This is Not Going to End Well Part III

This is Not Going to End Well Part III

The Aftermath

Seeing your wife and children in shock and tears through the back window of an ambulance, if you're not a total fool, is one of the most sobering things that can happen to you.

I don't remember walking...I guess I walked...from the car to the ambulance. I do remember sitting on the stretcher and answering questions that seemed a bit surreal. Of course I knew who I was, and what day it was, and where I was. I did realize this was part of the EMTs' normal checkout procedures, but it still seemed almost satirical somehow.

It was a slow ride back to the paddock and my pit. I'm not sure they had brought the battered hulk of the car back yet, but I quite clearly remember Sherri rushing the ambulance and pulling the back door open. An attendant gruffly told her I was ok but they were not through with me yet...and then literally pushed her back and closed the door. While he continued to question me I could see her as well as both kids through the window. The picture is etched in my mind forever, and in it the kids are...still kids.

Someone later made the comment that the incident must have been scary. I replied that that emotion was about the only thing which was not going through my head while it was happening. Ans after I was exhausted and depressed, but that was about the extent of what I was able to feel. And while I do have photos that two people took of the car after the incident, I am not going to share them with anyone including this blog. Suffice it to say that there was no longer a single untouched panel on the car, and that two of the wheels were broken.

My “recovery” began when we left the track. We were staying at John Lewis's place in Windsor, and we took a shortcut off Highway 37 to avoid 101, called the “Lakeville Highway.” It passes rolling farm and pasture land, and another permanent memory is the setting sun reflecting off a red barn in a bright green field (it was Spring, remember...the only time in California that grass is anything but golden brown)...with two chestnut horses grazing nearby.

“God,” I thought, “It's good to be alive.”

I knew that Sherri and John had conspired to drive me to a hospital to be checked out...mainly to verify that I was not bleeding internally or something like that...probably a reasonable precaution though I did feel a bit silly explaining to a baffled emergency room physician why I was there and what had happened.

After that I needed to regroup. Sherri strongly urged me to sell the car immediately, which I knew was not the right move. For one thing it was worth nothing as a wreck. But the bigger issue was, as I told her, I needed to get back in it and race it at least one more time. I feared that if I didn't I would not only regret my cowardice for the rest of my life, but that it might freeze me with fear in other areas, including the far riskier situation we ignorantly face on public roads every time we turn the key in a car.

But I shoved the car in a shed I had originally built for Jason's Crosley...and did not open the door again for six months. I really need to think things through. Why had I gotten into racing to begin with? What did I get out of it? How much did it really mean to me and how much risk was I willing to take?

Then I accepted Peter Giddings kind offer to move it to his place in Alamo and for John deBoer, who was working for him at the time, to begin to bring it back from near death.

If you have ever read a vintage racing magazine or been to practically any vintage race in the world there is a very good chance you know who Peter is, or at least know his cars. He's another of those wonderful souls I've met through cars and about whom there will be other stories as this blog develops, but you can get a solid non-personal preview here:http://petergiddings.com/. Pretty heady stuff, eh?

John was doing great work on the car, but it was going slowly. He was sensitive to the car...managing to pull out the totally crushed front fender. I had asked Jack Hagerman to look at it, as John was only able to work on it in his spare time. Jack said I had better get it away from John before he “ruined it,” pointing to the fact that the redone fender had an edge where it joined the hood surround which was sharper than the one on the other side. Jack wanted to scrap the original metal and build a new fender. John was trying to save as much of the original car (actually all of it) as possible.

I did not like Jack's answer nor that he disparaged someone else's work. I looked closely at a photo I had of the car taken on the day it was picked up from Otto Linton in 1952...and that difference between the sides was clearly visible. These cars were hand built, after all, without computers, by workers hammering metal over, at best, wood forms, and at worst a bag full of sand. Clearly Guido and Giovanne weren't talking to each other as they worked on either side sculpting the car in Torino.

Next Ernie had me take it to Kent White in Nevada City. Known as the “Tin Man,” he had done body work for Bill Harrah. While more than competent, like many in the restoration world, Kent somehow sort of drifted out of business competence, and among other odd things he did, somehow managed to lose the original door inserts I brought him so he could use them as templates to correct the dented doors. Ernie advised me to get the car from him before anything else went wrong.

Ernie and his neighbor then finished the body work and the car was painted in his neighbor's garage. John had provided me an “incentive” to finish it by August...he had been asked to put together a non-judged display of various Siata models for Pebble Beach and wanted mine as the sole 300BC.

