Race Your Youth

During our youth, one of our favorite games consisted of racing small metal cars. As far as I know, this game had no name because it was completely original.

The little metal cars we used were in small scale the same as the real cars, which drove on the roads and racing circuits of the world. They were only a few centimeters in length and had no engine, so we used to let them race on a down-hill track that we specially built in the backyard of Bugs’ house. We chose that place because there we could find building material, like old roof gutters (the basic material to build our track), bricks, planks and iron pegs.

Because of the lack of the engine, in order to allow these cars to race, it was necessary to have a down-hill track and the real skill was to build it. We made it up of old but still good roof gutters, tilted downwards.

We started by building the highest column of bricks at the beginning of the track and a very short column at the end. Starting from the lowest to the highest we put gutters suspended on the columns, then filled in the missing gutters and held them up with planks, pegs and other things. We made tests as the building of the track went on. These tests were needed to find the right inclination, if the track was not steep enough the cars would come to a halt, half way down the track, so we had to take out a brick from under the gutter, if it was too steep the race would be over in a few seconds and the cars would land piled-up at the end of the track. The track wasn’t just straight but had mild curves at places where we joined the gutters and which made the cars swerve and overtake each other.

When the work was over, we realized that we had built a 20 meter long track which started from a height of 1.5 meters from the ground.

We all had our favorite models of cars, Bugs had a bright red Ferrari and I preferred the dark green Porsche. My Porsche seemed heavier and therefore went faster but also overturned easier. In every race there were about eight participants but as you can imagine there was never enough space, so usually the one who got in front first usually won the race. I remember that the models which took part in these races, were mostly Chevrolets, different models of Fords, Indianapolis racing cars and a couple of dragsters that raced on their own. They covered the twenty meter down-hill track in less than one minute!

Our construction become permanent until Bugs’ dad would decide to clean up the yard and our track with it.

We spent many afternoons playing this game and the time flew past having great fun, because everyone always got his chance to win a race.