[updated:LAST EDITED ON 14-Jan-02 AT 10:50 PM (EST)](this will likely be the last little bit of tale spinning I do over the next several days, as everything is about to get unplugged and relocated starting tomorrow. I have contacted the Arizona Sprint Car Series, to see if I can get some info to help fill out the story some. But in reality it isn't about the technical detail as much as it is the people and the sport itself -Wolf)


"Yep, we're missing a few bolts!"

That revelation came from Bobby, as he crawled along under the van looking things over.

"Seems like they wanted the driveshaft, or maybe the tranny for some reason. And we're gonna need another starter and a fuel pump, they got them too." Bobby back-crawled out from under, and sat up.

"It's a good thing we got there when we did!"

Joe agreed. As fast as all of that had happened, he could imagine what little would have been undamaged before very long...

A horn tooted, and a familiar Bronco rolled into the yard. Jim waved his hat, as he stepped down from the truck. They waved back to him, and Bobby reached for a rag to clean the oil off his hands.

An oil pressure sender had failed, and left a 70 mile an hour smear all along the bottom of the truck from midway to the bumper. But at least it wouldn't rust where it had gone...

Joe greeted Jim, and shortly after so did Bobby.

"I hear you have a Sprint Car now, what are your plans for it?"

Bobby shrugged "Dunno, it's in pretty bad shape, and you know the kind of superstition that gets attached to something like that..."

Jim nodded agreement, but Joe was of two minds about that. Joe had looked at the frame a few times when he had a chance, and the welds he saw on it looked like the work of his old mentor himself -

Clean, very tight overlays that looked like a row of clamshells laid in a row one on top of another. Whoever had built that frame knew their stuff, and if it was Ann's dad - that man took his time about it.

Over and over again he began to feel that it should be put back together. But he had not mentioned it to Bobby yet.

 

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 15-Jan-02 AT 08:34 PM (EST)]Somehow, a local newspaper got ahold of the story, and decided for lack of any other stories to rehash the whole thing out of local sensationalism.

They hounded Ann once they found her address, stuffing microphones towards her until she fled into the house...

There were some reaction pieces from the area racers and fans too...

An old man from Tuscon:
"I think that car has a curse on it, really. The man what built 'er died in that thing..."

Joe schmuckatelli, at a local bar:
"Man, that car has blood all over it! I sure wouldn't wanna drive it..."

Even from a seasoned mechanic/pit crewman:
"I can't say that a car can be cursed, they're only as good as the drivers, you know. But racers tend to be a superstitious bunch..."

When the camera crew showed up at the ranch, they were putting the final wraps on the story. They already had all of the spin for it that they wanted (they thought).

"And so, do you plan to race the car again?"

(Shoving the microphone at Bob)

"I had not really thought about it, I was only doing what the lady wished at the time, and we have not touched or thought about it much."

Another reporter from a competing channel pushed forward "Is it true that the car killed several spectators? Can I have your comments on that?"

"Look, it's only a race car..."

Joe spoke up just then, quietly, but firmly. And in retrospect, that was what crystallised all that was to come:

"The car you guys are talking about was made by a master craftsman." He looked around, and the reporters were suddenly silent. They were hearing the conviction in Joe's words. "There is NO such thing as an inanimate object, whether it's a car, or a block of wood, or a BOWLING BALL fer krissakes that has a jinx on it. It was pure bad luck."

"Ya know, you can get in an Oldsmobile, or a Lincoln Continental tonight on your way home from dinner out. And you have no guarantee that a train crossing light won't fail, or some drunk won't barrel into you. But if that happened, it would be explained away differently wouldn't it?"

"At least on a race track everyone is sober, and travelling in the same direction unless something goes wrong. There ain't a damn thing wrong with the car Ann's dad built that can't be put to rights. And it would be a perfectly safe race car to drive when it was done!"

He paused.

"Better than perfect, maybe. The man who welded THAT frame up knew a heckuvva lot about what he was doing. He probably forgot more about structures than I will ever learn..."

The reporters dug for a little more, but that was pretty much how it played at five o'clock that night...

And having stepped in it, Joe wasn't sure if he had bit off more than he could chew.

But Bobby was proud of what Joe had said...

 

Bobby was amused, Joe on the other hand was about mortified watching himself from the cameras eye, earlier that afternoon.

"Well -" said Bobby "I reckon that settles it! We're goin' racing!"

"Uh... Just like that? I mean..." Joe waved at the TV and everything in general "All I did was say it deserved to be rebuilt..."

"Yep!" said Bobby "And it couldn't be a better sprinter. I'd say we lucked out." He pulled on a Coors.

"In fact, win or lose I bet we're famous!" He winked.

Joe didn't know what to think right then...

On the tube, they switched to the nightly weather.


Fifty miles away, Ann had her hands to her lips. The young man, the one who had been so caring...

