On a fast-track through history

To most people it was just a hill overlooking a junkyard and a brick factory, but to Richard Warde it was a treacherous raceway, a blazingly fast track that could be conquered only with a rickety piece of wood on wheels.

The place where Warde and friends used to race soapbox cars has since been fenced off and overrun with weeds and potholes. According to the 56-year-old private investigator, the small hill off Placentia Avenue used to be a popular speedway for racing homemade soapbox derby cars. Warde said he didn’t want to disclose the exact location to protect the property owners from trespassers, but he remembers a time when dozens of students would congregate on the hill and watch a handful of racers push their homemade cars up the hill and then rumble down at speed.

“It was kind of a cool hangout for the freshman and junior-high kids,” Warde said. “The older boys had their hot rods and motorbikes, and we were left to dream of what it was like to be behind the wheel.”

Friend Gary Graff said the races attracted a group of kids who were a little behind on the fad.

“It was the mid-1960s and soap box cars were a thing of the past, something kids did about 10 years before. So when we started racing, it wasn’t exactly a cool thing to do,” he said. Neither Warde nor Graff could remember exactly who started the trend, although both believed a local boy likely launched the short-lived fad after building soapbox derby cars in Boy Scout camp.

Warde said he remembered about a dozen different racers participating in the races, most building cars from wood they had found at junkyards and wheels from old wagons, wheelbarrows and scooters. Cars were nailed together by hand and rarely painted.

“We didn’t have steering wheels like the ones the Boy Scouts made,” Graff said. “Basically you would sit in something that resembled a box shape and point it in the direction you wanted to go. There were lots of crashes, but not a lot of girls to see our bravery. You were considered lucky if your car simply fell apart before you got to the bottom of the hill,” he said.

Warde estimated the races went on for about five months before his friends started to lose interest and picked up other hobbies.

“Yeah, like BB guns and girls,” he joked.

Warde said there were few photographs or relics from his soapbox days besides a series of pictures taken by his father Philip Warde, entered the photo reproduced above in a contest at the Orange County Fair in 1966 and won a blue ribbon. Warde said he came across the picture about two years ago while cleaning out his father’s office after his death.