The Curse of Fon’s Ferrari Part 2

Fiction by Greg Glassner
Read Part 1

After Chub Olsen determined that the notorious Fon Portago 335 S Ferrari had found its way to a storage garage owned by his employer, Carlo Ludovico, he decided try to restore it.

One Friday night in May, Chub went all out and brought a jug of Jack Daniels Black and a bucket of KFC to the body shop. After they wolfed down fried chicken and biscuits and made a big dent in the bourbon, Chub brought out his research and told Carlo he knew the car under the tarp was the one involved in the Mille Miglia crash. “Is that why you say it’s cursed?” he asked.

This time the older man didn’t snap like he usually did when confronted with that sore subject. In fact, his eyes misted up and he nearly broke down in tears. “My family comes from a little village near Guidizzolo in Italy,” Carlo said. “By 1957 I had started this business and could afford a trip home to visit my relatives. This was the week of the Mille Miglia and my whole family went over to watch it. We were sitting on a hill overlooking the road and having a simple picnic lunch of bread, cheese and salami washed down by the local vino. We were having a great time. Nobody noticed that my brother’s six-year-old daughter wandered down the hill to get a better look at the cars as they sped by. When Portago’s Ferrari blew a tire and flew into the crowd, little Carlotta was one of the children killed instantly,” Carlo said.

“She had been named after me,” he added.

“Ten years later, I had a chance to buy a Ferrari for $500 in the U.S. Customs Auction in Buffalo. I knew it was in sad shape, but figured I could fix it. When it got it here, it looked familiar and I did some of the same research you did.”

After a pause, Carlo said sadly, “When I found out it was Fon’s Ferrari, the one that killed my niece and so many others, I shoved it in the back of the storage building and it’s been there ever since.”

While he understood Carlo’s deep feelings about the Ferrari 335 S and wanted to be respectful, Chub Olson didn’t believe in curses, not that sort of curse, anyway.

Chub doubled down by continuing to sell used cars at an unprecedented clip and successfully repossessing them when the buyers defaulted on their E-Z-terms, no money down loans. In addition to being the consensus Employee of the Month, if there was such an award, Chub displayed individual initiative by finding a battered Austin Healey 100-4 in another corner of Carlo’s storage building and making Carlo an offer he couldn’t refuse. Chub paid $200 for half interest in the British sports car on the condition that Carlo would coach him in the art of auto bodywork.

Chub set aside his sybaritic lifestyle and spent his spare evenings and many weekends mastering grinders, welding torches, rivet guns, socket wrenches, vibrating and rotary sanders, body putty and paint guns. Carlo augmented his coaching responsibilities by sending the Healey’s engine and transmission to a shop owned by a friend who owed Carlo a few favors.

By spring, the Healey was running and resplendent in a shiny coat of British Racing Green lacquer. After enjoying it for a few weeks, Chub sold it for $3,000, netting each partner a cool $1,000 after expenses.

Carlo Ludovico had always dreamed of turning over his business to his kids, but the oldest was still in junior high, so Chub Olson had become something of a surrogate son over time.

After celebrating the sale of the Healey, with more bourbon and some takeout barbecue, Chub again brought up the Ferrari and Carlo admitted that 20 years after that tragic 1957 Mille Miglia, it might be time to give “the curse” a rest. That Saturday afternoon Carlo and Chub uncovered the Ferrari 335 S and extricated it from its resting place. With Carlo’s coaching, Chub went to work on the new project. Carlo accepted $500 of what Chub made on the Healey plus the anticipated hours of sweat equity for a half share in the Ferrari.

As Chub peeled back the layers like an onion, he discovered that the car had been at least partially restored after the race wreck. The tube frame had been straightened and the engine and drive-train had apparently been rebuilt. Even the thin aluminum skin of the sinuous Carrozzeria Scaglietti body was in much better shape than it should have been. The new damage looked more like the result of careless stevedores than a high speed shunt, which may have explained the car languishing in a customs warehouse for years before Carlo acquired it. The feral cats that roamed the property had kept the Ferrari free of rodent damage. The interior of a race car is pretty spartan to begin with, so freshening it up was within Chub’s newfound capabilities.

Although he was more exacting with the Ferrari restoration than he had been with the Healey, Chub had learned by trial and error and by early March, 1978, the Ferrari was all together and its once crumpled body was smooth as silk. Chub had sprayed on countless coats of primer, hand sanding each coat before applying another. It awaited a top coat of Italian Racing Red, which would be applied by Lorenzo, the grouchy troll-like perfectionist who ruled the paint booth at the back of the body shop, an unlit stogie always clenched in his jaw.

