The Go-Cart

 

My father was a great man, and he was an even better family man; a loving, giving soul who wanted the best for his wife and kids, and worked hard to provide us that life. However, sometimes, just occasionally, the thought would cross my mind that maybe...just maybe...my father was trying to kill me.

Allow me to offer this example of why this thought would occur to me:

One warm, bright, sunny Saturday in August of 1967, just after I turned seven years old, my Dad gathered a bunch of wood, some scraps, four wheels and two axles from a toy wagon, and one of my sister’s old jump ropes, and decided to build a go-cart for me.

Dad had a lot of talent using his hands. He was a gifted painter, a skilled draftsman, good with car repair, and an excellent wood worker. The job in front of him took roughly four hours to complete, and it was the BEST looking, COOLEST vehicle EVER CREATED!..at least to my seven year-old eyes.

The wheels and axles were attached to a couple of thick, oak boards that served as the foundation for the vehicle. Two wooden crates were nailed to the foundation, one at the front, one at the back, and they were reinforced with cut up 2X4s around the sides and the tops of the crates. He nailed together boards that would serve as a “windshield”, built a wooden seat and glued on old cushions to make a fairly comfortable place to drive. He took a big piece of thin, bendable pressboard and made a roof for the “car” and put pie pans on the front and back for “lights”.

The back axle was fixed to the frame, but the front axle was steerable. Dad cut the jump rope in half, and attached one end of each piece to each end of the front axle, so that the little vehicle could be steered by pulling one rope or the other. A long, thin piece of wood served as a hand-break: I could push the “hand-break” forward and it would rub against one of the back wheels, theoretically slowing the vehicle until it came to a stop. The whole of the creation was, in its way, a brilliant piece of work.

Sitting in my little car, I felt…like a king! I was a seven year-old with my own car! I was so incredibly happy, I can’t even describe the feeling now, all these years later.

But what to do with it….

My father’s first idea was to take another rope and tie my go-cart to the back of his car, which is exactly what he did. Mom was at work and my younger sister and brother were with my grandparents, so it was my Dad and I; my father driving slow down Main Street with a rope tied to his back bumper, towing me through town.

As I think about that scene now, fifty some years later, I can’t imagine that the police didn’t descend on us with riot gear, a swat team, and Child Protective Services; but this was a small, Mayberry type of town in the 1960’s. Instead of some busy-body calling the police and screeching about this man endangering his son, people looked in mild amusement at a man driving a white, two-toned 1962 Chevy-2 towing a small, tow-headed boy through town in a little, hand-made wooden car while the little boy made loud “VRRROOOOOM” sounds and had the biggest grin on his face imaginable.

As much fun as I was having though, what I didn’t know was that this was only “Phase One” of my father’s grand plan.

He towed me through town to the park. Once there, he pulled the car over at one of the picnic shelters and unhooked the tow rope from the cars, and said: “Son, let’s see what this baby will do!”

The town’s park was nice: it had a paved road that circled through the park, a baseball diamond that the little league used every year with a grandstand and a concession stand, two picnic shelters, and a canoe rental. The shelter we had parked at overlooked a hill…a fairly big and steep hill.

Every year, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, my mother’s side of the family has a big picnic. We always have the picnic in the same park shelter, the very shelter that my Dad towed me to. Everyone shows up to eat great food and enjoy a day of fellowship. We have a volleyball game, we have a “cornhole” tournament, we have a radio broadcasting the Indianapolis 500 on which all of us, even the kids, participate in an informal pool; everyone puts in a dollar, gets a slip of paper with a driver’s name and starting position, and whoever has the winning driver gets the money. I go to this event every year, and every year that I am there, I remember the day I went down the hill in my go-cart, and all these years later, I still think the hill is HUGE.

My father’s big idea was to put me in the go-kart and set me on my way rolling down the hill. This was a plan I was fine with, until I was sitting in my little wooden car with the jump-rope steering at the top of the hill, looking down. That was when it dawned on me that this wasn’t going to be as simple as just rolling down the hill.

The problem was that the road goes straight down the steep incline and, at the bottom of the hill, takes a sharp turn to the left. There isn’t any time to hesitate if you are rolling out of control down the steep knoll. If you turn too sharp to the left to navigate the turn, you will hit a huge oak tree. If you don’t turn, you will roll straight into the Stillwater River.

No one wanted that, least of all me.

“Ok, son! Grab the steering ropes!” he said enthusiastically. “Are you ready?”

No. I wasn’t ready. I was still taking in the height of the hill, the gradient of the hill, the turn to the left at the bottom…the tree…the river…

Before I could answer, I felt a push, and, like that moment when one crests the first peak of a rollercoaster, I experienced that first pull of gravity on my little wooden vehicle.

I was off!

Almost immediately, I knew that I was going faster than I had ever gone in a mode of transportation I was supposed to be in control of: my tricycle never moved this fast, and I had recently learned to ride a two-wheeled bicycle but, try as I might, I never got it to the speed I had attained in that moment.

In the first few seconds of free fall down the hill, I knew I was going TOO fast. Faster than I could think. Instinctively, I knew I was in trouble. I pushed the hand-break forward, and it broke…

I was now fully in the grip of gravity and physics. I was rolling down the hill, out of control, trying to steer with two pieces of rope in each hand, with pieces of my wooden go-cart starting to fall off. Even though I was moving at a speed that was faster than my seven-year-old brain could handle, I remember a moment when time seemed to stand still.

“Well, this is it,” I thought to myself. “It’s been a good life…seven years…I’ll miss my Dad, my Mom, my brother and sister, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…I know I’ll go be with Jesus after this kills me, but that will be OK…I won’t have to go to school…that’ll be nice…my life just flashed before my eyes…it wasn’t much of a flash…maybe my life will flash before my eyes again…

Then ZOOOOM! The moment was gone. The go-cart was shaking itself apart. I was frantically trying to steer my little car. Keep it straight down the road, get ready for that curve…DON’T GO INTO THE RIVER!

I closed my eyes and jerked back on the rope in my left hand, and I felt the go-cart swerve left…

BANG!

I remember the sudden stop…the sound of wood cracking…the feeling of my body caught in the forward momentum…the feeling of being PULLED out of my seat and through the opening that constituted my “windshield” only to plant my face on the same side of the big oak tree that my go-cart had crashed into.

There was no pain. I was laying on the broken wood that used to be the front of my little wooden vehicle. I felt like lying there for a while, not moving, glad that the ride was over. I didn’t care about my go-cart; I didn’t care about my condition…I just wanted to lay there and rest after the terrifying ride.

I heard a car come down the hill; it was my Dad. He picked me up off the pile of broken wood and put me into his Chevy-2 and raced across town to the Doctor’s office that my mother worked in as a nurse. I looked down and saw that my shirt was stained red with blood. I remember being calm; I didn’t cry or scream.

It turned out that I had a couple of cuts on my forehead and my right cheek from the high-speed impact of my face against the bark of the tree, some bumps and bruises, a few scrapes. Nothing was broken. My mother was outraged when she saw me, and she muttered under her breath as she and the Doctor cleaned me up. The only pain I felt was when the Doctor applied the iodine to my cuts and scrapes; that shit HURT!

I have no idea what happened to my go-cart. I never saw it again after the wreck.

My Dad said he was proud of me for not crying, and that made me feel better.

After my father confessed to my mother the entire story of my adventures with my little wooden go-cart; towing me through town, my trip down the hill into the tree, she didn’t speak to him for a week…

I, however, got ice cream!

Score!