Spokane

Memories on a roll
Bob Rickard remembers fondly his soap-box derby days back in Ohio

Megan Cooley
Correspondent

When Bob Rickard noticed a soap box derby in town late last month, he saw something familiar in the young participants: himself.

Rickard, who grew up in Cleveland, believes he participated in one of the first -- if not the very first -- soap box derbies ever held. A lone photo and a vivid memory may be his only proof, but Rickard's experience aligns well with history. He remembers that the Chevrolet Motor Co. sponsored the event and that it was held about 30 miles from his home.

Regardless of history, the lessons Rickard learned building his race car have lingered for almost seven decades.

"It was professional to me," the South Hill man said of his car, "but compared to a lot of the competition I had ... well, mine was nothing."

Maybe not nothing.

Rickard was 13 in 1933 when he built a soap-box car out of two-by-four wood studs, wheels from a toy wagon and a lot of imagination. Rickard remembers adamantly wanting the car to look realistic.

Using a coping saw, he shaved the car's wood body so that the top curved and the front came to a point. He covered the whole thing in sheet metal and hammered it until it was smooth. Using the wire mesh from a screen door, he added a nonfunctional radiator in the front.

Making the car's steering system was one of Rickard's biggest challenges. He could have simply built a weight-sensitive, side-to-side device that responded to pressure from his feet. That sort of thing would have been fine for the day-to-day games he and the other boys played in the neighborhood.

But Rickard was preparing for a derby he'd seen advertised across town. Since it was sponsored by Chevrolet, only a round, functional steering wheel would do.

"I had to have something more sophisticated than that for this event," Rickard said with a laugh.

Using a broomstick for the steering post, Rickard wound a rope around it and ran the rope through a pulley system he designed inside the car. He didn't have an instruction book. He just tinkered with it until it worked.

The whole car rested on two two-by-fours, which were attached to four wagon wheels. But Rickard needed axles to get the thing rolling. He couldn't turn to his father, a minister, for help.

"That kind of stuff was in left field for him," Rickard said.

Instead, Rickard looked in his father's basement, where he found two pokers his dad used to stoke the coal that heated the family's home. The iron rods were one inch thick, so Rickard filed them down until they fit through the wheels.

Finally, it was time for the finishing touches. Rickard painted his race entry number -- BY 332 -- on the side of the car. When it came time to name the car, Rickard took inspiration from the derby sponsor. He called it the "Shove-er-Lay."

"If you didn't give it a shove, it would just lay there," Rickard explained.

So how did Rickard fare in that 1933 soap box derby?

His older brother, Walter, gave Rickard a push at the race's starting line. The Shove-er-Lay crept 10 feet forward and came to a stop. Walter shoved again. The car inched forward, but never moved more than 30 yards from the starting line.

"My escapade ended. I thought I had a chance, but it just turned out to be a big disappointment."

Putting such effort into play wasn't unusual for Rickard or other children during his era, he said.

"You didn't have all the toys and things kids have today, so you made things," Rickard said. "That's how we entertained ourselves."

Most children owned a few basic building blocks: roller skates, a wagon and a sled. The lucky ones had bikes.

"We pretended we were motorcycle police," Rickard said.

His job delivering 100 daily newspapers earned him $1 each week, and he got another 25 cents on Fridays for escorting a truancy-prone neighbor boy to school every day.

"I felt I had a good income compared to the other kids in the neighborhood," Rickard said.

This afforded him the luxury of learning how to play the trumpet, which in turn brought in more money once he turned 15 and began performing in nightclubs on weekends.

Rickard married his high school sweetheart at age 21, moved to California, had a daughter and then fought for a year and a half toward the end of World War II. When he returned from Japan, Rickard planned to enroll in the University of Southern California's architecture program, but his wife died, and being a full-time father and student wasn't feasible. Rickard took a job with the local gas company, married his second wife Moria, raised two children and moved to Spokane in 1990.

Though he never took a job designing automobiles or houses, the ingenuity Rickard fostered as a child manifested during his free time. Rickard continues to play trumpet. He is an accomplished watercolor artist whose work is sold throughout Spokane and is displayed in local galleries.

With a laugh, Rickard recalls the lessons he learned that day his soap-box car puttered out: Don't make axles out of stoking bars. Pay close attention to the physics teacher when he covers the unit on friction.

And don't be surprised if an imaginative childhood leads to a life of creativity.

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