Carlo agreed that Chub deserved some time off, so Chub packed a bag and took off for a sort of arrested development spring break in Florida, where he would catch the 12 Hours of Sebring and perhaps cavort with some hot college babes at Daytona Beach. With Carlo’s permission, Chub selected a durable Volvo Station wagon from the car lot and popped an air mattress and sleeping bag in back.

Chub headed back to Milledgeton after two weeks of sun, beer, seafood and brief flings with a blonde cheerleader from Rutgers and a statuesque brunette hippy with impressive boobs. He thought he might want to see the brunette again. Chub blew into town on a Friday night and dropped his bags off at the Lakeview Motel. He picked up a quart of Jack Black, a bag of pretzels and headed over to Carlo’s, hoping that Lorenzo had worked his magic on the Ferrari’s paint job. When he strolled in the door, the look on Carlo’s face and the stench of smoke told him the news was not good.

“Wha… what the heck happened, Carlo?” Chub blurted out.

“It’s not good, Chub,” Carlo said. Take a couple belts of our old friend Jack and I’ll tell you. After they each tossed back a good three inches of hooch, Carlo continued.
“Lorenzo finally got around to painting the Ferrari last Friday night. He’d been doing customer cars all day and maybe exceeded his usual capacity for inhaling fumes. Maybe I should’a stopped him, but I wanted the car ready for you,” Carlo said.

“I guess he felt a little woozy and went out in the alley for some fresh air and lit up a new stogie, forgot it was still lit and went back to the paint booth. He must have poured lacquer thinner into his sprayer and when the fumes hit the cigar, ‘Blammo!’ the whole place went up in flames. I was in the front office when I heard the explosion and called 911, but by the time I got back there and the firemen arrived, Lorenzo was a goner and the Ferrari was a smoldering mess.”

Chub and Carlo made new drinks and walked back to the gutted paint booth. Poor old Lorenzo’s remains had been removed but the Ferrari’s charred corpse remained. Chub agreed with Carlo’s assessment of “it’s a mess.” The concrete block structure had acted as a firewall, so most of the damage had been restricted to the paint booth and its contents. The Ferrari was, as they say, toast.

Saturday, a memorial service and wake were held at the body shop. The presence of Father Salerno lent a solemn air to the ceremony, but Italian food and libations lightened their spirits. No mention was made of a curse.

Chub reported for work Monday morning, but his heart was not in it. Curse or no curse, the doomed Ferrari was on everybody’s minds. Even moving the charred remains back to the storage building did not lift their spirits and the other employees looked at Chub a little differently than they had before.

Chub realized there was a change in his own priorities as well. He let an Olds Cutlass go for well under what Carlo had in it, even though the buyer had no job and his ability to make payments was shaky. And he practically gave away a Triumph Spitfire with a faint engine knock to a cute 18-year-old redhead who flirted with him. Three weeks after Chub got back to Milledgeton, he and Carlo sat in the office Friday evening, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels between them, when the phone rang. Thinking it was a lucrative wrecker call, Carlo grabbed the receiver, listened and then handed it to Chub.

“It’s for you, some woman named Rachel,” Carlo said.

Chub was half in the bag and had to think a minute before taking the receiver. Carlo listened to Chub’s side of the conversation which was mostly “ahhs” and “a-has”, and finally, “Sounds like a plan. Count me in.” After hanging up, Chub turned to Carlo and said, “Rachel is a brunette from Daytona I met. She’s a perennial grad student and a pretty decent photographer. She just got a rebuilt engine in her VW van and scored a grant to retrace Ansell Adams’ photos of the Rockies. Wanted to know if I’d like to come along as a co-driver and … er … companion.”

Chub paused for a minute, took another sip of his drink, and added, “Probably needs someone strong enough to get out and push the old VW up steep slopes. Those vans are pretty gutless.”

Chub didn’t need to add that he had accepted the offer.

“I’m never gonna forget working for you or that Ferrari,” Chub finally said. “After all that effort, I never really got a chance to drive it except for a few short runs in February, when it was too cold to put it through its paces.”

“Curse or no curse, I don’t think I’m done with that Ferrari,” Chub added. “But maybe we need to give it a rest.”