Minor collection of short stories and recollections intended for teen readers. There's a simple but effective piece by John D. MacDonald, and a more entertaining reminiscence by John Steinbeck about some of his old cars and the days when people fixed their own cars unlike 1956, when Steinbeck wrote the piece. The last story in the book is a true one of race car driver Jimmy Bryan's preparations in the day leading up to the 1958 Indianapolis 500. At the end of the story, we are told that he won - avoiding a 16 car pile-up that killed one driver. And on that note the book ends - but my own search of the Internet on this driver left me depressed, as I found out he himself died less than two years later at a race on the Langhorne track near Philadelphia. Given the publication date of this book (1966), it seems very strange that this story would have been included, or was it intended to have some special meaning for an audience where many of the readers knew Jimmy Bryan was already dead?

The other stories are pretty minor and not all well-written, but with a cover and a title like this, it was an impossible impulse to resist at $1.50 in the used book store. ( )