Word: alleys
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Indy's Gasoline Alley, the row of machine shops that line the famed old oval, roared last week with the sound of 900-h.p. engines being pushed to their limit and bustled with mechanized frenzy, profanity and machismo as next Sunday's 500-mile race drew nearer. The Alley is the ultimate in that American male sanctuary, the local garage. TIME's Barrett Seaman reports how a woman was faring there last week...
Endlessly the butt of off-color jokes, harassed constantly by reporters, both legitimate and bogus, and jeered by frequently unsympathetic crowds at every stall or slip, Guthrie had persevered. So thick were the throngs outside her garage in Gasoline Alley that race cars were unable to get through to the track. Accused of entering just as a publicity stunt, mislabeled caustically as a women's libber and once even asked outright if she was a lesbian, Guthrie calmly disclaimed all, except to say: "I'm a driver, period...
...Gasoline Alley is still full of those who say the 5-ft. 9-in., 135-lb. Guthrie will never make a showing in any car, because first, she is a woman, and, second, she doesn't have the physical strength to finish a race, the rigors of which sometimes cause drivers to lose 10 lbs. "That's a bunch of malarkey," says Teammate Dick Simon. "Anybody who's been around here long knows it's the mental strength that counts." Janet Guthrie has displayed plenty of that...
...woman's right to choose between bearing a child and not bearing it. But the choice must be real, not just theoretical. Women without means have never had a real choice. They have delivered without adequate medical care just as they have in desperation sought abortions from back-alley butchers...
Anyway, now's your chance to try figuring out what writing is all about for yourself. You could decide to trade in your New Yorker for a broadsheet. Or the part of the exhibit they call "dregs alley" might be enough to convince you to stay in the English department...