Only then I saw this small ad way in the back pages for a ready-to-go (at least if you bought yourself an engine and wheels and tires and all the other parts you'd need and pieced it all together) go kart frame for a paltry $39.95 plus freight. Now that was a sum I could actually wrap my brain around (if not my bank balance or the change in the little china elephant thing on my dresser). So a plot was hatched with my similarly devious and sneaky friend Frank (last name withheld in case his folks are still alive), whereby he raided his college fund for the necessary $$$ (or maybe it was more like a single $), and we arranged to have the thing shipped to my house so his folks wouldn't know.

I'll never forget the day it arrived. My mom in her apron asking in her pleasant, singsong voice "There's a big box out on the front porch, dear. Do you have any idea what it is?"

"Huh?"

That didn't seem to satisfy her, so I told her it was "some parts for a project Frank and I are working on."

Fortunately, she was busy cooking or baking or something (my mom was one hell of a kitchen whiz and homemaker) and I managed to wrestle the package around to the side of the house, unpacked it--JESUS! IT'S EFFING RED!!!!--and fumble/crash it down the steps to the basement. Then I just stood there admiring it and basking in the glow of that shiny (well, mostly shiny) red paint. Damn, I could feel the heat off of it!

My dad came home with a head full of the day's business downtown, and he pretty much grunted when I showed it to him in the basement. Then he headed wearily back upstairs for a pre-dinner drink.

Only maybe that was because it didn't look particularly threatening in its current condition. In fact, it didn't look like much at all. Just this naked red frame with a cheap, bent-metal yoke for a steering wheel, naked stub axles all around and a clunky,  L-shaped piece of steel below the engine-mounting pad I didn't have an engine for and connected to the brake pedal by a long, willowy length of metal rod. It took me awhile to figure it out, but the lightbulb finally came on. The engine (should I actually ever get one) would drive the right rear wheel via a chain and two sprockets, a small one on the engine p.t.o. shaft and a big one on the wheel I didn't have either, and the finished contraption was intended to slow down by that L-shaped chunk of metal pivoting into and scraping against (with a great shower of sparks, most likely) the large, wheel-mounted chain sprocket. So I not only had right-rear wheel drive, I had right-rear wheel braking as well!

If I ever got it put together, that is...

For the next many weeks, I combed the ads for whatever wheels/tire combinations I could afford (there were none. Then again, I had no concept of deficit spending at the time, but would later become adept and even expert at it). Maybe I should have pursued a career in Washington?

In the meantime, I'd put that bright red frame up on a couple sawhorses in the basement, and I'd go down there when my folks were busy upstairs, climb up on that kart's driver's seat, squint my eyes, hunch my shoulders forward, clutch that steering yoke so tight that the blood drained from my knuckles and make engine sounds reminiscent of a bull walrus playing a kazoo...

Time passed, as it does, and imagining/pantomiming feats of 4-wheeled derring-do began to lose its luster. Through some go-kart owning friends at school (including a tall and extremely clever mechanical whiz-type named Doug Bethke, who went on to build his own, highly innovative go-karts and later won an SCCA AP national championship in a big-block Corvette roadster of his own design and fabrication), my father and I became acquainted with the B&G Twelfth Street Garage, which sat on an alley in the shadow of the "L" tracks. They worked on a lot of weird and wonderful cars (I got my first-ever ride in a racecar there, when one of the owners took me for a hair-raising, high G-force spin in yowling and crackling HProd Berkeley...I was certain immediately afterwards that it was the fastest automobile on earth...)

They also did a thriving and lucrative business in overpriced go-kart stuff. With my dad's less-than-enthusiastic financial assistance, that's where I bought the cast-off set of monster, hard-as-firebrick slicks for the two back stub axles and, a couple weeks later, the much smaller dirt knobbies for the front. Thereby ensuring, should I ever actually complete the project, that I would have a vehicle totally unsuited, at one end or the other, to any manner of pavement or terrain known to man.

But I didn't care! Because now...IT WOULD ROLL!!!!

And so, dear friends, I took to rolling that engine-less contraption across the street, through that teachers' parking lot I told you about, around the side of the next building and to the story-high concrete ramp to the loading dock in back. And now you can surely visualize me (any tubby little kid will do) pushing my engine-less, most likely brake-less go-kart up that ramp, getting into it at the top, taking a deep breath, shoving off with my hands luge-fashion and plummeting downhill (okay, maybe "plummeting" is a bit strong here...make that "meandering but acquiring additional speed all the time") and then, as the final, fulminating climax, making a hard right at the bottom so I could, however briefly, feel the rear end skate out behind me!

It was pure rapture. Albeit in eyedropper-sized doses...

And then I'd push it up the hill so's I could do it all over again!

I don't know why, but my dad eventually took pity on me, and I'll never forget our trip back to the B&G Twelfth Street Garage to buy an engine. And, if you must know, an engine installation, since between us my father and I had the total mechanical skill set and aptitude of your average mud newt.

There were several potential motors to choose from, and I looked them all over with a connoisseur's careful and discerning eye. There was also a price consideration, as the popular and powerful McCulloch, Power Products and West Bend models were well outside our price range. Especially since the garage's owner had advised my father that we should maybe do something about the as-delivered braking setup, which he described, if I remember correctly, as "lethal." To demonstrate, he painted a mental picture of me tearing around in our driveway or some nearby parking lot and my dad standing there watching and occasionally waving me on. and then I'd head over for more gas or a chitchat. Only I wouldn't be able to stop the damn thing--not at all--and I'd crash right into him and cut him off at the knees. Or everything below the knees, to be more accurate.

As a result, a cheap and simple but serviceable new "flipper style" brake setup that applied metal pads to BOTH rear tires (now there's a novel concept!) was added to the bill.

In the end, I chose a rare but not particularly powerful, well-regarded or valuable (sounds like a description of one of Lou's cars) Clinton E-60, because it was cheap and I adored the lovely shade of frog-skin metallic green it was painted. Oh, and the graceful, gooseneck sweep of the air filter elbow, too...

I can still remember the midsummer afternoon, ransom paid in full, that we brought it home from the shop. It was half-in/half-out of the trunk of my mom's Dodge with the usual network of wire and twine holding it in, and I guess it must have been a Saturday, because the teachers' parking lot across the street was totally empty. Now my dad wasn't especially keen on trying it out on school property (or anywhere else, if you want the truth of it) but I was whiny and begging and beseeching and borderline tearful and he finally caved in...as parents often do.

To be honest, I think he wanted to see it run, too. If only to see what kind of misery his money had bought him.

So we pushed it across the street, added the gas mix (Q: How much oil should we put in? A: Until all the mosquitoes are dead?), put it up on blocks like the guy at B&G had shown us, pushed the choke lever full on and started yanking on the starter cord. I think it fired by maybe the twentieth pull. Or maybe the twenty-fifth? And then laid down a thoroughly opaque cloud of bluish-white oil smoke. I kept blipping the throttle to keep it from strangling on its own, oil-heavy fuel mix and, as it warmed, slowly eased back the choke lever. At that point a passerby (maybe Linda's dad, who was a science teacher) suggested between coughs that we might have just a wee bit too much oil in the fuel mix. So I went back to the garage and got some more gas and, with much spillage and muttered oaths and curses, managed to re-adjust and further dilute the oil-to-gas ratio in the tank. To the point that the resultant cloud was no longer opaque. Or not totally opaque, anyway...