In Final Lap, He Wants a Macho Mini-Car

Here we are deep in the Pinewood Derby laboratory, down here in the basement with the spiders and the sawdust and the old bikes. It’s a damp basement. Spiders live here. Mostly male spiders. Black widowers. There’s lots of sawdust, too. Male sawdust.

“That’s cute, Dad,” the little girl says as we sand her Pinewood Derby car.

“Forget cute,” I tell her. “This is a race car.”

“It’s pretty cute,” she says with a shrug.

So we shave the Pinewood Derby car a little more, the wood so soft I could almost whittle it with my thumbnail, so soft I could almost carve it with my calluses.

Unfortunately, I have no calluses. I have suburban hands, soft hands--hands better suited to holding tennis racquets or remote controls. When I twist off a beer top, it hurts a little. The last time I got dirt under my nails was at a hockey game. And it wasn’t really dirt. It was mustard. Lasted about a week.

“We need a band saw,” I tell the little girl.

“What’s a band saw?” she asks.

The little red-haired girl is 7 now and she still doesn’t know what a band saw is, doesn’t know how to use one, wouldn’t know one if it fell on her foot. Worst of all, she doesn’t seem to care.

“Haven’t you had shop class?” I ask.

“What’s shop class?” the second-grader asks, like she’s never even heard the term.

Now, if you don’t know about Pinewood Derby cars, here’s the deal: They give a kid a block of wood. They give the kid four plastic tires. A couple of small axles. Some screws. From this, each child creates a little race car. Sometimes, dads assist a little.

Then, on a spring Saturday, the troop or tribe gathers and races the little cars down a plywood track. Prizes are given for speed and design. Some cars look like cars. Others look like . . . well, almost anything.

“How about a shark?” I ask, imagining a race car shaped like a tiger shark.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“How about a rocket ship?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

She thinks a moment.

“How about a zebra dog?” she suggests.

“What’s a zebra dog?” I ask.

“It’s a zebra,” she says. “And a dog.”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

We stand there looking at the block of wood, turning it in our hands, breathing in the pine.

Me, I don’t just see a block of wood. I see a Lamborghini Diablo or a Ferrari Daytona coupe, the ’72 model with the long front end and spoke wheels. Or maybe a little red T-bird.

Because for years, I have made Pinewood Derby cars. I have made Batmobiles and Corvettes.

Some years, I put graphite on the axles, power brushed them, then put graphite on them again, virtually dusting the car all over with graphite, spritzing the fine powder on like holy water in hopes of making it ultra-fast. One year, we finished as high as fourth.

So this year, I want to make it count. One morning, I go to the Internet for design ideas, looking at Den 8’s Web page, the one in Columbia, S.C., which reportedly reveals all the secrets to winning a Pinewood Derby.

“Where does the weight go for maximum propelling power?” another Web site asks, then offers to sell me the answer.

Better yet, I ask around the office, which was an Internet of information even before there was an Internet.

“What you do,” a friend advises, “is bevel the wheels so only the tip touches the track.”

“Really?”

“That’s what this guy told me.” he said. “All the wheels do is keep you from flying faster down the track.”

“They do?” I say.

“Or,” he says, lowering his voice as if giving a stock tip, “you carve one wheel so it doesn’t even touch the track. Then you have only three wheels on the track.”

But that might not be enough. This may be my last Pinewood Derby car. I want to go out in style. I don’t want just performance. I want design too. I want it to be great.

“What if,” I tell the little girl, “we build a giant car?”

“A giant car?” she asks.

“Yeah, like a real car,” I say. “A full-sized Pinewood Derby car.”

I can almost picture it. We’d frame it out first, maybe on an old car chassis. Working late into the night, we’d make a Plymouth Prowler out of plywood, then spray-paint it bright yellow.

We’d carve and shape, carve and shape just like for the little cars. Except that when we were done, we’d have a real car. With a real engine. Twenty feet long. Bigger than that Ford Excursion. Graphite everywhere.

“You could be a Pinewood legend,” I tell the little girl.

She thinks about this a moment. It sounds like fun, being a Pinewood legend. But there’s no telling how this giant car might turn out. It could be a disaster, this car. Her dad doesn’t even have a band saw.

“How about we just build a little blue car,” she finally says, holding up the block of wood.

“A little blue car?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Hand me that hammer.”

“A little blue car?” I say again.

The little blue car turns out nice. We carve it and sand it, carve it and sand it, then drown it under three coats of hobby store paint.

In one heat, it finishes fifth. The other, sixth.

At night, the car rests on the little girl’s headboard, like the Heisman--one tire slightly smaller than the rest.

“Nice car,” I say, when I tuck her into bed.

“Thanks, Dad,” she says.

*

Name That Team: Next week, the top finishers in the bid to name a new L.A. football team.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.