Derby Dads Next Weekend’s Soap Box Derby Offers A Perfect Opportunity For Dads And Their Kids To Bond Before The Race

The Spokane Soap Box Derby is mostly about rolling resistance, friction, aerodynamics and gravity.

Yet it is also about a particularly appropriate subject for Father’s Day: fathers and children.

In the months leading up to the race, which takes place all day Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. on the Post Street Hill (approximately Post and Cora), about 50 young racers have been painstakingly building their cars from kits.

However, most kids need adult supervision, and often that means dads. So fathers and children have been sharing many hours together, wrenches in one hand, instructions in the other, furrows in both brows.

Nothing like the experience of complicated directions to forge a strong paternal bond.

We found a few kids and dads who have had particularly interesting Soap Box car building experiences, and we share them with you on this Father’s Day:

Allison Tenold, 10, and her father Jack

Jack Tenold is not what you would call mechanically minded.

“I think using a telephone is complicated,” said Tenold, a financial services branch manager for WMA Securities in Spokane. “VCRs, forget it.”

So when he found out that he had won a Soap Box Derby car kit for his daughter Allison in a raffle, his first reaction was to, well, panic.

“I thought, ‘We’ll never build it. Who can help us with this?,”’ said Tenold.

Allison wasn’t exactly born with a hammer in her hand either. Her interests run more toward soccer, softball and basketball.

But they picked up the kit and their courage, and proceeded to spread pieces of derby car over the living room floor.

“We built it right here in the living room,” said Tenold. “We tripped over it for two months.”

Working together, they came up with their own unique construction technique.

“We did a lot of it wrong, and then said, ‘Oops, that’s not the way to do it,”’ said Tenold. “Then we’d take it apart and do it right. That’s how I do everything in life.”

Both agree it was an excellent bonding experience, although Tenold added that he and Allison have always been pretty close anyway.

Now that the car is finished, it has done wonders for the Tenolds’ self-confidence in their mechanical abilities.

“We haven’t had one minute’s worth of help,” he said. “It shows we can do it.”

As for Allison, her feelings are stenciled in paint, right on the shell of the car: “Thanks Dear Ole Dad!”

Mallique Singleton, 10, and Dave Brown

Dave Brown, a Spokane floor-covering installer, was laying carpet in an office and listening to the office workers talk about the Soap Box Derby.

He knew it would be a great thing to do with his adopted son, Mallique Singleton. But it was quite a financial commitment. The car kits cost around $400.

As it happened, Brown stopped and bought a couple of lottery scratch tickets on the way home a few nights later. And as it happened, he hit a winner for $400. The coincidence was too strong: He knew right away what he would do with that money.

“I thought that would be the perfect opportunity to buy a kit,” said Brown.

So he and Mallique spent the next few weeks creating a race car from a box of bolts, wire, plywood and fiberglass.

“It’s not just father-son, it’s actually the whole family,” said Brown. “It gives us all time to work together. I think it’s a great experience, and it motivates the kids to take on a big responsibility.”

Brown found that it gave them all a focus for their togetherness at the end of the day.

“I work a lot, and my wife Vicki works a lot, and we come home and we’re tired,” said Brown. “But (when) we see a kid holding a wrench, trying to put the thing together, it gives us a chance to sit down and discuss it with each other - where it goes, how to put it together. It gives them a sense of responsibility and gets that teamwork going, too.”

This teamwork was especially gratifying to Brown, the father of an adopted son.

“It’s kind of hard building a relationship with kids who aren’t your own,” said Brown. “To me, it’s a building block to a better relationship.”

He and Mallique already have taken the car to Salem, Ore., and raced it in a rally as a warm-up to the Spokane race. Mallique came home with a 2-1/2-foot-tall trophy.

Meanwhile, Brown has found himself wishing he was Mallique’s age again.

“I never had this when I was growing up,” he said. “If I could have fit in it, I would have gotten in that car and raced it down the hill. I really would have.”

David Ibarra, 13, and his father Juan

David Ibarra is only an eighth-grader at North Pines Junior High in the Valley, but he’s already an accomplished translator. He translates for his father, Juan Ibarra, a cook at Tequila’s Restaurant, who speaks only Spanish.

“I’ve been translating for a pretty long time, so translating is easy for me,” said David.

One day, David was translating while his dad was conducting some insurance business with Marchette Momb, who works at the Allstate Insurance office in the Valley (“he can translate some pretty complicated terms,” said Momb).

Momb is also an official with the Spokane Soap Box Derby, and she has what she calls a “Soapbox Derby shrine” behind her desk. She noticed David staring at it.

“I said, ‘If I get you a car you can race, would you like to?”’ she said.

“I said I was very interested in racing,” said David. “I said it sounded like a fun sport to me.”

So Momb arranged for the Knights of Columbus to donate a car.

“This kid has been in my office every week since, shaking my hand and thanking me for getting him a car,” said Momb.

The car was a used one and half torn apart. So David and Juan went right to work on it.

“I read the instructions, and then translated them into Spanish for my dad,” said David. “We put the car together, and I kept on helping him and helping him.

“We tried to make a real improvement in that car.”

Apparently, it worked. David raced the car in Salem recently and came home with a trophy.

But the best reward has simply been the opportunity for David and Juan to work together.

“I enjoy working with my dad because he’s a nice person to work with,” said David. “It’s really fun for kids and parents to get involved in the fun stuff together.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos