blocks. They X-rayed it the next day and discovered What would have happened to Kevin if things had
a powerful electromagnet hidden inside the nose of unfolded differently on that July day in 1972? How
the car. It was wired to a switch that Gronen’s head much would have changed? What happened to
activated when he applied pressure to his headrest, his brake? Why did it fail? And if it hadn’t, could he
and gave him a jump off the line. have beaten Bobby Lange, even if — and it’s all if,
The scandal rocked the Derby. Gronen was of course — Lange was cheating? Questions pile up
stripped of his title, and his winnings were given to like January snow, obfuscating any real truths and
the runner-up. But the real blame fell on Gronen’s forcing those of us who knew Kevin to turn over a
guardian uncle, ski-boot magnate Robert Lange, Sr., thousand times in our minds the ways it might have
Bobby’s father. In legal documents and public state- gone better. In a way, we — his family — are most to
ments, the elder Lange took full responsibility for the blame for the way we perpetuated Kevin’s bad luck
magnet idea (though not its construction), pointing in our stories and expectations, allowing it to poke
out with indignation that cheating was endemic through even as he tried to build something solid
to the Derby. At some
point, officials asked to
X-ray Bobby’s 1972 car,
too — the car that had
beaten my brother’s
— which the DA found
during his investigation
to have been built with
significant engineering
expertise and $10,000
to $20,000 worth of
equipment. This was clearly in violation of the rules. against it. Just once, we could have speculated how
Though Derby cars are usually preserved for pro- that long bronze car might have carried him into
motional purposes, Bobby’s car was nowhere to be something better.
found, and remains so today. Despite the scandal, the Derby has survived,
None of this really mattered to Kevin. He was though it’s been altered almost beyond recognition.
past all that, enmeshed in a teenager’s life filled Cars are built with kits now, and boys and girls from
with the cars, cigarettes, beer, and drugs that kids ages 8 to 17 compete, rally-style, in three different
in the mid-70s suddenly had to contend with. Within divisions. The rules for each comprise a massive
two years, Kevin had accumulated a reckless-driving PDF file, and kits start at $400 — not including
citation, a DUI, a trip to the police station, and a wheels, which cost up to $100 a set.
long succession of real cars, some of them wrecked. Even in Kevin’s day, Soap Box Derby wheels were
Like the radio signal from an interplanetary probe something special. Every year he was issued a new
that passes behind a planet, his bad luck, which had set, and when the car was ready, balancing on its
seemed to disappear for a while, was back, loud planks, he would slide the new wheels onto their
and clear. axles, secure the cotter pins, and give them their first
Kevin barely graduated from high school, and long spin. They would whirl for countless minutes,
took a series of jobs working for heating contractors half an hour sometimes, an extended low hiss, like
until his patience wore thin. He didn’t build much the sound of a distant crowd cheering. There, in the
of anything after that — a shingled camper for his dusty woodshop, it was a sound my brother and
pickup, a metal toolbox for Dad — and didn’t seem I hoped would last forever.
to have any hobbies. He and I grew distant. His friends
seemed to disintegrate into desperation or suicide
and, in 1998, he did too, with a . 22 pistol in the small,
neat bedroom of his trailer on the outskirts of Boulder.
He died in January, confessing in his note that he Colin Berry is a journalist, memoirist, and fiction writer who
couldn’t stand working outside in the cold anymore. blogs about life in Guerneville, Calif., at
colinberry.com.
A frozen bolt or misdrilled hole
could send him into a furious rage,
sabotaging many days’ work in a
scary tantrum.
