Northport Stories of Yesteryear: 'It's A Guy Thing'

Down through the ages, competitive speed trials have been a major rite of passage. In the early days of Northport life, it was "The Buggy". This hand-crafted engineering marvel was the centerpiece for what would become our thrill-ride and began in concept at about age five; by about age eight or nine, research and development was complete and prototype construction was well underway.

The wheel base of this gravity-powered concrete cruiser was governed by the length of whatever boards were lying around. As I recall, 1 x 6 boards were the board of choice and if you had them you had most of your material list. The manufacturing facility for our buggies was our garage at 114 Bayview Avenue.

We had an old wooden box of tools that was hanging around that had been handed down from my grandfather to my mother and ultimately to my dad who never used them because he didn’t know how. There was a rusty old hand saw, an old hammer, a brace and bit set and other rusty and seemingly less important tools. That was okay, because we only needed the basics.

For those who are unfamiliar with a brace and bit, this medieval-looking tool was a hand-operated boring device with a turning a crankshaft-style handle that would ultimately create a symmetrical hole with a wood auger. This tool would allow us to create a steering feature, when coupled with some clothes line rope and the use of our feet. It would place our design among the top competitors in our field. We were destined to become racing legends.

Without divulging too many industrial secrets, it is safe to share that there were some features on this model that continued to evolve with time. Sometimes, depending upon availability, sets of baby carriage wheels could be had for a buck at the Jester Thrift Shop on Scudder Avenue (sold in complete sets only). My mother always kept us in the loop on stock conditions. These wheels would be key to our technical success and racing superiority, although our method of keeping them on the axles may have been considered unorthodox in some quarters.

The wheels fit onto the axles which were actually round, solid steel curtain rods (the kind that were painted gold) and were of a similar diameter to roughly fit into the hole at the center of the baby carriage wheels. They were kept in place by implementation of our "wheel retainer tool." More specifically, we put the wheels on the axles and smashed the axle ends continuously and unmercifully with the hammer until the axle ends were metallurgically transformed into a mushroom shape, creating a "wheel retainer".

This took a long time and was the least-fun part in building these babies. Since we lived by the law of "club and fang," the youngest and smallest guy would be assigned this least-fun thing to do. That, I recall was me.

Enter Jack Russell

Jack Russell was our retired neighbor who lived in a beautiful waterfront home across the street on Bayview Avenue. He was the uncle of one of our summertime cronies and somehow he got wind of our wheel retainer methods and became concerned for our safety.

Now, "Uncle Jack" was without a doubt an honorary cool guy. It would not have been acceptable to make him a certified cool guy because, after all, he was over the age of 12. He had a great harborfront home with a dock that we used to dive off, boats, antique cars, and most of all a tool box with an electric drill and drill bits that would penetrate steel!  

He invited us over to his house to partake in a wheel retainer redesign seminar. Using his wonderful electric tools, he soon had us secure with a washer and cotter pin arrangement that was truly superior, a redesign that would soon make our "mushroom technology" obsolete. 

Brakes? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Brakes

The main idea in speed trials is forward motion, and the hills of Northport provided us with plenty of that. In our quest to be the fastest men on the planet, the idea of brakes was counterproductive to our "forward thinking." After all, didn’t the Chrysler Corporation make cars that had forward thinking? They had windshields that were raked way back, so they must have known what they were doing.

For a fleeting moment, we did once consider brakes, but only as a minimal effort. We attached a 1 x 4 board at the side of our buggy in the style of a pull-back lever, mounted on a single bolt that acted as a pivot. The lever protruded to the plane of the street and was designed to act as a drag against the concrete to help stop the machine. The problem was that this inadequate design did not stop the buggy, but only served to slow it down a little. By applying the secondary braking system (your feet) you could eventually achieve stopped status, but none of these systems were deemed effective in avoiding a would-be accident.

The design team debated the safety subject and decided that, since the brakes would not stop the vehicle anyway, the braking system concept was without merit and would be scrubbed. We soon began a study in the proper and time-proven art of bailing out on solid pavement with minimal body damage. Generally, a few bruises and lacerations were considered acceptable.

Proving Grounds

James Street, Stanton Street, Lewis Avenue, Highland Avenue: They seemed like logical choices to us. From the top of James Street, we reasoned that if we could not stop, we would just coast all the way down to James Beach and into the harbor. The water would surely stop us. 

Then there was Stanton Street which was a bit steep, but we could always veer to the left and zoom onto Ackerly Terrace where it was flat. Lewis Road was a long hill, but again if we got into trouble, we figured we could zoom off to the left onto Ward Avenue. Then there was Highland Avenue which was without redemption: anyone on that hill without meaningful stopping power was destined to become roadkill.

In rethinking this thing, we finally factored in the possibility for car traffic. In the final analysis, our racing team did take all these roads, but in pieces. That may be the part of the story that was never heard. We would gauge just how far and how fast we might be going until a certain point where we knew we could bail without certain death. Somehow, we managed to make it through these years of discovery and awe and lived to tell about it.

As summer gave way to fall and the onset of winter, we had a whole new set of physics to deal with: Ice and snow. I think we spent most of our childhood winters sleigh-riding down Esther Stevens’ hill, looking for the "longest ride" that would carry us out onto the ice.

For some reason she never threw us off her property and never even said anything to us. We rode our sleighs there for years. In my mind, I can still smell that wet wool collar on my winter coat. I didn’t care. My cronies and I were the bravest, the coolest and the fastest ever. Come spring, we would be shooting cans and other things with our BB guns. As Elvis once lamented in a song his song, "I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E." Soon enough, Chief Percy Ervin would be looking for us. And so it went.