Phil says:
Here’s a special edition of the “Maker File” – Colin Berry reads Spinout, the story he wrote for Make Volume 07 about his brother’s efforts to build and race a car in the soap box derby in Longmont, Colorado. Unfortunately, he was up against more than just his own bad luck. Introduction by MAKE & CRAFT publisher, Dale Dougherty. Colin is an old friend of mine, and I was really excited that he wrote this piece for Make. Here’s a sample of the text version:
All his life, my brother, Kevin, was plagued with terrible luck. It began when he was a teenager, in the early 70s, in Longmont, Colorado — our hometown — and soon became something of a family legend. IThis was in the early 1970’s, in Longmont, Colorado our hometown and if the Trojan theater was giving away free tickets to Planet of the Apes tickets, the kid in front of Kevinhim in line would geot the last one. If Kevin sold enough newspaper subscriptions to win a clock radio, it was broken when he opened the box. If one of hisa friends shoplifted a pack of Odd Rods bubblegum cards on the way home from school, Kevin got collared for it. It was a pattern. He weathered it well, half-joking about his luck with his shy, gap-toothed grin, but over time it took a terrible toll.
In shop class, however, Kevin seemed to step out from its shadow. He was adept with tools and proved himself a skilled carpenter at an early age. I was seven years younger, and remember marveling at the first projects he brought home from junior high school: a varnished gun rack; a Newton’s Cradle, with its five suspended steel balls; a sturdy set of bedroom shelves for his Revell models. Looking back, it follows that the noisy, meditative setting of the woodshop would appealed to Kevin. It was, a place where no one was shouteding at him, and where no electronic parts could mysteriously fail.
