Down through the ages, competitive speed trials have been a major part in the rite of passage. For us in the early days of Northport life, it was the gravity powered “Buggy". This hand-crafted engineering marvel was the centerpiece for what would become our thrill-ride and began in concept at about age 5. By about age 8 or 9, research and development was complete and prototype construction was well underway. The wheel base of this concrete cruiser was governed by the length of whatever boards were lying around. As I recall, 1 x 6 boards were the board of choice and if you had ‘em you had most of your material list. The manufacturing facility for our buggies was our garage at 114 Bayview Avenue. We had an old wooden box of tools that had been handed down from my grandfather to my mother and ultimately to my dad who never used them because he didn’t know how. There was a rusty old hand saw, an old hammer and a brace & bit set among other rusty and seemingly less important tools. That was okay, because we only needed the basics. For those who are unfamiliar with a brace and bit, this medieval looking tool was a hand operated device that allowed the boring of holes in wood, by hand turning a crankshaft-style handle that would ultimately create a symmetrical hole with a wood auger. This tool would allow us to create a steering feature, when coupled with some clothes line rope and the use of our feet. It would place our design among the top competitors in our field. We were destined to become racing legends.
Without
divulging too many industrial secrets, it is safe to share that there
were some features on this model that continued to evolve with time.
Sometimes, depending upon availability, sets of baby carriage wheels
could be had for a buck at the Jester Thrift Shop on Scudder Avenue
(sold in complete sets only). My mother always kept us in the loop on
stock conditions. These wheels would be key to our technical success
and racing superiority, although our method of keeping them on the
axles may have been considered unorthodox in some quarters. The
wheels fit onto the axles which were actually, round solid steel
curtain rods (the kind that were painted gold) and were of a similar
diameter to roughly fit into the hole at the center of the baby
carriage wheels. They were kept in place by implementation of our
"wheel retainer tool". This is to say, we put the wheels on
the axles and smashed the axle ends continuously and unmercifully
with the hammer until the axle ends were metallurgically transformed
into a mushroom shape, creating a "wheel retainer". This
took a long time and was the least-fun part in building these babies.
Since we lived by the law of "club and fang", the youngest
and smallest guy would be in charge of this least-fun thing to do.
That, I recall was me.
Enter Jack Russell....Jack Russell
was our retired neighbor who lived in a beautiful waterfront home,
diagonally across the street on Bayview Avenue. He was the uncle of
one of our summertime cronies and somehow, he got wind of our wheel
retainer methods and became concerned for our safety. Now, "Uncle
Jack" was without a doubt an honorary
cool guy. It would not have been acceptable to make him a certified
cool guy, after all, he was over the age of 12. He had a great house
with a dock that we used to dive off, boats, antique cars, and most
of all a tool box with an electric drill and drill bits that would
penetrate steel! He invited us over to his house to partake in a
wheel retainer redesign seminar. Using his wonderful electric tools,
he soon had us secure with a washer and cotter pin arrangement that
was truly superior and
would soon make our "mushroom design"obsolete.
Brakes?.......We don’t need no stinkin’ brakes. The
main idea in speed trials is forward motion and the hills of
Northport provided us with plenty of that. In our quest to be the
fastest men on the planet, the idea of brakes was counterproductive
to our "forward thinking". After all, didn’t the Chrysler
Corporation make cars that had forward thinking? They had windshields
that were raked way back, so they must have known what they were
doing. For a fleeting moment, we did once consider brakes, but only
as a minimal effort. We attached a 1 x 4 board at the side of our
buggy in the style of a pull-back lever, mounted on a single bolt
that acted as a pivot. The lever protruded to the plane of the street
and was designed to act as a drag against the concrete to help stop
the machine. The problem was that this inadequate design did not stop
the buggy, but only served to slow it down a little. By applying the
secondary braking system (your feet) you could eventually achieve
stopped status, but none of these systems were deemed effective in
avoiding a would-be accident. The design team debated the safety
subject and decided that since the brakes would not stop the vehicle
anyway, the braking system concept was without merit and would be
scrubbed. We soon began a study in the proper and time-proven art of
bailing out on solid pavement with minimal body damage. Generally, a
few bruises and lacerations were considered acceptable.
Lewis Road proving grounds
Proving
Grounds: James Street, Stanton Street, Lewis Road, Highland Avenue.
They seemed like logical choices to us. From the top of James Street,
we reasoned that if we could not stop, we would just coast all the
way down to James Beach and into the harbor. The water would surely
stop us. Then there was Stanton Street which was a bit steep, but we
could always veer to the left and zoom onto Ackerly Terrace where it
was flat. Lewis Road was a long hill, but again if we got into
trouble, we figured we could zoom off to the left onto Ward
Avenue......... and then there was Highland Avenue which was without
redemption. Anyone on that hill without meaningful stopping power was
destined to become hurt in a major way. Now in rethinking this thing,
we finally factored in the possibility for car traffic. In the final
analysis, we
would gauge just how far and how fast we might be going until a
certain point where we knew we could bail without certain death.
Somehow, we managed to make it through these years of discovery and
awe without major injuries.
As summer gave way to fall
and fall to winter, we had a whole new set of physics to deal with.
Ice and snow. I think I spent most of my childhood winters sleigh
riding down Esther Stevens’ hill, looking for the "longest
ride" that would carry me out onto the ice. For some reason she
never threw us off her property and never even said anything to us.
We rode our sleighs there for years. In my mind, I can still smell
that wet wool collar on my winter coat. I didn’t care. My cronies
and I were the bravest, the coolest and the fastest ever. Come
spring, we would be shooting cans and things with our BB guns. As
Elvis once crooned
in his song, "I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Soon enough, Chief Percy
Ervin would be looking for us. And so it went………….
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