Going Down On the Hook

GOING DOWN ON THE HOOK

St Even A White Shirt And A Pearl Paint Job Will Get You A Ride Up

Sam Moses

ABOUT 1000 CROOKED concrete steps are wedged tightly into the face of the Hill and they lead to a cinder-block shack at the top, an aerie built around a 1926 Chevrolet, or what's left of one. But it's really only the aboriginal four-cylinder motor and driveshaft, and a little bit of the chassis. And back where the rumble seat once was there is a cluster of toothy steel-gray gears connected by spinning joints, dripping oil and churning crazily as they are driven by the Geritolic engine kachug-kachugging all afternoon long.

On the roof of the Chevy-nest a : platform supports a thick greasy cable that swoops down to the bottom of the hill like a homemade ski lift. But instead of a chair, a winch creeps along the cable at the kachug-kachugging pace, and it dangles a chain with a hungry ` hook on its end that whips and clanks as it moves. The Hook prowls along the Hill, and it waits. Next, please. Going down?

The idea is to avoid the hand of the Hook because the Hook really only goes down, it never goes up, and when it goes down it goes down with a hiliclimb Victim. It hovers around the 250-foot r mark, two-thirds of the way up, and the hiliclimbers keep coming like lemmings, long and loud, chased by giant flying divots and the acrid redolence of alco hol and oil as it is digested by the raucous old motors. Some are 10, some even 20 years old, mostly flatheas Harleys, but also Bonnevilles and Light fling Rockets and Tigers, a superannu ated Indian, and god, even a Vincent!

But the Vincent looks far less out of place than the Yamaha MX500-he must have gotten lost on his way to a gawdam motocross, someone says-and they call it the "trail-bike." It doesn't even have any tire chains, and what kind of hiliclimber doesn't have chains? I mean, some of them even chrome-plate their tire chains, they mean so much. But the Trail-Bike just has a regular knobby tire, like the Hill was no big deal or something-you know, you don't-scare-me. Everyone but the Trail Bike knows that if you want to beat the Hill you better do it with chains.

The Hill has a name, Mt. Garfield, but that is much too mundane. It must have been named before anyone ever started racing motorcycles up it, or else it would be called Mt. Gar-gantua or something. But it's in Muskegon, a better name, and Muskegon is a good place for a hillclimb, it fits into the earthiness of the hillclimb circuitplaces like Egypt, and Everett, and East Palestine. And they say the last time there was a national hillclimb at Muske gon, the police brought out the paddy wagons to the Hill-cages, actually-and collected the Rowdies and Earthies, Rules-and-Regulations-Breakers, in them until the climb was over, then drove them all to jail.

That's what Skid said anyhow, and Skid is a hiliclimb person because he was born in Muskegon, and Muskegon is a hiliclimb place he says. But maybe Skid's stories are just nostalgic canards or maybe even wishful thinking.. .he says that he used to ride the Hill, and he could even get his old ocher Plymouth to the top, yessir, and two years ago he parked his Frostee Custard Truck at the bottom of the Hill and sold beer and dope out of it instead of ice cream, so they put him in one of the cages and he went to jail. But Muskegon is his home town, his stomping ground, his terri tory, he knew the cops, so they let him go. But if I was from Manistee I sure wouldn't have gotten out of it I'll tell you, he tells you.

This year Skid came back from Den ver just for the climb, he says, wearing his unbuttoned shirt with no undershirt that has a big red-and-white patch on the back, an eye-fooling imitation of the Coca-Cola trademark, but it says "Enjoy Cocaine" instead, and half the people in Muskegon don't know what it means. I mean, they still call joints "reefers," and they stopped doing that in California in 1962, but then Muskegon isn't Mendo cino, and how could they know that the latest dope shibboleth is doobie or unit or something like that, and you don't smoke them, you do them. They don't know those things in Muskegon, and they don't care, and they're better off not knowing them, they say, and maybe they are. >

Skid came back from Denver just for the hillclimb, and Nick Cisto, Skid calls him The Cisto Kid, meets Skid at the airport. Except Skid almost didn't make it because they wouldn't let him on the plane in Chicago he was so drunk, and they never noticed the coca-cocaine shirt. Zack scored on old Angie Labriola last night, the Kid tells Skid first thing, and do you believe that? I mean, she's so dumb.... - 1 __1_1 1~-_~i__ -~__~~__

