Nothing recalls the growing-up-years of my three sons more than the words “Pinewood Derby.” The Derby was an annual Cub Scout event that teamed fathers (or mothers) with their Scout sons to build a seven-inch race car. The tiny autos coasted down a descending forty-foot track, four abreast in a series of elimination races at one of the Cub Pack meetings. The excitement was electric. You thought you were at the Daytona 500.
Anticipation and construction of the cars preceded the event for weeks. To guarantee uniformity, the Boy Scouts of America specified the car kits, ensuring every competitor started with the same block of wood, same wheels, and same axles. But modifications and refinements were allowed. In our town, boys fortunate enough to have fathers who worked at the Cummins Engine Company with Mechanical Engineering degrees had a decided advantage.
Did I say this was a Cub Scout program? Forget it. This pitted dad against dad for bragging rights rivaling those seen on car bumpers boasting of mere honor students. My oldest son, Eric, joined the Cubs in 1973, Chris, the next boy became a scout two years later, and Brian, my youngest, was in Cubs until 1982. That gave me nine years to hone the skills of friction reduction, the magic of #800 sandpaper to polish axle shafts, and weight and balance techniques bringing our speedster within a gram of the five-ounce weight limit. Many a night I labored until the wee hours applying my refinements. Oh, the boys? I got their approval in the morning. This was warfare against those Cummins fathers!
Alas, I don’t remember winning any first-place trophies. Rumors suggested that at the Cummins plant, computerized wheel alignment equipment tested miniature vehicles, but nothing was proven. Damn you Diesel Devils!
Some boys, I’m sorry to report, had fathers who didn’t know a screwdriver from a crescent wrench. Their race cars usually lost a wheel half way down the track or could be identified by the smiley face decals. Actually, there were trophies awarded in other categories: most creative, funniest, and most colorful. Consequently, some cars looked like sharks, Batmobiles, Army tanks, and fire engines.
One year, at Brian’s insistence, we took the head and shoulders of his “Fonzie” doll, made famous by the TV show Happy Days, and put him in our car’s driver’s seat. The Fonz didn’t win, but he looked dashing zipping down the track with his tiny silk scarf fluttering out behind.
These Pinewood Derby memories came roaring back after reading an article in yesterday’s newspaper. A resident professed his love of Pinewood Derby Racing and hopes to find others interested in the handmade wooden cars. He got the bug, the article said, “helping” his Cub Scout grandson. Yeah, I bet, helping! I wondered if he used to work for the Cummins Engine Company?
4 thoughts on “Pinewood Derby”
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Remember doing the pinewood derby with my son a few years ago….
A great experience and fun.
Thanks for sharing.
Just read the blog and had a good laugh. We had all girls so never experienced the Dad competition. Did you know the girls are now participating in pinewood derby! My youngest granddaughter Marla just participated. Her dad was bragging how they won 3rd and 4th. Marla said, ” Dad, there were only 4 in my race!!” ?? No Barbie doll but painted pink!
Oh my gosh, Brian, I forgot the best memory of all. I love it. Go bubble babe!
Allow me to add a few details to this story – and i promise I won’t embellish, scout’s honor!
Being the third and youngest son, my dad had done it all by the time my block of pine came home witch me after my pack meeting on fall evening. He’d made a gleaming pinewood cherry red race car, with decals and racing stripes. There was a Herbie the Love Bug WV year. Once he even made a sailboat pinewood derby car, fully equipped with a mast! Yes, my father sure enjoyed his time in our cub scouts. But the one year that stands out most of all was the year he was recovering from surgery. At the age of 10, I had pretty limited information but my understanding at the time was that he had too many veins in his legs and they just needed to take some out. They used a new approach to staple his skin shut when done and I recall he set a hospital record for the most staples after an operation. 167 sounds about right, or maybe it was 13,800. Regardless of the number of them, he was under strict instructions to stay off his feet for several weeks to let his wounds heal. Standing up for any length of time would cause unbearable pain as his legs would swell. That’s the night I came home with my pinewood block, ready to take on those Cummins families. A car was produced that night but let’s just say that the 800 grit sandpaper wasn’t required this year. I recall that we rounded the front bumper. The was a small indentation where the driver’s seat was but I think the block of wood came with that already installed so don’t get too excited. We painted it blue, with spray paint. And in a final effort to give it some sense of character we pushed two brass thumbtacks in the front for headlights. That was it and my dad was back in bed before the big hand had made a full swing. There wasn’t fanfare that year over my blue office supply puttering ride but the next year my final entry made up for it in spades.
My dad got the story wrong. It wasn’t Fonzie looking cool in his T-bird sports car that I asked for. I decided I wanted a lady in a bathtub rolling down the track with her three Cub Scout competitors looking curiously over at her from lanes 1,2 and 4. Somewhere along the way, I decided that if I couldn’t build a race car faster than my friend’s engineering fathers, I could at least make a distraction pretty enough to perhaps slow them down a bit.
We carved out a tub and painted it white. My dad bought a doll and quietly one night long after I was asleep, discreetly separated her top torso, glueing her into the middle of the tub. We then glued down some mini bubble wrap to serve as bath bubbles and she was ready to roll! The sweetest vengeance of all was that the race officials had to dismantle the laser precision finish line because my bathtub beauty couldn’t coast under the laser cameras at the finish line. They just had to judge the finish the good old fashioned way, with their eyeballs. And you know, if there’s one thing that should still be able to be enjoyed a good old fashioned way, it’s got to be the pinewood derby car races – bubbles, sailboats, racing stripes and all.