How Did I Get Here? Page 12

  There was a myopic visionary at this time, living in a basement in the north of England, who had the answer to raising RMS Titanic from its watery grave: he’d pump millions of ping-pong balls into the hull until the wreck floated up to the surface. Meanwhile, two even more myopic visionaries in Toronto talked themselves hoarse about starting a second Canadian car magazine, crushing Track & Traffic like a cockroach and gifting Canadian enthusiasts with the finest car magazine on the continent.

  Looking back, how could a pair of reasonable men not convince each other that this was an errand of two fools, a hubristic brainstorm with tiny brains, off-line, destined to collapse in total failure, humiliation, and the loss of other people’s money? Simple: Eric and I were enthusiasts.

  Actually, more than enthusiasts. We had talked ourselves into such a pitch, a foaming lather, that mere conversation was no longer sufficient. We never stopped yapping, but the time had come when this mutual obsessiveness was forcing us into action, transferring our knowledge into the real world. We’d be doing something to bring us closer to the epicenter, something satisfying to both of us, harnessing our unique talents to start a new, exciting magazine for the Canadian enthusiast.

  As Canada’s foremost unpublished car writer (with, incidentally, zero editorial experience, zero experience or aptitude for reporting, and zero contacts in the sport or the industry), I would be the editor. Eric would bring his weighty financial knowledge to the publisher’s suite, an expertise gleaned in his junior post at a major Toronto trust company, not to mention a mathematical acumen and the inborn gift of gab that would mesmerize Midas himself.

  Eric did a quick projection of our profits and losses after the first year. Pegasus Publishing would be the corporate parent. The Canadian Driver, like Henry Luce and Briton Hadden’s Time, was to be the first in an empire of other brilliant titles. Eric forecast that The Canadian Driver would land us in the black by the second issue. A deep forensic examination, in the form of nonstop bull sessions between ourselves, was rich in guesswork and unbountiful in hard facts. But, white-hot with the heat of ambition (or could it be the metric tons of hot air just expended?), we taught each other and told ourselves what we wanted and needed to believe.

  Winter 1961 turned sluggishly to spring. Rain, day after day, impelled a fashion and health crisis: the soles of my worn-out shoes had almost detached, flapping with every footfall and scooping water onto my cold, wet feet. I was forced to compensate by altering my walk to a kind of sliding shuffle. The solution appeared in the form of a bottle of rubber cement. Every night, I’d sandwich the sole and shoe together, bind them tight with a necktie, and know that next morning—barring a monsoon—I was safe for another day.

  I couldn’t neglect my duties in the copy cub department and betray Royd Beamish’s rare confidence in me. Meanwhile, Eric had rented a tiny space in a small building on King Street. Pegasus Publishing needed to start somewhere. I worked on designing the corporate logo. (The order of priorities, in the birthing phase of a new entity, was always fluid.) I’d be there evenings and weekends. Eric checked in often, to report on his search for financial backing, or to jaw.

  The target launch date was late May. We were now in mid-February. We hadn’t thought about an art director. Eric’s search for a space salesman was equally critical. So far, we hadn’t raised a cent. It began to dawn on us that starting up a magazine must sooner or later stop relying on daydreams and face the icy-cold, stone-hard facts. How could our lavish new publication do without an experienced, top-flight art director, if neither of us knew any, knew where to look, and hadn’t the money to pay for a Help Wanted ad?

  The unraveling of the dream began about this time. I managed to inveigle and beseech my high school art-class friend Maurice to design the magazine, on the promise of a fat payday down the road. Eric faced an identical quandary in hiring an experienced, media-savvy advertising salesman for no money (until that hazy day when we’d all be rich). Our self-congratulatory fantasies started decelerating even faster than they had accelerated.

  Eric had found a pair of young brothers with a vague interest in investing, fellows who were car-minded and naive enough to see part ownership of a car magazine as their entrée into the inner circle of Canadian motorsports. It was taking candy from a couple of babies. But by now, the belt of reality was so tight it pinched. Out went four-color printing, including the cover. The price per issue doubled, then doubled again. The rented office was abandoned.

