THE ONE BEER TO HAVE

by Wrenchski

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

A one-two finish is what I’m after now…

Running a two and a half car stock car team when you are the only one able to find which end of the screwdriver goes in the screw is not fun…or funny. I’m running around trying to get all the tires back in the racks while the team owner (2nd car drivers mom) is bitching about how if her (nearly retarded) son drove THE CAR WITH THE GOOD PARTS IN IT HE COULD WIN SOME RACES, and I’m thinking everybody thinks their kids a winner… then why does SHE think JR’s penchant for 12 year old girlfriends is perfectly normal when he’s a couplea years short of thirty… tires in the racks, where’s my jacks and stands and gas cans… O’sweaty is having his picture taken AGAIN with the goddamn checkered flag, and JR is in the spectator parking lot with his hand up Lolita’s skirt AGAIN… they were out there between the heats and the main event… I need a helper old enough to open my beers and pour them down my throat… mind made up next week O’sweaty gets the number 2 car into the top three AGAIN and JR wrecks the number 1 car for the third time as anything with the least bit of stagger and left side weight causes him to careen from the outside across the railroad ties marking the inside of the turns ruining the wheels and most of the suspension…he says it’s because the steering wheel is too big… (Mom bought him a tiny Grant chrome “racing” wheel for his B-day)

Fat balding man waddles up and offers me an open beer…

It’s that goddamn cheap ass stuff my parents drink…only reason that brewery is still operational is they’ve discovered firemen cops and other civil servants are EXTREMELY loyal IF you give them free kegs for their social gatherings… to NORMAL people it tastes like it was strained thru an old gym sock.

I slap it out of his hand and tell him to GET ME A REAL BEER, DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING OFF-DUTY COP, OR WHAT? BRING BACK A BUDWEISER, FER CRISSAKES… He stammers and walks away. Toward Mom…much gesticulating and talking…he walks off…

Moms asks me what I did to the guy in the Hawaiian shirt… Morry… Morty… huh?

I ask why she cares…

It would seem unbeknownst to me She had invited the DISTRIBUTOR of the previously mentioned swill to a lil’ after-race party for the brilliant idea of attempting to uh…date rape him and put the arm…lips…whatever on him for the expressed idea of buying say, a couplea MODIFIEDS and moving the whole deal into the big time… uniforms… trailers… trucks…tires… AND NOW I’VE RUINED EVERYTHING AND I’M FIRED…

I have to reply that firing a volunteer is difficult at best… especially when he DOES ALL THE WORK, AND OWNS ALL THE GODDAMN SUPPORT EQUIPMENT AND ONE OF THE CARS.

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-