Planes, No Trains, and Automobiles

At the end of August, I went to the shore for a few days of not doing much of anything. I’m not really good at not doing much of anything. In fact, if we had played Not Doing Much of Anything in high school gym class, I would have been picked last. Accordingly, after about 15 minutes of not doing much of anything, I resolved to do something—even just once thing—every day. Early on, I scratched training for a marathon and writing The Great American Novel off the might-do list. I needed something to do, but I didn't need that much to do! I rode my bike around the island (14 miles), walked to Stone Harbor Point and back (5.62 miles), and cleaned the garage. Not much, but it felt as if I'd done something.

One of days when I was doing my 5.62 miles along the beach, I saw a B-24—yes, the WWII vintage bomber—fly overhead. That’s not something you see every day. So I called my brother Rob who knows about these things and he told me that it had to be from the Commemorative Air Force and I should look at its web site to find out what the deal was. A quick trip to the interwebs told me that the B-24 was spending a few days at the Cape May County Airport, otherwise known as the former Wildwood Naval Air station. I decided to head over there that very afternoon.

I’d never seen a B-24 in person, but I remembered that one of my father’s competitors in the insurance business flew a B-24. My father, the self-described world’s best pilot, could get under this man’s skin instantly at social functions by referring to him as an airplane driver, rather than as a pilot. This is something my father, the former fighter jock, particularly enjoyed. He was a better pilot, better looking, got laid more, could hold more liquor, and do a better job solving the NYT Crossword in pen (at least after he met my mother), than any old airplane driver and he made sure that the airplane driver knew it.

I’d been to the Cape May County Airport once before and thought it was a sad sort of place that must have about 23 customers per year. On this visit, however, it was packed. I practically had to park in Delaware and then I had to wait in line to pay my $10 admission fee. They were having some sort of expo to cash in on the visit of the vintage planes. In addition to checking out the exhibits, you could sample beer or buy some sort of contraption to keep the flotsam and jetsam out of your gutters and downspouts..

The B-24 and its cousin, a B-17, were parked on the tarmac outside the hanger that houses the Naval Air Station Wildwood Museum. The bombers’ friend, a P-51 Mustang, was also part of the exhibition, but it was undergoing some “procedure” so it wasn’t available for my viewing pleasure. You could ride in all the planes, too. That, however, was not for the faint of wallet. The fare was $450 for a thirty minute ride on the B-17 or B-24 and $3,200 in the P-51. Yeah, I passed. But I did think about it.

They need to tell people not to smoke in the bomb bay?

I took the self-guided tour of both the B-17 and B-24, the pride of our military industrial complex circa 1944. They seemed as if they’d be scary as hell to fly in, let alone with people shooting at you while you bombed Germany. Seeing the planes and hearing about the conditions in which men served on them really does fill you with awe for the accomplishments of the guys of the greatest generation.

No one told me that Tom of Finland did US Navy Recruiting posters.

Nothing makes a better backdrop for a jazz combo than an  old German V-2 rocket.

Some think that had James A. Garfield been treated in an airplane hanger in New Jersey, he'd be alive today.

After I toured the planes I walked through the exhibits again. The museum has a nice enough collection mixed in with a bunch of cheesy stuff, especially the mannequins depicting wounded soldiers. Even with a huge crowd—which there was—the place look as if you could drop a few million bucks into it before anyone even noticed. Still, it was nice to see people soaking up some American history for a change.

Interestingly enough, this was not the logo on the back of my mother's Studebaker.

I thought the vintage planes were about as vintage as Cape May County events got until I checked out Twitter on my iPhone on October 3 and saw that there was a vintage auto car show and race in Wildwood. My friends Bruce and Martha the phone Luddites--as in flip phones with broken screens—give me a hard time about my close relationship with my iPhone, but had it not been for my iPhone and Twitter account, we’d have never found this this thing. Thank you Cape May County Herald for posting something about it!

The Wildwoods (as in North Wildwood, Wildwood, West Wildwood and Wildwood Crest) are just across Hereford Inlet from Stone Harbor but they might as well be a million miles away. My grandparents started going to the Jersey shore in the 1930s and my mother told me even then Wildwood was “pretty rough”. If your favorite dying northeastern city had a few miles of nice beach next to its downtown, that would be Wildwood.