  The first mad flush of excitement had made editorial content a rousing game of imagination; this magazine would put the reader in the cockpit. Give top drivers the third degree in interviews. Go behind the scenes to discover the technical secrets of the winning machines, the men who designed them and the boffins who kept them running. Thorough coverage of the stellar racing events.

  Come April and those glowing concepts lay strewn about like so many cigarette butts. I had gushed and bloviated about this new magazine, its classy style and great writing. Then I sat down at the typewriter to lay out the editorial content of the inaugural issue. The difference between enthusiasm and knowledge plunged me into a chasm. Specifics hadn’t been necessary in the heat of inspiration. I hadn’t a clue about exactly what a magazine about the Canadian automotive scene should actually be about.

  We’d cover the Canadian industry, we said, discovering, too late, that there was no Canadian car industry to cover. We envisioned a national editorial reach, discovering too late that if we had bothered to think it through, we would have realized that a handful of amateur club races held four thousand miles apart hardly justified the term “national.” Nobody on the west coast gave a damn about who had won a race at Harewood Acres, Ontario, three months before, just as no Ontario racing fans cared about some club event near Vancouver.

  Eric and I weren’t terribly smart about basic facts. In fact, we were ambitious morons. How could we have committed to founding a serious consumer publication, not only on superficial understanding of all the factors, but preening ourselves on our own brilliance? The magazine’s complete News section was a six-month-old press release about an improved Maserati “Birdcage” sports racing car that no Canadian racing venue would ever see. I was the reporter/correspondent/editor, not because I wanted all these responsibilities, but because I knew no other skilled car-minded writers who were willing to work for free.

  Our magazine was destined, we honestly believed, to explode the printed page with amazing fare that would lure readers back every month, in numbers that advertisers couldn’t ignore. But in fact Canada’s one great automotive magazine had skidded off the track before the race began.

  Eric and I still met, but neither of us had the guts to come out and say it: The Canadian Driver was a few feet shy of driving off a cliff. No comedy writer could equal the laugh-until-you-cry story of the final month. Eric had found an ad salesman! Our Irish-immigrant friend, Nat. No, Nat had never sold an ad or anything else. He was a mechanic by trade, and, lucky for us, an unemployed one, able to start immediately. Nat’s command of English was sketchy, filtered through a thick Irish brogue. His pay would be handsome, once the magazine got going.

  Nat borrowed a necktie and went out on his rounds on a Monday. By Friday, he had pitched every automobile company and its ad agency, and circulated through the tire and accessories shops, major car dealers, and gasoline retailers. Nat hadn’t come back empty-handed to the office (read: the coffee shop until we could find suitable quarters). In his big Celtic mitt was a receipt signed by an actual advertiser. He’d plunged $150 on a quarter-page ad heralding not only his gas station but also his Borgward franchise.

  Some people, cast by happenstance into cramped metaphorical corners but too proud or too optimistic to accept an ugly fate as the ruination of their plans, shut out reality by drinking. Not Eric. As the bad news cascaded over The Canadian Driver like a cloud raining down piss, Eric whistled. He couldn’t talk with you, nor you with him.
He whistled when the phone rang, he whistled when it didn’t. And in the manner of all champion twenty-four-hours-a-day whistlers, his was a tuneless whistle.

  The magazine debuted and folded minutes apart. So far as I could determine, newsstand sales ran neck and neck with our mail-order business, both racking up perfect goose eggs.

  We had had enough of magazines, talk, and each other. I never saw Eric again. His trust company office didn’t know where he was. Nobody did. Years passed. My wounds inflicted by this failure had healed. But apparently not for Eric. In the mid-seventies, he suddenly resurfaced, on the wrong side of the law. Eric was charged along with two others for fraud in a scheme involving gold bullion from Brazil and got four years in the pen.

