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The Year of
Living
Vicariously
1971.
It
was a rotten year, mostly. We were still mired in Vietnam,
Sneaky Pete Robinson was killed testing ground effects on his
AA/FD digger, Nixon and his henchmen were taking liberties
with the Constitution, and I was a million miles from
anywhere, a homesick and clueless 20-year-old kid, drunkenly
stumbling about the bars of An Jung-ri, Korea, trying to
escape my rotten army life through the chimera of chemistry.
My self-centered universe ended about six inches from my nose
and it was a truly dismal, depressed, foul-tempered place to
live. Ah, but ya know, there's a silver lining in every beer
bottle and at the end of that miserable year something
happened that restored my faith in humanity and, not
incidentally, my good humor: they ran the Cannonball Baker
again.
Now,
this wasn't any ol' run-of-the-mill race like the Indy 500 or
the 24 Hours of LeMans. No stringent rules and petty
bureaucrats to enforce them here. This was an anarchistic
tweaking of authority's nose, a sharp stick in the
metaphorical eye of those we would today call the "politically
correct." This was a race that took fortitude, endurance and a
serious lack of judgement on the part of its participants.
This was the Cannonball Baker Sea To Shining Sea Memorial
Trophy Dash and it had but one rule: whoever drove a vehicle
from the Red Ball Garage in New York City to the Portofino Inn
in Redondo Beach, California, in the shortest amount of time
was the winner.
Car
crazy and race obsessed, burdened with both perceived and
actual oppression at the hands of the olive drab crowd, the
in-your-face Cannonball caught my attention like a tracer
round on a dark night. And I even had a team to root for: the
Polish Racing Drivers of America, those beacons of truth,
justice and having a good time with life, had entered a trio
of stellar drivers with a plan to drive across country
non-stop in a van stuffed full of gasoline tanks. Having
joined the
PRDA not long before and been granted a coveted lifetime
membership (in return for $3), I roused myself, if only
temporarily, from my stupor and cheered from afar as the great
event took place.
There
were other Cannonballs. The `72 race, for example, was a
corker, with the PRDA entry --a V8 Vega -- aparently cruising
to victory until the gods of racing broke it only an hour from
the finish line. That race also had an all-female team dressed
in pink pant suits, and three faux priests in a Mercedes. But
it's the `71 event that I remember so fondly because it came
at a time in my life when I needed a little cheering up, which
it was uniquely qualified to do.
The
race report here first appeared in the March 1972 edition of
Car and Driver. It is of course copyrighted and no
commercial use is allowed unless you have the permission of
the magazine, or you can be sure a horde of humorless
corporate lawyer toadies will descend upon your woebegone head
and demand you cease and desist your activties. I wrote the
sections on Brock Yates and Ernest "Cannonball" Baker. Use
them as you will, but I'd appreciate the credit.
--John
Mikes
Somewhere in Minnetundra
Sometime in 1999
These pages brought to you by the
Frostbite
Falls Chapter of the Polish Racing Drivers of
America |