Running The Roads-With Bruce Springsteen’s Racing In The Streets In Mind 

 

By Seth Garth

 

Nobody knew exactly how Stu Stewart acquired his knowledge and love of fixing up automobiles, taking basic scrap heaps and making them run to the sun, making them the gods’ own chariots, but he was the “max daddy” king hell king of the 1950s golden age of the automobile night around Fritz Taylor’s old working-class neighborhood, the Acre section of Gloversville. Stu, a few years older than most of the guys who hung around with Fritz at Vinny’s Variety Store over on Millard Street, was strictly a “loner,”  a guy whom Fritz would make the other guys laugh at with his imitation of Stu’s Western  slowpoke cowboy walk, really an amble, with his tight ass jeans, his package of unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes complete with matches tucked inside the cellophane, his shit-kicker engineer boots that maybe if Fritz thought about it was the cause of that bramble amble walk, and his whip-chain hanging from his back pocket for all the world, the teenage world, the small shops and offices of downtown world, and the copper world too to see.

Hold up though Fritz only did that imitation when Stu was not around and the coast was clear for Fritz’s freaking skit. Reason: if Stu had ever found out what Fritz was up to, despite the age differences (16 to 22), despite the size and toughness differences, and despite his professed desire to only use that whip-chain for show Stu would have made mincemeat out of Fritz’s silly ass teenage face. The reader does not believe this? Ask Red Riley from over on Sagamore Street, a tough guy who had actually done a stretch at Joven Boys’ Reformatory and learned to be tough or would have wound up being somebody’s honey boy, who said something negative about Stu’s latest honey (girl, okay) and wound up needing twenty-seven stitches quick in the emergency room or he would have died when Stu wailed that whip-chain across his face one night. And Stu, well, Stu just walked away like he had swatted a fly or something. Red took his beating like a man, never said word one to the cops when they came by, a well-thought out tradition in the Acre where the cops were no man’s friends.          

So Fritz knew exactly when and to whom to show his classic imitation. Mostly though everybody, Fritz included, hushed up when Stu came cruising by Vinny’s to start his night’s work. And if the night was a Friday or a Saturday then that night’s work would start by Stu coming by to select a “sidekick” for the evening, a guy who would act as “starter” for the inevitable “chicken run” which would end the night (or really the next morning’s dawn). See Stu in his youth time had been just another guy hanging around Vinny’s, waiting, well, waiting for something but if nothing else than to be old enough to ride a “boss” car around so that he could pick up a “sidekick” at Vinny’s like Hacksaw Jackson did before Stu took over the franchise after Hacksaw had picked him a few times. Stu was only continuing in Hacksaw’s footsteps and so every young guy too young to have wheels of his own, an inability to put a “boss” car together out of a scrap heap or too poor to have a father front for the price of one, Fritz in that latter category, would come to attention waiting for Stu’s nod that signified he would be the sidekick that evening.

(The nod Fritz would realize later was really another side of coming of age, of manhood age in the Acre. Early on guys would greet each other with fulsome hugs as a sign of boy solidarity. Later it would be some short verbal greeting like “What’s up, Jimmy boy.” But as a boy came to manhood his demeanor changed, because almost unconsciously sullen and unresponsive taking a page from Marlon Brando’s or James Dean’s playbook as if words rather than the “nod” were unauthentic by then. This “nod” thing by the way was not all-encompassing, was reserved for guys who you thought were “cool,”  guys who you might not hang with but knew in some capacity enough to make that social distinction. No nod, worse no nod from gods with boss cars like Stu was the kiss of death if you had any aspirations to lead an adventuresome life in the Acre. Strangely when Fritz was in the Army during hellhole Vietnam War time that same nod served that same purpose and it was there that he learned that nod was something of a universal coda among working-class male youth of the day.)      

The only other question on any given night was which one of about six different cars Stu would show up in. Maybe better which parts of the one of those six cars he showed up in would still be intact since he was a born tinkerer, was forever amp-ing up every car. One night Fritz was picked, had received the nod (which unlike in his silly imitation of Stu he took with silent glee as was expected or he would not have made it to the car door before Stu took off) so he knew the full story of what went on in an average Stu night.   

You would never find Stu cruising around aimlessly during the day since as far as anybody knew he held a day job down at the shipyard which was the lifeline of the town’s economy where he was an ace mechanic refitting worn out engines and such. But come dusk around his trailer where he lived, a place he had been brought up in before his mother split with some guy one night and hadn’t been heard from since and he just kind of stayed anyway, you could hear whatever car he had decided to ride that night getting revved up to perdition. Fritz’s night was the night of the two-toned (red and white) ’57 Chevy which even then was a car that young guys were ready to die for, would be the car they wished their fathers would pass on to them but usually wound up being traded in for some new model like a so-so 1960 Chevy or 1961 Dodge something.