  I’ve often wondered if the fiasco of The Canadian Driver drove him to a life of crime. And if so, what I could have done to prevent it. We were a couple of conceited blockheads, equally guilty of hubris, persisting long after all evidence had warned us that our project was doomed to fail. Eric wasn’t a sneaky criminal type. I think his problem was an inborn optimism so strong that sometimes it outran reality.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  The good that quickly befell me thereafter turned out to be fifty-one percent bad. The editor of Canada Track & Traffic, Bill Wordham, had just quit to become a TV reporter for the ABC-TV network (which must have been the most dramatic job-hop in history). Eric and I had fomented The Canadian Driver by spluttering indignant contempt for Track & Traffic. Our close analysis exposed CT&T’s shoddy journalism, which we took as proof that the magazine was not only inept but also shamelessly corrupt. Its European correspondent, for example, was named M. T. Line, clearly a cynical pun disguising the obvious fact that no European correspondent existed.

  Our disgust with CT&T’s failings slopped over to lambasting its criminally crummy management. We’d never met nor seen Jerry Polivka, the Czech immigrant cofounder/publisher, but he must have been pure evil to brazenly sell such junk. Owing to the small world of Canadian auto journalism, Jerry knew I’d be interested and solicited me to replace Bill Wordham as editor.

  Jerry had grown up dodging Nazis in occupied Prague: maybe distrust had become a trait. He should have been forced to wear a mask in any business deal. I took the editor’s job. I pounced on the editor’s job.

  No one else on earth was clamoring to ride my editorial genius to the stars. I could no longer go back to huddle in the bosom of Maclean-Hunter, and my pay would crack the $100-a-week barrier. This represented an overnight leap, in my naive idea of affluence, to the respectable class of regular haircuts, new shoes every year, and the sheer prestige of lofting myself from hole-plugger for obscure trade journals to the pinnacle (or the nadir, it was too early to ascertain) of Canadian automotive journalism, barely six months after sitting jobless in a run-down dump of an apartment, my one steady companion a starving rodent.

  Track & Traffic faced the same pitfalls we had at Canadian Driver. The magazine was editorially uninspired. Advertising was feeble. Nothing on the horizon augured for any improvements. Yet CT&T had somehow limped through a year of monthly issues, had its own printing press on the premises, and showed no signs of bucking the bailiff for nonpayment of bills.

  Editorial independence would symbolize the trust between management (i.e., Jerry) and me. He had promised me a free hand, both in writing most of the magazine and “interacting” with potential advertisers (a face-saving way of offering a road test in exchange for an ad). Jerry proved as good as his word, which was meaningless. Editorial freedom, as he interpreted it, meant that if he won an argument, I was free to quit. I argued about awarding a cover photo and a glowing “road test” to a shitbox Škoda Octavia for a full-page ad, the same deal for lunatic junk like the Amphicar (which handled on the road like a boat and in the water like a car), and choice auto marginalia of all varieties.

  A CT&T Xmas Gift List, maybe the sorriest of space fillers, was a golden opportunity to trade unromantic merchandise for quarter-page ads. Thus, what the gift list recommended to be placed under the tree were tire jacks, twelve-volt batteries, and perpetual wax for every kind of car.

  No detail escaped Jerry’s attempt to slash outgo—he paid five dollars per photo, and the photographer had to buy his own film. On the few out-of-town assignments I wangled, Jerry’s Law applied: Why should he pay the bills, when I’d have to eat and sleep anyway?

  I hammered out every article in every issue. That wasn’t necessarily to satisfy my itch to write: asking a reputable journalist to bend his work to play favorites, while offering less money than he could earn mowing lawns, offended my pride before it offended his. I played at being the art director, to ensure that the caption under a Škoda interior photo wasn’t misplaced to run under a photo of Ludwig Heimrath winning another race in his Porsche RS. Proofing the magazine was my job, too: nobody else on the six-person staff was good at spelling.

  By the end of my first six months as editor of Track & Traffic, I had moved from thinking of my career thus far as one failure in commercial art and two failures at trying to turn out a decent car magazine. Jerry, aided by his girlfriend, Diana, had spent every hour of every year since 1958 struggling to keep it afloat, month to month. Then, in 1961, an angel showed up, willing to contribute significant funds.

  A wealthy Montrealer of early middle age, Norm was a Corvette racing driver and a warm, intelligent balance to Jerry’s brooding, almost paranoid assumptions that everybody was plotting to rob, cheat, and lie to him about everything. He came in from Montreal every month or so to get Jerry’s reports on the balance sheet and any looming issues. He knew no more about magazines than Jerry, whose assurances that CT&T was as good as it could get, considering the odds against success, he swallowed whole. In any case, Norm’s pockets were too shallow to fund a tremendous upward editorial push.

