I’ve written in this space before about my adolescent interest in things that fly, including planes, gliders, rockets, and hovercrafts. But part of that interest also touched on speed. I loved to go fast. I remember sitting in the back seat of the family Ford station wagon with the window down, as we drove north to the cottage on Highway 69. The rushing air hitting my face, the telephone poles whizzing by, the cars flashing past us in the opposite direction….I just loved the feeling of speed. Back in those days, I was never happier than when out riding my bike through Leaside’s quiet streets at breakneck velocity, leaning down low as I zoomed through the corners. And yes, that was long before the idea of bike helmets had ever occurred to the grownups, let alone to us kids. What were we thinking?
I realize I’ve been less than honest in the previous paragraph. There were moments when I was happier doing something other than riding my bike – and most of them involved homemade go-carts. For a while, my twin brother Tim and I were kind of obsessed with go-carts. And to be clear, I don’t mean those motorized versions made from tubular steel and featuring a padded seat, steering-wheel, a centrifugal clutch, and rubber tires. We would have loved a go-cart like that, but they were well beyond our reach at that age. No, I mean the classic wooden chassis, wheels ripped from old red wagons, steering actuated by pulling on ropes, and locomotion achieved by someone else pushing you using a broken hockey stick. You know, go-carts! Oh, and still no one thought about helmets. Again, I ask, “What were we thinking?”
In our neighbourhood around Parkhurst and Donegall, Tim and I, and several of our friends all had go-carts. I’m not sure how many we built over the years. They’ve all blended together in my hazy memory. But I do recall one in particular that was built out of an old door I’d found in our basement. I made four less-than-straight cuts with a handsaw to bring it down to the right size. (No power tools for me!) I’d saved up my babysitting dough and spent it at Canadian Tire buying four brand new wheels – larger ones for the back, and smaller ones for the front – and a couple of axles. Back home in our furnace room workshop, I assembled it as best I could, using both scraps of knowledge I’d gained in my Grade 8 Industrial Arts class. I fashioned a padded seat along with a backrest of sorts and introduced an innovative new steering mechanism using a bicycle sprocket, chain and two elastic shock-cords, and a makeshift rectangular steering wheel fabricated by screwing together several pieces of 1” x 1” pine strapping. I confess, my steering innovation never really caught on, largely because it didn’t work nearly as well as the old and reliable technique of pulling on rope.
But it was fast. I remember convening a go-cart rally in what was then known as the girls’ schoolyard at Bessborough. There were probably four or five neighbourhood go-carts that congregated in the schoolyard that Saturday afternoon. We set up a rudimentary course, following the path charted by newly tarred sections of the schoolyard’s pavement. It was soooo smoooooth. We felt like we were on the Bonneville Salt Flats minus the sonic booms. Of course, most of the go-carts broke down at some point that afternoon. And by break down, I mean a wheel fell off, or an axle broke, or the wood in the chassis split. I think I remember pulling the steering wheel right off my go-cart while at speed. That was not helpful. It was hard enough controlling the thing with the steering wheel.
But more than anything else, I remember the excitement we all felt when building our speed-machines and then testing them to put the “go” in go-carts. It gave us all a strong sense of accomplishment that even lingered after detaching my steering wheel and careening into the brick wall of Bessborough School. I just remember how fun it all was…though I lived in fear that my dad would need that door one day and go looking for it in the basement.