The ballad of Biscuit Adams

It was easy to get Katie to agree to go to the county fair. Who doesn’t love the fair? Back when she and I were on the road traveling America as union organizers, county fairs often provided much-appreciated distraction in whatever sleepy country towns we may have found ourselves in. But it was a much tougher sell to get her to bring our two small children and our four month old baby to the fair’s demolition derby. At first she was curious. Then people in town started to warn her - the noise of the engines, the noxious fumes, the mud slung from spinning tires into the crowd - it was no place for a baby. Ever the good sport, she strapped some headphones on the baby and said “let’s give it a shot.”

***

In 1896 William George Crush, the general passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company, had a crazy idea to promote the company. His proposal: they give him two of their 40-ton locomotives, he points them at each other on the same stretch of track, they drive full speed towards each other, the crew members leap off the trains moments before they collide into each other, all for the entertainment of ten thousand spectators. The railroad executives, naturally, loved the idea.

***

My mother warned her that we’d encounter some unique people at the demolition derby. “It’s just one of those southern things,” she explained. But the truth is, demolition derbies aren’t southern at all. There is some dispute about the actual origins of the thing we call demolition derby today, but none of the prevailing origin stories have it starting out down south.

One version has it starting out, like most things gearhead related, in California. In 1946 a racing promoter named Don Basile organized a “full contact race” at Carroll Speedway in Gardena, California. The four drivers smashed their cars into each other during the race. This, however, wasn’t a true demolition derby, since the object was to win the race rather than to be the last car standing. That type of event, where the cars enter a ring and smash into each other until all but one of the cars are dead, has been traced back to 1950 in Franklin, Wisconsin. According to old county fair records, a used car salesman named “Crazy Jim” Groh, organized the event with his surplus product and sold tickets. Eight years later a stock car driver named Jim Mendelsohn organized a large derby at Long Island’s Islip Speedway. That event brought demolition derbies out into the spotlight and over the next two decades they grew to become a staple at county fairs throughout the country.

***

Crush picked out his spot for what he was calling the “Monster Wreck”: a large field in a valley fourteen miles north of Waco. A 500-man crew laid the track, built the platform, a grandstand, a bandstand, and a carnival midway. They dug two wells and laid pipe, installing dozens of faucets for the assembled crowd to use. They were preparing for 15,000 to 20,000 spectators. He would call the site Crush, Texas. For the day of the wreck, Crush, Texas would be one of the largest cities in the state.

***

We arrived at the Garland County Fair well in advance of the demolition derby to give the kids a chance to look at some livestock, ride some rides, and eat some fried food. The kids were more interested in the midway games - particularly the one where you could win a live rabbit. After a hearty hell no I redirected them with promises of corn dogs. I understood why they were drawn to the midway games over the rides and food, though, and it wasn’t because they wanted a pet bunny. It was because they have carnie in their blood.

My grandmother Hazel, the subject of my book, became a carnie later in her life. I’m not sure how much of that phase of her life will end up in the book, but throughout the late sixties and most of the seventies she spent time traveling with the carnival after she took up with a carnie named Eric. He was more than just a carnie. He was a hustler, a tout, and a murderer. The first story I ever wrote for Grantland was about Eric, horse racing and Hot Springs.

The Garland County Fair has shrunk considerably in the twenty years since I’ve lived here. The old fairgrounds I grew up with are now home to a Best Buy and a Panda Express. The new fairgrounds are way out in the sticks and occupy a much smaller swath of land. Perhaps I was just smaller back then, or had fewer fairs to compare it to, but today the fair seemed to be a shell of its former self. I passed two older men sitting on a bench near the 4H Club’s concession stand who confirmed my suspicion.

“The fair gets smaller and smaller every year.”

“There just ain’t as many farm folks around here as there used to be.”

“Oh, they’re still here. The young ones just don’t care about it any more.”

“Alls they care about is that damn derby.”

Small as the turnout for the judging of which pig gets the big ribbon might have been, that damn derby was packing them in. A half hour before showtime and folks were streaming into the pavilion, each of them forking over ten American dollars to an old man in overalls in a plywood booth. People wore airbrushed shirts with the nickname and car number of their friends. Some wore shirts with tributes to a recently deceased young son of a derby driver, or others of derby drivers passed away. As the fans filed in and took their seats, a tiny version of the derby was taking place out on the ring with little kids ramming battery powered trucks into each other. A man carried the first aid kit and fire extinguishers out and placed them around the ring. Katie fished out the headphones and put them on the baby’s ears.

***

Crush promised the railroad they’d get at least 10,000 spectators for the big crash, each buying a special ticket to travel to the event location. They hit that number before 10am. The special trains bringing people to the event were arriving filled to capacity with even more passengers clinging to the roofs. By 3pm there were over 40,000 people in Crush, Texas, far surpassing their wildest expectations. The crowd was so large that many were gathered beyond the perimeter set up to keep the spectators safe from the crash. Crush could only get the crowd to move back to a safe distance by threatening them that the show wouldn’t begin unless everyone was on the safe side of the line. Eventually the over excited crowd acquiesced. The show would soon begin.

***

The derby cars entered the arena one by one as the announcer called their names and took turns parading before the cheering crowd. The cars were all massive, hulking beasts. They were devoid of any glass. Their doors were welded shut. Their extra-long 1970s trunks were bent upwards into makeshift battering rams. Some of the cars were painted slick colors with decorative numbers or the driver’s names. Others were the color of Bondo with crudely spray-painted numbers. Some looked like they were leftovers from past demolition derbies, pre-crumpled like soda cans. Some looked too pretty to be in such a miserable situation - stuck in a literal mudhole about to be smashed into a flaming ball of scrap metal. Each car, no matter how ugly or misshapen, was clearly an object of love for its driver.