Wow.

The only issue was...this was four years later. That's how long the rebuild took. Meantime the fear I did not experience during and after the wreck kind of crept in. I was OK on the street, but the couple of rides I took with friends on the track made me very uncomfortable. But I always think it is tougher to be a passenger than a driver and put at least some of my nerves down to that. I recall when I was going to New York on business riding in a cab was terrifying, but when I drove in Manhattan in my rented car it was no problem.

I figured out quickly what the rules were:

1. Never be influenced by the guy behind you blowing your horn
2. Don't look in the rear view mirror. Anything that far back will take care of itself
3. Right turns on red are illegal in Manhattan, so the only way to get around the corner is to start moving as slowly as possible as soon as your light turns green. The sea of pedestrians who immediately step off the curb to cross the street will just flow around your car without problem
4. Lane markings mean nothing. There will be a truck unloading blocking 1 ½ lanes anyway. Just drive side by side with as many cars as will fit the roadway

The problem riding in a cab is that you can actually see all this mayhem going on around you. When you're driving it is invisible to you.

Gary Winiger and Ernie were worried about me, and conspired to have me co-drive a two hour enduro with them at Sear Point in Gary's Siata. This was a bit of a confidence builder, but limited. With this and my own return to racing I found my driving skill was not a concern...but for two years or so after I could not go into a fast turn without a second of “heart freeze” wondering what might break, fall of the car, and kill me.

Though John had selected the cars for Pebble, the Head Judge had the final call. My conversation with him was a bit peculiar.

“Is the car red?”

“No, it's blue.”

“Good, we have too many red cars.”

“They're Italian, for heaven's sake.” (I thought this but didn't say it).

“If you have a roll bar is it removable?”

“Yes.” thinking it is not the easiest thing to remove.

“Good, we would like it displayed without it. What color are the seatbelts?”

What color are the seatbelts? “Black.”

“Good. Does it have braided oil lines and if so would you paint them?”

“NO!!!!” This madness has to stop. It's a race car!

I was deeply honored for this invitation to what is the most prestigious car show in the world. It was also one of the most boring days I've ever had with a car.

My race group at Monterey runs on Saturday in alternating years, and on Sunday in between. Fortunately in 1991 we ran on Saturday. That evening Adin and I pulled the roll bar out, so when we got to the venue and drove in all we had to do was a quick polish to remove the track grime. It was literally a ten minute “spit shine” of the car. Adin had borrowed a video camera and later in the day a woman looking at the car remarked that “they must have spent all night cleaning it.” You can hear Adin giggling on the recording.

But he laughed even harder when Ralph Lauren's people arrived with a Bugatti trailer queen. Two guys in white lab coats then jumped out and began brushing grass blades out of the tire treads with makeup brushes. Adin was laughing so hard he was in tears.

Spectators were very polite..and totally intimidated. A father kept admonishing his seven year old daughter over and over again..”don;t touch the car. Don't touch the car,” as she stared into the driver's compartment. The diminutive size of a Siata always fascinates the younger enthusiasts.

“Would you like to sit in it?” I asked her, receiving a shy nod in return. Whereupon I scooped her up, swung her over the door, and deposited her in the driver's seat, to a chorus of several gasps including her dad's.

Before that Saturday I had only put one race on the car...the weekend before, known as the “Prehistorics.” Jamie Phiefer, ahead of me, had blown the Excelsior motor in his Berkeley, something he seemed to do with alarming regularity. I think he must have cornered the market on these motors. He had dumped oil all over the track, but it was not visible. As I entered turn nine I looped the car. While people assure me I was nowhere near the wall all I seemed to be able to see was white concrete, and had no idea what had happened. I must have hit the berm of the corner, as there was and still is a small dent under the rear fender...on my newly done four year restoration!

As I drove into the pits my friend Terry Matheny was wagging his finger at me.

“I saw what you did,” he chided.

“What the hell was that?” I asked. “I never saw an oil flag.”

“They didn't know it was there until you hit it,” he replied. “They threw the flag when you were halfway through looping.”

I told Sherri “this thing is a crap shoot. I don't care how good a driver you are. A good deal of it is outside your control.”

One day, in another entry, I'll explain why my return to racing became a permanent part of my life rather than just an attempt to recover my nerve.

18th Green, Pebble Beach, August 1991
That's Adin Behind the Car
He was 14