Flyboys Down the Big End
by Nathan Leslie
Out of school in '51, I snagged a gig at Racer in San Fran, which was trying to keep up with the other dragster mags down the coast. It was a small time operation: only the Leones, the couple who edited the rag, myself, and one other part timer. Most of the articles were free-lanced by staffers for other mags, writers with ghost names like Stevie Smoke and Jimmie Jacks, and Racer shuffled them some dough on the side, and free tickets to the races. My girlfriend at the time thought my life was crazy back then, and I guess it was.
Well, Frankie told me to go down to Santa Ana, which at that point had the biggest strip in Southern Cal, except for the paved bed of the Los Angeles River itself. The word was some flyboy named Danny Swale challenged "Brute," the fastest motorcycle in America. This was according to its cocky-assed owner Owen Breen. This was before the dragsters figured out the slingshot design (then went back to the middie after the up top was snuffing out too many top racers), before they figured out the kind of bite a tire needs so it doesn't veer like a demon out of the gun. In those days a drag race wasn't a quarter mile, it was how long you wanted to make it. Events had a hush-hush, speak-easy feel, with every possibility the blue would storm the place down, and chase you out with lights blaring in the dust.
So I drove down the coast to Santa Ana just in time. Got a flat on the way down, and I was sweating it, but I stepped out of my car and the people were already gathered around the strip. The sun was low through the dust kicked up by feet and tires, and as I walked down there I spotted Breen over to the left in dungarees, no shirt. He was sucking on a bottle of red wine, sitting on the track in the dust. The dust rose around him, orange and flecked, as if he was on fire himself and his soul was doing a number on his skin and bones. He didn't have a lot of friends amongst the fans there who were mostly flyboy crewmembers or wanna-bees. Back then motorcycles were considered flimsy by most of the kids; they were for jellyfish. But this Breen had won six straight, and hit 140 when the dragsters couldn't get to 130 veering out of the go.
As I hopped over the bevel I could see that nobody was speaking to Breen, and on the other side Swale was dressed in overalls like everyone else, silently hunched on the bumper of his Ford V-8--a stripped down Model-T roadster (which I found out later had finned aluminum heads and three jugs on top of everything else). It was one of the ugliest rail jobs I had ever seen, so gutted and stripped it looked like it would split in half in the middle of the run. A cluster of his backers in overalls--buddies from his body shop--stood around him, mumbling softly. No rah-rah-rah atmosphere that evening.
Nosing into the crowd, I asked a scruffy looking kid in overalls what the prize was and he said it was for a one hundred dollar war bond, or seventy-five in cash--nobody ever took the bond. K.C. Wright had his black van and clocks set up at the other end of the strip. These were the days before chrondeks put flaggers and timers out of work. I waved, not knowing if he could see me through the dust.
I wanted to get some pre-race quotes from the guys, so I slyed up to Breen first, pad in hand.
"Owen, how do you think you will do today?" I asked, playing reporter.
"Not well, not well. I don't have it anymore." He didn't look up. He sifted some dust through one hand, and caught it in the other. I egged him on: surely he was pulling my leg.
"What do you mean? You won your last, what, five or six races in a row?"
"Six. Yeah, yeah but it's not feeling right," he said. "My senses don't feel right."
"How about the bike? How's your bike feeling?" I edged back. The crowd looked anxious for the race to begin. Guys were slapping their legs, saying they should have just stayed home and watched Man Against Crime.
"Bikes don't feel. Bikes are machines," he said. Evil look. Eyes fired. "Machines don't feel."
"Uh, right, right."
"The problem is Kresnik didn't speak to me today," he said. I thought Kresnick was his mechanic, or his wife or girlfriend, maybe his best friend--if he was sensitive. I had heard he was sensitive.
"My ministering spirit. Kresnick, slayer of monsters. I'm trying to feel his spirit, but it's not here."
"Is the race going to start soon?"
"When I feel Kresnick, or Ulgen." Who the hell is Ulgen? I asked. "His son," he said.
"What do you think of Swale?"
"Who?"
"Your opponent. The guy you're racing."
"Yeah. He's fine. I don't know much about him. This is good wine."
"Does wine help you?"
"Wine always helps," he said, and looked at me then. If he was kidding me, his humor was dry as a bone. I didn't think he was kidding me.
I wandered over to Swale, who struck a different tone altogether.
"So, Swale, your opponent over there isn't quite ready, I understand. What will you do--"
"I'll have to stomp him and his sissy bike."
"So you think you're going to win?"
