Just A Gal From Glidden: Dad’s go-cart flew

By Kate Winquist

The surest sign winter was over on our farm wasn’t the calendar. It was the day Dad hauled the go-cart out of the barn.

He built it during Easter break in 1970, according to my most resourceful brother. The body was plywood, painted a bright, proud red. The motor came from The National Store — later Peavey Mart — and, as family legend goes, Dad told the clerk it was for a water pump so he could use it as a tax deduction. The tires were also written off as “farm equipment,” and the steering wheel came off a scrap car at the nuisance ground.

Still in the driver’s seat. Dad takes the wheel of the homemade go-cart that became the centre of countless summer memories on the farm.

That go-cart was the centre of our summers. Before long, I was putting miles on it, circling the yard and heading down the dirt road. Whether I learned to drive on that or the ride-on lawn mower is up for debate, but I do know I was driving long before I was supposed to.

There were a few mishaps along the way.

My cousin Gord was about eight when Uncle Neil decided he was old enough to take the wheel. Mom strongly disagreed. Gord proved her right by driving the go-cart straight into a water-filled ditch. Mom had her ‘I told you so’ moment, and she never let Uncle Neil forget it.

Then there were the races.

The Jackson boys from down the road — Maury and Shawn — showed up one day on their mini-bikes and issued a challenge. Our family didn’t back down from much, so the races were on. First to the quarter-mile turn and back won. The mini-bikes won a couple, and that didn’t sit well. Dad quietly went to work and removed the governor from the motor. I doubt he told Mom.

After that, the go-cart didn’t just run. It flew, leaving the Jackson boys in the dust.

That evened things up in a hurry.

Eventually, like most good things, it moved on. When Mom and Dad retired to Medicine Hat, they passed the go-cart along to another family. My kids never got to experience it the way we did, ripping around the yard and down the road on summer evenings.

I’m writing this on April 11, what would have been Dad’s 93rd birthday. Of all the things he built over the years, that go-cart might not have been the biggest or the most important.

But it was the one that let us be kids—and let him watch it happen.

We’re still telling those stories, 56 years later.