By Tim Robinson

When we moved to Salmon Creek in the mid 50's our house was bordered by a woodsy 2-acre plat that would soon become four new homes. They had a paved street while our gravel drive is still a gravel drive 70 years later.

That paved street became our playground, of sorts. 

America had a fascination with soap box carts, featuring national racing derbies*. We kids were not immune to the those trends, often making our own carts out of two by fours, plywood, baby buggy wheels and bent over nails to hold the axles in place. 

These slipshod, rickety, poorly constructed coaster carts were constant summer fun. We got more sophisticated.

As one of the older kids in the neighborhood, I designed a faster, smoother more elegant cart with a "stick brake" nailed to the side,It was a lever action to slow down the cart that otherwise had no actual braking system. It also had a steering wheel with a large rope-wrapped dowling connected to the front wheeled two-by-four. 

Our dad worked at the newspaper office in town so we had access to sheets of aluminum that had previously been used at the pressroom. 

I formed a classy hood from one large plate. We painted it fire engine red and gave it a name. "Musky 99"; its origin remains a mystery. We added a cab over the top of the driver's seat, cloth window screens and only needed a guineapig to try it out. 

There was a shortage (no pun intended) of guinea pigs who could fit inside the tiny compartment. 

Fortune favors the bold and in this case, young and willing. Our short little brother Scottie was just six and eager to participate. He was a perfect fit even if he had never been in more than a Radio Flyer wagon pulled by our mom. 

The pavement we called a "raceway" has a 15 degree slope north and roughly 200+ feet to the intersection of a more traveled neighborhood street. Some danger existed since coaster carts had no brakes...except Musky 99. True stopping power was essentially U.S. KEDS or P.F. Flyer tennis shoes. Goodness knows we wore out a few heels in those shoes.

Musky 99 was improved with actual ball-bearing wheels, bigger in the rear and smaller in the front, creating a rather sleek look. Scottie was familiar with baby buggies having nearly killed our next youngest brother Pat who was sitting in a pedaled buggy at the top of the cement stairs to our basement. Scottie was barely 2, standing behind Pat when he opted to give Pat a push foward by surprise. Pat rode those 11 steps down like a rodeo cowboy on a bronco. He survived with a few bruises and a cut on his forehead. He may not even know who pushed him since Scottie toddled away unaware that Pat suddenly disappeared from view.

It was Pat's screams that I heard and came to his rescue. Scottie was nowhere to be seen. 

Musky 99 was a great success for two or three weeks. A neighbor kid who played a mean accordian on his front step, practicing in the afternoon, had complained to his very capable handy-man dad to build him a coaster cart.

His dad responded with a bicycle-wheeled, elevated cart that could top out at 20 mph with a boost start from almost any other kid. It had a steering wheel, brakes and a seat cushion as well as a drink holder, GPS and A/C.

Okay, okay, not really... but it was FAST.

It was agile and kind of ruined the competition from any other cart on the block. It was a sad end to coaster cart racing when a different neighbor kid suggested an idea to thwart accordian kid's new ride. He called it a BOOBY TRAP race. The essence was to set up obstacles in the raceway and also allowing each rider to carry some sort of additional item to toss at will when either leading or at the start. Those item could be an old set of tire chains, cushions from mom's couch, a bag of rocks. Just about anything to disrupt the path of the other riders.It successfully put the kibosh on our summers from that point forward. 

This was okay. Scottie began school that year, Pat recovered from his injuries and Musky 99 was retired to the scrap heap behind the shed. It was a new era of rope tying our bikes to a slipshod, rickety, poorly constructed wooden hydroplane we built, to drag down the street without flipping like Bill Muncey in Miss Thriftway. It didn't always work for us either.

*The Soap Box Derby began in Dayton, Ohio in 1933 when a local news photographer saw kids racing homemade push carts down a hill. Wikipedia.