"I know I'm going to win. I've seen the future, and in the future I'm going out to dinner with the money I earned, and I'm getting a cheap piece of ass so I can save up the rest and go to college someday." He elbowed me to say yeah, right.
"So you aren't intimidated by Breen's record?"
"What, he won ten in a row or something?"
"Six apparently."
"It's over now, man. My guy gave me a fajita tonight for good luck. I won't need to even turn the engine. The nitro will be my seat."
I asked him what his fuel mix was today, and he put his finger over his lips and said he would tell me after the race. He yelled across to Breen to get going, but Breen said he wanted to finish his wine (he didn't say anything about his spirit).
"Well then give me some," Swale said.
"I don't have an extra cup."
"I can drink from the same bottle as you can. I won't spit in it."
Breen sifted more dust between his hands, and seemed to ponder this. He blinked, and looked off into the distance dramatically.
"Okay, why not?" Breen walked over to us, and handed his opponent the bottle. Five minutes later the guys in overalls motioned them towards the starting line, but neither Breen or Swale seemed to care. They wanted to finish their wine in peace. Breen was a robust man with jet-black hair, and a wide scar across his forehead, which I thought probably left him in his curious state. Turns out he just fell in the shower. I don't know if it was the angle of the sun, or that California light, but his lips looked extra pink that day, as if he was wearing lipstick. He had dark shadows under his eyes, and his skin flared in patches of light and dark. I wondered if he was Eastern European--Hungarian maybe. He slipped his goggles down over his eyes. It was as if the goggles swooped me into some alternate state--I felt some quiver of captivation. Something. Time elongated. In the reflection of Breen's goggles, I could see my eyelashes, the rivulets of early middle age in my forehead. My hairline. I don't remember why I turned around--a gust of wind, a voice, a tinkle of keys--but I did. For just a moment I fixed my stare on Swale. And held it. Then back to Breen, who tossed the bottle into the dusty scrub.
Swale also had goggles dangling from his neck, and he slowly popped them on. But he did it in such a way that to him the goggles seemed more out of obligation than anything. I couldn't help but stare, as if I'd never seen a race before in my life. Swale almost swayed back towards his car, and I watched him. His roadster was configured so he was back near the rear axle,but not quite that far. Swale was a short man with reddish-blonde hair, and a thick Irish face. Yet, that's like trying to describe Mickey Mantle as tall and blonde.
Swale turned the ignition, and Breen turned his.
I walked a third of the way down the strip to see the action. And the revving began. A race was always louder than I thought it would be, and this one was not an exception. I took the cotton balls out of my pocket, and stuffed them into my ears, and they continued revving their machines. This was the first race I saw where they didn't slowly lead the vehicles up to the starting line first, before they shot off. They sat at the starting line, and just revved in neutral, and revved,and revved, louder and louder. The crowd held their hands over their ears. Elbows everywhere. The air reeked of smoke and oil.
A flagman in a ski-sweater walked in between the motorcycle and car, with a red stick. He held it high over his head. Revving. Revving. He twirled it around in the air, and Swale and Breen eyed it at the same time, and as his arm lowered, they dropped the hammer, squealed in a fury, and exploded, and were off towards the big end. The boom echoed behind me, as I chased them down the strip. I mean, Swale exploded out of there, but almost went off the course. He had that kind of control over the beast.
At this point I had whipped my camera out from my satchel, and I was snapping pictures as quickly as I could.
This was like the other early races I had seen between amotorcycle and a car, where the car couldn't get the bite that a bike could. I could tell right away that Breen was going to win.
His path was straight and true, and it looked like he got about a 140.
Swale was quite a bit behind, at least two car lengths. That nitro didn't give him enough, although he did have a real hauler. "Brute" was too much. Breen zipped on the flat out, and passed the line before him.
I ran all the way down the strip taking pictures, and got there a minute after they did. They turned around and came back and were in the midst of shaking hands. Breen still looked like someone had just kicked him in the balls, but Swale was smiling like a kid. The dust rose around them. I asked K.C. what they got, and he said 141 for Breen, 128 for Swale.
"128's not bad," I said.
"Not good enough," he said. "Gotta get more bite out of this rubber."
"Drive a bike," Breen said.
"I'm not driving a pansy machine like that," Swale joked. That was when Breen smiled--three seconds and it was gone.
"Well, I'm not going to race a fuelie like you, and get all burnt up to a crisp."
"That won't happen," Swale said.
"It will happen," Breen said.
"I just have to up the mixture, and then it won't matter how many tires I got. I was thinking about a forty-sixty."
