Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (32 page)

While Cal’s wife stretched her arms out to her approaching daughter, she said, “Don’t let him kid you. He’s better than Petty, or any of them!”

“Come on,” Cal said as he blushed and shook his head. “I am not.”

“He is too!” His wife, Angel, lifted Cally up onto her knee. “He may be quiet when he’s around people, but he’s a tiger on the track. Ask anyone who’s seen him–or raced against him. They’ll tell you.”

Cal’s father snatched a framed picture off the mantel and shoved it in front of me. It was of Cal in his racing suit, and he was kneeling next to a three-foot silver trophy with a stock car on top. Behind him in the picture was a wall full of trophies and ribbons. His father said, “That was over a year ago. He’s got a bunch more since then.”

Angel set her squirming little girl down to toddle across the carpet. “The only thing holding us back is sponsors.”

“But that’s changing.” His father handed me a picture of the car zooming past a big grandstand filled with fans. “With the way he’s winning these days, they’re going to be lining up at the door to get their logos on that car.”

Later that evening, I ran into Cal at the beer tub. He seemed a lot more relaxed than he was earlier in his father’s living room. When he pulled his arm out of the ice water, he held out a bottle of Miller Lite to me. “That okay for you?”

I twisted the cap off the bottle and said, “Your family is mighty proud of you.”

I expected a blush like before, but this time there was none. Cal was serious as he nodded his head. “I’m a very lucky man. I wouldn’t be where I am now, if I didn’t have my family.”

He was taking a swig from the bottle in his right hand when I asked, “Do you make a good living racing?”

“No. I’ve been winning a lot of money lately, but most of that’s eaten up getting there. Got to pay the pit crew, mechanics, parts, and transporting it all to the track.”

I interjected. “And the cost of the gas!”

Cal choked a bit on his beer. “Yeah, fuel! It’s not getting any cheaper. It takes a lot of money to race. No, I don’t make a good living racing. Not now, anyway. But like my wife said, once we get ourselves a few good sponsors, we’ll be doing all right.”

At that moment a hint of cockiness emerged from him as he tossed the empty bottle into the nearby trash. “You know what it cost to get your logo on Robert Yates hood?”

“Not a clue.”

He pulled another bottle out of the ice water as he slowly said, “More than ten million dollars.”

“Wow!”

“That’s just for the hood!” He flung the bottle cap in the trash. “A stock car has a lot of space for advertising. And when you’re winning, they pay big bucks for a spot on it.”

He held up his Miller Lite bottle. “Wouldn’t I love to have that logo on my hood.”

I saluted him with my beer, then we clinked bottle necks as I said, “Someday.”

“Hopefully, soon,” Cal sighed, and we both tipped our bottles up.

After swallowing, I asked, “So, what kind of mileage do you get with that car?”

He nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “A couple miles a gallon.”

“So it’s not cheap to run a long race like Daytona.”

Cal took another swig of his beer before he said, “What you burn in the race ain’t nothing compared to what it takes to get there. You’ve got time trials, qualifying rounds, and practice, practice, practice. A guy has got to do a lot of driving to get to Daytona.”

I tipped the bottle toward my lips, as I asked “How many homes do you think you could heat each winter?”

“Huh?’

CHAPTER 13

U
P
T
HROUGH
B
UFFALO

F
ROM THE DARK, HE STUMBLED
into our camp and blurted out, “I need your help!”

It startled us. We were inside a picnic pavilion in Fireman’s Park at Kennedy, New York. And this man was so drunk he had to lean on a picnic table to keep from falling over. We didn’t hear him walk up because our pressure cooker was making so much noise.

I snapped, “What do you want?”

He was middle-aged, wore a rumpled brown suit coat and needed a shave. Still leaning on the table, he wobbled as he slurred, “I’ve got a bet on the bar at the steak house that says you’re the kind of people who would bring your mule in for a drink?”

The village of Kennedy only had a few businesses in it. One was the Cross Roads Steak House. Although it was on the other side of the highway, a couple hundred yards from our camp, every now and then the scent of grilling beef would waft through the pavilion. Earlier, while cutting up sweet potatoes for the pressure cooker, Patricia said, “I sure wish we could afford a steak.”

I told the drunk, “I’m not taking my mule in a bar.”

He flopped his butt down on the bench, then leaned over and pounded the top of the table with his fist as he slobbered through, “I’ve got forty bucks over there that says you will! It’s yours if you’ll do it. And they’ll buy you both a steak dinner.”

Patricia slipped her arm around me. “Honey, maybe we ought to consider this.”

This was trouble. The money was one thing, but a steak dinner? I knew my wife wouldn’t let me pass it up. She turned to the man. “What do you want us to do?”

“Just take your mule over there and walk in the bar with it. That’s all.”

She turned to me and started rubbing my forearm. “Sounds easy enough.”

“It’s not worth getting Della hurt for a couple of steak dinners.”

