Spindletop Rotary to sell Soap Box Derby gear as it says goodbye to 20-year tradition

But when the Texas Department of Transportation in 2019 announced plans to remove the Maury Meyers Bridge to make way for the widening of Interstate 10 and U.S. 69, the organization suddenly found itself without a venue to host its race. That, in conjunction with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following year and a change in the organization's makeup, made it almost impossible to conduct the race.

So, Spindletop Rotary is selling the equipment, which includes soapbox cars, weights, ramps and scales, among other gear. The club is hosting a garage sale for the items from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at 242 N 18th St., under the Maury Meyers Bridge in Beaumont.

"Part of (the activity) was getting out of your comfort zone," Spindletop Rotary Past President Shannon Garrod told The Enterprise Thursday. "(The cars) come in a kit and my grandson and I put them together -- we actually had two, we lost one in (Tropical Storm Harvey) so I ordered another kit -- and he had to help me assemble it . (It made you) work with your hands and create something and then race it."

The Soap Box Derby was comprised of three divisions: Stock, Superstock and Super Kid competitors. 

"The first three finishers in each division were awarded scholarships," Garrod said. "The Stock and Superstock (winners) could use that for higher education...they got $500 for third place, $1,000 for second place and $1,500 for first place. The Super Kids got the same (amounts), but they could use it as needed because most of them were special needs. One of our race winners, who had cerebral palsy, used (the money) to outfit a truck so he could drive it."

First place finishers got to travel to Akron, Ohio for national races in July, where the All-American Soap Box Derby is held each year, Garrod said.

"We would ship the cars (and) give a stipend to the families of the winners to help with travel expenses," she said. 

While the event was a lot of fun to put it on, it also required a lot of work, Garrod said.

"Fundraising, but also just getting the permits, the barricades, permission to close down the bridge and the streets, getting porta-potties and setting up the course -- we had ramps and canopies, we had to have volunteers for the timers and the judges as well as concessions and security, it was a huge endeavor," she said. 

And though it took a lot of work to put on, the real nail in the coffin is the loss of the location. The club worked with TxDOT to try and find a replacement location, looking at the Brooks Road overpass or even the Willow Street exit downtown, but both either came with too much liability or just weren't feasible.

The only other option to continue the derby would be to build a course for it. Such a course exists in Hockley, northwest of Houston. But to build one like that here would cost an estimated $2 million taking into account property acquisition and building costs, Garrod said.

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"There just isn't another location," she said. "And we were under the impression that the (Maury Meyers Bridge) was going to be torn down in 2020, 2021 and it's still there."

As the years have gone by, the makeup of the Rotary Club has gone from mostly older men to now almost all women, Garrod said, which would make the physical aspect of putting on the event more difficult as well.

"You've got to lift those cars off the trailers and lift them on the trailers -- there's a lot of manpower that's needed as well," she said.

The club will be selling several of the cars, many of which don sponsors such as Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas and DJ's Original Boudain, among others, as well as the racers' names.

Garrod said the cars will probably go for between $100 to $300 depending on condition and age. The sale will also feature never opened soapbox car kits, which will be priced around $400, she said. Additionally, the Super Kid cars will probably go for more than the Stock and Superstock cars as they were two-seaters specially made to accommodate racers with special needs.

"It was a family event," she said. "Some people were competitive in nature and some people were just there to have the opportunity to do it. These kids were seven to 18 years old driving these cars 25 to 30 (miles per hour) down the Maury Meyers Bridge with gravity. It was a great bonding experience, it was really a lot of fun. It was a lot of hard work but the reward at the end of the day (was) the Sunday banquet at the Elegante...the camaraderie of the whole thing, people outside, off of electronics doing something as a family."

olivia.malick@hearst.com