So I need a good idea for a story for the Utah Storytelling Guild.
You see, most of my stories are
revisions of somebody else’s works. My apologies to Aesop, the
Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and all the other ancient
folks who wrote the fairy tales everybody knows. Now mind you I
didn’t steal anything. I just reversioned some things. You know,
like when you get a new version of Windows on your computer. It
vaguely resembles the original version. I don’t worry about
violating copyright, because all those authors were dead a long time
ago, and you would have a hard time proving that my versions were
very close to the original tales. Besides, I rarely get paid for my
work so copyright isn’t much of a problem. Anyway I have spent a
lot of time reversioning stuff that somebody else created.
I did get up the nerve to write and
tell some of my own original stories. My basic problem is that I am
too introverted and conservative. I have a hard time letting my
imagination go wild and just putting crazy ideas into stories. In
writing original stories, I think you have to start paying attention
to things around you.
I know, I should write about something
that everybody knows about, but that I can get really excited or
passionate about. Maybe how I overcame my hatred of dogs, or how I
hate the pinewood derby or something. Oh, dear, did I mention the
pinewood derby? I HATE THE PINEWOOD DERBY! I have five boys and
have had the joyful experience of losing with every one of them.
This year I was going to do a great reversal. I studied videos on
YouTube, and got all the masterful hints that would help me win.
Every year I have let my sons carve and paint the cars, while I
helped nail the wheels in and put quarters on the top so they weighed
enough. This year I decided to take the lead. I’ll let my son
Joseph help with a little bit of paint or something, but I am going
to take full control of the design
So I found this really great video that
listed 6 scientifically tested and proven strategies for winning the
pinewood derby. It started by making the car aerodynamically sound
and amazingly simple – just make one diagonal cut on the block of
wood. Don’t bother to cut and curves or anything fancy, it won’t
matter that much. I discovered that in the past I had been building
the cars backwards and putting the front wheels where the back wheels
should be. That’ll make a difference I thought. Next, the weight
of the car has to be perfectly located between .9 inches and 1.6
inches from the back axle and stacked up tall to push the car forward
after it comes down the inclined track onto the flat area. I went to
Hobby lobby to get some slam-dandy weights this year. No more
quarters! Correct placement of the weights will guarantee that my
car will beat others by 4.1 car lengths. The guy in the video
demonstrated an unpainted car with a single diagonal cut on the piece
of wood, with weights that were strategically duck-taped on in just
the right place – between .9 inches and 1.6 inches from the back
axle.
Next was to pay attention to the back
axles. They weren’t really axles, they were just nails pounded in
where the two car-width grooves reached the edge of the wood block.
The video guy said that you had to carefully grind the nubs of the
heads of the nails, and the little humps near the top of the axles.
To do this, you have to put a hand-held drill in a vice, tighten in
an axle nail, then get some fine sand paper to hold under the nail as
it spins. Now you have to understand that I have tools, but they are
not anything fancy. Just the basics needed to do household repairs.
My vice doesn’t really work, so I got out a couple of clamps and
used one to clamp the drill to the top of my workbench and a second
to clamp the trigger in the on position so I could use both my hands
to hold the sandpaper. It worked ok and I sanded and sanded and
sanded. No trace of nubs or humps. At Hobby Lobby I got just the
right sandpaper and even some pumice to polish those axles. Then the
video guy explained a secret trick for the axles – bend them 2 ½
degrees so that they lean into the car and only touch the track with
the edge of the wheel. Oh, and by the way, sand those wheels to get
the rough edges off. This will decrease the friction or the wheels
on the track and make if fly like an eagle! Okeedokee. But how in
the world to I get the bends in the axles to exactly 2.5 degrees on
the same spots on each axle. I guess I gotta get out the old
protractor and go to measurin’. Oh, and then he says you can order
pre-bent polished axles online it you don’t want to bend them
yourself. It’s about $5.00 per axle. Well, that sounds pretty
good to me. After all, the derby isn’t until the 18th
and it’s only the 7th. They should get here on time.
Besides, who else is gonna have pre-bent, polished axles. I’m a
shoe-in!
Now about the front axles. You're supposed to saw the right front axle groove just a little, so that
when the axle and wheel are put in, the wheel sticks up in the air
and doesn’t touch the track. Well by golly, why even put the dang
thing on? Just leave it off! But I figured the video guy knew what
he was doin’. He kept tellin’ how each of these steps will make
your car win by so many car lengths. Then the left front axle is
supposed to be bent at 1.5 degrees and lean in so it rubs against the
middle guide bar on the track. I don’t exactly get it, ‘cause I’m
thinkin’ this adds friction, but the v-guy says it will keep the
car from wobbling back and forth. So I ordered another pre-bent,
pre-polished nail. I’m thinkin’ that this year I’m gonna flat
out kill the pinewood derby.
