Ch22 - P&W Revisited - Hound "redirects" race interests

CHAPTER 22 PRATT & WHITNEY REDUX Thanksgiving Week 1980

(HOUND) I was living on Cliff drive’s slopes as autumn delivered comfortable nights, ones more tolerable for a heavy-coated creature.

In addition to my food and water meanderings, I hiked to the Northeast ball fields, attempting a Gee&Leo reunion. Thatch east of Belmont avenue provided camouflage for a ballfield visit but then I had no idea when they might return there.

During happier days I had shared a kennel with Max and Blaze, their other adoptees. As days cooled, I believed I caught Blaze’ scent,, perhaps one originating from an intermediate gas stop made between Grandview and northeast Kansas City.

When a human says a given distance constitutes a drive that means a longer hike for a dog. Distance is not the sole challenge,

there’s also the challenge of singling out an interesting scent among competing odors.

I scent at three or four distinct levels. My nose near the ground means I’m tracking, normal head height indicates I’m discriminating, but when I point my head toward the sky, I’m bringing in distant scents. Those are my high-power optics. I possess everything I need for survival, not necessarily what I might require for a road trip.

Odor-wise, interferents are the olfactory equivalent of driving into a blinding October sunrise, singling out Blaze’s scent would challenging. A three day trip would also require multiple food sources, ones beyond a single fat rabbit or distracted squirrel.

As I passed near the Armco foundry I witnessed workers there processing iron scrap. They all wore small muzzle equivalents, paper masks that stretched over their noses and mouths. Those muzzles or masks must not work very well given they all coughed.

Are coughs your equivalents of my barks? A noisy front-end loader moved what the workers termed bag house dust.

I circled the foundry twice before that dust extinguished Blaze’ scent. Looping south, I encountered horses stabled near 26th and Lillis. While the horse odors were comforting, I abandoned a homecoming in favor of returning to Paseo’s deep woods near the Preservation neighborhood.

Missing Gee&Leo, to say nothing of my kennelmates, a few days later I again attempted a homecoming. Rain the previous night kept me on-point past the bag house dust. Past the Armco foundry I hiked a bare industrial corridor occasionally interrupted by Blue River’s wet meadows.

(RACER AND MORRIS) Multiple reasons justified Sunday-only races, time off-work and low car counts figuring among those. For Catholics, Vatican II’s Saturday evening vigil Masses allowed Sunday morning recreational activities, Jewish racers were well past Shabbat, too.

While normal people spent Sunday mornings drinking coffee or reading Star comics, Sunday dawns also witnessed cars oddly

parked along county roads where racers gulped high-calorie breakfast drinks before stuffing biscuits into jersey pockets.

A late November club championship would conclude the Kansas City racing season. Such local championships created epic accounts among podium placers and amnestic effects among the unranked.

Ranked cyclists sometimes shunned these championships, fretting being upstaged by unknowns, competent racers certainly, but ones with heavy family or work commitments.

The organizer’s plan meant participants would negotiate six successive loops, sweeping down-and-back Blue River road. While the start-finish line was chalked across Oldham road near Swope Park’s Lake of the Woods, the race’s south terminus dogleg-ed onto Bannister Road before reversing itself in a parking lot. Inclusion of the hairpin turn would permit race leaders to estimate time-back for their successors At the gun Racer positioned himself on row two, joining K-L-W teammate, Morris Johnson, Jr., Kern’s latest protégé. The menthol aroma of a counter-irritant marketed as Cramergesic blended with a non-showered contestant’s scent. While no rationale existed for hustling the first mile of a morning-long contest, somebody always did.

Within five miles or perhaps fifteen-minutes, racers split into three echelons ,plus stragglers. These impromptu groupings allowed racers to share pulls-at-the-front and made riding easier.

Racer and Morris composed the first chase group, positioned about two hundred yards behind a three-man lead team. Barring change, the lead trio would fill all three podium steps. Most of an hour was consumed acquiring the rhythm of pulls, forty crank revolutions followed by a wrist flick that nominated a fresh lead.

Two dedicated sprinters made up the lead group, cyclists who avoided wind-breaking pulls, plus a third guy who was known to gut races, angrily motoring away with an expensive bike dangling from his car’s trunk.

The Kern pair could have worked harder to catch the leaders even though the race dynamic suggested sitting tight. Hour two was consumed by more steady work, basically maintaining tempo and

covering ground. By the fifth circuit, racers better appreciated the fatigue associated with a morning-long contest.

With the Blue River passing in-and-out, they approached the Bannister industrial complex. Racer recalled the Dodson dairyturned-racetrack as the site of Kern’s emblematic victory.

More recently, those eighty acres had hosted multiple Cold War enterprises, Pratt & Whitney, Bendix and Westinghouse among them. On-site precision parts rework meant use of odiferous solvents and specialty coatings. Mid-race, however, wasn’t a good time to reflect on either Kern’s pal mares or process chemistries.

On their sixth and final lap the Kern-coached duo tried one of Kern’s favored distraction techniques, focusing more on roadside scenery while neglecting physical misery.

And that was when Racer first viewed the dog.

No, not any dog, the one depicted on the high visibility redyellow-black placards at K-L-W. Nothing much to do while waiting for Kern to lock-up, Racer had memorized a common message.

STOLEN SHEPHERD

STUDEBAKER LARK HAROLD’S DRIVE-IN

He was ten-inches left of Morris’ rear wheel when Racer first noted the dog, allowing him to observe Hound without up-ending Morris.

Hound was making time, nearly matching their speed, although running on the road’s un-mowed side, one opposite the factory.

Racer retrieved a sweat-soaked biscuit before dismounting, trying to whistle the dog toward him, although without success.

Before remounting he witnessed the dog disappear into a ravine.

(HOUND) I saw the bicycle guys, smelling them ahead of noting their chain-drive chatter. Most aromas weren’t bad, barring one man smeared in menthol and another who lack a shower.

Sunday was my third day hiking woods or glades past the Belmont avenue crossing. While still six miles from Grandview, I periodically caught Blaze’ scent.

Several times humans halted cars, trying to entice me with biscuits or knee pats. But I was amazed when that bike racer dismounted, attempting to whistle me toward him, staring back in gratitude. Before abandoning whistling me in he entered into an animated exchange with a darker-coated racing mate.

The industrial complex’s odors were even more distracting than those of the baghouse, dashing my hope of maintaining Blaze’ scent.

More than a rainsquall would be necessary to venture past the Bannister industrial site. The sole piece of good news was that cover of darkness would permit my feeding from tie-out bowls. For the immediate future the ground squirrels and rabbits were safe.

The Kern-coached duo missed the podium by a single step, likely a consequence of the dog-whistling incident. Post-race they lashed their bikes in the Econoline, returning it to K-L-W. From Kern’s store they rode to Land Lady’s rooming house where Morris had recently moved..

Land Lady placed Morris in suite 4-B, where a nightstand stack of Louis L’ Amour paperbacks announced his reading preferences.

Perhaps he found Racer, Land Lady and George Kern akin to Louis L’ Amour’s Sackett cousins, adapting a L’ Amour tagline. A cousin always has your back.

If preceding weeks were suggestive her Sunday play bill would require a single dial change, from CBS’ 60 Minutes program to KMBC and ABC’s Sunday Night Movie. Morris and Racer agreed Land Lady would identify with Shelley Winters in her Poseidon Adventure-based portrayal of Belle.