Happy Spring to you. Less than nine shopping months until Christmas.

Carol Olney, of Lignite, recently posted a picture on social media of a news story that she had clipped from the Burke County Tribune somewhere around 1982. Below the title “Lignite Scouts hold Pinewood Derby” is a photograph of Lignite Scout Troop 347 composed of Justin Young, Travis Chrest, Robbie Gilseth, Ryan Reistad, Grady Bakken, Chad Johnson, Jarvis Ellis, Blain Johnson, and myself.

Nine of us shaggy-haired knuckleheads, lined up and looking in every direction except at Leonard Savelkoul, the photographer. Seeing the picture and reading the article brought back memories that I hadn’t remembered for quite some time.

I remember my mom being the Den Leader, and I remember her occasionally “talking” to Scout Troop 347 through clenched teeth at our weekly after school gathering at the Legion Hall next to Martin’s Barbershop. I remembered that the Beach Boys had a song called “409” that had a bit of motor revving at the beginning of the song, and I remembered that my creative mother (the Den Leader with clenched teeth) had set up a record player, hidden from spectator view, to kick of the Pinewood Derby with that motor revving.

I remember that I was in charge of the record player, I remember that numbers thwarted me once again and I miscounted the number of record grooves to the start of the desired song and on my mom’s signal I dropped the needle at the wrong song. Quick 10-year-old thinking, I ripped the record player plug out of the wall and fled the scene…around the corner to where everyone else was.

I remember being so embarrassed by this, and I remember feeling terrible that I had messed up the grand Scout Troop 347 Pinewood Derby kickoff and that I had let my mom down. It’s strange the stuff we remember and the stuff that flitters by without wedging itself in our psyche.

I remember that my Grandpa Fritz helped my brother and I make our Pinewood Derby cars. Jarvis’s was a slim and sleek racer that fetched him the 1st place trophy, mine wasn’t so slim, sleek or fast.

I remember Grandpa Fritz asking me what I wanted to turn my official Pinewood Derby block of wood into. I asked him if we could make a pickup, and I remember him turning the block of wood over in his hands a bit while he pondered my request, and said, “We can do that.”

I knew he could. He could make most anything out of block of wood. As the great sculpture Michelangelo once said, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

Grandpa could see the pickup I requested in the block of wood, and together, we set it free. I still have that pickup, and when I saw the picture Carol posted, I dug it out of its parking spot in the trunk in our basement. Upon inspection, it is quite obvious what parts of it I set free and what parts my grandpa took the lead on.

The trunk in our basement holds a number of other odds and ends from many moons ago. Odds and ends that hold a lot of fond memories. What will happen to those odds and ends when my end comes? I’m the only one that holds the key to release the memories they hold, so odds are, they will meet their end shortly after I meet mine. So it goes.

I suppose that is the way of things, and I suppose that is as it should be. Locks without keys aren’t much good to anyone.

The pickup has a new parking spot now. A spot on my bookshelf, where I can see it, where I can turn it over in my hands and go wherever it takes me. “We can do that.”