Once Fritz opened the door and sat down Stu was off, was off to his first run through around the town and then out a few miles toward the ocean at Adamsville Beach to see what was cooking to see if there were any unattached honeys out there to spice up Stu’s evening. (It could, as rumor had it, have been attached honeys as well since at least once such Jane saw Stu, saw Stu’s car really and abandoned her guy since Stu was whatever his reputation with the women only a fair looking guy, just average so it had to be the car that the girls were dreaming about riding around with Stu in and were willing to give whatever he wanted as part of the price of being seen in the boss car of the town. That was Fritz’s take on the matter both before and after his first sidekick night as the guys around Vinny’s speculated on Stu’s appeal.) On the first pass no action, nada, so they headed to the Dew Drop Drive-In, the gathering spot for youth nation in the area.

There things heated up considerable since the “Dew” was the spot where guys with cars with or without dates, guys and gals without cars went to have a quick snack before the night’s exertions. It was there that Stu spotted Sandy, Sandy McGuire, nothing but a fox, who was a senior at the high school and who every guy around had dreams about even Fritz although he knew she was out of his league. Sandy was sitting on one of the picnic tables Mister Mooney, the owner of the Dew Drop, had put on back of the drive-in in the summer so that the kids would not be blocking the door as respectable people, meaning people there for a dinner and not some car-hop provided tray astride their car, could get inside to folk down their dough for a serious feed. Sandy sitting, as usual at that early time of night, talking to the three or four girls that she had come over to the drive-in restaurant with in somebody’s father’s car.           

Fritz swore the following was true, and to this day he swears that it happened just like that on the occasions when he has gathered in with some old corner boys who hung around Vinny’s and they speak in almost reverend terms about a cowboy grease monkey like Stu. Strangely reverent since they had had mostly successful professional careers or like Fritz been skilled tradesmen, he a small shop owner in the printing trade. Stu stopped his Chevy a few feet from the picnic tables and without saying a thing, remember Fritz swore to this, he simply pointed his finger at Sandy and drew it toward him. A minute later Sandy, also not saying anything, gathered up her sweater brought against any night chill and purse and headed toward Stu and the car. Sandy got into the car through the driver’s side and planted herself in the middle (in those days before seemingly universal bucket seats you could get three across the front seat if necessary), and Fritz took “shot-gun.” It took a few minutes after Stu started the car up for anybody to talk, talk above the radio which was playing some rock and roll song by Chuck Berry as they rode down Lemon Street which told Fritz they were heading back to Adamsville Beach. Then Sandy who looked almost as good up close as she did from a distance with a nice clear face and long brown hair, long slender body and nice legs and who smelled, well, smelled like jasmine or something, asked Stu about how he had put the car together, the “boss” car she said with a certain excitement in her voice.       

Fritz wasn’t sure what to make of what Sandy was talking about since it was one thing for guys even sixteen year old guys like him to go crazy over boss cars it was another for girls to do so. Then Fritz asked Sandy how she knew so much about cars and through that question why she took up Stu’s silent offer to “take a ride.” Sandy laughed and said boys and men for that matter were not the only ones who got excited over cars, and that everybody knew that the number one “max daddy” in town was Stu and that she knew at some point Stu would hone in on her (she didn’t use that word according to Fritz but that was the idea). Oh boy, Fritz thought right then this was going to be like taking candy from a baby for Stu (although he too didn’t use that term but that was the idea). By the time they got Adamsville Beach Sandy was talking excitedly a mile a minute over the radio about the car, school, her home life and what her so-called boyfriend Matt, football Matt would think of her riding with Stu in his souped-up dream Chevy. Yes, this would be like taking candy from a baby as Fritz would find out later when he would have heart to heart talks with girls and they would tell him that they talked a lot when they were getting sexually aroused but were not sure what to do about the situation.

Stu quickly parked the car down the far end of the beach, the Seal Rock end known locally for eons as the lovers’ lane of the area and parents and children should keep away, far away after about dusk, actually probably should stay away in the daytime too just in case some randy couple decided they could not wait until the sun went down, and asked Sandy with a bit of leer if she wanted to go for a walk. She hesitated for a minute then said yes. He didn’t ask Fritz to tag along so Fritz knew the deal was going down, the “do the do,” the local term for having sex learned from a song heard by Howlin’ Wolf on the radio, was in progress. About a half hour Stu with a slight grin on his face and Sandy not looking particularly disheveled like he had seen some girls once they “went for a walk”  down to Seal Rock resurfaced and got in the car. Fritz who had been sitting on the seawall about fifty yards away followed suit.

