*Or, How I Became a Death-Cheating Toad in Mexico and Broke the Ancient Aztec Alien Curse Put on My Family by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Lost Show Car
[This article originally appeared in Garage Magazine #16.]
In his July 1963 interview with Rod & Custom, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth
teased readers with news about a new project he had started, one he called the
Bald Eagle. “I am going to build a car that will be irresistible to women,”
said Roth. “They will want to climb on it, scratch the paint and just crawl all
over it.”
That chick-magnet project was later
renamed the Orbitron. In ’63 BDR was under pressure from Revell to produce
another wild show car, one that would become, like the Outlaw and Beatnik
Bandit and Mysterion before it, a show circuit sensation and million-selling
plastic model kit. BDR pull all the stops for the effort: Working from an idea
by Roth, Ed Newton drew a concept and Roth and Dirty Doug began shaping its fiberglass
form in the Maywood shop. It was long and low, asymmetric, built like a UFO
dragster with the driver sitting behind the axle. Like the Beatnik Bandit and
Mysterion it featured a bubbletop blown at Acry Plastics, but with a spacious
angel fur interior big enough to accommodate Roth and one of those girls he
talked about in R&C. The previous year Ford had given Roth three new 406
crate motors, two of which went into the Mysterion; the third went into his ’55
Chevy daily. Roth chromed out the ‘55’s original 265 small block and stuffed it
in the Orbitron’s engine compartment. Its centerpiece was a long tubular
nosecone, jutting forward of the front wheels, containing a pod of
Red-Green-Blue lights that, BDR explained, would combine into a single white beam.
After getting a luscious Larry Watson blue fade paintjob, it was ready for its
debut in early ’64.
By all rights the car should have been another triumph. At the time Big Daddy was King and his Rat Fink Empire was at its peak;.Roth Studios was pumping out millions of grotesque t-shirts and doodads for rebellious kids around the globe, model kit royalties were pouring in, and the Maywood shop was the undisputed center of the kustom car universe. He had just been lionized by Tom Wolfe in the bestseller Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, which compared him to Salvador Dali and called his cars things like “baroque” and “Dionysian.”
Instead, the Orbitron was a flop. On the ’64-’65 show circuit, it was greeted with public indifference. Contemporary photographs show the Orbitron in the parking lot of Revell awaiting measurement for a model kit that was never released. Roth theorized the Orbitron was too similar to the Mysterion, and that he screwed up in hiding the chromed engine behind its body panels. He also blamed the Beatles, whose 1964 appearance on Ed Sullivan coincided with the Orbitron’s debut and ushered in a new wave of youth culture more attuned to electric guitars than fantasy show cars.
Whatever the reason, it was Roth’s
first taste of failure. He decided to cut his losses and dump it. BDR was
notoriously unsentimental about his work; legend says he once swapped seven of
his show cars for a new VW Beetle. Dan Woods, who worked for Roth back in the
day, says Roth once traded a Rolls Royce custom project for a pair of chrome
valve covers. “He didn’t care,” says Woods. “He called all those cars ‘my
mistake pile.’”
Roth may have not cared about most
of his cars, but his attitude toward the Orbitron seemed to border on outright
contempt. "I sold the Orbitron to some dude in Texas," he recalled in
his 1995 book with Tony Thacker, and those were to be the final words he had to
say about it, at least in print.
Contrary to Roth’s recollection,
though, the record shows it went to Kansas, and the dude was car customizer and
show promoter Darryl Starbird.
“Me and Jake [Jacobs] were putting
the frame together for the Druid Princess in ‘65,” recalls Dan Woods. “The
Orbitron was still at the shop, and I remember Starbird’s trailer coming to get
it.”
“I think I paid Roth $700 or $800
for it,” says Starbird. “I toured it for a couple years, then I sold it in ’67
or so to a fella in Ada, Oklahoma, a car dealer I think.”
The last pictures of the Orbitron I
can find were at the 1967 Wichita show, when Starbird still owned it; I know it
toured at least briefly after that, because I saw it. That’s a different part
of this story. But somewhere around 1970, the Oklahoma car dealer sold it and
the Orbitron seemingly fell off the face of the Earth.
Over the years several Roth cars and
bikes resurfaced, but the Orbitron remained (along with the Mysterion) one of
the two lost grails of Rothdom. In some ways it was more elusive than the
Mysterion, because the Mysterion’s chassis and running gear were eventually
found. By contrast the Obitron was lost lock, stock, and barrel.
What made its disappearance more
perplexing is that even the most serious Rothologists had little idea of its
whereabouts. Neither Dan Woods, who worked for Roth in the 60s, nor Von Franco,
who worked for him in the 80s and 90s, had leads. The modern triumvirate of
hardcore Roth revivalists -- Mark Moriarity, Dave Shuten, and Fritz Schenck – had
each sought the car and ended up stymied. Between them they had restored,
located, or cloned many Roth cars, but the Orbitron was always the one that
eluded capture. Ten years ago Moriarity took out several “Have You Seen This
Car?” ads in Hemmings, and only received two responses -- both vague
recollections of seeing it in Texas in the early ‘70s. The consensus was that
the Orbitron was junked or destroyed, a conclusion that seemed so obvious that
Shuten planned to clone the Orbitron just as he had done with the Mysterion.
Thus it came as somewhat of shock
when, in September 2007, the Orbitron suddenly reappeared. The headlines
screamed on car forums all across the intertubes: Roth’s Orbitron Found! Parked In Front of Mexican Sex Shop!
The news was weird and hilarious and
inexplicable, and left most Roth fans giddy. For a myriad of reasons, it left
me scared shitless. When Stoner called and offered me a trip to El Paso to see
the Orbitron in person and write this story, I initially refused. I explained,
calmly and rationally, that the Orbitron would probably try to kill me out of
revenge.
“Uhhhm… okay,” said Stoner. “Revenge
for what?”
“Dude, this is going to sound
crazy,” I said, “but… I think I killed Ed Roth.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, not me, exactly. My family curse.”
“Uh huh.”
“Seriously, man, ever time I cross
paths with Roth, or a Roth car, bad shit happens.”
“Alright, so make that part of the
story.”
“And if I end up dead?”
“Well,” reasoned Stoner, “if you
really did kill Ed Roth, you would probably deserve it.”
After
thinking about it for a minute, I realized he had a point. I booked my flight
to El Paso, and my long awaited showdown with the Orbitron and Death.
---------------------------------
On the bumpy plane ride to El Paso I
thought about my first encounter with Roth and the Orbitron and the curse. It
was February 1968, inside the Sioux City Auditorium, and I was a seven year old
Iowa farm kid. Like my older brother, I was under the spell of the great
juvenile pop monster custom car cult established by Roth, and when we learned
that the Great Fink himself would be appearing at the local World of Wheels car
show we begged our old man to take us.
Roth was at a booth, flanked by the
Mysterion and the Orbitron, engulfed in a mob of eager acolytes. I lined up and
waited patiently with my Beatnik Bandit model kit for an autograph. By that
time neither car belonged to him; Roth had gravitated into the outlaw biker
world and had hocked most of his holdings to finance Choppers Magazine, but he
was still a big draw at car shows and commanded big personal appearances fees.
I didn’t know any of that then, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway.
Meeting Roth was going to be as big as meeting Santa. Hell, bigger. As I neared
the head of the line, I craned my neck through the forest of corduroy coats and
spied the great bearded Fink, seated next to an enormous menacing elf. It was
Tiny Brower.