Frankie Avalon buys a Kohr Brothers ice cream cone in Wildwood back in the day.

The city has started a heroic job of rebranding itself with its 1950s doo-wop era architecture but the place has large sections of town where no one has put the bop in the bop shoo bop.

The car show was in the parking area next to the Wildwood Convention Center. Most of the cars were from the 1950s and early 1960s—usually tricked out in some way. There were lots of low riders.

Interestingly enough, they don't sell these bumper stickers at Nuns' Beach.

It was all pretty informal—the cars didn’t even have signs in the windows to identify them. I had to ask someone sitting at a table selling t-shirts where the car races on the beach were. He said they were about 10 blocks up the Boardwalk and that I should just look for the large Ferris Wheel.

The Boardwalk is well, something you just have to see to believe. It hasn’t changed very much since my last visit, longer ago than I care to remember. It’s sort of like the midway at a low end county fair, except instead of smelling of cotton candy and farm smells, it smells of cotton candy and ocean smells, in addition to cigars, someone who used too much Axe body spray, and someone who didn’t use enough Axe body spray. As my college friend Peggy would say, it’s quite something.

There are lots of shops selling things that make you scratch your head and say to yourself “Who buys this stuff?”

In October some places are closed. I couldn’t check out Paul’s Balls.

Grabbing a wiener wasn't an option either. Yep, it's right there by Paul's Balls. I think both Paul's Balls and Grab a Wiener would do really well in Rehoboth Beach.

After our ten block walk, we were near the large Ferris Wheel and could see the tents that presumably marked the race course out on the beach. For whatever reason, Wildwood is one of the rare places on the shore where Mother Nature deposits sand rather than taking it away, so it's quite a walk from The Boardwalk to the beach.

The tents marked the site of the weekend’s main event, something called The Race of Gentlemen. Yes, it sounds as if it should have been sponsored by Ralph Lauren or perhaps Vineyard Vines. Elaborate tailgate parties spilling from vintage woodies, women in pink and green, men in rowing blazers, top shelf liquor, that sort of thing. WRONG.

The event turned out to be unlike any car gathering I’ve been to, and as someone who comes from a family of motor heads I’ve been to my share. It was a gathering of hipsters with old cars and motorcycles. Come to think of it, I think the only way to get a hipster to the beach would be to lure him with an old car or motorcycle.

I think this guy is the mascot for the Oiler's Car Club.

I think the event was sponsored by Harley Davidson and perhaps—I wasn’t quite sure—Old Crow Whiskey. You could have told me that it was sponsored by Zap Comix and I’d have believed it. There wasn’t much info about it online, so I really didn’t know what to expect.

I couldn’t believe that they’d really race cars on the beach. Who did they think they were, Barney Oldfield?

 

None of the cars were newer than 1930-ish. A long time had passed since anyone had described any of them as "cherry". The motorcycles were of the same vintage and condition.

There were about twenty cars, and a few were still spattered with sand as if they'd just been in a race. The collection of cars was way more Abramson’s Junk Yard than the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Actually, it was more Abramson’s Junk Yard than it was Port Royal Speedway, even on Hot Pants Night. Several of the cars were being tinkered with by their owners.

Kinda makes me want to take up surfing.

No one seemed concerned about the effects of salt water or even sand on their machines. According to the event’s web site, admission was supposed to be $30, but it looked as if the person selling tickets had said "Screw it!" some time ago so we walked in for free. I even walked around looking for someone to pay since the experience was certainly worth the thirty bucks.

There were half sheet pans under cars and motorcycles everywhere. Apparently the racing gentlemen were concerned about keeping dripping engine fluids off the beach.

Trust me, it was just coffee.

They really went all out with the potato chip display.

Food wise, well, it wasn't exactly a spread to send Alice Waters into orgasmic hosannas. Unless they were hiding the food booths at an undisclosed location, there seemed to be a choice of coffee, beer, potato chips, and pork rinds. There was special booth just for the artisanal free range heirloom pork rinds. Crazy.