After depositing Sandy back at the Dew Drop into the hands of her girlfriends about eleven o’clock Stu told Fritz they were now ready for real action, ready to scour the highways that led to Adamsville Beach to see who wanted to take on the max daddy in a “chicken run” and maybe “win” some girl away from the sucker who only was riding with whoever was the king of the hill and have some real fun, ready get down on the “do the do.” Fritz kind of timidly asked Stu whether he and Sandy had done the deed, had had sexual intercourse. Stu laughed and told him that he would learn something about girls like Sandy if he listened to what he said. He had asked Sandy if she wanted to “do the do” over on a secluded area of Seal Rock. She hesitated, said she was not sure, didn’t want that boyfriend Matt, the football player to find out she had been having sexual intercourse with him. Stu, knowing the ways of such “good girls” looking for minute kicks suggested she give him a blow job, you know suck his dick. They walked a little further behind some bushes and Sandy without hesitation pulled down the zipper of his jeans, put her sweater on the ground and got down on her knees and did her work. Good work, very good work Stu said for a “good” girl.

Here was the lesson Stu thought Fritz should learn. He was sure that he would get some action out of Sandy just the way she was talking up a storm in the car probably nervously wondering what she would be expected to do. The problem which Stu was not sure about was that big bull of a football player Matt who might be tougher than him, might see red despite his whip-chain and so he proposed that blow job scenario. And she hopped to it seeing that she would not have to do the other deed. Good girls like Sandy grabbed that opportunity, liked the idea of an off-hand blow job that would not create any sexual danger of pregnancy and would not get around school so they could keep their good reputations. Stu also said that from now on any time he wanted a quick blow job she would be bound to oblige him. Beautiful. But the beautiful thing for Fritz having been part of the scene that night was that Sandy would also have to go down on him if he asked her to avoid any talk around school. (Fritz said would take Stu’s advice a few months later and mention what he wanted and expected from Sandy one night at the Dew Drop and while she was not that happy about it, remember this was Fritz talking, she obliged him in the woods in back of the Dew Drop. A couple of times later as well before she left at the end of summer for college a few states over. Make of that what you will.)                 

Stu said while good girls like Sandy were an easy way to have quick sex and he admitted that she had skills in the oral sex department, sucked his dick completely dry and swallowed the whole load when he erupted, probably grabbed her skills from fending off a million guys who were looking for something more with a few licks to show she was a sport and not some ice queen virgin he was still up for something more from some boss car driver’s slut. So they was looking for some “chicken run” action. (Guys around the Acre were glad to get a blow job just like any other guys but they, and the girls too, didn’t see oral as the same as regular missionary-style intercourse so nobody really bothered to call any girl “easy” or a slut on that basis.)   

Now in those days “boss” car guys didn’t pay attention to some kind of newspaper reports or radio or television broadcasts to find out who was the king of the “chicken run” night like those outlets would be anything but clueless about such subterranean doings but learned who was who out on the backroads late at night. That was why Stu was driving like god’s own angel to see who was also driving those deserted causeway roads at the near end of Adamsville Beach where by day families would throng to cool off from the heat but by the late hour would have totally abandoned the area to the night-takers, to the wild cowboys who had more guts than brains (as Fritz would figure it out later but then he was crazy for the rush of going fast in a “boss” car). Up the road about two miles away from the beach and the entrance to the causeway he found his meat, found what he was looking for a guy in a home-made hot rod that used to be, parts anyway, a 1949 Hudson but which looked that night like a hell-mobile.          

Stu had heard about Lonnie Devine, about that souped-up Hudson and how old Lonnie from Riverdale, several towns away heading west toward the inland towns, had taken down Jimmy Jason a guy whom he had barely beaten the year before when he had a 1953 Dodge souped-up. Had heard too that he had a wild, unpredictable girl riding with him, Laura something. So Stu approached Lonnie’s vehicle and gave him the “nod” (this “nod” an extension of the corner bot nod mentioned before granted to “chicken run” foes known or unknown). That nod signifying that he, Stu wished to run the roads, see what was what. Lonnie answered with his nod and the game was on.    

This “chicken run” is what Fritz or any other sidekick was brought on board by Stu for, to either act as starter or to ride the ride and tell him instantly where the opponent was so he did not have to look right or left. This night Fritz would ride the ride since Laura on the flip of the coin was declared the “starter.” Well, you know there is no story, no story that Fritz would find worthy of telling fifty some years later like some earnest schoolboy if Stu had lost so you know that he won. Blew that Hudson away by a couple of hundred yards. That was not the important part though for him that night. Nor was the fact that Laura, after Lonnie’s defeat at the hands of on Stu Stewart, coolly walked over to Stu’s Chevy and just as coolly sat down in that front seat right next to Stu and began fiddling with the radio dial to get some new rock and roll station in Boston. Nor was the fact that as Stu related to him later he had his way, his “do the do” way with Laura who turned out to be twenty times more skilled at “real” sex than Sandy was at oral sex. No, what was important when the deal went down and Stu had a serious sex partner Fritz was left at the seawall on the nearside of Adamsville Beach find his own way home at two in the morning. Blessed are those who run the roads racing in the streets.