Go-Karts, Ski Ropes, & Skateboards

“What doesn’t kill ya, makes ya stronger.”
“What can’t kill ya, ain’t worth playing with.”

In 1963, my older brother and I pooled our life savings for a grand total of twenty-eight dollars — a paltry sum in today’s economy but back then, it was a respectable amount for two kids. Taking our cash in hand, we marched down the street to the Stafford’s house and offered to trade the Stafford brothers our savings for their rusting, long-idle go-kart.

In those days, business transactions between minors were perfectly legitimate unless one party’s parents approached the other party’s parents within the 48-hour grace period and demanded a redo. Much to my mother’s dismay and my father’s delight, the Stafford parents never came to our door.

My brother and I set about sprucing up that old junker while our father enthusiastically began tuning the engine. Dad even went to Jones Hardware for a couple cans of blue spray paint which we applied in a less-than-professional manner. Mom rolled her eyes like women sometimes do.

Despite the lax local attitude towards child-instigated business transactions, the Garland Police adhered to strict enforcement of even the most minor traffic laws. My brother and I had to push our go-kart a half mile to the local elementary school parking lot before we could drive it. Rumor was that the first violation of driving a go-kart on the street would merit you a stiff fine and the second would get your offending vehicle confiscated.

My brother eventually threw in the towel, leaving me as the sole owner/operator of our little speed wagon. I did routinely drive it on the sidewalk with an occasional venture into the street. In fact, I got stopped by the local constabulary a total of four times for flying down the street in my go-kart.

I’m happy to say that the stiff-fine/confiscation rumor never proved true in my case. I assumed that, due to my angelic personality, cherub-like visage, and feigned deferential obedience to the gruff local cops, I got off with a series of stern warnings. However, I now realize that those guys just didn’t want to mess with the paperwork involved in writing me up. None-the-less, it was good salesmanship training.

Broader adventures
By the summer of 1964, my friend, Alan, and I had reinforced a ramp that we’d originally built for riding our bikes over. The ramp was four feet long and raised to about six inches off the ground, allowing us to get some airtime when we sped over it on our bikes. Reasoning that the go-kart was much speedier, we raised the ramp to twelve inches.

The first (and last time) I hit the ramp, I was approaching twenty miles per hour, the go-kart’s top speed. This is where I should probably interject that the go-kart had zero safety features. Although the high seat back offered minimal protection from a roll-over event, there was no seat belt and even motorcycle riders didn’t wear helmets in those days.

I did achieve some airtime, but the heavy Briggs-and-Stratton engine forced the back left tire to contact the ground prematurely, initiating a half-roll wherein I ended up beneath the kart for a short skid — kind of like a base runner sliding head-first into home plate with a fat, grinning catcher sitting on his back like a rodeo cowboy. Thankfully, I was in the grass and not on the asphalt street.

Since the crash bent one of the front wheel brackets, the go-kart remained out of service for many months until I informed my dad and admitted to the evils of stunt driving. Even though he mercifully straightened the wheel, another risk-enhancing toy came on the market about that time.

Smaller Wheels
Gibson’s Discount Center began selling “Sidewalk Surfboards” from a Westcoast company named “Roller Derby”. These were the pioneer versions of modern skateboards. They consisted of a cheap piece of 3/8” plywood, slightly more than a foot long, fitted with metal roller skate wheels. Their ten dollars price tag was outrageous.

Fortunately, my father had a wood shop with lots of extra wood lying about and my three older sisters had outgrown their roller skates. I only had to destroy a single skate and cut down a 1×6 piece of pine to build a much larger version of the “Sidewalk Surfboard”. Who knew my oldest sister would be sentimentally attached to that stupid skate?

My friend Alan’s family owned a ski boat, so it was no surprise that he showed up one day with a nice ski rope. We shared a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and there was really no reason to suspect Alan hadn’t obtained specific permission to cut that thirty-foot ski rope down to ten feet. That’s a story in itself.

We started out slowly with one rider sitting atop my makeshift skateboard and being pulled behind the go-kart at about ten miles per hour via that modified ski rope. As our experience began to diminish the risk – and thereby, the excitement — we progressed to standing up and traveling at much faster speeds.

Sixty years later, both of my knees and my left elbow still display large road-rash scars. Alan’s dad, being my family doctor, tended to my various wounds with stitches and/or plaster casts. Not all those wounds were related to the go-kart.

Fast-Forward
So, what’s the point? We did a lot of stupid stuff that resulted in injuries of varying degrees, but we always got back on the skateboard, or go-kart, or bicycle the day our cast came off, and we learned from those injuries just what our limits were. We learned which risks were worth taking and which ones would likely end in disaster. Our generation may well have been the last generation to have enjoyed total freedom to be kids. We translated those experiences into the courage to start businesses, raise confident offspring, and live life to its fullest.

What’s going to happen to our culture when the current generation of video game addicts assumes leadership roles based on their greatest risk being the “Game Over” message when Mario crashes his kart? Will future generations have the cajónes to take on the next Adolph Hitler or will they simply surrender and return to their mothers’ basements? When did parents become so fearful about their kids’ safety that they condoned life inside those protective underground wombs?

As Patrick Henry should have said, “Give me risky adventures or give me death!”

A meeting of great minds who think alike