According to this article on "Pedal Car Planet", pedal cars have been around since the 1890s. I believe I remember a very old one on display at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina that was ridden by the Vanderbilts' daughter. The early ones were toys for rich kids, of course, but life changed after World War II. At that time in our history, the middle class grew along with manufacturing, the result being that what had formerly been luxury items became less expensive, and people likewise had more money to buy non-necessities. It was right in the middle of those "Happy Days" of 1950s and 1960s America that I was born, so my childhood is filled with memories of things that were "exciting" and "new". Non-consumer-related things like jet airplanes and rockets were new and exciting, too, and the American automobile had lost its fins and developed rocket-inspired styling.

The taillights of the 1963 Ford Galaxie (space themed name!) were supposed to resemble the glow of rocket engines.


The AMF Scat Car was an inexpensive pedal car. The cars with full bodies cost more, but these tube-frames without bodies would have been, I suspect, a lot lighter, and they looked like open-wheel racing cars. Earlier Scat Cars had round steering wheels, but ours had "jet airplane" steering wheels, not really a wheel but a bent tube that looked like it belonged in an airplane instead of a car. (And dangerous... when two little kids decide that a head-on collision might be a fun thing to try out!)

Anyway, here is a short film of my brother and me riding around on our driveway in January, 1965. I was 5 years old, and he was 4.


There was no such thing as home videotape then, but my parents did have a Bell & Howell Two-Twenty movie camera. This used 8mm film which had to be flipped over half-way through, and the total length was 3 minutes and 20 seconds, or 1:40 per side. I actually used the camera some when my kids were small, because I couldn't afford the $1000 price tag of a VHS camcorder. Here's the camera that made the above film. Notice that you had to wind the camera up! (Later, the "Super 8" format came out, which had magnetic tape along the edges of the film for sound!)

I'm always hearing that facebook is only good for conversations that lack substance. Status updates. Silly jokes. Links to political rants. Extreme left or right political cartoons or statements containing 2% truth and based on a 98% lie. Stuff like that. There is a lot of that, and I admit that it's tedious. When I first signed up for it it, I was excited and amazed to be "reconnecting" with people I hadn't seen since high school, but I never actually got together with any of them.

Until today: I just got back from lunch with my second cousin, whom I hadn't seen since I was a little bitty kid. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen him in my life! And it started because I searched for (and found) his uncle on facebook. We work only 8 miles from each other, and met at an Antone's about 10 minutes from each of our offices.

So maybe all of the chit-chat and status updates are pointless, but just like in the real world, you get a few meaningful connections out of the hundreds of casual ones. I say "like in the real world" as if facebook isn't the real world. There are fake accounts on facebook, but everyone I'm connected with is a real person, so facebook is as real as the telephone or the U.S. Mail. The addition of all of those casual connections in your life, because of facebook, can actually result in a few that are more meaningful.

I've actually observed this before, though I've never been a part of it. There are quite a few women I know (perhaps I should put "know" in quotes, since it's the first kind of superficial friendships)... quite a few, who get together with each other on a regular basis because they reconnected on facebook.

Like everything else in life, it is what you make of it.

I don't know that we'll have lunch again. I enjoyed it, and enjoyed catching up on the last 48 or 50 years; I'll have to decide whether to call him next month, perhaps, or just see if he calls. I'm not a very social person, anyway, so just saying "hey, let's go to lunch" is a totally radical thing for me!

Scenario:
- Kid has one of those slow, battery powered "Lightning McQueen" cars.
- The plastic wheels wear out, and the kid is outgrowing it anyway.
- Dad decides to modify it.

(When I was a little kid, my "Scat Car" had pedals, and was pretty fast. But the rear-axle crank had pretty short throws, so it could have been faster.)

This dad is way cooler than I could ever have been! (I seriously thought about buying Adam and Jesse a go-kart once, but decided the $1000 wasn't in the budget. Ironically, just yesterday I was thinking that I wish I would have just gone ahead and done it.)



Judging by the photos (specifically, the Porsche on the lift and the video of McQueen on the dyno, and the "FFTEC Motorsports" logo at the end), the dad works at a place where they make fast cars go faster, so he certainly has an advantage.

Anyway, fun times!

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted a nothing post. Reminds me of the days when I was addicted to this website.

Something to add — here's the Periodic Table of Sports Cars from Car and Driver which I find amusing. Some of it may hurt your feelings, actually, but the parts you think are hilarious may hurt someone else's feelings. Then again, you may not care at all. I thought it odd that I would take any of it personally, since I have no stake in any car company, so I suppose that told me something about myself. (But, really, a Cadillac XLR classified as a poseur-oid?)

Here's their description:
"A periodic tablet [sic] organizes elements by weight; our table aims to weigh the elements of a sports car. Like Mendeleev’s famous chart, the sports cars here are grouped according to their physical properties (see colors below). Specific years aren’t mentioned (i.e., Porsche 911, because all 911s are isotopes of each other). Oh, and if yours isn’t on here, sorry—there is room for only 118."


(Click to download a PDF version, much easier to see.)

I've been trying to go 3 to 4 weeks between posts in order to help curb (or kerb, for you English speakers) my propensity for compulsive blog checking, but the irony of this is too much to pass up.



Did you see it? It's 88°F, which may be considered rather cool and pleasant when compared with the weather a couple of days ago, but the Weather Channel's algorithm for selecting "stories that affect me" still seems to be flawed.