If you grew up in the late 50s and 60s, you must have been aware of hot-rods, and/or sporty cars. The former were mostly made from USmade automobiles, while the latter were those exotic little things that went like blazes and came from Europe, somewhere. Every nation had its own prestigious marque, some more than one. It was a wondrous time to be alive and reasonably young.
Thanks to my Dad, I was always interested in motor-driven machinery. Some of my earliest memories are of him taking me to motorcycle races (during the last days of WWII) and after the war ended, there were midget cars. I thrived on the sounds and the smells of exhaust and racing oil and burnt tires. He’d grown up in Germany, not too far from the Nurburg Ring, and due to a small accident to one eye couldn’t be a race driver, but was a motorcycle mechanic while training to be a tool and die maker. Friends of our family during the war had motorcycles, and I grew up riding them—even to church and Sunday school. I’ve never out-grown my love of cars, either.
One of my first heros was the writer/race driver/skier Denise McCluggage. Oh! How I wanted to be her, but unfortunately, that was not within the realm of possibility. I did my best to imitate her, (except for the skiing) but ran out of money. It was certainly fun while it lasted, though.
In 1994, a compilation of colums written for Autoweek by Ms. McCluggage was published. By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping quickly became one of my favorite books. Unfortunately, it’s largely out-of-print at this time, but we can always hope she’ll relent and let it be re-issued. I wrote a rather long review of it which may be read here: http://www.racerchicks.com/auto/bybrooksbookreview.html
If you like, you can spend more time at that site and read my report of the 24 Hours of Daytona in February 1969. It’s here: http://www.racerchicks.com/chick_pick/CP_Kelly_Daytona.html
(This was my very first published piece, written for our local SCCA newsletter.)
Obviously, I like reading about other women drivers, and was 
delighted to find a fairly new book by Todd McCarthy titled: Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing. It’s mostly about the 50s and earlier, with lots of fascinating history, including a good bit about Denise McCluggage. Unfortunately, the book does not have an index, but it does have a fabulous bibliography of books, films/TV, videos, newsletters, magazine articles, and web-sites, etc. Not all of that latter are up-to-date, but they’re still better than nothing. I’m grateful for such a list.
Fast Women: lives up to its name with rather more ‘kiss and tell’ info than one might expect. Especially considering the era in which it all took place. Certainly it was happening – no one denies that, but it wasn’t talked about all that much, I don’t think. I certainly never heard any of it, and I was right in the middle of it all. On the other hand, I was pretty much oblivious at that age. Actually, I was just way more interested in the machines. Oh, well.
I was pleased to find two of the women I knew back then mentioned in this book: Suzy Dietrich from Ohio and Donna Mae Mims (Think Pink) of Pittsburgh. I could not find my daughter’s god-mother, however, who was one of the best—Nadeene Brengle from San Diego. Actually, Nadeene and her husband Alan got me started in my short-lived racing career. I’ve never regretted one minute of it, either. My only regret is that it didn’t last longer. But I have such fabulous, wonderful memories!
Fast Women is from Miramax, in hard-cover for $23.95. ISBN is 978-1401352028.
Fast forward a bit now, to today, and if you like romance novels as well as auto racing, you might well like the NASCAR books issued by Harlequin. Don’t knock ‘em until you try ‘em. Trust me on this one. Not all of them are winners, but for the most part, they’re very readable, with lots of fascinating mechanical details along with the (mostly) subdued romance elements. Yes, of course, there’s a love story, but it’s pretty much G-rated. NASCAR is family-oriented, after all. The covers are frequently more suggestive than the stories.
Actually, we have a California writer to thank for this fast-growing sub-genre of romance novels. Pamela Britton wrote romance novels because she liked to read them. But she also loved NASCAR. It seemed reasonable to her that these two things could be combined, and so she wrote Dangerous Curves, which came out in March, 2005, and was followed by In The Groove a year later. Six months after that came On The Edge. A three story Christmas anthology was next later in 2006, and since then there have been nearly 50 more titles in this very popular series. I may have to try for one of my own!
Thanks for reading!
If you have comments or suggestions, please send them to kelly@theseniorreader.com
