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By Root 248 0

around and perhaps use a floor jack to install some shock absorbers purchased at the counter. Such an exposure to injury liability would give a lawyer fits; implicit in the invitation to the back is a judgment of the young man’s character and a large measure of trust. He will get some light supervision that is likely to be disguised as a stream of sexual insults, delivered from ten feet away by someone he cannot see (only his shoes) as he lies under his car. Such insults are another index of trust. If he is able to return these outrageous comments with wit, the conversation will cascade toward real depravity; the trust is pushed further and made reciprocal. If the young man shows promise, that is, if he is judged to have some potential to plumb new depths of moral turpitude, he may get hired: here is someone around whom everyone can relax.

The fringe benefit of a discount on parts, and the use of a lift after hours for his own car, is a big part of the compensation. Having the next crop of kids coming in and seeking his advice is no doubt another part; he rises in stature. Showing up at, say, the local dirt track oval on a Saturday night, with his shop’s posse in matching T-shirts, is another pleasure. Or maybe the whole crew caravans down to Baja for one of the big desert races, with a train of hangers-on. Guys will glom on to the scene by dignifying their rides as “chase vehicles” or “pre-runners,” the idea being to run the course ahead of time to check it out. It’s a day and night festival reeking of high-test race gas and warm beer, punctuated by the breaking of metal.

The social hierarchy is tied to a speed ethic that can be a little challenging for a younger man to decode. He may need to be schooled. When I was eighteen, about a year after being inducted into the Volkswagen speed scene by Chas, I was parked in front of another shop, the Buggy House in Hayward, messing with the carburetor that protruded through a hole I’d cut in the deck lid of my car—a crudely ostentatious approach. A guy in a bone stock-looking Bug pulls up, parks, and goes into the shop. He was older. After a few minutes he comes out and gets back in his car, without saying a word. I was hoping he’d seen my fancy Italian carb. He starts the car, which emanates a quiet, mild-mannered sound. Then he puts it in first gear and proceeds to light up the tires.

Now he jams it into second. The car is still not moving forward, but the cloud of white smoke billowing out from the fenders is getting denser, and the rear end is starting to drift to one side. He speed shifts into third and finally the car starts to move forward, slowly and in a direction that is still vague, as I stand there agog. The tires melt and get sticky, the rear end squats, the car launches and, after traveling about thirty yards, he hits fourth and gets a good chirp, a sort of parting comment. The smoke hung in the dead summer air, a compact cloud that drifted toward me in eerie silence. As the stench of burning rubber reached my nostrils, I began to understand what people mean when they call a car a “sleeper.” That would be the opposite of “all show and no go.” It’s not just how fast you go, it’s how you go fast. I felt a bit like a puppy who’d gotten a rolled-up newspaper across the nose.

Community

Can the speed shop teach us anything about the tension between work and leisure, and how it might be eased in the direction of a coherent life? It is a community of consumption that overlaps with a community of work. The overlap takes place within the life of each participant, and the shop is the site where the overlap becomes social: no one working there isn’t also an enthusiast, and no customer isn’t deeply involved with the nuts and bolts of his own car. They know the particulars of each other’s engines. A machinist working at a speed shop is likely to see the same crankshaft several times over the years. He will recognize his own writing on the counterweights, in grease pen or Sharpie, noting the bearing tolerances with each rebuild as its journals get ground and polished. He