Grandma's neighbor
Tiny was founder of Sioux City’s
notorious El Forastero outlaw bike club, and my grandparents’ neighbor. Mom
grew up poor on Sioux City’s rough Westside and my grandparents still lived
there with my schizophrenic aunt. They were “Black Irish,” descendants of an
ancient invasion of Spaniards to Ireland; as a result they were also
superstitious and ultra-Catholic. The walls of their cramped little bungalow
were a riot of crucifixes and cheap religious art, save for one ephemeral
picture of a beautiful Mexican girl at a well. It was painted by Grandpa in his
brief career as a failed artist, after the Army and before becoming a mean
drunk. For a while he tried selling his art at the little picture framing shop
he owned, with little success. One night Grandpa went on a bender and set all
his pictures on fire. The mysterious Mexican girl was the only one to survive.
Their house wasn’t a pleasant place
to be for a seven-year old, so whenever we visited my brother and I would ask
to roam the neighborhood. “Just don’t
go over by those motorcycle people,” Grandma warned us, between drags on her
unfiltered Pall Mall.
“Why?”
“Because they’re all going to hell,”
she barked. “And they’ll take you with them, that’s why.”
It was a chance we were willing to
take. My brother and I would peer over the fence at Tiny and his friends while
they worked on their choppers, attended by beer-serving beehive molls. He was a
huge dude, 6’7”, or 6’8”, 300 pounds, big enough to dwarf BDR, and Sioux City’s
undisputed One-Percenter-In-Chief. Tiny filled us with a sense of dread, and
awe, and envy. More than anything else my brother and I wanted to be like him.
So when my brother and I got to the
front of the line, we gave Tiny a sheepish wave. He elbowed Roth. “Hey, I know
these kids,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” said Roth, signing my
model kit. “I got a couple of boys your age. Here, take a hat.” He handed us
each a free hillbilly crash helmet, festooned with his rollicking trademark
R.F.
As far as I was concerned at that
point, Santa could go pound sand because nothing he could bring down the
chimney could rival that hat, personally given to me by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth
himself. My brother and I stopped to ogle the Obitron for what I assumed would
be the last time.
Years later I learned how Roth and
Tiny Brower knew each other. One of Tiny’s club brothers, Dave Mann, was a
trained artist and illustrator who enjoyed painting scenes of the El Forasteros
in their natural habitat: riding, partying, living. Tiny knew Mann’s art was
good and sent a snapshot of one of his paintings to Roth. Roth loved it, and
commissioned 8 more Mann paintings to sell as 98¢ posters in his monthly car
magazine ads.
Detail from Roth ad for the Dave Mann Forasteros posters
Today Mann’s Roth paintings are
considered classics of Lowbrow style. They had titles like Tecate Run, Tijuana Jailbreak,
and El Forastero Party, depicting
remorseless Viking hordes of filthy outlaw bikers leaving entire cities in
flame. The models for those pictures were Tiny and the El Forasteros, and
perfectly conveyed that vision of hellbound evil my grandma sensed when they
roared in formation past her front porch.
Not everyone appreciated the
paintings, though. Hot Rod Magazine publisher Robert Peterson -- always eager
to promote a clean cut image of hot rodders – was already disenchanted with
Roth’s subversive style and dalliances with the outlaw biker world. When the
Mann posters appeared in Roth’s monthly HRM ad, it was the last straw. Peterson
censored and cancelled Roth’s remaining advertising and severed all ties with
him. It was the beginning of Roth’s long downward spiral.
In the year after that first meeting
with Roth, a drought wiped out my dad’s corn crop and he took a winter job at a
processing plant to pay the bills. Two days before Christmas, he narrowly
escaped a boiler explosion that took off a co-worker’s head. In my eight-year
old catholic conscious, I couldn’t shake the thought that my Roth hat had
invited Hell to Iowa.
Santa
skipped our house that Christmas. I couldn’t blame him.
---------------------------------
There are two million people in El
Paso and its border twin city of Juarez, surrounded by a quarter million square
miles of nothing. It’s the home of Fort Bliss, the birthplace of the Margarita,
and an ideal hiding place for things you want to remain hidden.
Montezuma knew it. When Cortes first
encountered the Aztecs in 1520 he was dazzled by their gleaming body plates of
gold. The Aztecs called it teocuitlatl,
“the excrement of the gods,” and valued it for its ability to reflect and
amplify the sun. Fearing that all his holy shit would be captured by the
invading Spaniards, it is said that Montezuma himself ordered the Aztec
Empire’s treasures of gold hidden to the north. Rumor or not, it brought the
first Europeans to El Paso. Tens of thousands of Conquistadors crossed the Rio
Grande here, in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola where Montezuma’s
gold was supposedly buried – vast caches of treasure so great that split a
thousand ways it would make each man richer than the King himself. Cortez spent
twenty years in the badlands north of El Paso looking for it, only to return to
Mexico empty handed.
The US government knew it. When they
wanted to keep the Manhattan nuclear project from the prying eyes of the Nazi,
they stuck it in the desert north of town. On July 11, 1945 -- seven days after
El Paso bartender Pancho Morales salted the brim on the first Margarita -- they
detonated the first atom bomb outside Alamogordo, and nobody was the wiser
until Hiroshima. Even today the classified White Sands Range is the military’s
go-to secret place for testing lethal weaponry.
The hot rod gods also knew it. When
they decided to hide the Orbitron from the world, they hid it here – in plain
sight, in front of a Juarez sex shop.
But unlike those previous treasures, the Orbitron didn’t stay lost. It
was found by the guy who picks me up at my motel, Michael Lightbourn.
“Okay, seriously,” I ask, hopping
into his truck, “is the sex shop story for real?”
“Completely,” he laughs. “Let’s go
get burritos.”
Despite the Anglo name Lightbourn is
no gringo. His English forebears came to Mexico by way of Bermuda 200 years
ago, mixed with the locals, and emigrated to El Norte one generation back. His friends jokingly call him
“Lightbrown.” At El Paso Jefferson High he became a hot rodder and gearhead, and
it evolved into an occupation selling repop auto trim pieces manufactured in
Mexico. Along the way he became an unlikely Indiana Jones, bringing back
automotive treasures from south of the border, and his cell is constantly
ringing with new leads. Over burritos and Tecate, Lightbourn explains how he
stumbled upon the greatest hot rod find of the century.
“I’ve got people in Mexico always
looking for stuff for me, mostly Mustangs and muscle cars and ‘30s Fords,” he
says. “One of my guys over there started bugging me this summer about a
fiberglass car he saw in Juarez, in front of a sex shop. He said, ‘man, you’ve
got to see this thing, it’s really cool.’ I was like, why would I want that? I
thought it was a dune buggy or something.”
“Anyway, he kept pestering me about
it,” says Lightbourn. “So I gave him a disposable camera and said, ‘go take
pictures.’ When I got them back from the photo lab I looked at them and said
‘holy shit… that’s the goddamn Orbitron.’”
In Juarez, people estimate that the
Orbitron had languished in front of the sex shop since 1991, used as an
attraction and garbage receptacle. Assuming 200 people passed by it a day, more
than a million people saw it, but Lightbourn was the first to finally recognize
what it was. As soon as he recovered from the shock, he headed over the bridge
to strike a deal with the sex shop owner.
“I offered him five hundred bucks,”
he says. “The guy got angry and says, ‘my uncle built this car thirty years
ago, it’s a family heirloom, I’m never going to sell it.’”
Not wanting to contradict his story,
Lightbourn left, but returned. And returned, and returned.
“Finally, he says, ‘you’re one
persistent sonofabitch,’” says Lightbourn. “I said, well it’s easy to get rid
of me. Just tell me how much you want. So he thinks a minute and names a price.
I had the cash in my pocket.”
“How much?”
“I got a good deal,”
he smiles. “After we shook hands, the guy asks me, ‘what do you want that car
for?’ I told him I was gonna make it into a hot tub. He says, ‘really? I was
thinking about doing that too!’”
