By Janet McCanless
For the Salisbury Post
Every once in a while, we’ll see a kid from our street zoom past the house in some kind of dune buggy conveyance, or maybe a small scooter of some kind. Looks like fun, but I want to know what happened to the fun of making your own vehicle out of an orange crate and some grocery store buggy wheels. Guess that makes me a geezer, but I can certainly remember, as if yesterday, the contraption my brother constructed when we were kids in Florida.
Gregg was always tinkering with something, trying to make parachutes for our cats or some crazy scheme. He came up with the idea of making a little go-cart that we could get around the neighborhood in. He took a giant crate of some kind, stole the wheels off a grocery cart and fashioned something resembling a steering wheel. He then made the momentous decision that I should have the honor of the first test drive.
Now, in theory, his plan should have worked; the cart/car/scooter, or what have you, looked OK. The wheels were a little wobbly, but it did go forward when he got behind it and pushed. It certainly looked as if it would go. The trouble began when he realized there was no braking mechanism on it. Rather than risk his life and limb, he naturally thought of me!
One other thing. We lived on a hill in Jacksonville, and the reasonable thing to do was drag this contraption up to the top of it, install me in the driver’s seat and push off. We did just that. I was so excited to think he had chosen me to be his test driver. I was sure the other kids on the block would be so jealous, they’d all be coming around wanting him to build one for them. I eagerly accompanied him to the top of the hill and climbed in.
It wasn’t until I was zooming my way down that he informed me, quite loudly, in fact, that there were no brakes, and the steering wheel didn’t work all that well either. Brave soul that I was ó and am ó I just figured I’d slow down gradually and then come to a nice stop, right in front of our mother, who by this time was standing on the curb in front of our house wringing her hands in her very perky apron.
Hey, I was only 9 years old. I just didn’t understand the laws of physics or gravity. You know, the laws that say once you propel yourself forward in a downhill direction, you’re gonna need something to make you stop.
Well, I found something to make me stop, it’s called a tree, and stop I did, the cart throwing me out and splintering into a gazillion pieces. Whereupon my brother pronounced the experiment a complete success!
It’s a wonder either of us ever survived our childhood, but boy, those were the good old days.