• . .and me and my old lady are gonna make it to Hawaii this winter.. .1 got this $1200 steam carpet sweeper for $400 from a guy who had to cut out and we're gonna sweep our way across the country to California and make enough bucks to fly to Hawaii then live there or something, just not come back to Mus kegon, that's all. I mean the Town Tavern, the gawdam TT, is even closed tonight, and it's Saturday night, just because of the hiliclimb. `7--______._.1__•. .....~s

Even if he breaks even on the table

You think maybe Muskegon isn t really a hiliclimb place like Skid says because on Saturday night before the hiliclimb they close all the bars by eight o'clock. Or maybe it's just they don't like Hiliclimb People; they don't even want their money because they have to take their crap, and maybe fights. So the TT and all the others except the Lakeshore close on the biggest night of the year maybe, but the Lakeshore is dead anyhow, except for the Kid and his old lady, and Skid drinking gintonics and losing at ten-bucks-to-two pool.

he loses $8 a trip but he's too gin toniced to put that together, and Skid keeps paying the 10 bucks. And they go back to the Kid's summer cottage on Lake Michigan and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the stereo while they watch Johnny Cash with the sound turned off on the tube. Watching Cash lip-sync Skynyrd is better than watching Skid shoot pool, and cheaper says Skid.

The hard-core Hiliclimb People are already out at the Hill. The crewcuts with lambchop sideburns have their campfires at one end of the field and the single-gold-earrings have their fires at the other end, and you can tell which end you're in by the air because it's not marshmallows the earrings are burning. And there's no trouble because every one is mellowed out and they're all there for the same thing, which is. to watch the Hill win the next day, and they know it will, and they'll cheer for the riders who make it and for the Trail Bike because they say it's like the little engine that could: I...think...I...can, I think I can, I-think-I-can, Ithinklcan Ithink....

The Trail-Bike is a Class B machine, a 45, nobody ever calls a Yamaha MX500 i 45, but that's what it is, and it can make it and the Hiliclimb People love it. A lot of the B bikes are side-valve KRs, the kind that Roeder and Nix and Resweber rode at places like Springfield and Stockton and Sacramento, bright orange in their prime but now just cobby, and there are a bunch of Beez ers and Trumpets and even a Gold Star, a really immaculate one, it belongs in Visalia, someone says, and it does.

Ihe tirst guy throws a cnam wit~i~ drops the clutch, gets about five feet, but the second guy makes it even with a misfiring motor. The Hill isn't so tough today, someone says, and it isn't. The third guy does it so easily that he flies over the top without getting stoppedor maybe the Hill just suckered him, someone says-coming down somewhere in the littoral woods, just shy of Lake Michigan, they think. Even the Hook can't find him.

Then comes the local favorite, a Genuine Muskegon Hiliclimb Person, a Feutonic Giant named William Uher... are those really jackboots he's wearing, and why does he dig his starting trench with his heel in a goose-step instead of using the shovel like everyone else? His body only makes it halfway up, but he throws his Harley to the top, and the announcer announces that the Harley made it but the Fuhrer didn't, so he doesn't get a time, and everybody boos the announcer.

A Tiger ridden by a John Hamilton goes up in 6.326 seconds and Hamilton and the Tiger both do a back-flip after they go through the timing eyes. It's a new Class B record, but later in the afternoon the Class B number one, Randy Gabriel, goes one one-hundredth of a second faster and adds a half twist to Hamilton's flip. Gabriel is the winner, and the Hook carries his Harley back down the Hill. But is he really a winner, someone says. I mean, he threw his Harley to the Hook didn't he?

The Class A machines, the 54s, the 750s, the Big Guys, roll to the line kaclank-kaclanking their tire chains. The first rider is the National Champion, a Kentucky Boy named Terry Kinzer, who maybe wins five or six grand a year at hiliclimbing and only breaks even but doesn't care because it's his thing and he's the best in the world at it because he's the best in the country and they don't do this sort of thing anywhere else.

Kinzer takes his lacquered and chromed and spit-shined pearl-and-blue Triumph that once was a Bonneville to the top of the Hill like he was going to eat it alive, and as he trips the timer he does a half-gainer, or rather his Pearl Bike does the half-gainer because Kinzer bails out when it's only a quarter-gainer and does a few reverse rolls down the hill. And the Pearl-Bike lands on her seat and handlebars and a little bit on the front wheel, backwards and upside down.