After a couple of hundred-dollar
handshakes with Mexican customs agents, the Orbitron was back in Los Estados
Unidos and back in the headlines.
“Ready to see it?” asks Lightbourn.
I gulped down the rest of my third
Tecate to bolster my nerve.
“Let’s go.”
---------------------------------
On the way
to the showdown, we pass by an entrance to Fort Bliss. Millions of soldiers
have passed through those gates, including a few from my family. The first was
Uncle Billy Stebner, my great grandma’s brother. As a small kid Uncle Billy saw
General John “Black Jack” Pershing and his 6th Cavalry parade
through Sioux City on their way to Dakota Territory to quell the last of the
Sioux uprisings. It left a lasting impression. Uncle Billy joined the Cavalry
and ended up at Fort Bliss serving Pershing as a lieutenant. It would have been
a quiet stint if not for Pancho Villa.
Villa was a Mexican bandito and
revolutionary who had risen to fame by helping to overthrow the dictator Diaz
at the Battle of Juarez. In 1914 Uncle Billy and his Army buddies watched the
action, like a prize fight, from a railroad boxcar in El Paso. For his trouble
Villa was awarded provisional governorship of Chihuahua and he quickly began
confiscating every ounce of gold within the state, at gunpoint.
At first Villa was friendly with the American government, even traveling to Bliss for a photo op with Pershing. But after Woodrow Wilson threw his support behind his hated rival Carranza In 1916, Villa went ballistic. On March 9 he crossed the border into Columbus, New Mexico with a force of 1500. They called themselves Los Centauros – the Centaurs, for the half man-half horse creatures of Greek myth – and they rode into town wrapped in bandoleros, guns blazing, some riding Indian motorcycles. They seized gold and mules and burned Columbus to the ground, killing ten American soldiers and eight civilians while losing 80 of their own.
Columbus, New Mexico in flames
It was the first foreign attack on
U.S. soil since the War of 1812, and prompted national outrage. Wilson ordered
Pershing to pursue Villa back across the border, and Uncle Billy went along on
the ride. That so-called “Punitive Expedition” was a fool’s errand. The
Doughboys’ standard issue Harleys were no match for the Centauros’ Indians, and
the Villistas were able to slip back in among the populace. Pershing and his
force of 6,000 returned to Fort Bliss empty handed. Uncle Billy told me about
it countless times, including his bout with dysentery. Even in his 90s, he
swore he would return to Mexico and find the billions of dollars of gold Villa
hid in the hills of Chihuahua.
A few
months after the Pancho Villa expedition another young man from Iowa, John
Cullen, arrived at Fort Bliss. He was my Grandpa. He was an infantryman who
followed Pershing to his next assignment on the battlefields of France. He
fought at the Marne and returned with nightmares of trench warfare, and the
memory of a girl he met in Juarez. She was the girl in the painting, his lost
Mexican treasure.
The Orbitron’s new home is an unassuming
warehouse in an industrial section of El Paso, red and white with wrought iron
grating over the office windows. We are met there by Mark, a friend of
Lightbourn’s from Dallas who is in town to retrieve a Mexican Firebird.
Lightbourn hits the light switches and the halogen and neon groan to life,
revealing a cavernous building filled with dusty amalgam of muscle cars and
classics; Trans Ams, Mustangs, Cudas, a Herbie the Love Bug clone Lightbourn is
making for his daughter.
“So where is it?” I ask, nervously.
Lightbourn grins and points to a row
of cars against a side wall. Wedged in between a babyshit yellow fat fender
sedan and a crumpled ’69 Chevelle wagon sits my bete noir, the Orbitron.
“Come on, let’s roll it out so you
can take some pictures,” says Lightbourn.
I approached it warily, half
expecting it to attack. The drag link is disconnected so the front wheels have
to be turned by hand. Mark yanks and kicks at the tires to angle the steering.
“Don’t provoke it,” I warn, pushing
gingerly.
We roll it to the center of the
floor, and Lightbourn opens a rear rollup door for additional light from the
late afternoon West Texas sun. Given its 16 year sentence as a sidewalk garbage
dump it’s in reasonably good shape. Larry Watson’s blue fade paint is long
gone, save for a few oxidized edges, revealing its black primer. Ed Roth may
not have been the world’s greatest craftsman but he certainly didn’t skimp on
fiberglass; the body is heavy and solid with minor surface cracking on a few
stress points. The sharp horn-like fenders are still intact, except a missing
tip on one of the rears that reveals some of Roth’s plaster. The only missing
body pieces are the nosecone, which appears to have been removed with a
hacksaw, and the engine cover. The missing panels reveal Roth’s hand built
frame, his stubby four-link setup, the same early 265 engine that came from
Roth’s Chevy, the same ‘Vette valve covers, the same chrome Strombergs, bubbled
and peeling.
“They were filled with water when I
got it,” says Lightbourn. “Cylinders too.”
The other major missing piece is the
bubbletop. The interior is gutted and only a few shreds of angel fur remain,
which appear to have been dyed dark blue at some point. The TV console and
upholstery are gone and the plywood floor is warped and worn from years of
exposure. But the Moon pedal remains, as does the Cragar slotted steering
wheel. The shift lever is still there, but the custom knob is gone. Amazingly,
three of the four hubs carry the original slotted chrome Cragars and tires,
including a rotted Casler piecrust cheater slick.
Between the halogen and the
reflective sunlight glare, it appears half charging bull, half alien autopsy.
Is the resemblance coincidental?
Two years after the first nuke blast
at Alamagordo, eyewitnesses reported seeing a UFO go down in nearby Roswell,
New Mexico. If conspiracy buffs are to be believed, the craft contained aliens
whose cadavers were taken to a secret Air Force facility for gutting and
experimentation. Soon after, a plague of UFOs filled the skies surrounding El
Paso. Maybe they came to retrieve the bodies, or Montezuma’s gold, or revenge,
maybe they came to save us from ourselves. I personally think they came for the
margaritas.
Some people don’t believe it; others
will tell you that UFO activity around here is nothing new, and that the Aztecs
themselves came to Mexico from outer space. But to me there seems to be some
sort of connection between all of it and my family curse. The facts are this:
the Air Force’s secret Project Blue Book
catalogs 1522 separate UFO encounters between the first Roswell incident and
the disappearance of the Orbitron. Most were in the western US, more than 15%
in New Mexico alone. In the midst of
that extraterrestrial traffic jam, a young Air Force enlistee from Los Angeles
named Ed Roth headed east to Colorado for basic training. During his 1951-2
stay in Colorado Springs, Project Blue
Book notes a spate of UFO incidents:
July 9, 1952. Colorado Springs, Colo. 12:45 p.m. USAF
pilot Maj. C. K. Griffin saw an object shaped like an airfoil less its trailing
edge, luminous white, move slowly and erratically.
Aug. 29, 1952. Colorado Springs, Colo. 8:35 p.m. USAF
pilot C. A. Magruder saw 3 objects 50 ft in diameter, 10 ft high, aluminum with
red-yellow exhaust, fly in trail about 1,500 mph.
When the
Air Force shipped Roth to a base in Morocco, the UFOs followed.
Sept. 9, 1952. Rabat, French Morocco. 9 p.m. USAF
Intelligence civilian illustrator E. J. Colisimo saw a disc with lights along
part of its circumference fly twice as fast as a T-33 jet trainer, in a
slightly curved path.
March 25, 1953. Nouasseur AFB, Rabat, French Morocco.
9:23-10:15 p.m. (GMT). Majors Radin and Rend plus 1+ crew of C-47 at 5,000 ft
saw white light above at 7,000 to 8,000 ft maneuvering in spiral pattern over
airfield, descend and land on airbase S of runways at 9:28 p.m. visible until
suddenly blinked out on the ground at about 10:15.