"What did you use today?" I asked.
"Twenty-five to seventy-five. I'm still a little nervous about any more than that."
"See, nervous about fires," Breen said.
"Nervous about running off the strip, like I almost just did," Swale said. "More than anything that's what I'm worried about."
"Get some bald tires. Give you more contact," Breen said.
"Not a bad idea," Swale said. He shut his engine off, and we looked back. The crowd was walking towards us, yelling things we couldn't hear yet.
They were still a football field away.
"That was fun," Breen said.
As I said, back then the public perception was these races were all greaser kids and disreputables--which was partly true--but a smattering of flyboys had their eye on the sky. Ten years later it would be a whole different situation. A type of professionalism was in the air then. In '51 it was all fun and bragging rights. But, this was all before NHRA got its fingers into regulation and big money, before twin engines, before asphalt slicks, before mid-engine racers were passé, before nitro was pushed underground then brought up again, before direct drive, before funny cars,and streamlined fetishes, and parachutes, airfoils, and TE-440.
Seven years later: appearance money.
Even if Swale lost that day, the California crowd was inventive enough to beat the motorcycles off. Swale was the underdog back in '51, but by '56 most of the flyboys did enough tinkering and invention so they couldn't be called flyboys at all. Professionals couldn't make the kind of dough you can live on, but they'd work half a day at the body shop and spend the rest racing--not at Santa Ana anymore--but out at airports that leased to the whole of them, and sold concessions for a little extra. Golga airport erected stands that seated a thousand, and they filled them every race. If you could stand the thought of airplanes landing on your head, you were fine.
Speeds approached 170 for the first time. As Swale saw, the dragsters needed more traction, so they used bigger wheels in the back and smaller wheels in the front, and they didn't veer as much out of the gun. These boys also set the cockpit back behind the rear axle. All that drag racing is is weight distribution and traction...and souped-up engines. They got the third part by adding compression and displacement, changing the valve timing more, juicing up the ignition voltage, and polishing intake parts. And advertising helped for the first time. Cigarette companies. Beer. Oil.
In late '57 to early '58 a Joe logbolt from Florida named Jimmie Gattits was bragging about topping 176, which was the fastest yet. He had a set of 1930 Chevy frame rails and a 331-cubic-inch Chrysler hemi, and long header pipes that swooped out behind the rear tires. His front wheels were spokes because he said they were lighter and thinner, but they made his rail look ungainly and way too fragile.
And he called his dragster "Rat," which infuriated the Californians since they took it to mean desert rat. Stomped on their toes a bit. Then at the NHRA in Houston he pulled a Swale; he was eliminated, but he learned what he needed to do to win big later--a more fruitful enterprise in the long run.
This is why dragsters didn't mind losing as much as you'd think, because they were trying to figure out a better way. Trial and error. So down in Texas he met the granddaddy of drag racing, Ted Ratchet, whose car finished first.
Ratchet showed Gattis how to convert his engine to ninety percent nitro , instead of the twenty-five the other guys used. This made a difference.
Gattis wasn't about to shut up about how good he was either, which led to a challenge from Weller in Oklahoma. Weller was an ex-California flyboy, who moved out to Oklahoma, partly to spread the word of drag racing. He offered Gattis $450 just to show up and race in OK (he knew, of course, he'd have the stands in his pocket). Gattis not only took the appearance money, showed up, but he also happened to beat Weller by a second (the clocks claimed he reached 179!). The California boys went nuts. They said Gattis couldn't hack it in the desert, and that the clocks were fast out east. In Driver Swale called Gattis the biggest phony in the sport. Well, Frankie saw story all over this thing. To spur it on, he had me call Gattis and ask him if he was going to let some geezer like Swale call him a fake. Gattis didn't read the article, but said that he'd show up, only if Swale at least paid his traveling expenses. He told me he was too poor to offer Swale anything. Then Frankie asked me to call Swale and ask him what he thought of this idea. Well, it was like Swale already expected it.
"Tell that Mamma's boy I'll have five thousand when he gets here, and a chance to get another thousand if he wins."
The news was out, and I for one was stoked. I was still living in the same ramshackle apartment building as I was in 1951, and I was getting damn tired of following the sport I love for peanuts. I was torn: my artistic convictions didn't want the sport to grow any more than it had, but my financial needs had other things to say. My girlfriend was starting to make noise about marriage and commitment and children, none of which I could hack at the time. I guess I wanted it both ways. I wanted to make a better living and keep the integrity of racing. But it wasn't meant to be.