I instructed everyone to choose a car to root for. Gus couldn’t make up his mind - changing his choice over and over again. Katie chose an orange and green car with a flower painted on the side. Adeline chose a beautiful orange and black striped car with the nickname of its driver, Jeremy “Biscuit” Adams, stenciled on either side. I chose a gnarly looking car with the words “Get Some” crudely spray painted on the side. In an event like this, I didn’t figure you got many points for pretty.

The drivers roared their engines in anticipation of the start of the heat. The sound was deafening. It shocked my entire family. My kids kept their fingers in their ears. Katie made it maybe three minutes before she fled, her hands clasped tightly over the baby’s headphones as she moved.

Eventually the kids let their fingers out of their ears and rose to their feet. They jumped up and down and pumped their arms in excitement for every big hit. The rules of demolition derby are simple - if you’re still able to drive at the end of the time limit, you move on to the next round. You’re not allowed to hit another car in the driver side door. You’re not allowed to use your driver side door as a shield. If you have a hit on another car, you have to accelerate into it. No braking before impact. “The fans paid for a show. Give them one.” the rules state.

Biscuit Adams was more than willing to give the fans a show. While some drivers were trying to Oscar de la Hoya themselves into the next round, driving around to avoid taking damage, Biscuit was ramming every car he could. His particular move was to drive into a corner of the mud-filled arena, throw the tiger-striped car in reverse, then use the back of his car as his battering ram and back into other cars at full speed. It made a lot of sense. Why use the front of your car - where the engine is - as your battering ram? You’d do as much damage to your own engine as your opponent. Biscuit knew his business. He was throwing that frankenstein Monte Carlo from drive to reverse and back over and over again and dusting the rest of the cars off one by one.

When the heat ended, Biscuit didn’t even wait for the announcer to call his number. He drove straight to the winner’s circle as soon as he heard the final horn. It was a baller move and the fans cheered for him. Adeline was ecstatic to have backed not just a winner, but a rockstar. She would sing Biscuit’s praise to any and everyone who would listen. He was her favorite. And he won!

***

At 5pm Crush sent the signal for the trains to begin their approach. Each locomotive was pulling six cars behind it and they started on a downhill slope. Each train reached a speed of an estimated 45 miles per hour by the time they met one another at the bottom of the valley. The impact of a head-on collision at that speed was the equivalent of a train hitting a solid wall at 90 miles per hour. Crush had expected the locomotives would hit each other and rise together into an inverted V. What actually happened was that each train exploded like a bomb. Though the crowd was thought to be at a safe distance, the huge explosion sent debris from the trains flying at extreme speed for hundreds and hundreds of yards. The crowd was assaulted with flying metal shrapnel. Three people died, including a teenager whose head was ripped in half by a flying chain and a young girl whose skull was fractured by a piece of iron. Six more were seriously injured, including a photographer who lost one of his eyes. In the moments after the blast and carnage, the crowd ran towards the wreckage to grab souvenirs, injuring many more as they picked through still-scalding hot metal for keepsakes.

***

While the fair keeps getting smaller, and the carnival midway gets tamer, the demolition derby gets bigger and bigger. Yearly attendance at demolition derbies around the country is estimated to exceed a million people. Prizes at some derbies are in the tens of thousands of dollars. Most of the nearly 2,500 events every year have nominal prizes that are far less than the cost of purchasing and building a car to compete. For the drivers the sport is mostly a labor of love. They are gearheads, tinkerers, adrenaline junkies. For the spectators the demolition derby is bloodsport, a backwoods gladiator’s arena, where competitors like Biscuit are rewarded with the adulation of fans for possessing that most essential of redneck cunning and expertise - mastering their automobile inside and out.

***

The night of the disaster, the railroad informed William Crush that he was fired. But when newspaper accounts came out of the debacle, they mostly declared the event an immense success. Ticket sales went through the roof. Word of the outrageous publicity stunt travelled all over the country. Scott Joplin wrote a song about it - “Great Crush Collision March.” After settling the lawsuits brought against the company, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company rehired William Crush. He worked for the railroad until his retirement in 1940. In the coming years, railroads all over the country would stage their own locomotive collisions as publicity stunts. Thankfully, none ever experienced the calamity of the “Crash at Crush.”

***

On our way out of the carnival, Adeline wanted desperately to take a shot at winning a pet bunny. Instead we let her try to catch a fake fish to win a tiny stuffed dog. After $5 worth of tries, she finally “won.” This is what the carnie calls a “hanky pank.” As opposed to the “flat store,” a crooked game like the one Hazel and Eric ran for so many years, the hanky pank is just a game where the cost to play is more than what the prize, or “slum,” is worth. The hanky pank has survived where the flat store has failed. Rather than cheat us with a scam, the hanky pank is just good marketing and sound capitalism. Convince us we want something we don’t need then sell it to us for more than it’s worth. The real carnie magic lies in making sure the mark is happy even after realizing they got ripped off. Adeline went to sleep that night cuddling up to her tiny $5 slum dog. At least we didn't have to pick through scalding hot rubble to get it for her. As I tucked her in and said good night, she reminded me once more, smiling ear-to-ear: "I picked Biscuit and he won."

Here’s to you, Biscuit Adams, master of machines, destroyer of cars, and hero to little girls. May your engine never stall and forever roar.

Until next time,

David