hero of Bougainville, named "Iron Mike" Nazaruk; and
a pudgy Armenian kid from Oakland whom the other drivers gave
extra room. Ed Elisian was known as "Illusion" and had a reputation
for being unstable both on and off the racetrack.

At the back of the field, leaning against the battered blue number
81 Central Excavating Special, was another rebel. Rodger Ward was
the ex-pilot known for his incendiary temper, his profiligate gambling, and his bad manners on the racetrack. Only five days earlier,
during the latter stages of a similar 100-mile championship race at
DuQuoin, Illinois, Ward had barreled off the fourth corner and lost
control of the Central Excavating Special. It plowed into the pits and
instantly killed Clay Smith, the much-liked and widely respected
chief mechanic for the Agajanian team. Before the car tumbled to a
stop, it had injured eight more bystanders-including two children.

But that was five days ago. Ancient history. The car had its dents
pounded out and the blood wiped away, and the old warrior was
ready for another battle. Like most of the cars at Syracuse, number 81
had been around for years. Built in 1951 by Ohio craftsman Floyd
Trevis for Cleveland contractor Pete Salemi, the car had been Bill
Vukovich's first ride in Indianapolis and had carried a number of
drivers, both fast and slow, over its four-year career. Unlike modern
racing cars, which are replaced after a few races, cars like the Central
Excavating Special labored on for years-sometimes decades-until their innards fell apart and they were scrapped. Many would carry
more than one driver to his death or shatter his bones, yet would
return to the tracks.

For some, it was too much. Following the DuQuoin death of Clay
Smith, his driver and friend, thirty-five-year-old Chuck Stevenson,
quit racing on the spot. His car and Ward's had touched wheels,
which is what caused the fatal spin into the pits. Shattered by the
experience, the 1952 national AAA champion and two-time winner
of the stock car class in the Mexican road race would not climb into
a race car for another six years.

Syracuse, too, had taken its toll. In 1911 Lee Oldfield (no relation to the legendary Barney) lost control of his car and plunged
into the crowd, killing eleven spectators. Nine years later, the track
claimed the life of Indianapolis champion and French Grand Prix
winner Jimmy Murphy. Scores of others would be badly injured, in
part because the track funneled from a wide front straightaway
into a back chute barely more than two cars wide. Yet, skating on
the hard cinder surface-which became like polished black granite
after 100 miles of scuffing by the racing tires-average speeds were
climbing to 100 mph.

At the head of the pack was the cream-and-white Bob Estes Special,
the entry of Inglewood, California, Lincoln-Mercury dealer Bob Estes.
Its driver was a hard-eyed Angeleno named Don Freeland who had savaged the car around the evil old track to win the pole position. Next to
him on the front row was the burly ex-sailor Andy Linden, who packed
a reputation as a first-class bar fighter and something of a loner. Behind
Freeland in the second row, driving the Lute's Truck Parts car, was
handsome, cocky Bob Sweikert. Considered a major talent, the brash
twenty-seven-year-old had often trenchantly remarked, "I'll never live
to retire." Back in eighth, in the cream-and-red Hinkle, was McGrath,
while near the back was Bryan, chewing a cigar and waving a hand still
raw from his Indianapolis trial at a young woman in the stands.