The odd thing about drag racing in California was the gang mentality. In the Breen-Swale race, you'd think Breen would have been the popular favorite since he won so many races. But California is a car state, not a bike state. I also thought they were an underdog state. They sided with the underdog in the Swale race, and if anyplace was rational about who it roots for, I thought California'd be that place. But once people found out Swale was going to race this newcomer Gattis, they didn't stick with the underdog at all, they stuck with Swale. Which makes sense since he's a local. But you'd think somebody would have sided with Gattis. I couldn't find a soul.
The race took place at Famoso, farther southeast of L.A., deeper in the desert. An entrepreneur named Willie Olsen had set up a strip, and he was raking in the profits. Five thousand people showed up for the Swale-Gattis showdown, each one paying five bucks. The ticket takers carried the money out to Olsen's car in grocery bags. And there were other racers there of course. Most of the dragsters there were early form slingshots, with GMC blowers right off the crankshaft. These were money rails, and Swale's new dragster "The Bear" was the fanciest of the bunch.
Not only was the crowd large, but it was unruly. During the time trials there were at least five fistfights in the stands. Beer bottles thrown everywhere. There was only one technical inspector, and he skimmed the dragsters in. The announcer taunted Gattis with, "How'd you like that one, Tampa trash?" and called his rail "lead sled." The fans threw bottles and debris at Gattis as he came up for his run. "Lead sled," they taunted. "Lead sled, lead sled." To make matters worse Gattis and his crew had difficulty adjusting to the air density, and traction. He ran a 170, but was outmatched by Swale's 179.
Neither one of the men had wives or girlfriends present, so I asked both of them if I could take them out to this steak place that night--I wanted to deepen my story. They didn't see anything wrong with that. Three days before, I finally ended the long-term deal with Elsie, and I was ready to let-loose with an orgy of food and beer. Masculine camaraderie at its best.
We got there, and each ordered a steak, and beer. The place didn't serve anything else--no vegetables, or bread, just meat and blood and booze. The place had wooden booths, and a wooden floor, so we felt like we were eating in a barn.
Gattis and Swale shook hands over the table, and talked about Florida while we waited for our dinners. Gattis was saying he wouldn't mind moving out to California himself since that's where all the action seems to be. But he had to keep an eye on his poor mother down in Miami.
"She's a pain in my ass, really," Gattis said.
"No, I'll tell you what's a pain in the ass," Swale said. "Go get a sick-as-hell father, then you'll know you're in it bad. Men don't deal with pain the same way. We bitch and moan."
"I know it. Those ladies are used to it I guess," Gattis said.
"They give birth," Swale said. Still sensitive.
"My papa have to give birth, he'd take somebody down with him."
Everything was smiles. The food came and we ordered more beer. We pigged out like the commies would drop the bomb the next day.
"So, I'm a journalist, but I'm also a fan of these races," I said.
"Well goodie for you," Gattis said, hawing it up, and elbowing Swale.
"So...." I waited for them to settle. "So, I was thinking, tomorrow's race is one race, but we'll see many before it's all said and done."
"Let's hope," Gattis said.
"I don't know. I'm thinking about hanging it up after this one. Go make babies, live by the sea," Swale said. I thought he felt he was the hot shoe around town, and he could afford to lose.
"Yeah right."
"Yeah right," Swale said, elbowing Gattis back.
"Yeah right," Gattis said.
"Right, so...where do you guys think racing's going now?" I was not expecting immediate camaraderie amongst sworn enemies. But Gattis seemed to be above competition. He was in for the energy, he said.
"Down the strip. Vroooooom," Swale said. He rasped for more beer. Gattis exploded, and I didn't think I'd get a serious answer out of them the whole night. I drank up myself. "No, no. What's going to happen is the whole thing is going to hell," Swale said. "We don't know what we're doing out here at all. We're still learning, I mean. It's a science. It doesn't look like a science, but it is. The crew has the control. We don't have any control."
"You're--" I started.
"We're figureheads in these machines. It's all about design and chemistry. How much nitro? How do you position the cockpit? The air density. The engine. We'll figure it out though."
"You don't have it figured out yet?" I asked.
"No, God no," Gattis said. "It's trial and error. Trial and error."
"And most of it's error," Swale said.
"Do you think more money is coming into the sport?"
"I doubt it," Gattis said. "I don't see why it would. It's such a small little group of people. Big money is only concerned with big money. It's too small." The waitress brought us beer, and we drank more.
"Yeah," I agree with that. Swale said. "Some money might come in, but not tons."
