By
George
By George Klass
Every
year, Bill Alexander, Pinto and myself get together about this time of the
year to discuss the up and coming Fun Ford Weekend season. This year, our
meeting was going to be at California Speedway but since the event was
cancelled, we had to make other plans.
Pinto and I had already discussed the 2006 rulebook via email and we
polished everything up with the intention of presenting them to Bill (and
Mike Pausina) at the Fontana, CA event. Obviously, this didn't happen, but
I knew that Bill still had his airline ticket and so I suggested that he
come on out anyway, stay at my place and at least he and I could talk
about FFW plans for 2006.
Bill came out on Wednesday and we went over the rules that evening and all
day on Thursday (very few changes anyway). With that out of the way, I
decided that Bill needed some "time off" from Katrina and Rita
and all the rest of whatever he does during the racing season, and so, I
planned a little "road trip".
We left my place on Friday morning, September 30th and headed north up
through the California central valley past Bakersfield toward Sacramento.
September 30 is an important date to us old timers. This was the date, 50
years ago to the day (1955) that James Dean was killed at the intersection
of California Hwy. 46 and 41, about 50 miles north west of Bakersfield. I
figured that we should visit this site and pay our respects.
Dean had just wrapped up principle shooting on the movie
"Giant," and was entered in a sports car road race at Salinas,
California on that fateful day. Since he had just picked up his new
Porsche 550 Spyder nine days before, he decided to drive it up to Salinas
rather than trailer it to get some miles on the engine. Bill Hickman (an
actor / racer friend who was to drive the Dodge Charger in Bullett several
years later) and a photographer, Sandy Roth, were following behind with
Dean's '54 Ford station wagon and the empty trailer.
Dean was not letting any grass grow under the Spyder, and in fact he
had received a speeding ticket for going over 80 MPH (speed limit was 45
MPH on Hwy. 46) from the CHP about an hour earlier. Highway 46 is a fairly
narrow, two-lane highway with minimal traffic. As Dean approached the
intersection of Hwy. 46 and 41 going west, a 1950 Ford sedan going east
attempted to make a left turn in front of the Porsche. The driver said
that he never saw the low-slung Spyder (painted silver-gray) coming toward
him in the afternoon sunshine. The collision was almost head-on and pretty
much cut the Porsche in half, pinning Dean inside the car and throwing a
Porsche mechanic who had been Dean's passenger out (there was no seat belt
on the passenger side). Amazingly enough, the mechanic lived, eventually
to die in 1981 in another car wreck.
The other driver, the same age as Dean, was a college student going home
for the weekend, and his injuries were very minor. Because of the
conditions at the time of the accident and because the general opinion was
that Dean had been going over 85 MPH at the time of the collision, the
other driver was never charged with any traffic violations. His name was
Donald Turnipseed and to this day, he has never given any interviews about
the accident.
Dean died of a broken neck either at the scene or en-route to the
hospital.
By the time Bill and I arrived at the crash site on Friday, there were
about 50 or 60 other people there. Some had driven from as far away as New
York. There were also a few Porsche 550 Spyders (or replicas) painted up
to resemble Dean's car, with his racing number (130) on the doors and the
car's nickname painted on the rear deck lid ("Little Bastard").
It was a neat experience, I can tell you. It's desolate as hell out there,
just empty corn fields. Dean's legacy didn't really start immediately
after his death. "Rebel Without a Cause" wasn't released until
November 1955 and shooting for "Giant" had just been completed.
When "Rebel" was in production, a 16-year old high school kid
named George Klass watched the scenes shot up at the Griffith Observatory
being filmed.
After we hung around for a while, it was off to Sacramento. Some of you
may not know this, but Bill Alexander is a "railroad buff." He
likes trains and I knew that the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento
would be something that Bill would want to visit. As everyone must know,
Sacramento was the western edge of the initial transcontinental railroad
that was started around the time of the Civil War. The Central Pacific
Railroad headed east from Sacramento and the Union Pacific headed west
(from St. Louis I think), and eventually came together and was completed
with the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah.
This is a great museum if you are into trains and railroading with some
original locomotives on display, including early locomotives that first
went up the unbelievable grade over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, heading
west towards Reno, Nevada.
On the return trip home on Saturday, Bill and I stopped in to visit with
Craig Breedlove and to tour his shop in Rio Vista. I worked for Craig in
the mid 60's and was a crew member on the "Spirit Of America"
land speed record car, the first car to run over 600 MPH on the Bonneville
Salt Flats in Utah.
We had a great three or four hours talking about "old times," as
old folks (Breedlove is a year or two older than me) are prone to do.
Craig showed us the new jet car that he is building. This car is designed
to go 900 MPH (no, hat is not a typo). Other than a 30,000 horsepower
General Electric J-79 jet engine, everything else has to be hand made in
Craig's shop, including the tires. I think that Bill had a great time
hanging out with Craig.
On our way home we stopped off at the NHRA Museum in Pomona for a visit
and then it was back to my place and then to the airport where I dropped
Bill off for his flight back to Baton Rouge.
Our road trip was just a little over 900 miles and a ton of fun.
