After getting past the washing machines, and the ice-boxes, and a few stacks of funny-smelling tires......... what in the world......... A model RACE TRACK! Christmas, 1963, electrical race tracks were NEW, at least they were to me and my wide-eyed friends. We knew about electric trains; they had been around forever, but race tracks? We'd never seen one before. The new store had two of 'um. Just alike, and ......... the two race cars (in the race track set) were miniature MODIFIED-looking '39 Ford coupes! If I hadn't been lookin' right at them, I'da sure never believed it!
I ain't making this up, either.......... you CAN'T make up this kind of stuff! These little race cars were modeled after Henry's most famous and stock-car-friendly design; they even had their hoods REMOVED, showing off their V-8 'engines'. There was a red one and a blue one. Their tires were rubber and the wheels were real-looking gray colored 'rims'. The little control switches, that each driver actuated had, an 'accelerator' that LOOKED like a real-live accelerator pedal! As a final touch, they came with cool looking decals. Looking back through the haze of 49 Christmases, the designer of that race set had SEEN a Carolina-Saturday-night stock car. He'd been there and done that! And a bunch of nine-year olds definitely recognized and appreciated his genius.
But, y'all know Santa Claus........ he MADE two race track sets (one for me and one for my best friends, next door) that looked just like the ones at the Western Auto. Santa even mounted those little race tracks, each to a sheet of plywood, and got them both down chimneys.....(and my house didn't really HAVE a chimney) just waitin' on their drivers.
We raced all Christmas day........ that was just about all the little coupes could handle. By Christmas night, none of 'em would run anymore. I soon learned there was a component called the 'pick-up'; each car had two pick-ups...... copper tabs that mounted near the car's front wheels and made contact with the electrical conductor in the race track. It's how the coupes' tiny electric motors got their power, and after 12 hours of continuous racing........ we had wore out every single pick-up on all four cars! Over the following days and weeks, we tried to repair the cars by soldering the worn-out copper, and it kinda worked, but they never were the same. Sadly, I think we'd gotten the best of their motors too. The little coupes never would run all by themselves anymore. Guess the designer never dreamed they would run 500 miles, at one time!
Kinda like a real-life Alan Jackson song, the old Western Auto moved a couple times, burned down in the '70's, but rebuilt and made it until this year......... when the state of North Carolina tore it down for road-right-away. It won't ever come back, and today's kids wouldn't be nearly as thrilled over a '39 Ford equipped race set......... time changes everything..... but 1963 was one more special Christmas!
HO! HO! HO!
-Bobby
email: lefthander00@hotmail.com
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(Editor’s note: Bobby Williamson is a member of the regular cast of the Tuesday evening racing show ” Racing Through History”, presented on Zeus Radio Network by RacersReunion®. Archives can be found by following the link. Live broadcasts can be heard from 7:00-9:00 PM every Tuesday. Please feel free to join us in the RacersReunion® Chat Room for the show.)