  I’d slump through the door of my apartment on Eglinton Avenue most evenings, heartsick, pissed off, and cursing Jerry. Sister Chris, who was living with me while attending high school, patiently heard out my complaints. She was, like her mother, no critic of others’ lives, and an ideal flatmate. Her even temperament, wit, and self-sufficiency allowed me to leave her home alone for two weeks, with no concerns, while I followed the Shell 4000 Trans-Canada Rally.

  I realized that, as with Windsor Advertising Artists, I had once again managed to position myself in an almost hermetically sealed environment. Rudy had simply not cared about friends; Jerry’s paranoia and probable sense of guilt about having suckered, hornswoggled, and generally dismissed most people he did business with made him someone with few friends except for Boris, a fellow Czech, and his girlfriend/secretary, Diana, whom he kept on a short leash.*

  Bailing out sinking scows does tone the arms, shoulders, and upper body. The magazine did, perforce, build up a few of my skills. I wrote, or in the cases of correspondents rewrote, every word of every issue. Designed the page layouts. Cadged photos from Avedons like my brother Hugh, the only adult I could find willing to pay for the film. I let Jerry exercise his droit du seigneur and pick the shots to be printed. Jerry had a Helen Keller eye for visual excellence. In another swindle, Hugh had painted a Lola sports racing car for an advertiser’s two-page spread; it was maybe his best painting ever. When I presented it to Jerry, he hauled out a crude piece of shit, pronounced it obviously superior to my brother’s crappy daub, and left Hugh insulted and unpaid. The fix was transparently in: Jerry had found some hack to portray the Lola, collected the fee from the advertiser, and pocketed at least half for himself.

  There was no other way to survive in this one-lung operation than to write fast, composing “road tests.” Every issue had at least one, because a three-page product puff—a single-page ad—from the three-hour ride most car companies trusted us with was not possible, especially if you consider my other incidental labors: improvising fixes under one-hour deadline pressure, begging contributors to take demeaning payments, and scram
bling all the time to get everything finished on time, on a short, shredded shoestring.

  But operating where things can’t get worse is not necessarily the worst education for a neophyte. Canada Track & Traffic was a sorry magazine by any measure. So leprous was it in the Canadian car community that when Jerry and I trooped out to Ford of Canada’s head office in suburban Oakville to present CT&T’s Car of the Year award for the new Capri, every executive in the building was otherwise engaged. A bewildered secretary eventually accepted our Scroll of Honor in their stead. Humiliation is sometimes justified, but God, does it sting.

  My triumphal entry into New York fell flat the moment I arrived. I was here. Now what?

  Chapter 5

  An Upgrade Called America

  The American advertising industry had provided my ticket out: a mentor and friend persuaded me to leave my crummy journalism post, relocate to Detroit, and write car ads.

  Canada jiggled in the rearview mirror, receded, and disappeared as I drove into the tunnel conveying me from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit on a gray, snow-swirled afternoon in December 1962. I was trading a life in Toronto, in my home and native land, for a fresh start and a new chapter in the USA.

  The decision to take Uncle Sam’s coin wasn’t exactly painful. The suspicion that I wasn’t cut out for a contented Canadian life had become a conviction. I was temperamentally too antsy for that conspiracy of calm, phlegmatism, and compulsive self-effacement. Canada was a nation of nice that wouldn’t say “poutine” if it had a mouthful. I shouldn’t blame a country for my ten years of futility in commercial art and the lower forms of journalism. But it increasingly irked me that Canada shunned extremes of every kind, breeding what I saw as a wallflower mentality and a bland tolerance for mediocrity. Canada had settled itself without violence. The United States was founded on musketry and wars and dead Indians, a dynamism that depended on extremes—a natural breeding ground for violence. It bragged as if the world agreed with its tedious narcissism. The average Canadian keenly felt a dismal combination of ignorance and condescension in the American attitude. Ever average, I felt the same way.