An Open Letter to My Dearly Beloved
Rob McCuen
I have loved you beyond all reason or rhyme, called your name out
loud in the dead of night, cursed you and at times, even hated your
guts. You have been the best and the worst of times. You have been my
most treasured friend and my worst arch enemy, rivaled only by the
dreaded John Patrick Fitzgerald, who I knocked clean out in our
church basement right after Sunday school when I was in the sixth
grade. My blood-stained Sunday best became a symbol of triumph....
Sometimes you can be the coldest brassy bitch of them all, but I always
let you back into my life. You are a bug-eyed six year old boy
sitting on his daddy's knee, he much younger than I am now-- me
watching the lines on his handsome granite face darken and deepen as
he witnessed the instant conversion. I was in love and there would be
no turning back. I was gonna be a Sprint Car star, the best who ever
lived and he knew he couldn't do a damn thing to stop me. He told me
he didn't raise me to off myself in a Sprinter and laid it on extra
thick by telling me sternly that my racing would surely break my
mother's heart. I hate to admit it but I didn't care. My heroes had
come to life at warp speed on that big black half mile of pure bliss
and there could be no turning back now. I even executed a somersault
off a picnic table in my own back yard when I was only five just to
prove to myself that I was bad ass enough to be a champion like Jerry
Richert, Scratch Daniels, the divine Jerry Blundy and Wichita's Harold
Leep.
She is all-night white knuckle drives
through blinding rain in ramshackle rides. As I carved through the
darkness at 100 mph plus, I knew I was asking for it, but I can never
seem to get to you soon enough. Three hundred and sixty-six nerve
jangling miles to the pit gate and get the hell out of my way or for
damn sure there's gonna be a high speed crack-up. The lady in black is
calling my name once again and I must never betray her. The now dead
as a doornail BatMobile and I once made the trip in just a tick over
five hours on no sleep, 33 Marlboro reds and pure rock and roll
adrenaline right after I had put the final touches of pop shimmer
and brutality on the first and only White-Hot Tizzies release. She
beckoned me and I came as I always have. I'm a slave to her powers but
I don't mind. She is my seductress and she owns my soul and that's
exactly the way we both want it. She is me wearing my poor mother
clean out for two tortuous months until she ultimately buckled under
my relentless pleas and consented to let me live in a pup tent for
three whole days at the '71 Nats. I headed straight for Ernie's Bar
and Tap in Ainsworth and scored two cases of iced down PBR. I abused
my new found freedom something fierce and woke up on Saturday morning
in a mound of hay at the sale barn with a throbbing skull and
horse-flies the size of eight-balls having an all you can eat
breakfast buffet on my face. I didn't give a damn cuz I'd found a new
brand of religion in the form of Jan Opperman. I had met him face to
face the night before and even though the GREAT ONE had rendered my
star-struck ass completely speechless, all was right with the world.
Twelve hours later gorilla-willed hillbilly Dick Gaines took Jan to
school on the final lap in Karl Kinser's butt ugly white with red trim
#11 and you better believe I took that crap seriously. I despised
Gaines until I met him 15 years later, long after crashes and father
time had eaten him half alive. Me and my bud Greg scored a gig
stooging for Ron "the Barrel" Fischer after befriending a couple of
dope smokin' frizzy haired fiends from the hills of Indiana known to us
only as" Frog" and "Mummy." They were a blast and I'll forever be
indebted to those beloved stoners for taking us under their wings into
their brave and warped cartoon world.
