"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
5 January 2005Things I never saidHowever much I might think I'd fancy the description, I am not, and likely never will be, hell on wheels. Then there was this fellow named Don Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton, Carvajal y Are, Conde de la Mejorada, Marquis de Portago. If anyone qualified as hell on wheels, surely it was Portago, and this is what he had said to Ken W. Purdy (Car and Driver, August 1957) about Life, The Universe, And Everything:
You know, people say that racing drivers are daredevils, who don't care whether they live or not, and you've seen stories about me and my flirting with death and all that. Nonsense, all nonsense. I want to live to be 105, and I mean to. I'm enchanted with life. But no matter how long I live, I still won't have time for all the things I want to do. I won't hear all the music I want to hear, I won't be able to read all the books I want to read. I won't have all the women I want to have. I won't be able to do a twentieth of the things I want to do. And besides just the doing, I insist on getting something out of what I do. For example, I wouldn't race unless I were sure I could be champion of the world.
He never quite got to be champion of the world, nor did he get to be 105. Teammate Edmund Nelson once said that "I know he says he'll live forever, but I say he won't live to be 30." And on the way to Brescia in the 1957 Mille Miglia, the Ferrari he was driving blew a tire, somewhere upward of 125 mph, and crashed spectacularly, killing Portago, Nelson, and nearly a dozen spectators. The Italian government, horrified, ordered an end to the annual "thousand-mile" race. Nelson was right: Portago was all of twenty-eight when the end came. Die young, stay pretty? Not even. Portago may have done some foolhardy things, but he was no fool: he understood the risks, and he pressed on regardless. "Had he been cautious," said Purdy, "we would never have heard of him." And I, halfway to 105, wonder if anyone would ever have heard of me if I hadn't been so cautious. Posted at 6:54 AM to Driver's Seat |