About the time I was in the fifth or sixth grade I was always into something, mom said I was mischievous. I was never in any real trouble but somehow some form of trouble would come my way. Back then school would shut down for three months every summer, that's a long time to keep kids on the straight and narrow.
We lived in an old neighborhood in Donelson, there were other kids my age and we hung out together every day riding bikes, climbing trees, one day we built our version of a tree house. Then there was the day we decided to build a go cart to ride down the hills of the streets.
There were three of us, brother Pat, me and a boy down the street, we had an idea but not the knowledge or skill but we didn't let that stop us. We started by gathering the materials, a couple of old 2x4s, 4 wheels from a lawn mower with their bolts, a short length of rope (old close line rope worked well) and some nails of varying sizes and slightly used, slightly bent (the longer the better). The longest piece of 2x4 was the body connecting the rear axle to the front axle, it was maybe 48" long. The rear axle was about 36" and front was maybe 30" the seat was 2 pieces of 2x4 nailed side by side to the body, they were 10 - 12 ". The lengths were not exact as we didn't have a tape measure but they only had to be close enough, the cuts were made with an old rusty somewhat dull handsaw, we weren't allowed the use of the good tools.
All of these things had to be connected with nails so we started out with hammers and a section of concrete sidewalk, we beat on the nails until they were as straight as we could get them. The biggest / thickest nail was used as the pivot nail connecting the body to the front axle and allowing it to turn right or left. The rear axle was connected to the body with several large nails in a square pattern so the axle remained in a fixed position. Don't ask how I know but it is important that the body sat atop the axles otherwise the nails could have straightened out and the whole thing would fall apart. Even with this knowledge we still left nothing to chance so we would use long nails that went all the way through both boards then we would bend them over with the hammer.
The wheels were attached to the bottom of the axles with the bolts, the bolts were attached by driving several nails into the board part way on either side of the bolt then bending them over. This was done with all four wheels. The length of the rope used for steering was carefully measured to accommodate each of us then nails were again driven into each end of the front axle and bent over the rope.
Now we were ready to ride. We would take turns, one of us would ride while the other two would push on our backs. Steering was accomplished by placing our feet on either side of the front axle, if you wanted to go right you would push forward with your left foot while pulling on the right side of the rope. The right foot would be ready to push in case you went to far to the right, to turn left you just reversed the push - pull sequence. Braking was accomplished by placing both feet on the ground or jus the heel of your shoe but if you were going real fast there was the sure-fire method of just running into a ditch. We quickly discovered that when using only the heel of your shoe the asphalt would quickly eat away the heel.
We had a lot of fun with our go cart, for sure we expended a lot of energy and sweat would drip from our bodies. Eventually we got tired of pushing and or tired of pulling the cart back up the hills so we came up with another idea. We attached a longer rope to the front of the cart and the other end to a bicycle, that worked good.
One day we were making some repairs at the other boy's house, his dad had the tools we were allowed to use. Our friends dad worked on lawn mowers as a side job but his real job had him away from home a couple of days a week. So on this particular day we had the idea to attach a 5 horsepower motor from a mower to the go cart. It took a little thought to figure out how to do it but we came up with a plan. Modifications were made to the rear axle, it had to be shortened to receive the drive axle from the mower. We had to create a mounting base for the motor and bolt it on, we added a back to the seat so we wouldn't touch the hot engine and get burned.
The biggest issue to overcome was the throttle control, the mower had a long throttle cable we were able to attach to the body between our legs. That worked well until the cable vibrated loose and our friend had to run up a hill in a neighbor's front yard in order to stop.
Our fun with the motor on the cart was short lived, our friend's dad came home the next day and made us remove the motor. In that one day we experienced the power of the motor on our cart and pushing it around by hand lost it's alure so we directed our energy elsewhere. I think we must have started a new phase because a couple of years later motorized carts became a thing, grown men welded steel frames and attached up to two chainsaw motors to them, I heard they would go up to 60 mph.
As for me, I went back to riding a bicycle. On a long down hill run the speed would build up, the wind would blow your hair but then you would have to start pedaling again but it just wasn't the same. It was several more years before I got behind the wheel of a car and felt the power of the motor again.
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