Black Bug is 'Freed' after These 20 Years

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune

December 3, 1967

   WE TOOK Big Joe out of the garage a while back.  He had been hanging in the rafters for 20 years and must have been pleased to get into the light and savor the prospect of some action.

   There had been action aplenty back about 1947 after my older son had painstakingly put Big Joe together and readied him for the Soap Box Derby.  The black bug won one heat and thereafter was retired, but not before it had given me the type of thrill associated with ski-jumping or Russian roulette.

   My son had a paper route in those days and his Sunday burden was such that my conscience goaded me into assisting him.  We used a wagon of inadequate size to haul the bundles from the station to where we spotted them.

   ON THIS particular Sunday the lad said that since we had the big bug we might as well use it instead of the little wagon, so we wheeled Big Joe a couple of blocks to an intersection from which point it was down-grade to the station.

   Before getting aboard, I mentioned with some trepidation that we had to go through a couple of intersections and since Big Joe had no brakes whatever we might get creamed by an automobile.  The chance of this was remote, my son said, since it was barely 5 a.m.  So off we started, hitting the first intersection at about 30 m.p.h., going faster through the next one, but suffering damage only to my nervous system.

   Shortly thereafter I consigned Big Joe to the garage rafters.  He was too hot an item for the boys in the neighborhood.  I told my son that if he ever had a compelling reason for getting the thing out of mothballs he was free to do so.

   HE NEVER DID.  He finished school, got married and moved away.  A second son came along but the cut of his jib was different.  He noticed Big Joe and would reach up and give its wheels an occasional spin but he never asked to ride the thing.  Neither did his playmates, although the Tierney kids next door gave it some longing looks and Katie could have talked me into getting it down had she turned on the charm.

   Then, on a Sunday afternoon this fall, my son and his family checked in for dinner.  Big Joe came into the conversation and there was much begging from the grandsons.  We went into the garage and lifted it from the rafters.

   WITH ITS WHEELS back on the ground and layers of dust removed, the bug seemed as shiny and sturdy as ever and won admiring glances from the assembled smallfry.  We maneuvered it into my son's station wagon and when the family drove off the curtain came down on some history.

   Through the mist of years I could see my son mooring an electric motor to the work bench and using it to spin and break in the special wheels he'd bought.  The wheels spun for days and he periodically applied lubricants and abrasives.

   Then there were Big Joe and his pilot high on the ramp and poised for the race--not long afterward, defeat.

   The word now is that Big Joe has fallen apart.  It's just as well.  His new surroundings were hilly and dangerous, and I'm glad he collapsed before anyone got hurt.

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