Word: doodlebugs
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Postman Smith made his escape in a four-wheeled scooter powered by a small gasoline engine. He stands at the back of his doodlebug, put-putting along at four to twelve miles an hour. For a delivery, he leaves his scooter contentedly burbling at the curb, manages to save not only foot-power but some 23% of the time formerly needed to cover his route. His superior, Superintendent of Mails B. H. Kaigler, intends to recommend the scooter's adoption for mailmen in residential districts everywhere...
Headlong as a paper chase, Schoolhouse on the Lot is just as full of false scents and wasted motion. Playwrights Fields & Chodorov have used about 33 of the famed 36 original plots, scrambled them into doodlebug farce, peppered them with gags. Underneath the roughhousing is a healthy contempt for the method in Hollywood's madness, a keen eye for skulduggery. But compared with a Once in a Lifetime or a Boy Meets Girl, Schoolhouse on the Lot is too loud, too loopy, too larruping...
Most of the 2,500 existing doodlebugs have a 75-inch wheelbase, as compared to the 105-inch average of standard racing cars, weigh from 600 to 1,000 lb. The original midget cars were crude affairs powered by motorcycle engines, later by outboard motors, cost about $400 to build. In 1934 Los Angeles' Frederick Offenhauser, longtime assistant of Harry Miller whose standard-size engines won most of the important U. S. auto races in the past decade, developed a special miniature motor. Most top-notch doodlebuggers now use Offenhauser motors, spend up to $5,000 for a racing...
...Since doodlebugs may race indoors as well as outdoors and thus have a steady year-round season, they have attracted a number of standard-racing drivers, most notable of whom is Lou Schneider, who won at Indianapolis in 1931. Top-notch drivers average about $750 a week. Most of the rest average $125. Few can now afford to own the cars they drive. Like his brother, racing what he calls a "big iron" the ''little iron" driver is inordinately susceptible to quirks and superstitions. No driver will paint his car green. No driver likes to catch sight...
Well on his wav to becoming the dean of doodlebug promoters last week. Don Zeiter is a dour 41-year-old Ohioan so close-mouthed that he will not admit that Donald is his first name. An oldtime dirt-track manager, he appeared in Detroit five years ago with no worldly goods save a Model T Ford, convinced citizens that the U. S. auto centre should be the centre of U. S. auto racing. He built his motor speedway by securing the site, lumber, oil and contractor's services through profit-sharing agreements, attracted nightly crowds...