Indy 500 Memories: The Box Lunch
By Dick Smith
©1996
SpeedCenter Internet Publishing, Inc.
Exclusive to SpeedCenter
Do you remember the first big time automobile race you attended? If you
were like me, it came at a young age. My introduction just happened to
be the 1953 Indianapolis 500 and I've been hooked ever since. That
wasn't my first visit to the Speedway, nor my first automobile race, but
it was the defining moment as they say.
Everything about that day seems to be clearly etched into my memory cells even today. I remember driving into downtown Indianapolis to meet my Aunt and Uncle who were attending the race with my parents and I. The "plan", and I learned on that day that everyone who attends the 500 has a plan for arriving at the track and leaving after the race, was to take a taxi out to the track after leaving our family Buick at the Indianapolis Athletic Club where my Uncle was a member.
I was also presented with my first Box Lunch which would be my food for the day.
My father explained that cardboard box, the size of a cake box from the
bakery and tied neatly with twine, meant that my mother didn't have to
cook and prepare something for us to take to the track. Only years later did I also realize that it also meant that he didn't have to lug along a cooler on the long walk into the track.
The Box Lunch became the first of a host of items I will always associate with the 500. Inside, it held two pieces of fried chicken, a ham sandwich, a sack of chips, an apple, and individual small waxed paper sacks holding some crudites (celery, carrot sticks, and olives), a dill pickle, a cookie, and a napkin.
This is virtually the same Box Lunch that tens of thousands of race fans
will carry to the track this year, except now everyone gets theirs at one of the Kroeger Grocery stores, and modern packaging materials like
zip-lock bags have replaced wax paper.
Progress to be sure, but they don't taste the same. Maybe it's because the pickle juice doesn't run all over the chips and cookie now. To me, and perhaps a lot of others, it just isn't the 500 without a Box Lunch.
This year, 1500 miles away in Texas, I will prepare Box Lunches for myself and my friends who get together to watch and listen to the race. I make them the same way as they did in 1953.
I usually can talk a local bakery out of the boxes, kite string has replaced the twine, but its getting real hard to even find anyone who knows what I'm talking about when I speak of waxed paper bags!
When you attend the Indianapolis 500 you arrive early. Back in 1953 you
did it to avoid some traffic jams and to allow time to get to your seat
and it's no different today. Getting to the track involved The Plan.
Our choice that day, and still my favorite, was a taxi. All six of us
piled into one along with our Box Lunches and we hit the "route". On race day, Indianapolis is turned into several "routes". There are routes for private vehicles and "routes" for taxis and buses which also double as the VIP route.
The trains, which in those days hauled spectators from downtown Indianapolis to the Speedway, had their own route, the train tracks.
Oddly enough, it all goes pretty smoothly and we arrived in Speedway within 30 minutes. However, once there, the drop off points even for taxi's can be a couple miles from your seat.
Our seats were in the farthest northern grandstand of the time; Grandstand F. It resided at the top of the front straight. The long 2 mile walk North, from the drop point, was the beginning.
I was so excited that I didn't even notice the pickle juice running down my leg. This wooden relic of a stand, with perhaps no more than 50 rows of seats, was serving its last year. The grandstand predated the track's purchase by Tony Hulman and was scheduled to be replaced after the race.
Our seats were in the boxes up front, and in the first row no less. We arrived before 9:00, just in time to see the Purdue Band head back down the front straight after turning around in front of us.
Row 1 .....the track, on which 33 speeding cars were soon to go careening past, stood no more than 20 feet from my metal folding chair. To my left I could see the exit from turn 4, and to the right I could look down the front straight towards the start finish line.
Across the track, still the original bricks at that point, stood the stand of large trees at the North end of the track (more then than today) and a teaming mass of cars filling up the infield parking.
Between me and the track stood a double railing of 2 inch pipe at the front of the box seats, 20 feet of grass, a 3 foot high concrete wall and nothing else. No catch fence, no wire mesh, and nothing to interfere with watching the cars and drivers that soon would be zooming by.
With time to kill, I did what any 7 year old would do and joined many of the fans in tearing into my prized Box Lunch.
Today, over 40 years later, and while we've learned to prepare extra food, my box is empty before the race starts just as it was in 1953. My friends give me as much grief as my Mother did back then.
Indianapolis and tradition. It's hard to hear one without the other
mentioned in the same breath. Some say that the traditions make the
"Greatest Spectacle in Racing" what it is, while others claim they detract from it.
Many traditions like the unlucky color green, peanuts at the track, no women in the pits, and the single pace lap are but faded memories. Others such as the VIP parade around the track, a local instead of a Hollywood Race Queen, beer served at the track, and Fan Fest, have taken their places.
Some such as the balloon release at the start, "Back Home Again in Indiana", the Purdue band, "Taps", and pompous officials with armbands are still with us.
I welcome the new, and don't really miss the passing of the old. However, when the day comes that the Box Lunch disappears, I quit. For you see, it's just not the 500 unless I have my Box Lunch.
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