There was a very strong hipster vibe, in other words it was a pastel-free zone. In a fashion nod to Henry Ford’s remark about the color of cars, you could wear any color you wanted to as long as it were black. Skinny jeans and tats were the order of the day.

 

We missed the racing on the beach since the tide had come in. It looked as if the finish line, or perhaps that was the reviewing stand, were about to float away in several feet of water. We did however, see people do donuts and hear lots of engine revving by cars in various stages of tune up.

Four young women asked me to take their photo and so in lieu of listening to the unsolicited advice from one of my friends on how to do it, I handed her the camera so she could do the honors. I asked if they wanted to put their beer cups down for the photo but they were having none of that. Apparently their mothers know that they are not as pure as the driven 1930 Ford V-8.

A nice old Mercury at the doo-wop WaWa.

Some guy doing security told us to come back at 8:00 for the bonfire. Perhaps they'd grabbed some wieners and were going to be roasting them--it didn't seem like a s'mores sort of crowd. In the end, the bonfire interfered with the obligatory visit to Fred's. That meant I never had to come clean to a tattooed hipster that I didn't know the difference between a banger and a flatty.

My friends and I said to ourselves that we’d come back at 7:00 am the next day--when the tide was out-- to see the racing. Big surprise: that didn't happen. But I think we all believed we would when we said it.

I hope the Race of Gentlemen returns to Wildwood next year and isn't just motor racing's version of Brigadoon,  fading into the ocean mists (and a cloud of exhaust smoke) off an improbable spot at the Jersey Shore.

For more info on the Race of Gentlemen, check out this New York Times article:  Race of Gentlemen Looks Back to Simpler Time

And this great video on Vimeo-- Race of the Gentlemen

The Tale of The Old Club Tie

It’s that season that starts with Veterans Day (Nov.11) and reaches a crescendo on my mother’s birthday (Nov. 23) and ends with my father’s birthday (Dec. 5). And since Hawkeye and Munner (as in my parents) were such a hit on FB on Veterans’ Day, I’m taking my friend Jill’s advice and running at the keyboard about them for a bit.

My parents were World War II veterans. Yes, both of them.  Full-fledged members of The Greatest Generation. I was the youngest of the Bryant brood, so most of my friends had younger, hipper folks. What mine didn’t have in the young and hip (and, truth to tell, happy) department, they more than made up for when it came to color. By comparison, some of my friends’ parents were about as exciting as watching someone unload a Safeway truck.

The AFLAC duck visits with my grandparents, my mother,and my uncle Meade, 1939.

My mother came from solid stock. Her parents were wonderful people; self-made, hard-working, generous, civic-minded and church-going. But… a little boring. Sure, my grandfather had a wooden leg. And it’s true that my grandmother, a teetotaler and card-carrying D.A.R. member, drove her Cadillac is if she were Dale Earnhardt (not Jr., but the real deal, The Intimidator himself). But these quirks only served to make them more human. They were the best grandparents ever, but they didn’t push any needles when it came to outlandish.

My grandfather, Willis W. Bryant, Sr. (on left) en route to Sumatra, Dutch East Indies, 1929

The Bryants, on the other hand, of which my father was a sterling example, wrote the book when it came to colorful. The family history was filled with stories of our descent from Cherokee twins (just one, actually), murder, selling whiskey to the Indians (no, not the Cleveland Indians) life in the Wild West not to mention the Far East, drinking, womanizing, guns, more drinking, and let's not forget the a cameo appearance by Miss Barbara Stanwyck. The family motto is “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” and so it’s best to take our oral history, especially when recounted after several beers, with a grain of salt.

My mother receiving her commission, Fort Hayes, Ohio 1944. The letter sent by the Army to my grandparents said, "Mrs. Castner's unselfish devotion to the Cause of Liberty and her indomitable spirit, is an inspiration to us all."

My parents met and were married in France late in the war. My mother had joined up after her first husband—with whom she’d enjoyed scarcely a month of connubial bliss—was killed in action. The B-17 on which he served as a bombardier, Liberty Bell, crashed returning to England after a bombing raid over Germany. After my mother received her commission, she went to Europe on the liner-turned-troopship Nieuw Amsterdam and served as a dietician at an Army hospital in France. To say she wasn't fond of French men is putting it mildly. I never asked her where she met my father, but my guess is at the bar in an officer's club someplace.