So I order the axles, get other stuff,
including six tubes of graphite and some precision weights and paint
from Hobby Lobby and start to work – oh, and we find a pre-cut,
slicked down car for only 3.99. I’m sure it will be better
balanced than any car that I cut, so we pick that up too. I invite
my son to WATCH me build his car. He doesn’t seem interested. I
explain that I’m doin’ all this for him and I don’t see why
he’s not interested. He hangs around for a little while. I make
him sand the car and the wheels a little so that we can paint the
thing. We got more than a week to perfect this thing so we’re in
great shape.
Then comes the bombshell. I find out
that the Pinewood Derby is on the 12th, not the 18th.
Holy cow, the axles won’t be here in time. So we get to work
grindin’ on the axles and measuring the place to put the weights –
between .9 and 1.6 inches from the back axles and paintin’ and
everything else. My 11 year old daughter is really interested and
wants to race too, so we give her a block and get her some wheels and
she works right along side of us. I explain to her that I don’t
have much time to work on hers so she will have to work on it by
herself. She takes the car over to a neighbor’s house who has some
spiffy wood-working tools and comes back with a perfectly cut car.
So for two nights I’m out in the
garage at my work bench trying everything I know to make this car
perfect. A night before the race I tell my son to paint the thing.
He doesn’t know exactly how to do it, so he sprays around some
black and gold paint in a splattery, swirly kind of design. I told
him he didn’t know what he was doing, and then I put some duck tape
on his car so that he could make a straight line and paint half of
the car gold. He did that, and in the morning before I went to work
early, I took the tape off, masked the painted side and sprayed the
other half black. I also quickly did some spraying on my daughter’s
car. Now everything is just about done – I’ve just got to
assemble it all on Wednesday evening just before the race.
Joseph (my son) calls me at work in the
afternoon. “Guess what?” he says, “the axles arrived!” Oh
my gosh, now I know we’re gonna win this thing. I come home a
little early from work and check things out. The bent on the axles is
really hard to see – 2 ½ degrees isn’t much, and 1 ½ degrees is
barely perceptible. The video guy said to push the nails in – you
needn’t hammer. I practically blister my hands doing it, then I
check to see that the back wheels are leaning in at the top, the
right front wheel is leaning in at the bottom, and the left front
wheel is up off the track. Then I put tons of graphite all over the
axles and the wheels. Now we just have to take it in to the race,
weigh it and attach the weights – between .9 and 1.6 inches in
front of the rear axle.
At the church recreation hall, the
track is all set up. There are electronic sensors at the finish
line, a small parking lot where cars are parked after they are
checked in, several cars which the track owner has put on display,
and a scale and lots of weights and tools to put final touches on the
cars. Joseph and I are the first ones there. There aren’t even
any chairs set up for the scouts and their parents. We quickly go
over to the scale to see how much we have to add. The car, because
of it’s sleek design, weighs only 2.6 ounces. Not to worry, I got
plenty of perfect weights from Hobby Lobby, and my glue gun to boot.
I retreat to a nearby electrical outlet and plug in the glue gun. I
go back and forth from the gun to the scale several times until the
car weighs exactly 5 ounces. I am careful to make sure the weights
are .9 to 1.6 inches in front of the rear axle. During all my back
and forthing, all the other fathers with their boys arrive and weigh
in their cars. The track owner makes some cute comments about how
several of the boys are professionals because their cars are exactly
5 ounces. Turns out our car is the last one checked in, numbered,
and put in the parking lot for the big race. After a gaggle of
preliminary activities and instructions, the race finally begins.
The owner explains that every car will get an equal chance to race
and that a computer will determine the participants in each race. He
also tells us that the finish line laser will calculate times down to
one thousandth of a second.
So we sit there watching race after
race. All the cars look better than ours. Some are polished and
look like they just came off of a showroom floor. Others are cute,
looking like hot dogs and all sorts of stuff. I’m not worried,
though. After all the video guy beat everybody with an unpainted
slab of wood with the weights duck taped on. After about 25 minutes,
he the owner/race starter calls for #21 – my…I mean Joseph’s
car. Joe jumps up excitedly and runs to the end of the track to
watch the result. The starter calls out “ARE YOU READY?” to
which the boys scream out, “Yes! Ready, Set Go!” Three of the
four cars blast off the starting line. One slides off the starter
and proceeds at a fast crawl to the finish line. It happens to have
the number 21 on it. I stare in disbelief! Last place again!
Joe races the car several times. It is
extremely consistent. After all the cubs he even races his sister’s
car, which we put very little time into, just gluing quarters on top
and tapping the axles and wheels in with a hammer. It beats my…I
mean Joe’s car too. There is no justice in the world. I sit and
watch and fathers who are half my age beam brilliantly with their
victorious cars. Their kids looked ecstatic!
Joseph comes up
to me after the race and asks me if he can go home and saw his car in
half. “Why?” I said. “Cause it’ll be broken just like my
heart,” he says. I tell Joe it’ll be ok. Lucky for him he has
four older brothers who have had the same experience. What kites and
baseball are to Charlie Brown, the pinewood derby is to me. Did I
tell you already that I HATE THE PINEWOOD DERBY?
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