Then Jensen Button came up and I said “Jensen, hi, how are you?”.

“Great,” he said.

“Jensen, have you heard of a band called the White Stripes?” I asked.

“Why yes I have,” he answered in his regal English accent.

“Well they are one of my favorite bands, and every time I hear the song The Hardest Button to Button, I think of you”, at which point he cracks up and I get a shot of him and I shaking hands, what a cool chap.

Then Ross Brawn came up, stopped, chatted with me, and I got a picture shaking hands with him, then Rubens Barrichello. The McLaren were a bit unfriendly as I imagined they might be, oh well, it did nothing to ruin my day though.

Race-day, I had finally settled on a grandstand seat where I had a view of the cars for about 25 seconds!  It was a great seat except that there were no big screens anywhere around, and I had to rely on my hearing, which is quite bad, to stay abreast of the out-of-sight action. A girl next to me said that Ralf Schumacher had crashed, and was hurt bad, and that the medical truck was taking a long time to get to him, I was quite upset by that. It seemed that those four words spoken to Frank at the gas station were sort of prophetic.

The trip to Indy was very important to me you see because, back in the early 70’s my mother called up to tell me and my sister to be sure to watch the Indy 500, because she knew the guy who would be driving the pace car, and she would be there. So we both sat down to watch the race, my sister wasn’t a race fan and left halfway through, but I kept watching, hoping to see a shot of my mom whom I hadn’t seen for a few years, and missed terribly. Finally the race wound down, and as the car pulled into the winners circle surrounded by fans there she was, standing there smoking a cigarette, it was the very last time I ever saw her alive.

Concerning the photo of me and Sir Frank, I had it blown up and on the back I wrote, ‘Hello Sir Frank, sorry about the shirt, I got it for 50 cents at a yard sale, and thanks for speaking with me at the ‘crossroads’. Could you please sign this picture and send it back to me in Windsor, Ontario?”

After all, I was going to Indy for the next race on the calendar, and you never know, I could just run into him again.

At the Indy pit-day walkthrough, Williams were the first to open their garage doors, and I waited until one of the older mechanics was talking to the crowd in front of the roped-off area. Then, reaching across five people deep handing him the blown-up photo in its sleeve said, “Excuse me sir, do you think you could give this to my friend Frank, he might want to see it.”

“Certainly Sir”, he said. 

I had no idea what would happen to the picture after that. One scenario that went through my mind was that the mechanic would open it up, see the red shirt I was wearing, think it was a prank, and then throw it away.