Memorial Day Memoir

     

    As holidays go, Memorial Day is my favorite, or at least it used to be.  The reason it was my favorite had nothing to do with the purpose of Memorial Day.  It had other connotations.

     Like the end of the school year, the beginning of summer vacation, and the Indianapolis 500.  Many years, we had company on Memorial Day.  The aunts would come to decorate the graves of our grandparents.  They would come out to the farm, sit around and talk.  That was OK because we kids could be outside doing what we wanted rather than sitting around listening to boring conversations.

     What would we be doing outside?  I remember taking the old radio out to the shop, rolling open the door, turning up the volume of the radio so we could hear it in the yard.  What were we listening to?   Sid Collins, Freddy Aggravation, and others bringing us descriptions of The Indianapolis 500, the “greatest spectacle in racing!”  Vroom. . . vroom, vroom, vroom!

    “Back Home in Indiana”, “Gentlemen, start your engines!”  The pace car containing some celebrity leading the pack for the first lap, Sid Collins handing us off to the guy on the first turn, onto the second turn, and around the track to the home stretch and back to Sid and Freddy.  All the radio guys were yelling to be heard over the marvelous roar of the Offenhauser engines.

    Then, the green flag came out, the pace car escaped the track, and the rip and roar of the “Offies” ramped up, filling the shop and spilling out into the yard.  The names that still evoke the hum of a tightly-wrapped 4-cylinder engine include Parnelli Jones, Johnny Parsons, Troy Ruttman, Bill Vukovich, Eddie Sachs, Rodger Ward (a favorite), A. J. Foyt, J. C. Agajanian, and the Unsers, Bobby and Al.  

     Being kids, we couldn’t just sit around and listen, although we did a lot of that.  You could straddle an old tire and push it down into a sort of saddle with your rump and make a fairly comfortable seat.  Our attempts at building a go-kart were somewhat a response to the Indy 500.

    The bicycles took the brunt of our would-be racing ambitions.  To imitate the roar of the Offenhausers, we put cards, or cardboard cut from cereal boxes and the like, in the wheel spokes of the bike, held onto the wheel fork or fender brace by clothes pins.  Multiple cards got a better sound.  Just like the pros, you had to take a pit stop when the card wore out or clothes pin failed or got caught in a spoke.

     One time we even manufactured an oval track in the yard using tires to demark the infield.  Unfortunately, we had only two bikes, and my tricycle couldn’t keep up, nor did it lend itself to card motors, so it was largely a two-man race between my two older brothers.

     Our interest in cars and racing was fed when Dad took us to the fairgrounds in Hugo to see an auto Daredevil, “13-Year Old Tommy Holden” (we were pretty sure we caught “13-year old” Tommy taking a last drag on a cigarette before jumping into his car to do one of his four wheeled stunts).   

    It must have been in 1955 or ’56 because they were driving brand new 55 or 56 Dodges.  We were a little disappointed—they should have been Chevrolets or even Fords, but Dodges!?  No way!  What I remember was five or six yellowish Dodges ripping around the race track (intended for horses—no dished corners) weaving in and out in close formation at pretty high speed, kicking up a little dust.  Then there were boring interludes as the crew set up various ramps like a one-wheel ramp where Tommy or one of his other drivers would run the right wheels up the ramp and go down the track on the two left wheels after the right wheels left the ramp.  Some poor old junkers weren’t so lucky.  They were intentionally rolled by using the one-wheel ramp.  The object was to roll the car over 360 degrees, from wheels, to top, back to wheels.

     Then there were the jumps.  They set up two ramps and parked one of the new Dodges between the ramps.  Tommy took off around the track to get his speed just right.  Up the ramp he went, over the car, and came down on the second ramp.  I remember a crew member desperately flagging Tommy down on his first run because somebody noticed a flagged rope stretched across the track right about where the car would be airborne.  Another boring delay while the dangerous rope was removed.

     Then they moved the ramp and added a second car, and then a third.  On the final jump, the number of cars between the ramps I don’t recall, a sparkler in the car’s tailpipe was supposed to go off as the car made the jump, but the sparkler failed.  Fortunately, none of the jumps failed.

    The grand finale was a “T-Bone Crash”.  The second ramp was removed, two of the old cars used in the complete roll demonstrations were carefully placed the precise distance from the remaining ramp, and another old car especially equipped with seat belt and other devices to protect the driver, ran around the track to get up to speed, up the ramp, and crunch, right on top of the other two cars.  

     Crew members ran out, jerked open the car door, and after a suspenseful moment, the driver crawled out assisted by the crew and waved triumphantly to the crowd.  As I recall, the driver of the T-bone stunt was not 13-year-old Tommy.

     Of course after seeing that show, we had to have ramps and jumps for the bikes.  I seem to remember one of my brothers going over the ramp, hitting the ground and doing a summersault bike and all which sort of put a damper on the stunt driving.  Bike handle bars seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding the rider’s crotch in any accident.

      Over the years, a series of events dampened my enthusiasm for auto racing.  Lotus V-8’s replaced the Offenhausers, speeds reached 200 mph, too fast for me, and Chrysler entered an experimental turbine engine that didn’t sound like an engine at all, and it left the piston engines in the dust.  Moving Memorial Day to the last Monday in May didn’t help.  Now the race is on Sunday unless the weather interferes.  Sadly, Sid Collins, the voice of “the greatest spectacle in racing”, diagnosed with ALS, committed suicide.

     Perhaps the greatest disillusionment came at the hands of the television.  One Memorial Day we stopped in at Aunt Helen and Uncle Jerry’s on Memorial Day.  The big race was on TV.  Seeing the event on the little television screen couldn’t match what my imagination had created over the years by listening to the radio.    

     So my 66^th Memorial Day rolls around.  “Decoration Day”, as the old folks used to call it, now involves quite a few more graves to tend.  It’s still the beginning of summer, but now there’s work to do!  Better get to it.  Labor Day will be here before you know it.