"But the stands are starting to fill up," I said.
"Yeah, but it's mostly because there's more racers. Friends of the racers or family," Swale said.
"I don't know," I said.
"Not all of them, most of them," Swale said.
"What about this money that you two exchanged so this thing could get underway?"
"No, that was just helping him out. Like he said, he has his poor mother to take care of. I don't want him coming all the way out here for free."
"That's gentlemanly of you," I said.
"We try," Gattis said.
"Do you think more people are going to get hurt because of all the different experiments you guys are trying?"
"No," Gattis said, "absolutely not."
On Sunday I didn't speak to either one of them. They were polite about the dinner, but I felt like they were handing me a rotten apple and telling me it's apple pie. Intuitively I felt like the sport was going to hell, and I felt I had reason for thinking those things. The beer was a bad idea. I went back to the hotel and called Elsie, and ended up having one of those spill-your-guts two-hour phone calls that I hated. In the end, we decided it was best to stay away from each other. I hung up the phone, remorseless. Then a thought: Swale didn't notice a thing. I fell asleep dreaming of the comfort of men.
The day of the race was overcast and breezy. The sun shot through at erratic intervals, disorienting me. The crowd was loud, and even rowdier--hardly friends and family. And what happened was unexpected both to the crowd, and me. Swale and Gattis actually got a chance to face off, since both of them beat their competition--Hully, Chance, and Wilson for Gattis, Vicks, Oren, and Trout for Swale. They got a chance for the trophy run.
And when Gattis and Swale approached the line the crowd lit up. The announcer taunted Gattis. Bottles and cans clapped around his dragster. Swale looked over at him, and Gattis nodded. The flagman always carries a big orange flag. He swooped it over his head, around, and around, and around, and he dropped it.
Gattis tried to charge away wide open. The tires burnt, smoke billowing out. I thought he'd kill his tires and collapse right there, but he jetted off, ahead of Swale. Swale's whole dragster seemed to shimmy, as if it could sense Gattis on the other side. Gattis nosed ahead on the banzai, and kept going. In a little over eight seconds, it was over and done with. Gattis won. The crowd went ape-shit. A simultaneous moan: I could hear it even over the engines. And when Swale and Gattis shut their engines off the crowd was dead.
But it turns out another racer got top speed that day. A fellow by the name of Lyle Johns got 178 with his chizler. Gattis got around 172, but his ET was a little over eight, which blew Swale and the California boys right away.
After the race, I caught Swale as his crew took the dragster off. He was smiling, and pointing to Gattis down the strip.
"Boy he can run it can't he?"
"What was that thing he did at the flag?"
"He just let it all go. I've never seen somebody do that. I thought the damn thing was going to explode."
"Me too, Jesus."
"I'm telling you."
A year later Swale was burnt to a crisp when the nitro in his engine exploded. He was using a Hilborn fuel injector for the first time. He survived, with multiple skin grafts, but he never set foot in the cockpit again. But fifteen years later his son would. Gattis died in an identical accident in 1962.
As for me, artistry won out in the long haul. When the big money came, I gave up following the flyboys, moved to New York, and co-edited an art magazine of sorts. Much later, I came clean, owning up to what tapped on my shoulder all those years: I found myself with a man in advertising, who lived with me on Long Island for nearly twenty years. Several years ago he died, and left me his restored Lagonda M45 and enough money to live on until I croak myself. I’ve had a good life.
These days, I take the Lagonda for a spin, headed east into the rising sun. In the morning the sun glints in my eyes, and I feel it's warmth, and I don't even wear sunglasses. But I never go as far as the Hamptons. I head back, and I have my cup of coffee, and a couple pieces of toast with jam, and sometimes I read the paper.
And when I'm sitting there at the table, mug in hand, those flyboys rattle in my cortex as much as anybody. I have to admit, as tragic as Gattis' death was (and he was hardly alone in flyboy catastrophes), for some reason the image that still sticks with me is that bottle of wine that Breen and Swale shared, that cylinder of glass passed hand to hand and back, tossed into the desert scrub, the way both men walked casually towards the starting line, goggles stretched tight as possible, already amassing dust in the desert wind. And in that picture I'm still there watching, burning for the race to begin.
terms used in story:
asphalt eater--top-performing dragster
Banzai--all-out run
big end--last end of quarter mile
can--nitro
chizler--chrysler engine
flat out--driving at top speed
hot shoe--top driver
jug--carborator
lead sled--slow car
rail--dragster
shaved--car ornamentation cut
spokes--bicycle wheels in front
trophy run--final race