What I want to talk to you about is of great importance to many fathers and sons across the nation.
It is Derby Season. Well, probably towards the end of Derby Season in this part of the woods I reckon, but that is neither here nor there.
For those of you who are confused: No, I'm not talking horse racing like the Kentucky Derby, though I had a manager who always made a point to take vacation and go to it.
Nor am I talking about a season devoted to the wearing of a specific style of hat. You are free to wear any hat your heart desires any time of the year as long as you accept the risk of being stared at, or have fingers pointed at you as you walk by, or even laughed at by the uncooth bohemians that cross your path.
I am talking about THE Derby Season... the season of Pinewood Derby.
I am currently a Cub Master in the Boy Scouts of America. For those who are not familiar with Cub Scouts, that means I am the grown up who runs the monthly meetings of a group of 8 - 10 year old boys who make up what is called a Cub Pack. I am the official cheerleader for a group of nine boys right now. It is a small pack, but that is not relevant.
We held our Pinewood Derby several weeks ago, and the boys had a fun time. The families of the boys had a good time. And, the fathers and sons spent a significant amount of time prior to the Derby shaping blocks of pine wood into assorted vehicle shapes, painting them, adding weight so that the cars would max on weight allowance, and positioning plastic wheels on nail like axles on the vehicles produced.
I built three cars myself in a matter of two days. That is doubling the production of cars I've made in my life thus far. I built two cars many years ago when I was a Cub Scout, while the world was still young, TV didn't have the goal of pushing the envelope more and more each season with "edgy" shows, and gasoline was still under or around $.50 a gallon. I also built one a decade ago as a father for my older, mentally handicapped son when he was of Cub Scout age and the pack I am now Cub Master of invited him to enter a car.
Of those three cars prior to this month, the first I had a hard time getting to the bottom of the track due to problems with the wheels and axles. The second one, I employed various family members to work on various parts of the construction with me. I think my older brother did some of the saw cutting (I finished up with a pocket knife, files, and sandpaper), and I directed my mom in the detailing of the painting. My dad handled the wheel positioning and weighting. That car ended up winning best of show AND the overall Derby for fastest car. The third car was raced once or twice by someone as proxy for my son and I, as we couldn't attend since we were both contagiously sick.
I think elements of all three of those cars still exist somewhere in the house...
I made the three new cars this year for several reasons. The first was for the free family racing after the official Derby was over. This lets siblings of the Cubs (and parents if they are so inclined) have fun racing their own cars. The second reason was to have dummy cars to fill the race heat slots if one of the nine boys in the pack didn't show up. And the third reason was to have "pace" cars. In other words, to have cars available for testing the track without running the risk of damaging one of the Cubs' cars in a non-race. Good thing my cars were not actually competing -- they were all slower than the slowest of the nine boys' cars!
Now before you accuse me of it, no I'm not a Derby Freak. No where near it. Are you?
If you want to know what a Derby Freak is, I must refer you to the documentary film "Down and Derby" that was put out in 2005.
Okay, you caught me... that film isn't a documentary. It is a comedy, a light hearted farce and satire. But, it must be based off some degree of reality...
I was talking to some of the boys' fathers before and after our Derby, and I was surprised to hear they found the designs for their sons' cars on the internet. I had assumed they used their vast knowledge and experience in the auto industry to create these speedsters. I purchased standard templates at the Scout shop for my three cars and was feeling a little like I was cheating on the creativity. But if you and your boy have no problem using someone else's design after seeing it on the internet, who am I to criticize, even if I am the judge in charge of the Pinewood Derby? As long as the finished product meets the official BSA stated specifications (no more than 5 ounces, no longer than 7", no wider than 2 3/4", 1 3/4" clearance between wheels, and 3/8" clearance underneath), "It's all good!" as the younger generation like to say.
So, this afternoon, the father of a boy who will be in our Cub Pack next year (but is currently in another pack since our charter organization doesn't do Tiger Cubs for the 7 year olds) came over to ask me how to build a pinewood derby car. His son's pack is having their Pinewood Derby tomorrow evening...
Now, before all y'alls get yer knickers in a knot, give the man here some slack... this is his only son, this is the family's first experience and exposure to the whole Pinewood Derby circus, and the father is from a Latin American country where Cub Scouts doesn't even exist.
But, all y'alls can get yer knickers in a knot if this were to turn into ME building a car for them... Yeah, I would be getting my knickers in a knot over that, considering this family has known about their son's Cub Pack's Derby since before we held ours...
Lucky for me, it turned out I didn't have to build any thing. They opened the official BSA kit on my table, and out came the block of wood, the instruction sheet, the sheet of number stickers, four wheels, and... NO AXLES! Well, they would need to go to a hardware store to get some nails or something that will work and hope their Pack isn't a stickler about the axles being official BSA issue. But, had they not waited until 24 hours before the event to open the box, they would have known it was incomplete and had their pack rectify the situation. Kind of a sucks being them moment, huh?
So, after explaining the basics of how the car is put together and that the design is made by cutting the shape out of the block, the father determined he needed to know what tools were necessary. I loaned him my coping saw, and the rest he had. And, he would need to find something to work for weight should they cut any of the wood off the block.
And then, remembering what those fathers told me at our Derby about designs online, I did a quick search and brought up such a website. I think this particular father and son will end up just leaving the block uncut and then paint it and put the wheels on... After they left, I went and found some more websites.
The funny thing is, these websites seem to reflect a lot of the over-the-top attitude towards competitiveness and building Pinewood Derby cars that makes the comedy in "Down and Derby" so funny. You can buy books and videos from these guys. You can buy pre-cut wood blocks. You can buy specialized precision tools for perfecting the wheels and axles. One place, I even saw where you could buy pre-fab, ready to go, out of the box cars! Oh, and you can of course buy any number of designs for a car you build from scratch using the official BSA Pinewood Derby Car kit...
Some of those designs were pretty neat... Like the tank that appeared to only have two cuts on the block, or the starfighter (that looked like a Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper), or the python design which can best be described as a cat's arched back...
Maybe next year -- when my younger son is old enough to be a Cub Scout -- just maybe I'll avail myself of some of those designs when I build... er... I mean assist him as he decides what to build and builds it...