Kinzer jumps to his feet, jumps up and down, waving down at the Hiliclimb People-down there at Roger the engi neer who built some bridges around Muskegon but quit his job and became a factory worker and has never been happier; and Dale the bushy-bearded 300-pounder in denim farm overalls with a bottle of Boone's Farm in his big thigh pocket who works and eats at a Dunkin' Donuts and rode his Honda to Muskegon; and the Original Burger King, says the man-Kinzer waves down at them all as he jumps up and down on the side of the hill, the Pearl-Bike still upside down but Kinzer doesn't care because he knows his run was good. And the announcer says five-point seven-three-three and it's a new record and Kinzer rips off his Belistar and throws it over the top of the hill and says, "Hah! Take that, Hill. I win!"

But does he really? I mean, he watches the Hook slowly drop down and grab the twisted handlebars of his Pearl-Bike and he says susurrantly, "But one `a them other rascals is gonna go up quicker," and he knows it's true, and it is.

Then B. Doyle Disbennet-B. Doyle Disbennet, Bee Doy-el Dis-ben-net, no body named B. Doyle Disbennet could really be a winner, someone says-rolls out a Lightning Rocket with a frame that looks so long you think it has to be a mistake and a gilt teardrop tank that looks more like rust than gold metalflake or whatever it's supposed to be, a tatty-looking thing compared to Kinzer's Pearl-Bike, but it sounds so smooth someone says Disbennet should make a cafe racer out of it, and Disben net one-ups Kinzer's pearl spit-shine with his white shirt, without even any ring-around-the-collar it's so clean. A white shirt, just like the kind you wear to church with a clip-on tie, someone says, and maybe he does, maybe he came to the hiliclimb straight from church, except he couldn't, because look at his peanut butter-coloredpeanut butter-covered, someone sayscowboy boots.

Disbennet makes two runs pretty close to Kinzer's, but that's not good enough, so on his last run he unbuttons another button of his white shirt like he was taking off a tennis warm-up jacket or something, and rolls his Mellifluous Gilt-Tank over the top with a five-six one-four, over a tenth faster than Kinzer, which is a lot, and for the first time the Hill looks like a Loser.

Kinzer still has two more runs to go, two chances to win, but on his first he gets a bad start and churns up too big of a divot and doesn't even break six seconds. So he waits until everyone else has finished and it's six o'clock, people are going home, and no one is left but Kinzer and the Hill, for all he sees in his monomania. He's not so much trying to beat Disbennet as beat the Hill, but he knows he can't beat the Hill unless he beats Disbennet, and it's a personal thing.

So he digs a traction-trench with the shovel, long and deep enough to bury a telephone pole, and he stands at the bottom looking up for a long time,> lining up his approach, like Jack Nick laus or something, and come to think of it he looks like Jack Nicklaus 10 years ago. And he gets back on his Pearl-Bike and he wraps his palm with the rawhide strap that kills the motor in case he flies off, which he probably might, winds it tight like a bronco-buster at the Salinas Rodeo, and he holds the needle at a million grand and grits his Kentucky Bluegrass teeth and cocks his elbow up to his ear. And he brings it down like a karate chop and it snaps the throttle to WFO, and his prehensile left hand springs open and the clutch grabs and you never see him again, only breathe his digesting alcohol and oil and feel his flying divot-once knocked a spectator clean out at Everett, someone says.

He gets to the top without even any acrobatics, like Disbennet's best run, but he doesn't wave to the bottom of the Hill this time because most of the Hillclimb People have gone back to St. Joe's and other places, and he doesn't throw his helmet over the top of the Hill this time because he knows, and the Hill knows, and the Hook knows, that he is a loser, at least not .a winner, not the winner. Disbennet with his Gilt Tank and his White Shirt is the only winner, but he is nowhere around, and it was really only an epiphany, someone says, because the Hill never really loses.

And Kentucky Boy Kinzer, the World Champion Hiliclimber, is standing by the aerie with the kachug-kachugging Chevy inside, and he looks down and he sees no Hiliclimb People, only squashed beer cans and dripping red-and-white wine bottles, and roaches, and ketchupy ends of hot dog buns, and the bottom of the Hill to him is a netherworid. They should turn off the Chevy, some one says, and the Hook will stop clanking.