March 5, 1954. Nouasseur AFB, French Morocco. 7:15,
7:38, 9:55 p.m. Crews of USAF KC-97 aerial tanker planes and a C-54 transport
saw 1-2 white or amber objects or lights make passes at the aircraft on
collision courses as they practiced GCA landings.
Five more similar sightings occurred in North Africa during Roth’s stay there. When he returned to the States to finish his stint in South Carolina the UFOs followed again, at Shaw and Congaree and Savannah River. And then, back to Los Angeles.
Look, I’m
not suggesting that Ed Roth was in communication with aliens or anything.
Okay, maybe I am.
As the afternoon drags on
Lightbourn’s friends begin arriving at the back of the warehouse, one by one,
bearing tributes of beer. First are Sergio and Antonio, two of Lightbourn’s
Jefferson High car buddies who have a transmission shop nearby. There’s JD,
another school pal, and Red Dog, Lightbourn’s cousin. The EP hot rod mafia love
to party, and Friday fiesta is on. I’m still spooked by the Orbitron and the
curse, so I gladly indulge each every offer of liquid courage.
“So how did the Orbitron get to
Juarez?” I ask, cracking a cold one.
“Oh shit, man, it was in El Paso
forever,” says Sergio. “We all saw it years ago when we were little kids,
outside the bail bond office.”
Bail bond office? They are unclear
on who exactly brought the Orbitron to El Paso but they estimate it arrived
here circa 1972. The owner reportedly ran afoul of the law, maybe for drugs;
strapped for cash, he used the Orbitron to pay off the bail bondsman and his
lawyer, a guy named Sid Abraham. Abraham and the bail bondsman used it for
sidewalk advertising.
When the Orbitron arrived in El Paso, I was in California on the grand vacation of my youth. We spent three weeks on the coast, taking in ever tourist attraction; Disneyland, Universal Studios, Sea World, the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One day my brother and I saw a motel lobby flyer for the “MovieWorld Cars of the Stars Museum” in Buena Park. After a modest amount of pleading, Dad agreed to take us.
It was a
weekday afternoon so we had the run of the place. After winding through a maze
of cancelled TV customs and celebrity cars, we came upon the Beatnik Bandit. It
looked worn and dingy, with an unfamiliar green paint job. “Let’s get a picture,” said my dad,
motioning us to duck under the velvet rope and pose next to the Bandit. “Go
ahead, it’ll be okay.”
My brother and I leaned against the
Bandit’s fenders, like bookends, and waited for Dad’s Kodak’s flash. Four years
earlier I stood starstruck in Roth’s presence, but now the dilapidated Beatnik
Bandit left me sadly wondering whatever happened to him.
That same week we went to Knott’s
Berry Farm where, I learned later, Roth was employed. The Choppers Magazine
venture, a divorce, and a shop break-in had left him flat broke. He had sold a
few of his cars to the Brucker family who owned the museum, and had taken a
sign painting job at Knott’s to make ends meet. I don’t know if we crossed
paths there, but the curse had returned.
On the way back to Iowa, somewhere
east of Barstow, Dad spotted a dilapidated billboard along the Interstate
advertising “Ghost Mining Town! Next Exit”. He was a sucker for Old West
attractions and wheeled the Impala onto the exit ramp. It took twenty miles on
an empty highway to get to the ghost town, which consisted of a couple of
battered abandoned buildings. Dad apologized for the disappointment and we got
back in the Impala. The starter spun futilely, its solenoid broken.
As we sat there baking in the August
high desert sun, I don’t think I was the only one who thought we were going to
die. No one said anything, though, not wanting to panic my 5-year old sister.
After three hours we were rescued by a Mexican guy in a pickup.
When we
finally got home to Iowa, we discovered that the corn crop had been destroyed
in a hailstorm.
---------------------------------
More vatos arrive at the warehouse,
including JD’s son and his friends. Next is Luis, who arrives in a late model
Crown Vic with a company door logo reading “Zaragoza, S.A.” Luis works as a
bodyguard for Jorge Zaragoza, who own the largest dairy in Mexico and reportedly
one of the largest hot rod fleets in the world.
“Come on clown, get a drink!” yells
Antonio. He could mean anybody, so I crack another beer.
“So did Sid Abraham bring it to
Juarez?” I ask.
“No, it stayed in El Paso for a
couple of years after that,” says Lightbourn. “A guy named Mike Lowe bought the
Orbitron from Sid, and he sold it to John Attel. Both of them tried to get it
running on the street, but couldn’t. Attel’s the one who changed the carb
linkage. He said it was the biggest piece of shit he ever owned.”
“It almost killed him,” chimes
Sergio. “He got stuck in the bubbletop, outside in the sun.”
“He said it was kind of funny for
the first 5 minutes, but he was in there for an hour,” says Lightbourn. “He
tried kicking his way out and cracked the bubble. A bunch of guys had to help
him break out.”
Attel’s attempts to street the
Orbitron were also reportedly the cause of the missing nosecone.
“He actually got it running down the street one day, and it stalled a couple blocks from his house,” says Antonio. “They strapped a chain on the axle to tow it back, and when the chain went taut it broke the nosecone.”
“Hey clown, we can get this thing
running again!” yells Red Dog. “Let’s jump start it!”
The sun is down and everyone’s half
in the bag. The boys surround the Orbitron and start bouncing it on its rear
spring, laughing wildly. Holy sweet
virgin mother of God. They are like picadors, taunting this angry, cursed,
alien bull that want to send my ass to hell. I make a sign of the cross, hoping
to stave off the curse for another 10 minutes.
“Andele,
dumbass, help us out!” laughs Sergio.
I ignore the probable death
sentence, and stumble over to join the riotous Orbitron-bouncing.
“That’s not how you start a car,
clown!” says Antonio. “You got to prime the carbs, like this!”
Antonio breaks open the tequila and
pours some down the center Stromberg. Lightbourn and I pour our beers down the
secondaries. More gales of laughter. I am dead, for certain. My cell phone
rings, it’s Stoner.
“Sounds like you’re having a good
time,” he says.
“I think I’m going to pay for it
later,” I slur. “Bigtime.”
“Jesse’s got a number for you to
call,” he says. “Los Centauros.”
Los Centauros are a biker club in
Juarez who share the same name and ethos as Pancho Villa’s riders. Jesse James
made their acquaintance a few years back when he rode through Mexico and Stoner
assures me they will be of invaluable assistance in accomplishing whatever the
hell it is I’m trying to do here. I call the number and introduce myself to
Centauro Daniel, who promises a party of his amigos is on its way.
Tequila and beer ensue. The more we
drink the more the conversation turns to Spanish, which I don’t speak. Red Dog
fishes a quarter out of his pocket and tosses it skyward.
“Call it! Call it!” he bellows.
“Heads!” answers JD.
They chase the quarter as it rolls
around the shop floor. When it stops, Red Dog starts crumping wildly.
“Twenty bucks, man!”
“Double or nothing, clown!”
More coin flips, bigger stakes, more
screams of laughter. Above it I hear the roar of approaching V-twins. Two big
dudes with shaved heads roll into the warehouse, astride full dress Harleys.
It’s Danny and Daniel, wearing their Los Centauros colors. A few minutes later
Centauro Heber arrives with his beautiful wife Norma, who bears another golden
bottle of tequila. She passes it to me for a ceremonial swig.
“Senor Jesse James sends his
respects,” I slur, bowing slowly. As Stoner predicted, they offer their help in
securing anything I need during my visit. I wonder if they know any good
undertakers.
Sergio hops aboard an old orange
Stingray bike, and pedals it to the rear of the warehouse. He wheels it around
and points it at the Orbitron, 80 feet away, and begins pedaling furiously.
