Photo by Robert Burroughs

“I say the best thing to do is drive actively.”

“They said don’t get killed, you gotta work tomorrow,” said Jeanette Solis Blakely, the waitress in car number nine. She looks at the smashed instrument panel of her Cadillac, the old jukebox kind of car with the vertical rear fins and the rubber bumper tips.

“But nobody told me anything,” wails wide-eyed Jeanette, 40.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

“I can’t believe it. I don’t even know where the things are on this car. I mean, they had to show me how to start it. Ha ha! What’s that? Am I scared? Yes I’m scared! I can’t believe I’m going to do it!"

Jeanette’s grandson is in the stands tonight to see the first all-woman Destruction Derby at the El Cajon Speedway. Behind Jeanette’s pink Caddy, ten cars wait idling, engines grumbling at the edge of the super stock race. In a moment they will trundle to the infield, where, to the cheers and boos of 2,550 fans—a good turnout on a Saturday night when the Aztecs are playing at home—the women will bash each other’s cars to a halt until one remains running and its driver wins a $100 check.

The main event has ended, leaving a thin black cloud and the odor of burned rubber.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

No one will be injured in tonight's D.D., unlike the races at the track where one driver and two spectators have been killed in recent months; yet this Destruction Derby will end in such a way that no one at the track has witnessed before.

Now some of the women receive last-minute instructions. “I say the best thing to do is drive actively,” says Steve Luffe, the winner of six D.D.’s in as many years. “A lot of it is luck. You point yourself away to hit somebody and as soon as you nail a guy, you get the hell out." Of course, each driver has his own bit of advice. Protect your radiator. Stuff tires in your trunk for extra padding (illegal tactic). Aim for the other cars’ wheels. Never, never stall and make yourself a sitting duck for the others to smash at will.

“But nobody told me anything,” wails wide-eyed Jeanette, 40, clenching her steering wheel. “I work at the Feed Bucket, and some people there said, ‘Hey — you want to drive in this derby?' And I said, ‘Sure.’ Now look at me.”

From the announcer’s booth high above the track, you see a black-stained oval roadway, banked on both ends. At turn number four, the guard rail by the pit has been remounted, looking like a jagged scar. Two men died from wounds there in July when a racer shot over the bank. Another died last month when his car spun out and was hit on the driver’s side.

From the booth you see 11 cars painted in party colors, headed now for the infield, their doors welded shut, all windows and glass removed, all drivers wearing helmets. The main event has ended, leaving a thin black cloud and the odor of burned rubber. Those who were quiet in the roar of the cars are voluble now, leaning forward in their seats, some standing by the dirt-packed wall whose sign—“Stay Back"—must be ignored for a view of the distant infield.

What kind of people like Destruction Derby? We do. It’s a high school football crowd, a rock concert crowd with parents. The scene is a Brueghel’s painting of families at play: a girl with oversized glasses turns laughing and swats the boy behind her; the boy backs into a man who sloshes his cup, shakes foam off his hand and laughs. Destruction Derby—the world, in a nice phrase—contains something of appeal for all of us. “I’m sure everybody has had a mad desire to take a car and ram it into something,” says Luffe. “Here you get to do it. Some people come to see the drivers and others to see the crashing, the impact of the cars, the way the cars spin around, the sounds they make—stuff like that.”

“And there they go! Just like every day at Von’s,” screams track announcer Tom McGrath as the cars commence destruction, two lines backing into each other. He summarizes the rules: no head-on ramming and no ramming on the driver’s side. All drivers must wear seat belts.

“Ooooh!” says the crowd when poor Jeanette Blakely gets bashed on two sides at once. “Aaaay!" comes the cheer when two cars miss a third but bash each other. “Naaaaaw!" whines the mass when two cars pass without touching. “Wha’ kinda crap is ’at!” says a man to the woman next to him. “Hey, I don’t know," she says right back. “You’re the one talkin' about it.”

Now the event is beginning to take shape. “That is ... Rose Love," the announcer says. “There in car number 87. Look at her tear that infield!”

Leaning into a turn, flinging turf behind her ’64 Olds, this Rose Love, 19, looks like she’s driving for the money. Her sponsor—the company that gave her $75 for the car—told her it was no use paying if she wasn’t going to win. “Aw, heck I’m not that competitive,” she said after the race. She had other reasons, anyway, for trying to finish first.

“It was Rose’s idea to have a D.D. for the girls,” said Fred Perry, vice president of the El Cajon Stock Car Racing Association. “She came to me and asked if the girls couldn’t have their own derby. And so 1 said, I like to try new things. You know, aim for fan entertainment, something new.” He told her to propose the idea to the governing board.

“I was afraid they’d laugh at us, and they did," she said. “But they said we could do it if we got 12 girls together, and that was no problem.” Some signed up for fun, others because they’d wanted to drive but not against the men, who take destruction seriously. Most signed for the same reason as Donna Castellese: “Just because Rose asked me to.” (Donna is also Rose’s sister-in-law. Over half the women destructing this night are related by blood, marriage, or friendship through work.)

“We never wanted to go out there and smash each other,” says Rose. “We’re friends. We wanted to go out and have a good time.”

Fifteen minutes into the event, most of the cars are knocked out, motionless, steaming—but there’s Rose Love careening in wide circles, avoiding contact, conserving the strength of her bumpers, showing winning form.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing. It feels good to lean into the turns, so I did that. I had a good time.”

She used to drive a delivery car but gave that up because it was too dangerous. Now she crafts steel plates for dentures, besides caring for her husband and three-year-old daughter. A dumpling brunette with a gap between her upper front teeth, Rose looks nothing like a D.D. terror.

“Lord aw-mighty,” says a man wearing a racing association jacket. “She’s gonna bust clean out of the infield if she drives like that.”

Rose has now only one more car to eliminate—the ’63 Chevy wagon driven by Donna. Rose circles the blue car like a shark, nicking at the wheels—puh!—when she hits. Then up comes the checkered flag and the D.D. is over.

“Eeeeeeee!” you could hear on the field as social history was being made in El Cajon. From every shell of metal the drivers crawled, emerged into the pale, sea-green light and went running, arms outstretched, into one another’s fast embrace. Congratulations all around! The women hugged each other; the losers and also-rans jumped up and down.

While up in the announcer’s booth, McGrath pushed back from the table and rose to tuck in his shirt. “The girls didn’t go as fast or bang as hard as the guys usually do. I’d say," as he jabbed his shirttails into his loins. “But it was generally good. I mean, she had some smarts. She was keeping out of the middle and picking the others off. She did it smart.”

“It was just beautiful!” said Rose, clenched in excitement, standing by her car. “I figured—Hi! Thanks!—I figured I would just go out and try real hard and have a good time, but now I just want to go out and try again."

“It was great," said Donna, standing next to Rose. “She kept beating me up, and I couldn’t get away.”

“What’s that?” said Rose to Donna.

“I couldn’t get away."

They laughed.

Donna's husband, nearby, offered a proper word on the first all-woman Destruction Derby: “Well, between sisters—sisters, you know—heck! there was no competition."