Recently, I was invited to a birthday party. Now, in my current life, this always translates into jumping up and down in a scorching hot inflatable “bouncy castle” with ten sweaty toddlers amped up on frosting.
So, with this thought in mind, I didn’t really pay much attention to yet another birthday invite sitting in my mailbox. After a couple of days, I casually picked it up and started to read, “You are cordially invited…blah, blah, blah…birthday party,…blah, blah, blah…party honoring Jack Brabham…blah, blah…” Wait a minute! (rub eyes once or twice) Did that say Jack Brabham?!
As it turns out, a long-time West Coast racer and historian named Art Evans had invited me to a party to help celebrate Brabham’s 76th birthday. So, of course, I figured this must be some huge to-do, and they are inviting all the automotive media as a courtesy. I’ll probably never get within 50-feet of “Black Jack,” but, what the heck, it might be interesting anyway. So, I send back my RSVP – for myself and a racing friend (I figure my wife would rather have her spleen resected than go to another “racing party”) – and I think nothing more of it.
Finally, the day of the party arrives, so I gather up my friend and we head to Evans’ cliff-side Southern California home. As we walk through the open front door, we both just stop dead in our tracks. The room looks like a Motorsports Hall of Fame refugee camp. Making our way inside, we pass Sir Jack himself, who is busy having a conversation with two-time Indy 500 winner Rodger Ward. Huddled around the cheese doodles is everyone’s favorite racer Dan Gurney having a belly laugh with Trans-Am and F5000 champion Tony Adamowicz. I look over at my friend, who has that glassy-eyed “Twighlight Zone” look, and ask, “Is this for real?”
As we head toward the back door, Chuck Daigh floats into the room looking for something to drink. I step back to give him a clear path to the cooler on the floor and I bump into someone behind me. I turn around to say, “Sorry,” and I’m staring into the smiling countenance of Corvette-legend Dick Guldstrand. “Hi Dick. How have you been?” I stammer, still somewhat in a state of shell-shock. “Great,” Guldstrand replies. “Can you believe the drivers Art has gotten to show up for this thing?” No, I honestly can’t.
After talking with Guldstrand about the plans for this summer’s tribute to Corvette at the Monterey Historics, my friend and I decide that maybe we should go out on the patio and “collect our thoughts.” Damn! There’s no place to sit. And why you ask? Well, Carroll Shelby is sitting in the middle of the patio holding court with Bill Murphy, Phil Hill and Jack McAfee, as well as various other luminaries. Unbelievable. It doesn’t take long before my friend and I come to the realization that we are literally the only two people here who are not famous.
Right about this time, Evans sticks his head out the door and yells, “Come on everyone, Jack’s going to blow out his candles.” So we all make our way to the dining room where Sir Jack is standing behind his cake, smiling from ear to ear. Once surrounded by Shelby, Gurney, Ward and Hill, the crowd breaks into a rousing round of “Happy Birthday.” After the “birthday boy” blows out his candles, the speeches start. Each driver takes his turn telling stories about Brabham and the old days. As always, Shelby sits back and punctuates everyone’s story with some hilarious one-liner, until finally, he steps up to the front.
“I have to tell ya,” he says in his cool Texas drawl, “what a fabulous business man Jack is. We were racing together at the Nürburgring back in the early ’60s when this fella from Mercedes and I get to talkin’ and he offers me this incredible deal on a Mercedes sedan. I think about it a minute and I tell him, ‘Sure, I’ll pick it up Monday.’ So, Monday comes and I show up at the dealership and the guy looks at me all flustered. He says to me, ‘Sorry, Mr. Shelby we were told that you were no longer interested in the car.’ And I say, ‘By who!?’ And he says, ‘By that gentleman there.’ And I’ll be damned if he wasn’t pointing to Jack driving off in my Mercedes!!”
After several more hours of more of the same, we reluctantly head home from this incredible gathering which, one worries, may never be repeated. While Evans didn’t give out any party favors for Brabham’s 76th, he certainly did everyone a favor by organizing the party.
Now, if only that picture of Brabham and Gurney in the bouncy castle turns out.
