Heights - Coaster Buggy

I grew up on top of a hill. My dad, the mason decided to build a "brick cart". Nearly 100lbs, small front tires and the capability of 40mph... the brakes just smoked.

An early Corporal Punishment piece from 2010, "The Coaster Buggy". We seriously believe our dad had thoughts of bumping us off with this little jewel. The tales of woe and road-rash can fill a book. Neighborhood children grew to adulthood with gravel embedded in joints. The front wheels were prone to cut hard 90° causing the whole buggy to cartwheel like the worst F1 crash you've ever seen. Carnage...

I can still hear the tread on the rear tire whining up to a scream as it plummeted down the hill.

My Brother James reacts to this post...

Very Funny! I was thinking of this a few days ago. Rich Heckman... was one of the kids who came over for a play date, we rode that death mobile down the hill double team bobsled style. Hit the out wash of gravel from Kappus road and had one of those epic wipe-outs starting at Segreaves driveway. Somehow I fared much better. Rich was road rash and torn clothes from head to toe. Lucky for mom he was the youngest of his family too so his mom had seen it all before, he wasn't an Armour hotdog "Sissy kid". Now that I have kids I have often wondered what Mrs. Heckman thought we she saw him torn up head to toe.I don't think he ever came to play again.

Dad never really thought it through, the difficulty trying to hold that steering straight with one hand and hanging on the hand break white knuckled with the other. I don't think I ever made it past Mr. Anderson's with out a wipe out. That gravel just started those front wheels whipping back an forth until it launched you like a Trebuchet. If you were lucky you landed in someone's yard. What the heck would we have done if a car was coming up the road? And we did it over and over. Forrest Gump's mamma used to say "stupid is, as stupid does"!

James Zdepski - 4/20/2012