The Pinewood Derby

Ilana Long’s humorous book “The Binky Conspiracy” is available on Amazon.com. It makes a great baby shower gift!

A lot of eight year old boys are engineering demons. Give ‘em an awl and a chisel, and they can turn a block of wood into a racing rocket. It seems they are experts at whittling, masters of weights and balances, and geniuses when it comes to aerodynamic design. Pay no attention to the beaming 47 year-old Boeing engineer behind the curtain.

It was that time of year: The Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. For this much touted, much anticipated event, my boy, Benji, was handed a block of wood, four nails and a set of black, plastic wheels. With these few items, magic would be made.

Benji eagerly tore the tape off the materials box, spread the pieces apart and grabbed a paper and pencil. He began sketching his design. In his eight-year-old zeal, his drawing was complete with angles of all kinds, mountains and valleys, nooks and crannies, devilish details and extravagant proportions. His intricate design would have taken twenty of Santa’s elves utilizing miniature jigsaws hours of work under a microscope. It would have been like writing the yellow pages on a grain of rice.

My hubby, Steve, suggested, “Maybe you want to simplify it.” Translation: “I need to be able to cut it with a screwdriver and a hammer, as we have none of the necessary building materials, and besides, I’m a Jew and what the heck am I supposed to know about woodworking. The last good Jewish carpenter was Jesus, and look what happened to him.”

So, the design was modified. Ultimately, the new shape emerged as a rectangular block with a slight slope at the front, and an indention toward the middle. Benji spent an hour in the garage, bent over the garbage bin, sanding the block to chunky, jagged perfection.

Steve had the idea that it would be really cool if it looked kind of like a rocket. So we got Benji’s last Scout kit project; a wooden rocket, and my husband inelegantly ripped off the fins. Then, Benji pounded them haphazardly onto the sides of the car, so it looked rather like a non-flying version of Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. They then had to gouge holes in the bottom to meet the weight limits. The car was now Cub Scout Kosher.

Just when I thought our project was complete . . . “What about painting it?” Benji asked. I excavated the shelves in the garage to find the remnants of my acrylic paints, the detritus of an art hobby long forgotten. Prying open the tool box filled with mostly desiccated paints, I resurrected two lone tubes of color. One was a dull, mustard yellow, the other a purplish black. The latter, when applied, reminded me of the color a bruise turns on day two. I hoped it wasn’t foreboding.
Benji was thrilled. “Husky colors!” he shouted. The shades I had found were poor cousins of the bold purple and gold of the University of Washington, but Benji’s enthusiasm was unabated. He was already in process of applying the paint in broad brushstrokes. His pa, a proud alumnus, offered encouragement and touched up the edges with a thin brush. The final touches were ‘decals’ added after my failed attempts to draw a husky on scratch paper. We printed off the UW emblem and the husky icon, glued them on, and stepped back to admire our handiwork.

I then realized that we should have used enameled paint, which stays glossy, rather than the flat
acrylic paint, which made the car look like it had just spun its way through a dust storm in an ashtray. I came up with the brilliant idea of coating it with clear nail polish. Benji unscrewed the top, recoiled at the smell, and began touching up the car. I was hoping for a pedicure, but it never happened. Now the car looked dusty and wet. But we all couldn’t be prouder. In our eyes, Husky Fever was sleek, chic, with that certain mystique.

The evening of the derby, we barely pecked at our spaghetti, eagerly anticipating our (oops, I mean Benji’s) glorious race car success. Benji tucked in his Wolf Cub shirt, adjusted his yellow kerchief and made sure his cap was on perfectly straight. With confidence in his step, he checked in his car with the judges.

Okay, here I’m gonna say it. And Benji, darling, when you read this, know I am so proud of you and all that you accomplish. But our car was the worst car there. We put so much love into it, but it was a Yugo to others’ Maseratis. Lined up next to Benji’s Husky Fever car, there was the Orange Crush: sleek and focused. There was Zinger, Yellow Jacket, the Vaporizer, Wicked Cobra, oh I could go on. The other cars were finely chiseled racing machines of the highest quality. My wonderful son grinned and beamed as he proudly placed his duckling next to these swans.

The race track sloped down the center of the gym. Each car would compete in four heats. We took our seats among the boys, many of whom could not contain their excitement. Boys were sitting on their hands to keep them still, jumping up and down like oil in a hot pan, squirming like worms on a fish hook; Antsy boys in uniforms, all holding their breath and praying for their cars.

Finally, it was Husky Fever’s turn. It raced down the track at lightening speed. Despite its cumbersome appearance, it was surprisingly fast, and finished well in its first two heats. Benji, generally calm, was now also exploding from his seat to cheer on his car.

We squared off in the third heat against some tough competition: On track one,
The Green Streak. Poised on tracks two and three were Raptor and Firebird. On
track four, Husky Fever waited patiently. Then, they were off. The cars raced down
the slope. Suddenly, Husky Fever slowed, and rolled to an awkward, disappointing
finish. A wheel had popped off, and the older Boy Scouts were consulting the
judges on the legality of allowing it to continue. The car was allowed to proceed,
and Steve shamefully had to go to the judges table to request some hot glue and a
bandage for his wounded pride.

And then it was the final preliminary heat. A limping Husky Fever tore wildly down the track, careened sideways into the finish rail, and triple flipped off of the track into the astonished crowd. It was an exciting and terrifying disaster. The car was done for, finished, kaput. Benji raced to cradle his dying block of pinewood. And rather than sobbing into its crushed chassis, he beamed and announced, “That was so cool!”

We watched the finals as The Terminator destroyed Silver Bullet, Mean Machine and Snow White (clearly, someone’s mom had a hand in that one.) The fastest car was obviously designed by a child with a Ph.D. in aerodynamic engineering. Most Creative went to the Humvee decorated with gum wrappers. And Benji’s went home with an award, too. When he came home, he was all smiles, and hung it proudly over his bed. It reads, “Least Likely to Get a Speeding Ticket”.