Limit, The Read Free

private roads of the Hearst estate in Santa Monica Canyon, and they staged races on a quarter-mile horse track on the property, skidding their way around the dirt oval.
    â€œI learned a hell of a lot about the dynamics of cornering from that old Model T,” Hill said. Even then he knew how to pull back from the edge of recklessness. “I was enthralled with cars and power and speed, but I already had a certain saving caution. I did not, for example, ‘bicycle’ that Model T—in other words, corner it on two wheels, as some characters I knew often did with their cars.”
    Hill learned how to handle the Ford, and he learned how to fix it. When the connecting rod for the pistons or crankshaft broke, Louis the chauffeur showed him how to replace it. While the neighborhood kids played baseball, he roamed junkyards looking for bargain cylinder blocks and carburetors. He could not stop his parents’ drinking and fighting, but he could mend a busted throttle. Just as the children of Narnia slipped an oppressive home by stepping through the wardrobe,Hill found enchantment under the hood. He absorbed himself in the intricate language of carburetor, clutch, camshaft, and cylinder heads. He had found an escape to an ordered and predictable world where every pedal and piston had a clear purpose and responded to his touch.
    â€œI’ve always expressed myself via the automobile,” he said. “I guess I sensed that I was in an insane environment and that my only escape was in something that had structure. Cars gave me a sense of worth. I could do something—drive—no one else my age could do. I could take cars apart, too, and when I put the nuts and bolts back together again and the thing worked, no one could prove me wrong. That kind of technology was fathomable, made sense in a way people never did. Cars are easy to master; they hold no threat; and, if you’re careful, they can’t hurt you like people can.”
    Pooling money from his allowance and a part-time job pumping gas, he bought a succession of cars, including a 1926 Chevy and a 1940 Packard convertible. He acquired them at a time when teenage boys, particularly Californians, expressed disdain for the fake chrome styling of Detroit by turning showroom models into hot rods, “hopping them up” with rebuilt transmissions, lightened flywheels, extra carburetors, superchargers, and half a dozen coats of shining lacquer. It was a subversive creativity, as graffiti and hip-hop would be to later generations. The kid who once breathed through a tube and could barely swing a Louisville Slugger had found his gift. He tested his handiwork on San Fernando Road and the side streets of Santa Monica, which in the 1940s were relatively empty and unpatrolled by police.
    Teenagers met at stoplights and squealed away in cloudsof smoke, their chrome exhaust pipes amplifying the throaty roar. “There was no problem in finding out whether a driver who pulled up beside me wanted to drag,” Hill said. “We had our little signals. If one guy revved his engine in a subtle way, and that was returned, then the drag would be on. My left foot would be trembling on the clutch in anticipation as I waited for the moment when I let it in and took off.”
    Leadfooters and throttle stompers met at the Piccadilly drive-in on Sepulveda Boulevard or Fosters Freeze malt shop in Inglewood to eye each other’s hop-ups and talk to girls. Hill was shy, but handsome in the manner of California hot rodders, with a ripple of dark hair and muscled hands stained with grease. Gas rationing had ended, and Hill and his friends chased each other on coast roads and twisty canyon drives. The wind blew their hair. Girls laughed in the backseat.
    On weekends he drove a hundred miles over the mountains to the flat expanse of dry lakebeds near Muroc and El Mirage, where teens and war veterans congregated beyond the reach of police. They rolled into the desert