“Go clown! Go clown! Go clown!”
everyone chants furiously. Sergio puts the Stingray into a skid and wipes out
right beside the Orbitron, and lies on the floor giggling. Paroxysms of
laughter.
“Hey borracho! Pendejo! Your turn!”
I look around and they’re pointing
at me and the Stingray. I hop on the Stingray and wheel it unsteadily to the
back of the warehouse.
Holy Guadalupe, here I am, careening
toward a priceless, cursed piece of 20th Century abstract art with
all the dispatch my tequila-impaired senses can muster. At the last possible
moment I stomp on the coaster brake and leave a perfect Bezier curve of rubber
on the shop floor, just inches from the Orbitron.
“Ole!” Everyone’s screaming and applauding and rolling on the floor. I
take a bow. They’re all talking and laughing about something in Spanish,
apparently me, and I give them a quizzical drunken look.
“Hey man, we just voted you an
honorary Mexican,” says Lightbourn.
“No shit, for reals?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Your honorary
Mexican name is… El Sapo.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means The Toad.”
“Why?”
“Because you look like that dude in
American Graffiti,” he says.
I struggled to maintain my balance
while they bellowed in laughter; half honored, half insulted, one hundred
percent borracho. To celebrate I did something really, really stupid. I hopped
into the Orbitron.
I grabbed the Cragar wheel and
shifter, pantomiming one of Roth’s monster t-shirt designs, when I realized the
enormity of my error. I remembered John Attel frying under the bubbletop like
an ant under a magnifying glass. This car had tried to kill before, and I had
given it a good reason to try again.
Thirty
years passed before I encountered Roth and the curse again. It was 2001, at the
World of Wheels in Chicago, and I was there with my five-year old son. When we
entered the cavernous hall at McCormick place, there was a long line of mullets
waiting to get an autograph from wrassler Stone Cold Steve Austin. At an
adjoining table there sat a man in a top hat with a white goatee. It was Ed Roth.
Roth was
sitting alone, Buddha-like, and I couldn’t believe the fact that we had him all
to ourselves. After converting to Mormonism and self-imposed exile in Utah, BDR
was in the midst of a full-blown renaissance. The t-shirts were selling again,
the Rat Fink Reunion was drawing thousands of fans, and he was finally getting
credit from the Serious Art world for his influence.
My son and
I sat and talked to him for twenty minutes, alone. I mentioned our first
meeting in Sioux City, and Tiny Brower. I asked him about the Mysterion and the
Orbitron.
“Oh, the
Mysterion’s gone,” he said. “I think the Orbitron’s somewhere in Texas.”
We had Roth
sign a few items and left him to the growing crowd that started to assemble
around his booth.
“Was that
Santa Claus?” asked my son.
“Better,” I
said. “That was Big Daddy Roth. And don’t you forget him.”
Five weeks
later, Ed Roth was dead.
I sat drunk
and paralyzed in the Orbitron, this black fiberglass alien sarcophagus,
thinking about the curse. I wondered if it knew I had killed Roth, and whether
I had passed the curse on to my son. Just then – I swear – I felt something
overtaking me, a spectre of some kind. Okay, maybe it was the tequila, but I
was convinced that a ghost was in there with me, taking over my soul. I
clambered out and fell to the shop floor.
“Come on Sapo, let’s get out of this
sausage party,” said Red Dog, lifting me up by the arm. “Before you can become
a real Mexican, you got to go to the Cabaret.”
I hopped into Red Dog’s car with a
few of his vatos, and we headed to the Cabaret. On the way I stuck my head out
the window and screamed at a shooting star. I vaguely remember stumbling into
the club, and the night evaporated into a crystaline mist of thumping bass,
blacklights, and chrome.
The next
morning I lied in my motel bed and had a waking dream; in it an alien stripper
danced atop the Orbitron while Uncle Billy, Montezuma and Robert Oppenheimer
stuffed bills in her g-string. It was interrupted by the phone.
“Hey Sapo!”
barked Lightbourn. “How’s your head?”
“Been
better,” I croaked.
“What you
need is some menudo,” he laughed. I’ll be around in 15 minutes.”
My frayed
synapses began to reassemble the memories of the night before, and I was
pleasantly surprised by the fact that the curse had somehow allowed me to live
through the night. I cautioned myself against optimism, because the day was
still young. Lightbourn picked me up and we drove over to Plaza Transmissions,
Sergio and Antonio’s shop, and took a few pictures of a ‘34 hot rod project
inside. From there we headed to a little cocina in a strip mall a few blocks
away.
“Sapo!
Toad!” came the chorus as we entered. Apparently this will be my name for the
duration.
Most of the
crowd from last night are there, plus Gilbert and Sergio #2, two more Jefferson
High gearhead alumni. “Try the menudo,” they enthuse. “Best thing going for a resaca.” Hangover cure or not, the
thought of cow stomach soup is not helping my already elevated squeamishness. I
decline, despite grumbles that they will rescind my Honorary Mexican
privileges.
I wash down
a few slugs of Tylenol with my coffee, and the conversation comes back around
to the Orbitron and its first journey across the border.
“John Attel
got tired of trying to get it to run, and it was pretty busted up at that
point,” says Lightbourn. “The nosecone was cracked and he had thrown away the
bubbletop. So around 1974 he sold it to a guy who owned a little street
carnival in Juarez.”
“Yeah, they
used it for a long time over there,” says Antonio. “It was in all the parades
over in Juarez, too, Cinco de Mayo and Christmas, stuff like that.”
Damn, I thought. It was hard to
comprehend the indignity of the Orbitron in those years; dormant but angry, in
front of a Tilt-a-Whirl, serving as a photo backdrop for kiddie pictures;
tugged down the street behind a parade float, like a bull being marched to the
ring or a hapless victim being led to an Aztec blood sacrifice.
After the
menudo joint we headed over to Sergio #2’s place, a tidy stucco house with a
long, rambling backyard that leads to a secluded area containing his father’s
chicken pens and Sergio #2’s collection of hoopties: a ’38 Chevy street rod, a
’42 Studebaker Commander, a ’54 Bel Air, a ’32 Tudor project. I take some pictures
and crack a beer to celebrate the fact that it’s after noon, somewhere.
“So, how
did it get to the sex shop?”
“The guy
who owned the carnival eventually died around 1990,” explains Lightbourn. “The
guy who owned the sex shop was related to him, a nephew I think. He got it in
the will. By that time it must have been pretty roached out, and nobody there
had any idea where it came from. ”
And there
it sat for more than a decade, a sidewalk curiosity luring bypassers to browse
the shop’s inventory of vibrators and lubricants.
“Come on
Toad, let’s go over to Mexico so you can see the place for yourself,”
Lightbourn grins.
Sergio,
Mark and I pile into Lightbourn’s crewcab and we head toward the downtown
bridge to Juarez. A few blocks from the bridge approach we stop at a
convenience mart for provisions. Outside the mart entrance a whacked-out
homeless guy is pacing, fidgeting, ranting to himself about something in
Spanish.
“What the
hell was he talking about?” I ask, hopping back in the truck.
“Some shit
about space aliens,” says Sergio.
In August of ’74, just as the Orbitron was crossing over into Mexico, US military radar detected an object flying at 45,000 feet near the small town of Coyame in the Chihuahuan desert outside of Juarez. It suddenly dropped to 10,000 feet, and after a few minutes disappeared from the radar screens. Within an hour of the disappearance, civilian radio traffic reported a civilian plane had gone down in that same area. The next morning a Mexican search party radioed that wreckage from two planes had been spotted from the air. One was reported “circular shaped” and in one piece, although damaged. A few minutes later the Mexican military clamped radio silence on all search efforts, and refused offers of assistance by the US government.
