The Indy 500 is always special. Something happens every year which stamps its imprimatur on the history of the race.
The race in 1972 was significant for several reasons. One, the year saw the greatest one year increase in track speed for qualifying racers. Nearly a fourteen mile per hour increase to a then unheard of 196 miles per hour for pole winner Bobby Unser. Second the race winner Mark Donahue raced for rookie team owner Roger Penske, who after his first win at Indy in 1972 went on to have a bit of success in the sport. Third, the pace car was the iconic Hurst Oldsmobile Cutlass.
And fourth and far from least, it was the first time that Jim Nabors sang “Back Home Again in Indiana” at the start of the race — a tradition unlike any other which continued nearly every year until 2014.
The year 1972 was an important year for a less auspicious reason. It was the year where I would be assured of never seeing the Indy 500 until well past my emancipation into adulthood. I was two years old then and left at home with my grandmother. I would not witness the greatest spectacle in racing until my fortieth year on this planet.
If you follow the lore of the 500 you’ll hear countless tear stoking stories of family traditions of attending the race. Those families’ stories are not mine. My dad, a sixth generation Hoosier, never took me to the race.
My dad hated the Indy 500.
Here is his story why.
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It starts New Years Eve 1971. My father a 27 year old struggling lawyer and my mother a 24 year old stay at home mom with a 20 month old which was me went to a New Year’s Eve Party with among others Bill and Linda Stevens.
Bill Stevens was rich. He was born rich and he got richer being a lawyer in the glory years of the practice of law, the 1970s. He wasn’t any good as a lawyer but he had rich friends he’d bring to the firm as clients. He had a convertible Cadillac El Dorado and a Corvette Sting Ray. One of his hobbies was flying hot air balloons. He was 32 and had life by the balls. Bill loved to drink.
Linda 28 was smokin’ hot sex on wheels. Life of the party. Blonde. Tan. Blue eyed and smiling. So beautiful and fun. Whatever Bill wanted to do was okay with Linda.
I wasn’t there, instead in the care of my grandparents, but it seems to have been a rager. To hear my mother tell it, it was the most hungover she had ever been. Which considering that I have never seen her drunk is really saying something. My dad too was ‘sick with the flu.’
Mom and Dad didn’t have any money but they were young and good looking and from the limited data gathered that one New Year’s Eve party as available to Bill and Linda, my mom and dad sure seemed to love to party! The phone rang in our house 10 am New Year’s Day. It was Bill and Linda.
“You guys are so much fun!!!”
“Are we? Oh, thank you?”
“We’re inviting you to the Indy 500 this year!!!”
“Oh? Yay. Well goodbye.”
My mother went to throw up.
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The trip in was uneventful … easy in the limousine Bill had chartered. Champagne mimosas and Bloody Mary’s. Two of each for Bill. The happy double couple found their seats track side ten rows up from the brick start/finish line by 10:30 am, two hours to start time. By 10:35, Bill had opened a handle bottle of Bombay Saphire gin, which he drank straight up. By 11:35, Bill had puked on the gentleman sitting in front of him.
“Hey, you threw up on me!”
“Fuck you!” retorted Bill.
Pop fished a ten dollar bill out of his thin wallet so the man could go buy a shirt to replace the one Bill had destroyed … and to buy peace lest Bill or anyone else be beaten.
Bill fell asleep during the presentation of the colors and the singing of “Back Home Again in Indiana,” but then came to, just as the gentlemen were starting their engines.
“I gonna take a piss,” said Bill.
“Follow him please!” intoned beautiful Linda to my dad, and so he did.
Bill made it the bathroom, took his leak, but then lay down in the floor in the vestibule at the exit door. There he napped for the entire race… snuggled up on the filthy concrete floor of a mens room of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway … the din of cars and crowd and the stepping by and shouting of just-relieved patrons disturbing his slumber not in the least. My father stayed with him the whole three hours of the race like a guardian angel that rich Bill wouldn’t get robbed or arrested. Gary Bettenhausen led 138 laps until he suffered ignition trouble on lap 176. Jerry Grant took over the lead, but pitted for a new tire and fuel on lap 188 in the wrong pit which disqualified him. Only leading the last 13 laps, Donohue won the race. My father saw none of it.
As Donohue pulled into victory lane for his celebratory milk, Bill woke up as if nothing had happened. I suppose my father can be forgiven if he didn’t care to take me to the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
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You may be wondering what happened to the illustrious couple. A few years later, Bill, then divorced from Linda, drunkenly flipped his convertible Benz on Pennsylvania Street and killed himself. He tried to fix it in his will so Linda and their children would be disinherited … that his girlfriend would get his estate. But Bill was a crummy lawyer and he fucked up the drafting. The probate court ruled in favor of Linda.
Rich now herself, Linda remarried a very nice man. I saw her and her husband a decade ago— in her early seventies. We happened to be seated at the same table at a dinner. She was still beautiful and she smiled wide and happy. I didn’t immediately recognize who she was. When I figured it out I was pleased to make the connection. I didn’t bring up this story. Some things are better forgotten.
As I said, the Indy 500 is always special.
Steven S. Wallace 