She heard the words he said, and they made a kind of sense but she didn't want to accept what they meant.

Because that would mean that what happened had no reason, that it was...

"...a block of wood, a bowling ball for christ's sakes..."

And he looked in a way like papa Fred, or like Paul before he began to drink too much...

She staggered to her bed, and threw herself on the covers - her thoughts all at chaos with themselves.

 

Outside, in the star filled night, an owl flew towards the shed by the trailers at Bobbies place.

It may or may not have been the same one that Joe had heard late that night on the way down from Flagstaff....

The locals in the area sometimes believed that a "Spirit Friend" can take the form of an animal, and follow where the one it is attached to goes. Most of those people were Native Americans...

But Joe never heard the Owl hoot, later on that night. He was that tired.

 

In the clear chill of the morning, Joe was outside by the old racer, looking at the damaged parts as his entourage of fuzzy kittens mewed and rubbed themselves around his blue jean cuffs...

Funny about the cats, they seemed to have a come-and-go loyalty, depending on how noticed they felt at the time...

There was at least one bad bend in the underworks of the frame, and Joe figured that piece of tubing had to be replaced. The question became what kind and grade of steel was used to assemble it in the first place, but there were ways to find that out short of sending it off to a lab.

The first touch of the cutting wheel spewed a mass of distinct looking sparks that pretty much told Joe what he wanted to know about the piece. Ann's Dad had used high tensile strength metal to put this frame together. And that was exactly what he thought a man of such craft would do. This project was going to have a price on it, but he didn't much care about that.

In the big trailer, Bobby heard the grinder, and for a moment was wondering what was going on.

Someone come early, with an emergency repair?

But then he remembered the news last night. And he thought he knew what could make a man get up and out earlier than usual.

And he was glad about that. So he put on some coffee and tucked in his shirt on the way out the door...

 

They worked on it when they could, for the many months to come.

The engine was Bob's bailiwick, and he looked at it long and hard during the tear-down. Stock rods, but at a point he showed them to Joe, and he agreed that they looked as if they had been hardened by heat-treating them.

They were the standard length so that they would conform to the local rules. Also - the heads had not been modified beyond the standards set down by the area racing commission. It was a motor built to have advantages, that was true. But one built for a specific set of rules and regulations - so that it would be the driver, not any advantage in money that could be spent on superior motor parts, that would ultimately decide the outcome of any race it was a part of.

In some circuits, there were such things as "Claim Brackets". That meant that another competitor could claim your motor, and both the engine you ran and the one being traded for it (with a thousand bucks as a fee) would be torn down and inspected for legality.

So it didn't pay to build one with unfair advantages.....

It was after all a sport. And the minds of those who created it intended just that - that it should be a competition based on skill alone, and not a showcase for manufacturers or large corporations.

It was a sport for the common man. But if it attracted uncommon people to it - that too was well done.

 

Jim made the introductions, as they filed into the "Waffle House" on I-40.

"Bobby, Joe..." He said "This fella is John Townsend, his poppa used to race at the Canyon Raceway. I think you might want to hear what he has to say..."

And over a few Western Omelets, the rest of the puzzle began to come together.

John was twenty four, but he had raced when he was much younger, his Dad had run a stocker that had done about average right up to the day he passed away in the pits one night.

It was sad, but age and excitement had made inroads on the old mans heart, until it just quit suddenly between races while a motor was being changed out.

That was years ago, but the still young man remembered every bit of the legacy his father had wished for him.

And he wanted it back.

And he wanted so much to make his poppa proud.

And this was a shot at it, he could almost taste it....

Bobby and Joe listened, knowing that whatever happened would be set in history like a stone in the middle of their lives. And they agreed to try it, no matter how it came out.

Because Joe was a welder, not a driver. And mechanics never made the best racers - they always worried about the engine more than the win. Bobby knew that, and still it was hard to let go of the car he had put so much into. Even though he still thought of it as belonging to some other man.

-Yeah, there was a huge trust factor here.

But to make a true "TEAM" happen calls for differentiated skills, and Jim knew that (perhaps) more than anyone else there.

John told them straight up -

"Look, I may not be the best, but I'm not the worst. And I will do my level best to make you proud."

 

It seemed to squat on the trailer, like a caged bird....

Built for speed, and torque in the corners - so that it could claw it's way in to the center of the track even as the centrifical forces tried to fling it away...

It was gloss black, but had some orange markings that almost seemed to cry out to the world "I AM HERE TO RACE!!!"

It was not the most pretty car there ever was, except from the eyes of those who had put a part of themselves into it.

And it was the afternoon of "Race Day".

The car would never look as it should except in one specific set of surroundings, on the track...

And today it was going back there, for good or ill.

It was going home.

It was about to come to life again...

 

End of part four - comments welcome.

As you can see, I have taken it back up - and will continue it.


~Wolf