Childhood Flashback
Last week I was driving behind a large truck that had the standard truck bed removed and replaced with a large metal flat-bed structure. The custom-made bed was made of diamond plate. It reminded me of an episode of American Chopper where Paul, Jr. made a “soap box” derby car for an employee’s daughter to race. He did such a kick ass job on the derby car out of the diamond plate that I was very impressed. The girl ended up winning the race, but that’s not the point of this story….
It got me to thinking about an event that my Cub Scout troop participated in over 20 years ago. I grew up in West Texas where the landscape is flat and boring. There are no hills to race cars down, so we ended up at the airport where there were vast expanses of flat asphalt. We would have three-man teams. One person would drive while the other two would push the car. The length of the run was divided into three sections. At the end of each section, we’d stop the car and swap people around, so that each person had a chance to drive. I don’t remember what place we came in during the competition, but I seem to recall that we didn’t do very well.
My one lasting memory of that day is a boy was running alongside the track cheering on his team. He wasn’t watching where he was going, and then another boy stepped out in front of him. The first boy plowed into the second one at full speed, and they went down in a heap. When they were separated, they were both bloody on the knees, elbows, and other parts. They came up crying. I remember feeling so sorry for the both of them because it was purely an accident, and they were really hurting. There were no severe injuries, but asphalt burns on the joints really, really suck for days on end.
Just writing this reminds me of lots of different things that I did in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. They were some good times. It makes me wish that I had stuck with the Boy Scouts to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Instead, I only made it to First Class Scout shortly before I quit the Boy Scouts. Ahh well… Such is life. Too late to turn back on that one now.
