A SHOCKING EXPERIENCE

When I was a kid growing in Buckeye’s halcyon days of the 1950s, the rodeo grounds were north of the canal and east of Fourth. My dad’s business as the Wholesale Distributor for Standard Oil of California was nearby. The east/west road (Arizona Eastern Ave) was dirt.

Dad had helped my brother and me build a go-kart with a lawnmower motor. We kept it at “the plant” and, when no one was around, ran it up and down that dirt road. We hadn’t gotten around to buying a friction clutch so it had a chain drive direct from the motor to the drive wheel. So, in order to start it, you had to push it.

That wasn’t a problem if one person was in the kart while another pushed. But what if you wanted to take a ride and there was no-one to push? I got the bright idea to push the kart myself until the engine kicked over and then jump in.

That all worked great – except for one slight miscalculation. When I jumped into the kart, I ended up sitting down on the spark plug! At 40,000 volts, that spark went right through my Levis and into my posterior thus killing the engine.

So what’s the moral to this story? Plans for fun and excitement can sometimes end up with unexpected shocking consequences.