Though
my favorite toys as a child were action figures I did have my share
of cars. Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels primarily. They were relatively
cheap, so I’m sure they were Mom’s default when I wanted
something. But there were a lot of them. I had the Hot Wheels track
with the loop and the jump ramp that I would stretch from the kitchen
table out into the living room. I don’t have any of these left and
have no idea what happened to them.
There
was one toy car that stands out more because I do remember what
happened to it. It wasn’t one of the small cars, but a larger one
called an SSP Racer. SSP stood for Super Sonic Power. Each car had a
large wheel in the center of its body. You would insert the ‟t-stick”
and then pull, making the wheel spin and create sound, then let it
go.
Mine was
called the Laker Special. It was bright orange and I thought it was
the coolest model they made. The others all looked like cars. The
Laker Special looked like a Sci Fi rocket car. When it raced along
the floor it looked like it was floating slightly above the ground. I
have often thought that Luke’s landspeeder in Star Wars was
influenced by this.
Living
in the country I didn’t have lot of places where I could really
take advantage of the full Super Sonic Power. The space in my house
wasn’t really big enough for it to play out it’s full potential.
There were no sidewalks, and even with very little traffic back then
playing in the road was a no-no. But, I took it outside and made the
best of it.
One day
after a hard rain I was in a nearby wooded lot. Crews from the
telephone company had been working in the area, digging holes to bury
the phone lines that up to that point had been stretched between
poles. It was an overall upgrade to the system at the time. There was
a large hole in the ground, filled with muddy water. That’s when
inspiration hit. I yanked the t-stick and put the car in the water.
Just as I thought, the spinning wheel revved and sprayed filthy water
everywhere, soaking me in an instant.
Pretty cool.
The
Laker Special immediately sank out of sight into the brown mud. The
hole was a lot deeper than I thought it would be. I sank my arm into
it, but couldn’t reach the bottom. I got a shovel from our garage
and poked around with it, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find
my racer. I didn’t tell my Mom because I think I was afraid of
getting in trouble for losing this slightly more expensive toy.
Within a day or two the work crews were back and filled in the hole.
Unlike the happy ending of my previous story about Geronimo, the
Laker Special was lost forever.
To this
day I can go to that spot. Somewhere, six feet or so under the
ground, like an ancient artifact of the past, my SSP sleeps.
