Dan's Papers - October 3, 2008 - Start Your Engines

Once a year, on a crisp weekend in the autumn, the owners of many of those classic old convertible sports cars from half a century ago take them out and race them on the public streets of the Hamptons. This past Saturday and Sunday was that weekend.

As I am sure you know, last Saturday and Sunday we were hit by a big rainstorm. On some roads there were flood conditions. On other roads the police blocked things off to clear fallen tree limbs.

You might have thought these conditions would have resulted in the postponement of the event until another day. But then you don't know these people. They don't believe in raindates. They are crazy.

Just prior to the race, where the dozens and dozens of cars and their owners assembled on the lawn of the Bridgehampton Historical Society early Saturday morning, I met under an umbrella with Fred Gold, the owner of a white 1958 Porsche 356B, who had last been in one of these races, rallyes they are called actually, in Connecticut.

"It was the Nutmeg," he said, mentioning the name of it as if I should know it. "I haven't been out to the Hamptons for 20 years. But I drove this baby 160 miles earlier today to get here." He patted it.

Behind us, all decked out with pennants and balloons and signs announcing the occasion, was the Historical Museum and the other barns and buildings. Here on the lawn, all lined up, were the old cars - Jaguars, MGs, Austin Healeys, old Mercedes - almost all of which were convertibles. And in front of us, owners, admirers, drivers, photographers, spectators, navigators and officials, many in yellow rubber slickers, slogged around, talking about this and that. There were also dogs running here and there. Everyone was soaking wet. Everyone was very happy. Nothing was going to keep this crowd down.

Behind us, inside a large white festival tent set up behind the museum, there was coffee, fruit and bagels, several vendors with their wares spread out on tables, and the officials with lists, now checking everybody in as they arrived. After finishing my conversation with Gold, I walked into the tent, closed my umbrella, and talked for awhile with Kevin and Margaret Bodkin of Sag Harbor, who own a 1938 Cadillac Sedan. They were there without that car. It was out of commission for the month.

At one end inside the tent, there was a microphone set up where speeches would soon be made. At the other end, there were 30 folding chairs set up in three rows, because just before the race would begin, a band - the Bridgehampton High School Band - would play "The Star Spangled Banner." The band was not there yet. But out the tent flap, you could see them arriving, in uniform, scurrying through the mud and across wooden planking set down to an antique farm tool barn across the way, taking their instruments out of their cases there, and assembling them and tuning up.

This was the sixteenth year they were having the rallye. It's an event that celebrates a time, back in the late 1940s, when local men, returning home after the war with English and Italian sportscars from Europe, actually ran high speed races around all the streets in town until, finally, somebody got killed.

On this day, at 9:15 under that tent, a few speeches were made to welcome everybody. It was announced that the race would begin absolutely on time, and there had indeed been some cancellations. (Boos and hisses from the crowd.) But it was now 20 minutes until the cannon and 30 from the race. (Yes, there was a cannon on the front porch of the Historical Society building.)

After getting some coffee, I walked around, both under the tent and out on the muddy lawn, to talk to some of the drivers and navigators. Some wore leather helmets on their heads with goggles you pull down. There were two guys in their early thirties wearing identical bright red racing car suits, the kind that are fireproof and you zip yourself into. Both were covered with patches - Mobil, Ford, Porsche, Austin-Healey, etc.

Someone suggested I talk to them. "They have some story," I was told. And so I went over. We were in the tent at this time.

They were Richard Weintraub of Bridgehampton, the owner of a 1955 MG TF, and his navigator, Stephan Geller. During the week these young men both lived and worked in New York City, one as an attorney and the other as a partner in a diamond company on 48th Street.

I soon found out why these guys were interesting. In the last five years, with the 30 or more cars entered, they had two wins, one second, one third and one fifth. They were the class of the field.

"How do you keep winning?" I asked Weintraub.

"We have a secret," said Geller. "But we can't tell you. If we tell you, we have to kill you. I can tell you it involves multiple stop watches"

I asked them about their identical racing suits. "This is not hundred mile an hour plus racing," I said.

Weintraub told me they had ordered these NASA racing suits on the Internet from a clothing manufacturer in Texas. Then they had sewn on patches. That they were identical indicated they were on the same team. It was all for show.

"Does your team have a name?"

