Soap Boxers

Along a big new concrete chute at the Akron (Ohio) airport last week, 130,000 people, more than regularly attend any U. S. sporting event except the Indianapolis auto races, jammed together to watch the finals of the fourth annual All-American & International Soap Box Derby. The racers, selected through elimination races sponsored jointly by the Chevrolet Division of General Motors and 120 U. S. newspapers, had been having the time of their lives for three days at Chevrolet's expense in Akron's Mayflower Hotel. Their vehicles were miniature rubber-tired automobiles constructed by the contestants at a maximum cost of $10. To carry to the world the news of which coaster-wagon rolled down the 1,175-11. chute fastest, there were no less than 15 press wires.

After a police motor squad had patrolled the course, the heats began. In the third heat, Jack Wyatt, of Anderson, Ind., wrecked his car by crashing into a dog. After five hours, the crowd, somewhat thinned by the inescapable monotony of the spectacle provided by small boys coasting down a hill, saw the final heat. Robert Ballard, 12, of White Plains, N. Y., got the checkered flag as he rolled across the finish line first to win the U. S. championship, a silver trophy, a diamond-set gold medal and a four-year scholarship to any State university he might select. He promptly announced that he would go to the University of Minnesota. Runner-up Kenneth Richardson, 12, of Detroit and John Sigmans, 12, of Bethlehem, Pa., who came in third, each won a Chevrolet coach which they are too young legally to operate. Coaster Ballard then went on to win another silver trophy by defeating the foreign champion, 16-year-old Danie Wege of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in the international event. His record heat: 28.86 sec.

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