It's Pinewood Derby time!

Once in a while, someone comes up with an activity that is so good that it is simply repeated until it becomes a classic. When it is that good, sooner or later it is going to spread to other platforms. Next week I get to compete in one of those great all-American cultural events, the Pinewood Derby. By the way, the first Pinewood Derby was held in 1953.

I have a box of Derby parts right here on the counter. I suppose it will take some creative force to turn those wheels, axles, and block of wood into a racing machine. I further suppose that creativity is one ingredient. However, the main element is speed.

If you have built more than one Pinewood Derby car, you have begun to realize that there is more involved than sanding, painting and pressing on the wheels. To get the picture, you have to understand that this event usually involves men, boys and wheels, a combination that is going to produce a compulsion to engineer the fastest car—on earth.

Boys are born with the ability to run, chase one another, ride bikes, scooters and skate boards and they never tire of doing it. When they become men, they find that running and bike-riding are a bit tiring after all, so they turn to buying or building cars that will accomplish the same thing with less effort. Sort of.

I suspect that Detroit has a complement of engineers who were Cub Scouts in their youth because they would then have been exposed early on to the kind of grit and determination that is required to compete in the world of building cars, of whatever kind.

At any rate, this is serious business. A reading of the Pinewood Derby Times (I'm not kidding), along with some other high-tech websites, can keep one up on the “sport.” I had already heard about the innovation of digital electronic tracks. I just recently learned about the latest remake of the wheels.

I don't know whether they were designed for maximum velocity or increased gas mileage, but their arrival on the racing scene apparently made quite a stir. In fact, when they were released, they could be purchased separately in case buyers were unable to find a car kit with the newer wheel package. The word on the street is that an axle change is in the works as well.

There is a thriving after-market parts business as well. In fact you can buy kits with a finished body. You just apply the wheels. However, you could do that with the standard issue BSA kit and do just as well, I understand from The Times. Apparently aerodynamics has little to do with it. It is the polishing of the axles and weighting of the cars that gives them the competitive edge.

Unveiling your own revolutionary and successful model car depends on planning and secrecy. If you have the design of the decade, you don't want someone else having it as well. So men and boys plan and scheme in cluttered shops. They melt lead ingots in tuna fish cans, weigh their cars on postage scales, mix paints on plastic lids and dream of trophies. (I honestly don't know how these cars pass EPA standards what with lead and paint in the same sentence.)

When they meet on the streets, men casually ask one another, “So how's your car coming? You got a good model this year? “

“Naw, I don't think the wheels will stay on.” This is derby talk for what the engineer really means which is something like “Just you wait. We are going to kick your trash this year. You will eat our dust.”

I tried to think of a funny story about Pinewood Derby racing, but there aren't any. I may have one or two to tell after the girls, moms and grandmoms compete in a couple of weeks; but like I said, this is serious business. A lost race can only be remedied by doing better the next year. But a whole year of ignominy is hard to bear. It's a good thing that Mr. B. and I are in this together. If the wheels fall off, we can console one another while we wait for the next Derby.