The same day, the US Army assembled
a helicopter recovery team at Fort Bliss. Low altitude US overflights indicated
that both the crashed disk and the civilian aircraft had been removed from the
crash sites and loaded on Mexican military trucks headed south. A second wave
of US overflights spotted the convoy, halted in the desert; their radios had
gone silent and the ground surrounding the trucks was littered with lifeless
human bodies. When US helicopters arrived at the scene, the trucks remained but
the disk -- and the bodies -- were gone.
Today
Coyame is known as “the Mexican Roswell,” and conspiracy theories abound about
what ever happened to the mysterious circular ship and its inhabitants. Some
think it went to a secret facility in Georgia, others think it’s under control
of the Mexican government. I’m not sure where it is, but I’m convinced it was
the first attempt to tow the Orbitron back.
From the
crest of the bridge I can see the Rio Grande. Physically, it’s a muddy concrete
ditch with an extravagant name. It’s the army of uniformed agents on either
side that indicate its real significance: it defines an imaginary line,
separating two worlds, creating big risks and even bigger opportunities.
Opportunities for treasure hunters and smugglers, for immigrants, for gringos
seeking a little high-quality debauchery.
This imaginary line has long invited brutal men and rough justice. A few years after ventilating a New Mexico outlaw named William Bonney – a/k/a Billy the Kid -- Pat Garrett was appointed by Teddy Roosevelt as head U.S. Customs agent on this very spot. A lot of people suspect Garrett was killed by Jim Miller, a Texas Ranger turned cross-border outlaw, using a Colt Lightning he got from John Wesley Hardin. Hardin himself killed 44 men, including one for snoring too loud, before becoming an attorney in El Paso. He was shot dead at a craps game by El Paso lawman John Selman, after an argument over a Juarez prostitute. Selman was killed a few months later in a shootout by US Marshall George Scarborough, who in turn was shot dead by two former associates of Hardin’s during a bank robbery.
L-R: Wm. Bonney, Pat Garrett, John Wesley Hardin (dead)
This is
obviously not the place to fuck with karma, but we are. We are headed to the
sex shop where the Orbitron sat all those years, and rumor has it that its
previous owner now knows he let a treasure slip through his hands and is none
too happy about the deal. To prepare for the final assault we stop at a Juarez
mercado and buy the necessary provisions –mezcal, luchador masks, a sturdy crucifix
emblazoned with the virgin of Guadeloupe. Outside the Mercado we sit down at an
outdoor cantina for a ritual round of micheladas. As I sipped my drink I
thought about the mission, the curse, and the last Burge to come through here -
my dad.
“Greetings from the President of the United States. You have been selected by a committee of your neighbors for service in your country’s armed forces.”
Dad’s
letter from Eisenhower arrived 1956. One year earlier he had packed up his ’51
Chevy Fleetline after high school graduation and headed for California, to see
the sights and to work at a relative’s dairy farm outside West Covina. When he
returned to the family farm in Iowa that Fall, his crewcut had grown out to
greased-up Duck’s Ass -- like the kind he saw on the Mexicans in California --
and his Fleetline was lowered, with lake pipes, an Edmunds intake, and an
elaborate pinstripe. Dad could never recall who striped it – “some guy in Los
Angeles” – but I’ve always suspected it was Roth, who would have been just
setting up shop in L.A. after his Air Force discharge. I suspect it because
Grandpa’s corn dried up that year, and two days before shipping out for boot
camp Dad flipped the Chevy on a gravel road and totaled it.
Dad arrived
at Fort Bliss for basic in late ’56 which, according to Project Blue Book, coincided with another flurry of UFO traffic
around El Paso. He ventured into Juarez four times and brought back three
tattoos, a broken nose, and a case of Montezuma’s Revenge so severe that it
kept him in the Bliss infirmary three days. Plus a couple of stories he didn’t
tell me until I was 30, and made me promise never to repeat. I suspect he’s got
a few more Juarez stories he will take to his grave. Juarez was a wild place
then -- maybe wilder than it is today -- and was a hard initiation for a 19
year old hick from Iowa.
Dad spent
the rest of his Army stint in Korea and returned home in late 1958. It was
supposed to be temporary, because he intended to return to California for good.
Instead he met a wisecracking 19-year old Irish beautician girl at the Blue
Moon tavern in North Sioux City, which eventually resulted in a shotgun wedding
and my big brother. Dad put away his California dream and began farming the
same year I was born.
In the
forty years he farmed that 640 acre patch he experienced three crop failures:
in ’68, after our Sioux City encounter with Roth and the Orbitron; in ’72,
after the Beatnik Bandit California trip; and in 2001, after my last fatal
meeting with Roth in Chicago. That was the one that convinced my dad to hang it
up and retire, and finally convinced me that Ed Roth and the Burges were
knotted together in some inexplicable cosmic Aztec alien curse that doomed both
of us whenever we came in contact.
At Dad’s
retirement auction, most of the equipment – combines, tractors, planters -- was
bought by an unfamiliar bidder with a thick Spanish accent. As he and his
crewman loaded it up on flatbeds, my dad asked him where it all was going.
“Mexico,” he said. “A dairy farm in
Chihuahua.”
I was
thinking about one of those Juarez stories my dad told me when our waiter,
Roberto, came by the table with the fourth or fifth round of Micheladas.
“Hey,
Roberto,” I ask, looking around furtively, “Donde es the, um… donkey shows?”
“Sorry,
senor, they all close down,” he says, shrugging apologetically. “Animal rights
people complain.”
Well,
that’s PETA for you. The other guys are getting bored and fidgety.
“Come on
Toad, it’s time go to the sex shop,” says Lightbourn. “You drunk enough yet?”
“Wait a
minute, let me check with the electrocutioner.”
The street
surrounding the cantina is filled with vendors offering cheap trinkets and
amusements; the one I call the electrocutioner carries a device consisting of a
battery with tubular metal electrodes, and offers to test your ability to
withstand shock. I motion the guy over to our table.
“Let’s see
what you got, amigo,” I smile, handing him five bucks.
The
electrocutioner’s eyes narrow, angrily. It’s hard to tell if this guy hates his
job, or loves it way too much. I grab the two metal electrodes and the
electrocutioner twists the knob. At 40 volts I feel vibrations up my forearms.
“Come on,
amigo, I can take more than that,” I laugh.
He gives me
a silent fuck-you scowl, and starts cranking his rheostat. At 75 volts
the vibrations shoot all the way up through my neck, and my hands seize up. I’m
physically unable to let go of the electrodes.
“Okay,
that’s enough,” I inhale. This only seems to provoke him further, and he edges
the knob up more, to 85 volts. The vibrations shoot all the way up the back of
my head, across my ears and face.
“No mas,” I
warble, in perfect Spanish. He cuts the juice, still scowling, and I pry my
fingers loose from the electrodes while the rest of the table howls in
laughter.
“Let’s go,
Sapo,” says Sergio. “I think you got enough of a buzz.”
En route to the sex shop we drive by
the old bullfight stadium, past row after row of discount dentists and
upholstery shops and streetwalkers, breathing in the diesel-perfumed air of
Juarez. The boulevard grows seedier and Lightbourn threads his truck down a
narrow back street. We’re only a few blocks from the sex shop, and we pull into
an abandoned carwash for final preparations. Lightbourn and Sergio pull on the
luchador masks, I slug back some mezcal and kiss the crucifix. Two Hail Marys
later, we idle down the back street until it empties into a commercial avenue,
and swing a slow left. I look out though Lightbourn’s window and see the sex
shop.
It’s a boxy building with a green
façade and plate glass windows, and big ‘50s era lettering reading “Baños
Roma.” Another white sign reading “El Vaquero” hangs off the side. Inside,
behind a wall of windows, two dudes are sitting at a desk, guarding shelves full
of porn.