My father, who grew up in the Far East and California, was a glamorous Army Air Corps fighter pilot. Not just any fighter pilot, but the world’s best, if you were to believe him.

That's my father, Willis W. Bryant, Jr. on the far left. The guys in the barracks look as if they know some show tunes.

Years later James Dean adopted this very look.

He also had many social adventures, most of which involved women, something that you'd never glean from these practically suitable for Grindr photos. As far as the war itself was concerned, he believed, like a mid-century William Tecumseh Sherman, that the only good German was a dead German.

He named his plane, a P-47, Old Saucerass, after a dog his Uncle Jack owned. The dog had a spot on his butt that looked like, well, a saucer. Leave it to a Bryant to name a dog Old Saucerass, and leave it to another Bryant to name his airplane after that very dog. (I consider myself fortunate that I wasn’t named Old Saucerass.) In my father’s telling of story, my mother wanted him to call his plane Miss Betty but he thought a name like that was too common for words. Hence, Old Saucerass.  My father’s commander, a straight arrow type, made him erase the final S in Saucerass so the airplane became the even more ridiculous Old Sauceras.

He earned some medals, though he was completely dismissive of them. He claimed not to need some desk jockey at “Fort Fumble” (i.e. the Pentagon) to validate his skill and valor. However, he was proud of one bit of military recognition; his membership in the Caterpillar Club, a “club” for people who’d bailed out of an airplane in order to save their lives—as in pilots of disabled planes rather than paratroopers. He’d say it was his kind of club: no meetings.

The club allegedly took its name from the silkworm, since, in those days, parachutes were made from real silk. Then again, perhaps the name came about because silk caterpillars drifted from one mulberry leaf to another on a strand of silk. As Winston Churchill might have said, it's a metaphor wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Hawkeye proudly wore his membership pin—a little caterpillar crawling across a red white and blue field—on his blazer lapel.

One day in May 1983, I read an article in Esquire by John Berendt—who would later go on to write Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil—about neckties. Back in the 1980s, Esquire, a magazine for pre-ironic and manly-yet-fashion-conscious future doofus hipster-wannabes, contained page turning articles about neckties. Oh and political exposes, sports pieces, crime stories and other guy kinda stuff. I read it for the necktie articles.

The article noted that while in America, a necktie was just a necktie, in Great Britain; a necktie was filled with more meaning than you can shake a stick at. Public schools, universities, clubs, and associations had signature neckties and you had to prove you had the right to wear certain ties before purchasing one. I’m sure every red-blooded slightly-to-the-right-of-center American guy who read the article thought to himself, “It’s no bloody wonder that those limeys lost their empire if they had time to worry about who was wearing the Royal Victoria Lawn Darts and Freestyle Quoits Association necktie! And they drink warm beer, too! Bah!”

The article noted that even the Caterpillar Club had a necktie.

There it was: the perfect gift for my notoriously hard to buy for father. I wrote John Berendt in care of the magazine and asked where I could buy a Caterpillar Club tie.

He promptly wrote back on his very nice stationery and gave me the name of the store in England. This was before well before the age of email, so I typed out a letter to T.M. Lewin & Sons, Ltd; 106 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6EQ telling them that my father was in the Caterpillar Club and asking how to purchase a tie. In the letter, I described my father’s lapel pin, assuming that was all the documentation I’d need.

T.M. Lewin in the person of P. A. G. McKenna (Miss) wrote back in nearly impossible to read longhand quoting me prices for two different ties but telling me that due to their agreement with Irwin G. B. Limited they could not sell me a tie without a copy of my father’s Caterpillar Club ID card. Just before she closed with “yours faithfully” she indicated they’d be grateful if any form of payment could be in a pounds sterling bank draft rather than in dollars. Longhand. Yours Faithfully. Bank Draft. Oh my. It was practically like getting a letter from the counting house of Scrooge and Marley.

So on July 5, 1983 I wrote to Irwin G. B. Limited, Icknield Way, Letchworth, Herts 596 IEV to see about getting the proper ID Card. I described the pin and noted that it had the legend “W.W. Bryant AAF 5-24-44” on its back.

