By Eoin Young
I was a rookie at Indianapolis, journalistically speaking, and before I arrived in the Hoosier capital the picture people had painted for me was anything but encouraging.
It had been abdominally described to me as the culinary armpit of the United States. I was assured that as the plane began its final approach to Weir Cook Field the pilot would crackle the following message over the speaker system: "We are now approaching Indianapolis, please set your watches back 15 years…" In fact he didn't actually say that, but after a fortnight in or around the Speedway I began to form the impression that all the descriptions bore more than just a grain of truth.
You may be interested to know that the place for good steaks and antiquated race atmosphere is St. Elmo's in a sleazy area downtown, that the night life swings at the Holiday Inn Northwest and doesn't at Howard Johnson's across the freeway. HoJo's room service didn't even extend to a pot of coffee. And their barman figured he was doing you a favor just standing there.
In Indiana they don't encourage moving drinkers. Signs caution you to drink sitting down. Don't move your drink to another table, buddy, the barkeep will handle that tricky operation. In the garage area at the track a sign warns against attempting to smuggle in girls, shorts, or beer. Bruce Walkup fought a losing battle with the gateman because he was wearing Bermuda shorts. Would you believe these guys take their vacations to work at the track?
During the race the boozers, carousers, and sleepers in the Indianapolis infield probably have something. I was sitting on the grass just through the fence from the human zoo down at Turn 1, and I couldn't follow the progress of the world's most famous contest of speed, skill, and ballyhoo any better than the soberest of them could. And they looked as though they were having a lot more fun than I was.
Mrs. Unser Sr. went down to the victory circle for the second time in two years to collect the rent money from youngest son AI. In 1968 it had been Bobby. Al won the 500 at a reasonably leisurely pace slowed with a quarter-hour yellow light to 155.749 mph in his Johnny Lightning Special for sponsors Topper Toys and Firestone, and Ford, and Parnelli Jones and George Bignotti.
Statistics also gave the chance of rain on race day as 30 percent, and at 11:20 a.m. 40 minutes before the start umbrellas started sprouting like mushrooms all round the oval. It looked like being a tomorrow race but the humid gray skies were just teasing. The start was delayed half an hour and then it was delayed a further half hour when Jim Malloy's racer dragged a radius arm out of the monocoque and walloped the wall on the pace lap which played hen with the grouping of the field which was hardly military in ranks of three to begin with.
The race really started at HoJo's at 5:30 a.m. when the alarm call came through and we set out for the track. We could have eased the haste until after the all-night waiters had been swallowed up. When the gates opened at 6 a.m. there was a fair amount of action. At one gate a gridful of motorcyclists were waiting with revs wound on and the charge down into the tunnel was really something. Especially when the lead rider laid it down in the darkness. The all-night waiters were generally less than sober when the track opened and the continued supping throughout the night had turned most of them into either lovers, fighters or sleepers. Steve Krisiloff, who qualified on the first day and was first to be bumped, got bumped again when he walked into a fist and collected a 15-stitch cut above one eye. His assailant relieved the dizzy driver of his wallet as well.
Denny Hulme arrived out at the track early with his hands bandaged for his second day out of the hospital and sat himself on the pit wall to watch the endless stream of wall-towall marching girls and bands. And celebrities. And don't forget the biggest drum in the world. It was carried on the back of a pick-up truck with a hefty drummer on either side swinging alternately with giant bats that threatened to turn the truck over.