Patricia drew back from me as if I had insulted her. With hands on both hips she snapped, “In no way would I ever put her in danger! You know that!” Her tone softened. “I just think it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. If we get over there and you think it isn’t safe, we’ll turn around, come back and have sweet potatoes and cabbage for dinner.”

We decided to lead Della over, and if it looked safe–and she went in on her own accord––we would do it. I insisted, “But it’s up to her.”

When we walked into the brightly lit parking lot, all twenty patrons at the Cross Road’s were in it clapping. While we walked toward the barroom door I heard, “They’re really going to do it.” “This is awesome!” and the usual, “Man, that’s one big-ass mule!”

The plan was for Patricia to go in first and check the place out. It had three wide wooden steps up to a large landing. Then we would have to turn left and go up two more steps to get in the barroom. I was standing at the foot of the first three steps, holding Della’s lead rope, when my wife came out and said, “I think it’s okay. But maybe you should check it out.”

Still holding onto Della’s lead rope, I stepped up onto the landing to see what it looked like. When I turned around to hand the rope to Patricia, the Big Sis put her right front hoof on the first step and climbed up onto the landing. I had to leap into the barroom to get out of her way. Then she spun to the left, and the next thing I knew Della was standing at the bar beside me.

The place went crazy. Through the laughter, cheers and applause I heard, “Did you see that?” “Holy shit, she did it!” “Buy that mule a drink!”

Della sure knows how to make an entrance!

I knew she didn’t want a drink. But she liked the peanuts and potato chips a lot. And after a couple bags of each, she calmly turned around and faced the door. She was ready to leave. Then, as if she had done it every day of her life, our big girl stepped down to the landing and gracefully leapt to the ground. Enough slumming for her!

For us, every state line was a cause for celebration. New York’s was extra special because it’s the state that Patricia was born in. I was traveling with a broad from the Bronx.

When we crossed into New York from Pennsylvania, the most obvious difference for us was the roads. The ones in New York all had wide shoulders–many of them paved. It sure made walking a lot easier.

We also noticed that more people stopped to visit with us along New York’s highways than they did in Pennsylvania–maybe because it was safer for them to pull over.

Another thing we noticed was the appearance of poverty. In New York it looked like people were poorer than they were back in Pennsylvania. More homes were in disrepair, and many of the farms had tumbled down fences with barns that leaned in one direction or another. I was particularly struck with how many homes had been added on to and never painted to match the rest of the house.

Lots of Amish live in western Cattaraugus County. The appearance of poverty was even more pronounced among them. Although it was October, nearly all the women and children we saw were bare foot–many in ragged clothes. And we didn’t see the cheerfulness in the children’s faces like we saw in the Amish communities back in Ohio. All of the Amish kids in New York seemed to be sad. Not once did any of them wave at us from the back of a carriage.

The few Amish adults we did talk to were much more serious than any we had met so far. Back in Ohio, it seemed like every Amish person we met
had a spice of humor about them. They all seemed happy, but in New York the Amish we met were mostly solemn.

In the Buffalo suburb of Lacawanna, we camped behind the Lake Erie Italian Club. The club house was a large, flat roofed, red brick building that looked like it could have been a bowling alley. Surrounding the club was a paved parking lot that could hold four-hundred cars. On the backside of the parking lot were several grass covered acres with shuffle board courts, bocce ball lanes, a huge covered barbeque pit, picnic shelters and places to play volley ball. Behind all of that was a wide open grassy area adjacent to a small forest. A perfect place for us to camp. Patricia went in to ask, and the manager was quick to say, “Sure. Make yourselves at home!”

Patricia and I had just finished pitching the tent, when I looked toward the club house and saw a group of four men sauntering across the parking lot in our direction. All wore suit coats, but none had ties on. They were all dark complexioned, with slicked-back hair at varying stages of gray, and everyone had a drink in his hand. It was the thickest of the men, the one with the cigar who said, “Louie was telling us about you, and showed me that paper yous gave him. I’m president of the club.”

“I hope it’s all right if we camp–”

A large ash fell off the cigar as he waved both arms. “Oh sure, sure, sure.” His voice had the deep rattle of a long time smoker. “No problem! Stay as long as ya want! This is real interesting, this thing yous are doing.”

They all spoke in that Italian/American dialect which demands the use of hands. While we talked, I couldn’t help but wonder, who among them was
the man
to know in Buffalo? They all told us if we needed anything, to let them know. It was the president who said, “Go up to the bar and have a drink on me. Tell Louie I said so.”

Lots of grass for Della to graze on, a good distance from the highway, water nearby, and drinks waiting for us at the bar–A perfect place to camp.

“Just watch out for the poacher.” Anne said.

She lived next door to the Italian Club and had read about us in that morning’s edition of the
Buffalo News
. “Some nights there’s more than thirty deer out here,” she said. “And there’s a poacher who drives back here in the middle of the night with his lights off. Then he shines a spot light on the
herd, blinds one and shoots it. We don’t know he’s here until his gun goes off. By the time we get up, he’s got his deer in the truck and driving off.”