A week later, on blue Caterpillar Club stationery, I received a note from Mrs. B. Elsworth, the secretary of the Caterpillar Club.

We have checked our records thoroughly and cannot find any trace of your father’s membership here. However, the description of the lapel pin you give in your letter gives us a clue to the mystery, since it does not bear any resemblance to the lapel pin which we have always issued to members. Our pins are just a gold Caterpillar with the rank and name engraved on the reverse—we do not feature the date of bail-out and there is no background of red, white, and blue. We believe that in fact your father may have been enrolled into a “Caterpillar Club” which was set up during the middle years of the Second World War by a “pirate firm” in Canada.

I’m afraid in the circumstances we cannot provide you with the authentication you require. However your father certainly looks to quality for membership in our Caterpillar Club. If he would like to complete the enclosed form and send us some documentary evidence… we could be happy to present him with our lapel pin and membership card which would enable you to obtain a tie…

She very kindly enclosed a mimeographed sheet of information about the Caterpillar Club and its history since its founding by Leslie Irvin, the developer of the parachute. Jimmy Doolittle and Charles Lindbergh had used Irvin parachutes more than once—Lindbergh four times! The information included testimonials from members that are right out of P.G. Wodehouse:

Dear Sir: Will you please enroll me as a Member of the Caterpillar Club? I bailed out over Holland on August 15th from a blazing Kite and made a wizard landing.

God bless you brother Leslie on behalf of my wife and children, as yet unknown.

Dear Leslie, I’d like to thank you for the sweetest moments in all my life, when my parachute opened and I realized I was not going to die. Your ‘chutes are so good I am going to name my son (when I have one) Irvin as it was due to one in particular that I am alive enough to woo, marry, and get me a son. 

 

My father wasn’t a pack rat but fortunately he still had his pilot’s logbook from his early days in the Army Air Corps, so we knew that he bailed out from a P-47 whose engine had caught fire near Harding Field, Louisiana, on May 25, 1944. So I contacted the public library in Baton Rouge to see if they might be able to help. I wondered if there had been something in the newspaper about it.

Lo and behold there was!  The incident was newsworthy enough to rate a small blurb on the same page as an ads for the Pelican Club and The Katherine Davis School of Dancing. A library staffer whose name is lost to history sent a copy produced by the microfilm reader.

Pilot Parachutes from P-47 Near Engineer Depot

Second Lt. William W. Bryant of Harding Field escaped with minor injuries when he parachuted from his P-47 fighter plane at 12:45 p.m. today five miles west of the Engineering depot, air officials announced today. The pilot was on an operational training mission when the accident occurred. His plane crashed.

Nine months after getting the application I sent it back to B. Ellsworth on Ikneild Way, Herts.  My father signed the form Willis W. Bryant Lt. Col USAF (Retired).  Rank at time of bale-out 2nd Lt. US Army Air Corps, Service # A0767107.

A week later Mrs. B. Ellsworth, now my chum and identifying herself as Babs, wrote back. 

Since I now see from your application that the bale-out took place over North America, I am sending all the correspondence to our office in Canada, which deals with North American applications. Mrs. Eva Wagner of Irvin Industries Canada should be contacting you in the future about your application.... We have made further checks here and definitely have no record of any previous application by you. 

A little over a week later (Mrs.) Eva Wagner wrote, indicating that she’d received correspondence from Mrs. Babs Ellsworth. She went on to say:

When Leslie Irvin first established the Caterpillar Club in 1922, it was restricted to those who used an Irvin parachute to save their lives from a disabled aircraft. As time went on and other parachute manufacturers started up, it became increasingly difficult to determine whose parachute was responsible for the safe “let down”; especially during the Great Wars. He then revised the clause to accept memberships from those using an “Irvin-type” parachute. 

Therefore I am pleased to enclose an Irvin membership card and Caterpillar pin, which we know you will wear proudly.  

Shortly thereafter I sent the cash to Britain and got the tie in return. It was a lot of work for one somewhat nondescript tie, but since he was the world’s greatest pilot, it was worth it. And in the process, I learned the real reason for the fall of the British Empire...warm beer!