Lessons from the Pinewood Derby

My favorite possession is a wooden racecar about eight inches long and about two and a half-inches wide, plastic wheel to plastic wheel. It was originally glossy black, but it’s pretty scuffed up now and the paint is chipped and worn at the edges. An orange number 3 is painted on the tail.

My Dad and I made the car more than fifty years ago, when I was a Cub Scout. It was our entry in the Pinewood Derby, a father-son event that began in 1953 and has been an annual tradition ever since. Every spring, tens of thousands of Cub Scouts around the world enter their cars in local Derby matches, racing them down carefully constructed, regulation-grade wooden ramps in elimination heats that culminate in a final showdown race to determine the Pinewood Derby champ.

Our car started out as a block of pine, two wooden cross axles, four narrow plastic wheels and four one-inch steel nails. Our job was to shape the block of wood and the various bits and pieces into a racecar, then paint it and prepare it for competition. The Pinewood Derby kit came with a set of rules. You had to use the wheels supplied with the kit, for example, and the final weight of the car could not exceed a certain number of ounces.

My Dad and I knew what a real racecar should look like. Every September we’d go to the midget car races at the Allentown Fair and watch young hot shots drive scaled-down Indy cars around the fairground’s dirt track. It was loud and dusty for the spectators and frequently dangerous for the drivers (we usually saw a spinout or two, and sometimes a crash). But it was really, really fun. And it was something I did with my Dad.

So we tried to make Number 3 look like a real racecar, at least in its basic proportions. My Dad was a dentist (we lived upstairs, above his office) and he was good with his hands. He kept a few basic tools around the house, including a power drill. To shape the racer, he fitted a sanding disc to the drill and had me hold the drill steady while he pushed the pine gently against the abrasive surface.

We ended up with a handsome car, streamlined and sleek. We put a drop of oil on the hub of each wheel and tested it by racing it up and down the hallway. Then my Dad had a thought. He asked me to take the car down to Rader’s Market, a block and a half away, and ask the butcher if he’d mind weighing it. I probably made it there and back in under ten minutes.

“We’re light,” my Dad said, looking at the numbers the butcher had scribbled on a piece of paper. “If we can put some weight on this car, she’ll pick up speed down the ramp and we’ll have a better chance to win.”

My Dad took the sanding head off the drill and fitted a fat, quarter-inch bit in its place. He drilled four or five holes in the bottom of the car, then went down to the lab in his dental office and mixed up some amalgam. I just had some fillings replaced and I know that the material used today is a lot stronger, lighter, and safer than the amalgam my Dad used in the ‘50s. But this stuff was absolutely perfect for a block of pine in need of an extra ounce or two.

Again I raced down to Rader’s, but the car was still way too light. Another half dozen holes. More amalgam. Another trip to the market. Then more holes, and yet another dash to Rader’s.

When Number 3 was placed on the scale on Derby day, she weighed in at a fraction of an ounce under the maximum allowable weight. If you’d flipped her over, you would have seen seventeen neatly-filled “cavities,” still visible under a thin coat of black paint. She was fast and she was beautiful, and in heat after heat, she proved to be a winner.

What I remember most about that experience wasn’t winning the Derby, but the pleasure I had making that car with my Dad. He was young then, much younger than I am now, and he was busy building his dental practice and putting food on our table. But he always seemed to have time for me.

As the years went by, we put together electric train sets in the basement, and built gas-powered model planes that we flew in circles on the baseball field. We threw a softball in the backyard in the spring and a football in the fall.

I’ve been a father myself for about twenty years now, and I often reflect on all I learned from my Dad. He did so many things right, and I know I’ve often come up short by comparison. But I’ve always tried to be there for my daughters, the way he was there for me. It’s a lesson I learned from him and one I’m reminded of every time I glance over and see Number 3, chipped and worn, on the corner of my desk.

Don McLean, co-champion of the Pinewood Derby, will turn 88 on Sunday. He’s a great man and a great father. And twentysome years into his retirement, he’s still pretty good with his hands.

Happy Birthday, Dad.