Dead End Dirt Track - Bloody brilliant.

The July 12, 1947 issue of Picture Post has this wto-page article about fifty or so boys who made a dirt track in a vacant lot, using the bombed-out church next door as a staging area and/or clubhouse. The ten-year-old version of myself is indescribably jealous of three things.

-There were like fifty kids in the vicinity interested in racing their bikes.
-They had unrestricted access to a vacant lot, and all the adventure it offered.
-They weren't hassled by The Pigs, or fretful helocopter mommies bent on raising their kids to be pansies.






Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a farm near my street, and maybe five of us were able to mess around a bit in the fields. Sometimes we'd manage to make a dirt track of sorts, and that would be great for a couple of days, until the farmer came along and tilled the field, ruining our fun by using his land for it's intended purpose. Boo. The kids in this article? They had a huge lot to screw around with for months. So frikkin cool. And, they had a great bombed out church to use as a pit area. Bad. Ass. The fact that they all chose to have a house rule against functional brakes only magnifies their badassery.

Click on each image for an embiggened version, where you can actually read the text.

It looks like their track is on a bit of a hill, with one off-camber turn and an
uphill section. That's more interesting that just a flat course. The only way

I could think to improve it would be to make it a more interesting layout than

a siple oval. Something more like a road course, with a long straight and a twisty 

technical section in the infield. You know... more variety. This is not a complaint.