“Are we gonna go in?” I ask, craning
my neck.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,”
says Lightbourn. Despite his luchador mask, the two hombres behind the glass
recognize him. They stand up and shoot us the evil eye.
“Time to go,” says Lightbourn. He
stomps on the throttle, and the truck’s Banks turbo whines to life.
“Wait, man, wait!” I protest. “I
really, really gotta get some pictures.”
“Alright, Toad, but get ‘em quick,”
says Lightbourn. He hits the brakes and drops me off curbside a couple blocks
down from the sex shop, and tears off with Marky and Sergio flashing the
devil’s sign in the back window.
The cumulative effect of the beer and micheladas and mezcal has left me barely able to navigate, but I work my way through a maze of alleys back to the sex shop and stake out a viewing post behind a fenced-in clump of weeds. The photos from that angle are bad, so I ease around the corner for a better view.
Fuck. Now the two dudes have spotted me, and are reaching behind the desk for something. I double-back and dart into an alley cattywampus from the sex shop, and as I glance out from behind the building I see them angrily emerging from the entrance. One dude holds a pair of binoculars; the other is holding his left arm low, behind his back, concealing what I know is a gun. They get into a Toyota truck. Two small shreds of luck: I’m undetected, and my bladder is still marginally under control. But neither is going to stay true if I stay at this spot. I begin walking quickly down the side street.
Before the end of the block it dawns
on me: I have no idea where I am, other than a real shitty part of Juarez,
Chihuahua, with two angry dudes looking to do me harm. The stares of the people
I pass on the side street inform me that I stick out like a sore gringo thumb,
and if those dudes start asking around about a scared drunk gabacho with a
camera and toad glasses, it will only be a matter of time until I’m cornered.
AHA! Even in my advanced state of
inebriation, I suddenly, giddily, realize I have a cell phone with Lightbourn’s
number in it, and all I have to do is call him, and get directions, and… and my
fucking cell phone is dead.
The panic kicks in. This is it,
I think; this is where that goddamn curse finally kills me. I pinned my
back against a creosote utility pole, in a ridiculous attempt to hide from
fate. All of it started to flash in front of my eyes; Uncle Billy and Grandpa
and Dad, Cortez and Pancho Villa, Ed Roth and the aliens. I thought about my
wife, and our kids, and how she would eventually have to explain to them that
their father was shot dead in a misunderstanding in front of a Juarez sex shop,
and that it was all because of a demon car called the Orbitron, and that they,
as a result, carry a curse that will haunt them the rest of their days.
“Pssssst,
Sapo!”
It’s Marky, across the street,
crouched down low. I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life.
“Come on man, follow me,” he says.
We run full speed down the backstreet and around a corner to where the truck is
waiting. We dive in, and the acceleration slams the doors shut.
“Gracias, gracias, mil gracias,” I
pant, hyperventilating.
“Ain’t no thing, clown,” says
Sergio, smacking me on the back of the head. “Us Mexicans stick together.”
During dinner we toast anything that
moves. It’s at the Chaparral, a swanky joint in Juarez owned by Lightbourn’s
friend Jorge Zaragoza. It shares a parking lot with another Zaragoza property,
the world’s largest Krispy Kreme donut store. The food at the Chaparral is
outstanding, and the walls are covered in array of mounted big game trophy
heads; big glass displays along the wall contain complete stuffed lions, and
crocodiles, and bears.
“Jorge shot all of those,” says
Lightbourn pointing around. “That’s why he got into hot rods. It’s a lot
cheaper than lion safaris in Africa.”
Before dinner is over we’re joined
by Valentin, a young guy who works for Lightbourn and has arrived in his
home-built Roush Mustang clone. A few minutes later we’re rejoined by Daniel
and his Centauro brother Javier, who offer their services as guides.
“What do you guys think I need to
see?”
“Las Fuentes,” came the chorus.
Daniel and Javier provide a
two-chopper escort to Las Fuentes, where we are stopped at the entrance gate by
a team of tuxedoed bouncers wielding flashlights. They perform a quick search
in and under the truck for booze and firearms, and wave us in. It would be
probably be unfair to call this place an “outdoor whorehouse”; it’s more a big
cruise-in parking lot where you can buy a cold beer or, if the mood strikes, a
blowjob or an around-the-world. Sort of like American Graffiti, as imagined by
Ron Jeremy. It has two long A&W
style carports, and a central building where beer-serving waiters are
stationed. Independent working girls roam from car to car, advertising their
wares, and there’s a $10-per-hour motel conveniently located at the back of the
lot for completing transactions too complicated for the front seat of a car.
On the nearside of the lot there’s a
modern shelter area with an outdoor bar and table seating, where we take a
perch. We order a round of beers from the waiter, and politely decline a few
offers of discount erotic relief from the working girls. I notice the front
half of a monster truck sticking out of the wall behind the shelter bar, with a
bleached cow skull in its grille. “The guy who owns this place is really into
monster trucks,” says Lightbourn, lighting a Cuban cigar. “He used to have one
of the Bigfoot trucks up on the wall, but it fell off.”
“I heard it killed somebody,” says
Sergio.
I thought about that poor miserable
bastard, on his way to take a piss, only to get flattened by a falling bisected
monster truck. I wondered if his family had some sort of parallel universe
Bigfoot curse.
The Las Fuentes lot is busy, with a
few nice hoopties; tuner cars, 4x4s, American muscle. Alongside our side of the
lot there are a dozen or so Harleys belonging to the Jefes, another Juarez bike
club friendly with Los Centauros. Daniel introduces me to the Jefes, and translates
my request for pictures. A few more
rounds and I’m back to the same buzz level I was earlier in the day, before the
adrenaline slapped me sober.
All of a sudden the air is pierced
by shouting. We look around back by the motel area and see two working girls
sprinting across the asphalt, one of them carrying a pair of pants; the
shouting is coming from a stocky little pantsless guy in hot pursuit. The girls
split up and head for two different exits, leaving the guy cursing breathlessly
in his jockey shorts. Apparently he purchased a three-way from the two putas,
and flashed a payday wallet full of cash to prove he could make good on the
bill. As soon as they got to the motel room, the putas laid him back on the
bed, removed his pants, and bolted for the exit.
“Shit,” says the despondent dude, in
Spanish. “That was my electric bill money.”
It was impossible not to laugh at
the poor bastard and his predicament, and equally impossible not to feel
empathy. We all chipped in a few pesos so he could at least replace the pants.
We left Las Fuentes and headed for old downtown Juarez, again with Daniel and Javier forming an escort. Along the way we passed by a big GaleriasTec store.
“Holy shit, stop, stop, alto,” I
slur. The parking lot of the store is filled with an array of drag racers and
street racers, surrounding a long yellow dragster that has been pulled out of
its trailer. Daniel and Javier and Valentin have seen it too, and are already
pulling in. A pretty big crowd is gathered there, a few doing burnouts. Along
the boulevard a white and blue school bus full of Mestizos look on warily from
their windows.
We get out of the truck and begin
taking pictures when another guy named Javier introduces himself. He is the
owner of the Sama Layuca Dragway, a quarter mile strip on the desert outskirts
of Juarez. Through Daniel, he explains that the yellow dragster reigns as the
fastest car in all of Mexico, and that next weekend– on Dia de los Muertos --
it will defend that title against a Pro Street Vega coming north from Ciudad
Chihuahua. I’m bummed that I will have to miss it, but I’m pretty sure I know
which one will win.