Weintraub zipped down his suit a bit and showed me the front of a t-shirt he was wearing under it. It had four big black dots in two rows of two on the front.

"We're the Two Colons," Geller told me. "We both have stomach trouble."

I asked them how they had met.

"We've known each other since birth," Geller told me. "Our parents were best friends. And at four we were both at the Fleming School, then both at Riverdale through high school."

"I went off to the University of Michigan and he went to the University of Vermont. Now, we're back in New York. And we're best friends again."

Here is how this race works. The cars drive off at two-minute intervals. They drive along a prescribed route all through the Hamptons, mingling with the regular traffic, following the speed limits and traffic laws, and periodically stopping at certain timing stations so that race organizers could see how they were doing. The idea was, by using stopwatches, to pass each timing station at exactly the time prescribed for the race. If you were a minute late or less there was no penalty. If you were later than that, or early passing the timing station, there were points you would be penalized. The car, driver and navigator who could finish the race - it would take all day and these old cars are prone to breakdowns, particularly in foul weather - with the least number of points deducted would be the winner.

Timing stations would be at the Bridgehampton Golf Course, Bridgehampton Historical Society, Long Beach in Noyac, the National Golf Club at Sebonac Inlet, the parking lot at Flying Point (time to stop and eat and rest a bit), then off east to Cedar Point Park in East Hampton and Maidstone Beach Road in Springs. There were also along the way places to get your entry passport stamped, at Tuckahoe Road, Scuttlehole Road, Two Holes of Water Road and Old Stone Highway to show you were following the route and finally, back in Bridgehampton, where, at 5 p.m., the race would finish.

I asked how Geller and Weintraub failed to win last year.

"At the start, it seemed, we got sent off just one half second late. It threw us off."

Like I said, these people are crazy.

At this point, the band arrived and sat down, and after a brief further tuning up by Bridgehampton High School's band leader, David Elliott, they played a John Philip Sousa song, and then "America the Beautiful." They were very good. There was another speech made. And then there was the loud BANG of the cannon: the 10-minute warning. Dogs ran for cover. And from inside the tent, the drivers and navigators marched slowly out to their cars and started them up. Soon, the lawn was filled with a mighty roar.

The cars left one at a time, the official send off made by Town Councilwoman Nancy Grabowski at the Corwith Road entrance to the Historical Society grounds, and there you could see them go, one of them, say, the 1952 Jaguar XK 120 piloted by Barry Rice, or another, a 1953 MG TD piloted by Alan Patricof, and soon all of them, mixing it up with UPS vans, Hummers and Lexuses, went along their way.

I wondered if this year Pierre Weber, from Pierre's Restaurant on Main Street, would be out there in his glorious 1956 Deux Chevaux, one of the most badly built French automobiles ever made (the name translates as "Two Horses.") He parks that rickety car every day right in front of his establishment.

He was out in it last year. Geller had told me about it. He went out with the trunk packed with bottles of champagne and he was soon seen at practically all the timing stops, rattling up and hopping out to offer the drivers a bit of the bubbly as a toast to send them on their way.

"We declined," said Geller. "We wanted to win."

At the starting line, watching the cars go out, I stood next to Fred Cammann, a volunteer for the Bridgehampton Historical Society, and he told me that last year Pierre HAD been in the event with his Deux Chevaux, but as he recalled, his navigator and he got into an argument at some point - this is an eight-hour event after all - and the navigator walked home and left him. So maybe that explained his champagne timing stop behavior. If he couldn't have fun one way, he'd have fun another.

And so they were off. Some very serious with stopwatches and a great lurch forward as they shifted gears into first to head off, and others just chatting away and moving out when they felt damn well ready. Maybe you saw them out there - an odd collection of drivers in very old cars, out with the traffic heading up and down the lanes of the Hamptons.

The winners? Does it matter? I guess it does. First prize went to, you guessed it, Weintraub and Geller in Weintraub's 55 MG TF-1500, second went to Dan Rowen and his navigator Coco Myers in their 1953 Siata 208S and third finisher was Anthony Liberatore and his navigator James De Martis, in a fully restored 1956 Thunderbird. How did THAT get in there?

And everyone, the weary drivers and navigators, friends and family and officials, had one big champagne party under that tent beginning at 5 p.m. that went well into the evening.