go kart
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Me, in the late seventies. Re-enacting a scene from “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” with my father.
It would be twenty years before I’d drive again.
Noticeable is the open doors of some of the houses; nobody locked their doors then. Also the almost total absence of cars. I count three, and the sort of red van that was almost invariably used for bank job getaways in The Sweeney. My parents still live in the same house, in Dublin, a city that has redefined the phrase upwardly mobile, and when I return nowadays, the entire street seems to be double parked luxury drives.
I loved that go-kart, and would give the other kids rides - them standing on the rear axle and hanging off the back of the seat. Until the seat snapped off, and the axle started buckling, at which point I was heartbroken.
I guess I should have learned that sometimes, even if it runs the risk of losing you friends, you need to learn to say “No.” It would be twenty plus years before I started to get that lesson.
But my dad fixed the axle. I think a mallet may have been involved, but since perfectly precise three point turns weren’t the most common manoeuvre in it, the fact that the kart steered “A bit bockety” was never an issue; the lack of a seat, however, was potentially huge, until my dad made a four-sided box from chipboard, lined it with red shag pile carpet, and screwed it to the frame, and I had an instant couture kart.
And the fact that I just used the phrase couture kart probably explains why I never had many friends as a kid growing up on the not-so mean (but car-less) streets of south Dublin in the 1970’s.
