THE MOTOR BUG BIT ME when I was 11 years old. I was tearing apart lawn mower engines in hopes of building anything that gave me powered mobility. While other kids in the neighborhood were ripping around on Tote Goat minibikes or store-bought go-karts, I had to rely on a passel of rusty hand-me-down tools and a discarded, horizontal-shaft, 2-hp Briggs & Stratton. Alas, behind the plank seat, that little engine chugged and moaned atop its mower deck, spinning blades and all. The heap was a threshing machine on wheels that soon threw a rod, died, and was abandoned in a deserted cow pasture down the road.
A year later I was spending my after school hours bent over the fenders of a friend’s
