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Grand National America’s Golden Age of Motorcycle Racing

BOOK REVIEW:
by Doug Stokes
Author Joe Scalzo
Motorbooks International
ISBN 0-7603-2064-0
Pages 192 Size 10x10+/-
Black and White - 200
$34.95US

Duarte, California, December 24, 2004 (WDB). ... PRE-GRID: There’s always something achingly familiar about the best of Joe Scalzo’s racing books.

QUALIFYING: There’s something about the matter-of-fact way that Joe uses racers’ nicknames, about how he layers on detail upon detail, and smokes up emotions that only someone who had been there might know. 

These are not those public “secrets” that everyone has heard, these are none of the oft-told folk tales … And certainly not any of the stuff that’s been kicking around for years. 

This is the square shit, recalled, recorded, and (on paper at least) RE-LIVED by a guy who was there when it was all going down, and, who, happily enough, possesses the straight-ahead, square-shouldered, let-it-fly, wound-tight, eyes-open, teeth-clenched, gut-level writing talent to relate it back to us in what seems for all the world like real time. 

An example, Scalzo’s long out-of-print “Stand On The Gas” is the indelible record of American Sprint Car competition that, from page one, deliberately kicks clay right in your face, makes you nauseous from the smell of burning rubber and raw methanol, and then proceeds to get you all queasy airsick from the all the unscheduled flight time that his subjects collected before the crash wagon or the coroner collected them. 

That heart-hammering book from the 60’s laid bare the lives of the men who pounded those hulking pogues into the horrible high banks of Winchester way way too fast and then held on by sure dint of cussedness. 

Scalzo spit out the stories of the racers who raced each other with such a ferocity that most now believe Joe was exaggerating wildly … No way, no how, in fact, if anything, some think that this guy may have been playing it down a gear or two to make the telling a bit more palatable for the general public.

A couple of Scalzo “car” books that are still very much in print are his:  “American Dirt Track Racer”, and, “Indianapolis Roadsters 1952 – 1964” both of these MBI-published volumes pack a wallop as well.

MAIN EVENT: In his first new book in too damn long, Scalzo, as only this rangy sumbitch can, stirs up some sincerely serious stuff about one of the most exciting and easily the most dangerous form of two-wheel motorsport there ever was: Grand National Motorcycle racing during the turbulent 60’s and the changing 70’s and 80’s, when riding was the benison.

Scalzo’s cast of characters reads like some sort of beatific freak show.  Being fearless to these riders is what breathing was to any other mortal.  They don’t see the world, feel pain, understand physics, react to the weather, think about money, family, friends, possessions, or any other human function like any other sub-set of humans. 

Scalzo proves that above antic anthropology over and over on page after page in this one.  These guys (and a select few gals) raced because they didn’t know anything else that would work in their lives.  They eked out livings and/or made fortunes and no one really cared which was which.  Ride the motorscooter as hard as you can, suck down a pack of cold beer, get obliterated, chase a few skirts, heal up, borrow some money and/or give it all away, get to the next race, and just simply try to live to tell about it …
(at times, that last item on these racers’ “things to do” lists seemed almost optional.)

Scalzo knows the secret handshake for this tight club of characters and their keepers and (herein) spills it for all to take note of in this lovely logbook.  No one can take a hopped-up paragraph deeper into a turn than this dude.

And the photos.  Matching Joe’s words with almost eerie accuracy, the evocative illustrations chosen for this book back up the author’s imagery flawlessly.  As a side note, we’re told that even the Scalzo likes the way that the editors at Motorbooks chose, sized, and placed the 200 photos that leap off the pages at the reader all in nice untidy full-tilt-crazy broadslides.

If you happen to feel a little used up after reading a couple of these chapters that’s pretty easily understood.  Riding with these hounds and hotshoes is plenty hard on the body, even when you’re simply stroking along in an easy chair in own living room! 

Wham, Bam, Holy Shit M’am! 

Get a tight grip for this impossibly canted over, track-scraping, ass-thumping motorcycle ride … Write a timid or scholarly tome about this era and you’ll betray everyone and everything that’s holy.  Obviously, Joe did not do that here!

SOUVENIRS: Here’s Scalzo describing the great Gary Nixon:  “Gary the rattlesnake of a Grand National idol whose bantam power-to-weight ratio was killer, and who for good measure comes up supercharged with gallons of guts, plus such powerful goodies as balance, timing, reflexes, tenacity, and eyesight. 

… And, finally, Gary the redhead raver of a Harley-Davidsonphobe whose mascot of a great white police mutt supposedly was trained to empty its bladder into Milwaukee Vibrator toolboxes, and whose great obsession as a Lime Juicer Rebel was to be No.1 and smash all Hogs.”

OR: Joe’s saline riff on the legendarily tough Bart Markel:  “It figured that along with everything else Bart would be a real pain snob.  So he was.  Getting aggressive with his KR on pavement at a National road race – dirt, not blacktop was his genius – his disrespect was repaid by his getting well thrown.  Using his right hand to cushion his crash landing, and too-macho-chic to wear gloves, he had the abrasive surface tear through the epidermis, and working on the final layer of skin before he at last stopped tumbling and finished up in a heap.  Medics coming to his rescue were too nauseated by the hamburger palm to help.  So Bart visited a hot-dog concession stand where he further sickened everybody by staunching the bleeding with the contents of a salt-shaker.  Then he went back to search for where his KR had crash landed.” Markel’s mother told the author that tale.

JUST ONE MORE, OK?: This is Joe trying to explain the eclectic interloper Billy Eves:  “Billy was a bearded exotic with an earring straight from the Opp and Jody days.  Nobody else had a wife who for a time had been on a trajectory to be a hoofer with the Bolshoi Ballet.  Racing wasn’t enough for Billy.  In his slack time, he was licensed by the state of Pennsylvania to tell fortunes and read palms.”

NAMES & PLACES: This book will spit you way wider slideways than you ever expected, and that it to you at vaunted venues like Ascot, Milwaukee, Springfield, Laguna Seca, San Jose, Riverside, Houston, Ontario, Sacramento, DuQuoin, Del Mar, and Daytona.  This book will widen your eyes (and tighten your pucker-string) with the exploits of the giants of this golden age of motorcycle racing like Roberts, Resweber, Lawwill, Kretz, Helm, Baker, Andres, Nicholas, Tanner, Graham, Springsteen, Hammer, Van Leeuwen, Mulder, Mann, Parker, and Romero. 

AND … HERE’S ONE FOR THE CAR GUYS: Way before he became the celebrated ankh-wearing, long-haired, Jesus-freak, former prize-fighter, former blacksmith, loveable outlaw, wild-assed sprint car pilot who made it all the way to Indy, Jan Opperman was a bona fide California hippie who happened to be as fast a flat track rider as ever there was.  One rather precipitous day, when so advised at some sort of pre-new age séance in the Haight, he quit riding crotch-rockets and rebirthed himself as a car racer. 

Joe cites “Opp” as saying, “No matter how hard I drive a race car, it seems like I’m taking it easy, compared to motorcycles … I owe everything to motorcycles.” You and a whole bunch of other guys Opperman.

FINISH LINE: Here’s my final take on this tome: Joe Scalzo’s writing is WFO once again.  And that is very good front page news for motorsports celebrants!  Grab a handful of throttle, point ‘er at the first turn, and hang the hell on because you know it’s going to be one double-MOFO of a wild ride!

Doug Stokes