Neither wild
Arkansas razorback pigs, a summer long sentence for smashing the
family '67 Mustang into a barn when I gassed her just a wee bit too
deep into a mid July dry/slickee or a pissed beyond reason mama could
keep me away the following August, and I immediately betrayed her
already flimsy trust in my judgment by stumble bumming into the Arizona
Barn and discovering up close and personal how the racers of the day
spent their "down-time." I don't mind tellin' ya-- it was pure poetry
to behold, decadence in its purest form. Hell yes, gimme all ya got
and then some. The likes of Darin' Darrell Dockery, Billy Shuman, Jay
Woodside and Big Dick Sutcliffe played high stakes poker with dough
stacked a foot high while making goo-goo eyes with the painted
lady tramps of the evening. It seemed to me that these ladies were up
for just about anything-- just as long as you spent your Saturday
nights draped in Nomex and skid lids. Meanwhile, no bullshit Kenny Weld
was busy obsessing over Bob Weikert's already iconic Beefmobile, his
blacksmith forearms buried deep in the entrails of their home-built
grain-fed hog. Wow! Kenny Weld. Say his star-crossed name in hushed
tones, damn it all to hell and back. And thus began my lifelong
love/hate with Kansas City's brightest shining star. My distaste didn't
melt an ounce until a few years ago when I was told that old Kenny
had slogged through a driving rain in the downright freaky forests of
Montana mountain country to tell Jan that his little bro Jay had been
smashed to death at 27 in a heat race during his Knoxville debut. I
introduced myself to Kenny right after he got out of the federal pen on
cocaine and gun charges and let's just say he was anything but
friendly and leave it at that. I was wounded but I bore no grudges. By
then, I had sussed out that Weld wasn't being a prick, his fertile
mind simply percolated on whatever plane an anti-social super-genius
operates on, and he flat didn't relate to mere mortals on any
level unless you could help him get fast again. The sport had passed
him by and his rad new creation handled like a dog sled and was a major
buzz kill at the pay window, although it remains one of the most
innovative and downright awe inspiring beasts ever built. There's a
photo of the proud new papa sitting in his just completed baby and
Kenny never looked more at peace with the world. In 1973, while Oppie
partied with his carnie drug buddies, Kenny kept his freakishly pointed
nose to the proverbial grindstone and dominated the field to earn his
fourth and final Nats title. With or without those brutish wings,
Kansas City Kenny had their sorry asses covered big time. I hated the
winged wonders at once and 37 years has done little to soften my stance
on the subject. Then as now, the damn beasts are so greased lightning
rapid they can barely even race. These days, the doggone things are
more guided missle than race car and you point 'em more than drive'
em. Granted, wings have saved hundreds of lives and extended many a
career, I'll give 'em that, but wings are little more than fuel for a
bonfire to this old-skool boy from the hinterlands of Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa. Heroes turned to zeroes and legends and pretenders alike got
airmailed to that great racetrack in the sky. The fast guys came and
went, as did my idols. Lonnie Jensen, good old Ray Lee, Earl "the
Pearl" Wagner, Fast Eddie Leavitt, burly Des Moines blacksmith Ralph
Blacket and hell bent for leather Roger Rager. Hell, even Gary Dunkle
was fast for a New York minute. T.J. Giddings suddenly got life in the
exreme lane figured out and Rocky Hodges could scare the bee-jeezuz
out of Beezlebub himself. The Wolfgang era kicked in and Randy Smith
didn't let a little old thing like being blind in one eye stop him
from snaring seven track titles, nor did the daily reminder that
Smith's own daddy had gotten his arm torn off by one of these surly
bitches. Gary Scott's gory front stretch nightmare proved to be the
final nail in the casket and signaled the end of a brutal and
macabre last chapter to a beyond colorful era that we shall never see
the likes of again. These were MEN baby!
Then one
day I looked up from my twenty-something stupor and realized that some
of these heroes had become my friends. I moved the incomparable Jerry
Blundy to tears of pride with tales of his impact on my life as a hick
from the sticks who wanted to grow up to be just like him. My words
became weapons and upon graduating from a Missouri cow college, I would
gaze forlornly at the back chute from my last row perch in Section
M and wonder just what in the hell I was gonna do with my life. My
beloved mom and pop are both gone now and I've fallen in and out of
love dozens of times, raised a model son and toured the eastern
hemisphere in a beat up Volkswagen van, playing my songs to hipsters,
geeks, drugged up zombies and pretentious Euro-trash. I recently found
the love of my life and the very first thing I'm gonna do is bring my
ravishing beauty of a bride straight to Knoxville so she can find out
what I am really made of. Jesus Christ Almighty God, now I know what
I'm gonna do, I'm gonna come back to Knoxville and then someday I will
die. Amen.