Pulling out of the parking lot
Valentin lays a nasty long burnout with his Mustang and we continue toward old
downtown Juarez. Daniel and Javier flash their Centauros badges to the bouncers
directing streetside parking, and we commandeer parking slots outside Kentucky
Bar. By reputation, it’s the oldest continuously operating tavern in Juarez. It
opened in 1920, just as Prohibition was starting, and was named in honor of a
rolling group of Kentucky boys from Fort Bliss who enjoyed ritually spending
their US Army pay on this side of the border. Daniel knows the doorman, an
older gentleman in a three-piece suit, and he welcomes us in deferentially
despite my wobbling stance. We order rounds of tequila, and hoist it in a toast
the Bluegrass State.
My third wave of tequila for the day
began crashing into my second, and they both careened into the morning’s beer
and micheladas; it was becoming harder and harder to speak, but for some reason
I was pretty sure I could understand everybody else’s Spanish.
“It’s getting late, Sapo,” says
Lightbourn. “I gotta get home, and it’s gonna take an hour to get you back over
the bridge and to the motel.”
Shit. Here I am, an honorary
Mexican, and now they want to smuggle me back across the border? I’ve got half
a mind to report them to the INS.
“Thanks anyway dude, I think I’m
gonna stay here for a while,” I grin. “I’ll catch a cab back over. Talk to you
mañana.”
Outside the Kentucky bar we said
goodbye to Lightbourn and Marky and Sergio. Daniel and Javier and I took a tour
down the dark side streets off the main drag, illuminated only by the
occasional club marquee. We walked the dark gamut, trading swigs of tequila,
stopping every 50 feet or so to dialog with the working girls standing inside
the shadowy doorways. They ask us if we want to fook; we ask if they know
anything about the Orbitron.
After 30 minutes of research, we
returned to the main drag and I hailed a cab.
“Where to, señor?”
“Everywhere,” I tell him, throwing a
couple of twenties up on his seat. I was shitfaced, exhausted, and euphoric. I
had somehow survived my own personal Apocalypto, cheating the gruesome death
sentence I had expected ever since I landed 36 hours earlier. I am El Sapo, Honorary Mexican, the Tequila
Toad King of the Aztecs, and I am alive.
Then the tequila logic strikes me:
what if I actually am dead, and I just don’t realize it? I spotted an
all-night taqueria and realized there was one way to find out.
“Stop, alto,” I said to the cabbie,
waving my arms aimlessly. “Keep the engine running.”
In my tequila-addle mind I reasoned
that (a) if I were dead, that would make me a zombie; and, (b) if a zombie,
there would be nothing I would enjoy more than a nice warm dinner of fresh
brains. I swayed up to the taqueria counter and ordered a taco de Cabeza.
“Mmnmgm, braaaiinnns,” I mumble,
trying to do my best zombie imitation. I bite down into the taco, and the acrid
tasting brain goes down and mixes with the tequila and mescal and beer already
occupying my gullet. A few minutes later I run into a side alley and the whole
mess comes barreling right back up.
I wipe off my soulpatch with a sigh
of relief: yep, I’m still alive.
“Home, James,” I tell the cabbie, pointing to the bridge.
The next morning I laid in my motel
bed and had another dream. I saw the disembodied head of Ed Roth floating
around the room, wearing a sombrero; it was the same image of Big Daddy that decorated
my old Beatnik Bandit model kit box, the one I had him sign at the Sioux City
Auditorium. He didn’t say anything, but his beaming goateed grin seemed to
communicate that he was at peace, and that maybe things were finally cool
between us.
Lightbourn picked me outside the
motel around 9:30. He had his wife Tina and her sister Lorena with him.
“You must be El Sapo,” says Tina.
“One and the same,” I answer,
lifting my cap.
We picked up Sergio and crossed back
over the bridge into Juarez, and made another pass through the Mercado. Amid
all the cheap t-shirts and trinkets I spotted one souvenir I couldn’t pass up:
a big, fat, stuffed bullfrog.
After the Mercado we all went to an
outdoor café where we met a dozen or so of the Centauros for Sunday desayuno.
Daniel and Javier were there, along with Heber and Norma; Abraham, Rico, Patty
and Mike, and five or six others. Most of the club were off on a memorial ride
into Chihuahua as a remembrance for a recently fallen comrade, but Heber said
the group here had stayed behind to give me a special sendoff.
We raised a toast to the fallen
Centauro, then formed a motorcade through the streets of Juarez. We headed out
to the old river road that runs along the Rio Grande, past sandy parks of
Sunday morning soccer games. After a half hour ride in the desert flats
southeast of town we reached our destination: the Pancho Villa memorial statue.
I think Uncle Billy would be glad to know I finally found that rascal.
While we were loading up for the
drive back, Abraham noticed my stuffed toad, the one I bought at the Mercado
earlier.
“Ah, this is a good thing to have,”
he said. “In Mexico, the toad is good luck.”
I smiled all the way back to Juarez,
where we all made a brief stop at Las Fuentes for the Sunday morning car show
of the Juarez Mustang club. From there the Centauros escorted us all the way to
the El Paso bridge. As we were saying our final goodbyes, Heber motioned me
over.
“This is something for you to keep,”
he said. He handed me a framed picture of Pancho Villa shaking hands with Black
Jack Pershing, signed by all the Centauros.
Once we were back in the States we
headed to the home of Lightbourn’s friend Jorge Zaragoza, who has invited us
over for a garage tour. We reach a pair of massive steel gates which open
silently, and drive a long winding lane up to a spacious stucco hacienda.
Zaragoza meets us at the front door,
and shakes my hand warily. He is lean and mustachioed, with a look that tells
you he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I’m not sure what Lightbourn has told him,
but I figure I should be on my best behavior.
The garage tour is jaw-dropping. The
stall closest to the house contains Zaragoza’s wife’s car, an Aztec gold ’33
Ford sedan built by Roy Brizio that was a recent Rodder’s Journal cover car.
Another attached garage contains nine more cars, including a GT40, a
one-of-four ’69 Trans Am convertible, an equally rare ’70 Hemi Cuda
convertible, and six more Brizio hot rods. The floors of the garage are Italian
marble, and the walls are decorated with vintage Vargas pinups, including
several originals.
“Jorge is a just a regular guy,”
jokes Lightbourn. “He digs cars and women.”
There’s a third garage away from the
main house containing a collection of jukeboxes and a dozen or so additional cars;
Corvettes and Vipers, old Trans Ams, a nice old woody wagon. The piece de resistance is the Jack Calori
’36 Ford custom coupe that won the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance a few
months ago. Zaragoza owns a few more
cars that are currently out in California, including the Tom McMullen ’32
roadster.
No doubt about it, the family dairy
business in Mexico has been good to Jorge Zaragoza. Which gets me to wondering:
could this be the same Mexican dairyman who bought all my dad’s tractors?
“Maybe,” says Zaragoza. “We
sometimes buy equipment in the States for our corn operations.”
“Senor Zaragoza,” I smile, “You’ve
got good taste in machinery.”
On the way to the airport Lightbourn
obliged my request to drop by the warehouse and take a few final pictures of
the Orbitron. It was really a ruse, because I wanted to perform a paranormal
experiment. I snapped off a few pictures then hopped in behind the wheel of the
Orbitron one more time. I sat for a few minutes, silently, and didn’t have the
slightest sensation of specters, or ghosts, or impending doom.
Since finding the Orbitron,
Lightbourn has receive offers to buy it from around the world. He’s not sure
who will finally end up with it, but one thing is certain: the Orbitron will
soon be restored to its original 1964 glory. Knowing that, and knowing the long
purgatory it went through, lends the car a quality of redemption and the sense
that somewhere it is finally making Ed Roth happy. Maybe, like the Aztecs’
excrement of the gods, it was never meant to be found; but somehow the gods no
longer seemed angry.
By then it was time to go home. We closed the warehouse doors, and I said a final goodbye to the Orbitron, and the curse.
Epilogue: The Orbitron last weekend at the Detroit Autorama, expertly restored by Dave Shuten for new owner Beau Boeckmann.
