Remembering Rose: Soap Box Derby days come back to memory of racers in ’42

On Sunday June 26, 1972 North Main Street was closed off to traffic so that the annual soap box derby could be raced down the hill. It was the last year for the derby in Salisbury. Buddy Denham in the Wachovia car edged Ricky Garner for the win in the 14th annual soap box derby. photo by Wayne Hinshaw, Salisbury Post

Editor’s note: In memory of longtime reporter Rose Post, who died in October 2011, the Post is reprinting some of her stories periodically. This column was published December 29, 2002.

Only one clipping in the Salisbury Post “Soapbox Derby” file dates back to 1942. But the news rated a double column headline.

“Newton Cohen,” it said, “wins Soapbox Derby on Rain-Drenched Course.”

It popped up when Hal Barnes called from Atlanta to say he’d run across an old Soapbox Derby picture of himself and got to remembering those days in Salisbury when Soapbox Derbies merited big coverage in the Post.

Could we use the picture, he asked, in the Yesterday series on the Saturday editorial page?

Well, of course we could, but it turned into a story on Hal Barnes and his plan to move home again in the not-too-far-away future.

And it became one of those one-thing-always-leads-to-another situations that seem to prove life is like a continuing series of ever-widening circles in a pond you get if you skip a stone across the surface.

The next circle came from Clarence Beaver.

He was looking for something else when he happened onto a page out of an old scrapbook that had the 1942 article on it.

He was in that race, competing against Newt Cohen, which maybe was a harbinger of things to come. After they grew up, they stayed competitors in the heating and air-conditioning business.

But that day, Clarence wasn’t thinking competition.

“I was looking for something in my old pictures,” he said. “We’ve got five or six or seven albums we’ve made over the years, and stuff you just kind of keep as records, and this article was in there dated Aug. 19, 1942.

“I’m in that article,” he said, and so were a lot of other names he remembered and the businesses who sponsored them. Newt was sponsored by Cohen Sheet Metal Works, of course, and Clarence by Beaver Brothers Plumbing.

And James Hollis was there, and George Peeler and John Nettles and Bill McCora and Sam Mowery and so many more, but the story was much more than just a list of names.

“In a metal-covered, low-slung streamliner built for real speed,” it began, “15-year-old Newton Cohen, son of Mr. and Mrs. T.N. Cohen of 611 Lincolnton Road, flashed to victory in Salisbury’s second annual soapbox derby.

“Before a rain-drenched crowd of kids and grown-ups, Cohen’s red, white and blue ...”

Oh, Clarence enjoyed re-reading that forgotten story!

“It told who the winners of each round were. First round was Bill Adams over Bill Shives, and ... Well, I know a lot of them.”

He found his name there.

“Clarence Beaver, first round, over John Horton ... “

“I still see John Horton, once in a while,” he said. “He lives in Winston-Salem. He married a local girl.”

Clarence built his car in a garage shop in the 200 block of East Bank Street.

“Hoyle Ellenburg was Scoutmaster at First Methodist, and he knew I was going to want to enter a car. We lived one block away, and he said he’d help me build the car.

“It was a Scout thing. He’d briefly mentioned it at one of the Scout meetings, and he had heard that some people were going to build cars. It took about a month and a half to build the car at Hoyle’s little shop.”

Bill Ludwig, Boyden High School’s beloved football coach after whom the school’s stadium is named, was in charge of the city’s recreation program during the summer, and he directed the event. He planned to send the winner to Charlotte and probably to the finals in Akron, Ohio, if they were good enough. The cars had a weight limit and special soap box derby wheels.

“But that got called off,” he remembers, “probably because of the war.”

Clarence was 13 then, and his car was red and white.

“I think the races quit after that for a while because of the war. Everything was hard to get. Not too much material went into them, but building was at a standstill.”

He kept his derby car in front of the garage for a number of years, “but I used to stand it up on its end so the car could get in.

“Bill Adams and I used to get our cars out. That was when the Bank Street bridge had the hump up and over the railroad. They fixed that bridge in the ‘60s, but back then we’d get on the bridge, and we’d roll all the way to the creek, where the entrance to the new Super Wal-Mart is now. Then we’d have to push up to the top of the hill, and reverse that trip — it was two lanes then — and come back to Boundary, and at Boundary we’d have to push up to the Bank Street bridge.

“Innes Street bridge had a hump on it, too, but the Bank Street bridge was higher.”

They’re all good memories, the “Can you believe how things have changed?” kind. With the continuous traffic there during the past few weeks as Christmas crowds aimed at the new Wal-Mart, it’s hard to believe two little boys once pelted down that street trying to get as far up the hill beyond as they could.

It was strictly a summertime sport, he says.

“I can’t really remember when we stopped doing that, and I can’t remember what happened to the car. I gave it to somebody but I can’t remember who.”

That doesn’t matter.

What matters is that he’s got a picture of himself in a Soapbox Derby car, and for a moment when he looks at it he’s 13 years old again and can share a piece of history and a nostalgic moment for a time that was once upon a time with others who remember. Who knows where the ripples that stone he’s thrown into the pond will take him?