HELL’S OWN ROADIES

by Wrenchski

(excerpted from: PULL THE PIN: The KeroseneBomb Reader ; an extract of THE ALCHEMISTS NEGRO: My 30+ Years As A Motorsports Bottomfeeder)

HELL’S OWN ROADIES

I like to think of my kind as populating the pit gates of America’s short tracks in groups of two or three countrywide… I think we once did. Underage-jeans/work boots/denim jackets over sleeveless t-shirts… nervously smoking cigarettes while hoping to appear large enuff to be 21… waiting for tired men in old sedans and borrowed tow trucks to pull in without their regular help…” HEY KID, are ya here to stooge, or just stand around lookin’ tough,” Ol’ Red would say that, and you’d hop in his overheating Caddy, pass the pit steward and for toting tires fuel and pushing his TQ midget up to the track you got free admission and an eagles view of the racing from a first turn area marked CREW ONLY… we were hell’s own roadies…stooges they called us, as in “Who ya stoogin’ for tonight…?” Checking air pressure, occasionally removing the warm-up spark plugs and puttin’ in the colder racing ones if the guy knew ya’ well ‘enuff to let ya TOUCH his engine… and brandishing bruised knuckle fists AFTER somebody objected to YOUR driver putting HIS into the wall or sending him spinning into the infield out of the money… we were HELL’S OWN ROADIES, boys… we changed rear end gears layin’ on towel-covered cinders, hot grease dripping from our elbows and all the girls too young for a driver fell into our waiting arms… the beer and whiskey flowed afterwards and tall tales, verities and balderdash fle… we would live forever, and nothing would replace us. Nothing. It was the sixties, into the seventies, and we never changed. The game did.-30-

UNSANCTIONED GODDESS

by Wrenchski

(excerpted from: PULL THE PIN: The KeroseneBomb Reader ; an extract of THE ALCHEMISTS NEGRO: My 30+ Years As A Motorsports Bottomfeeder)

UNSANCTIONED GODDESS

And the wheel was invented, probably by accident like everything else, maybe some nomad’s fire ring rolled downhill while he was moving it and he wondered what it would be like to RIDE that sucker…

He was gonna be the first racer and didn’t know it yet.

Fast forward to a time of mechanical mayhem.

Kids who found algebra too tame after evenings of making parts for old farm tractors discovered the old tin lizzie behind the barn and used it to invent motorsports…what was the reason to speed up the machine if you couldn’t prove your superiority by trouncing the kid next farm over… a whole sub-society was born.

They didn’t like the company of other people… when you tightened up a nut on a machine, it stayed tight or had a VERY logical reason for coming loose.

Not so with the human engine…it was born loose, and often stayed that way.

One of everything…one vehicle… one driver/mechanic… one toolbox, one spare whatever, a homemade towbar between the racecar and whatever you could borrow to drag the no-longer-legal-vehicle to the racetrack…

He was dirty, broke, smoked, drank, fought, fucked and pretty much did everything by himself for himself and didn’t care what anybody else thought about his actions.

He did not band, bond or hang around with a group…he was alone in his own thoughts… no desire to stand out in a crowd, his actions stood above them all and as groucho put it… wouldn’t join any club that would have him for a member.

And the promoters found him…people who could not show you a tangible product for their days work…they neither built, nor repaired.

They packaged.

They took yours… and they sold it to others… they sold the ability to stand right close to what you were doing, and bask in the dark sunlight of your deeds.

And you were left helpless by your inability to band together…you were rivals…you were combatants… you dreamed of ways to stand above crowds, not herd them together and empty their pockets.

The animals couldn’t run the Zoo. -30-