I’ve always been fairly creative when it comes to things that go. I’ve already told you about my Metropolitan and some of the things I had to do to keep it going. This creativity has usually been brought about by not having much to work with. For instance my cousin and I used to put lawn mower wheels on boards and ride them down the hill behind our grandparents’ house. We used old nails (we found a jar full of bent nails in the pump house) for the axles. Five or six nails through the bore of the wheel would hold up for two or three trips down the hill. Of course we rarely had brakes. If we did, it would be a short stick that was nailed on the side of the main board so you could pull it up as you sped down the hill. For the most part we used the plum tree that was right in our path as a stop. My grandfather always fussed and told us we were going to kill the tree. Eventually we did.
    When I was about twelve or thirteen my friend, Ronnie, and I decided to build a motorized go-cart. I had built several before using a two-by-six, some wagon wheels and a two horsepower motor. Not a “real” one like this was going to be. It consisted of a five horsepower motor that I had gotten from a friend that had dug it up out of the ground. The piston was frozen up in the cylinder, but after an entire can of Liquid Wrench and beating the stew out of it with a block of wood, I got it freed up. I had a centrifugal pulley from an old Yazoo lawn mower. It was the kind that tightened up when you revved the motor. A throttle cable off of a lawn mower and a pulley from an old washing machine were also used. And the piece de resistance...my friend’s kid brother’s old pedal cart.
    We removed the pedals and left the zigzagged rear axle in place. I took the right rear wheel off, drilled some holes in the hub and put the washing machine pulley on it with stove bolts. The next thing was to put the motor on it. That was tough because the Kohler engine was way too big to go behind the seat over the axle. Being the genius that I am I found two old four-by-four boards and cut them to a length where one end was stuck under the seat and the other end was resting on the go-cart frame. After drilling a few holes here and there I screwed them firmly in place. Next we scrounged up an old fan belt that looked short enough and used it to figure out where the motor needed to be. I used some lag screws to hold the motor on the four-by-fours.
    After all that, we had a little problem. The motor was so heavy that if you weren’t holding the front end down, it would stand straight up. This was overcome by simply sitting in the seat. Of course somebody had to hold the front end down when you got in it and then they had to crank it for you, but other than that it was fine. Actually, it wasn’t fine. There were two small problems that made it kinda scary to ride. First, like all my previous go-carts it was lacking brakes. Second, when you cranked it up and gave it a little gas, it left. Not unlike being shot out of a cannon.
    After a single ride, we each gained tremendous respect for the cart of death. We had a lengthy discussion and decided it would be best to take it over to Ronnie’s house because he lived in a more residential area with quiet neighborhood streets. I lived next to the highway where it was a guaranteed catastrophe if you got out in traffic. Anyway, we pushed it all the way over to his house and, once there, tried it on a side street. I can’t remember which one of us rode it but we ended up going through Mr. Bailey’s yard and leaving some serious ruts. After a few more rapidly aborted attempts, we pulled it under a shade tree and sat there contemplating our situation. Of course the go-cart had its nose in the air unless we kept a foot on it or something.
    Ronnie’s older brother came by with a friend of his and they stopped and took a look at our creation. Grimey, Ronnie’s brother, decided he’d take it for a ride and his friend Paul would ride beside him in the car to clock his speed. He climbed on the go cart and I cranked it up for him. He and the go-cart took off like Morty’s goose and within a few seconds had gone completely out of sight (I’ve always heard the expression “like Morty’s goose”, but have no factual evidence that he was actually that fast). A couple of minutes later Grimey came cruising back up and applied the “ditch brake”.
    “You boys don’t need to be riding that thing!” he proclaimed. “Somebody’s gonna get killed! I didn’t have it half wide open and I was going 40 miles an hour.”
    At that moment I was filled with pride. I had built an official death trap. Not just the kind my mother recognized, but officially christened one by someone that knew all about such stuff. Grimey was a wildman and if he said somebody was gonna get killed you better believe he knew what he was talking about.
    He and Paul left us sitting on the side of the street with our go-to-hell-cart, wiser maybe but still itching for a long, fast cruise. While we discussed it, Bill, a buddy of ours, wandered up. Now Bill was a wildman in his own right. He was our age, but willing to try anything at least once. He begged us until we let him take it for a ride. Like before, one of us held the nose down while he climbed in. Once seated, I cranked it up and vvvvvvrrooooooooom, he was gone.
    After about twenty minutes, we started worrying about what might have happened to him. Of course in our heads we were picturing him at the four-way stop by the Barrett’s house crushed under Mrs. Barrett’s blue Electra 225. We headed out down that way but when we got to the four-way stop there was no sign of Bill or the go-cart, no blood stains or brains in the street.  We stood there for a while wondering which way he could have gone. After about five minutes Bill comes walking up the hill in front of the King’s house.
    “What happened? Where’s the go-cart?” we asked when he go within earshot.
    “Man, it was awful! I got down the hill, made the turn and it chugged up the next hill. Then I saw the Sinclair twins outside and I wanted to go by real fast and impress them, so I gave it some gas and when I rounded the curve it flipped over! Skinned up my arm and my head, but its not too bad.”
    “Where’s the go-cart?” I asked, not really concerned about his stupid head but rather wondering how anyone could just walk off and abandon our go-cart.
    “The axle broke and the spark plug is busted,” was Bill’s assessment of the damages.
    We walked over to the Sinclair’s and there it lay...in a heap. The rear axle was broken right smack between a zig and a zag.  It was actually in the neighbor’s yard, and it was a sad sight. In technical terms it was totaled. Bill kept saying he’d pay for it, but of course it was made entirely of scrap so it didn’t have much value... except to us...as an official death trap...that we built with our own hands...and never really got to ride. Lucky for Bill we hadn’t built an airplane.