Go-karts offer family-friendly alternative to soccer, lakes

It rises out of the farm fields west of Delano, out past Montrose and Howard Lake and places such as the Peppermint Twist Drive-in, where they play "Puff, the Magic Dragon" over the intercom. A chain-link fence corrals a small village of vehicles, from battered pickups to massive RVs with flat-screen televisions, most of them tuned to car racing.

Then you come across a squat building and a collection of garages and spectator stands before the sprawling green bowl of lawn scribbled with continuous loops of black asphalt.

Iowa has its Field of Dreams, the pristine baseball park built at the edge of nowhere. For the owners and racers, Stockholm Motorsports Park may be their go-kart track of dreams, where kids and adults live out NASCAR fantasies or, more important, participate in that fleeting, bygone thing we call family time.

Last weekend was the end of the racing season, and kart racers and onlookers took advantage of the warm slant of autumn light to pack the grounds. Five-year-olds in racing gear emulated their professional heroes in tiny Kiddie Cars. A teenage girl waited for a practice run, then pushed her pigtails under her helmet and revved her engine before squealing onto the track at 30 miles per hour.

Across a gravel lot, scores of dads and kids worked on their karts and several family dogs snoozed in the sun. One dad handed a socket wrench to his tiny son and gave him some advice that is true, and always will be: Righty tighty, lefty loosey.

"It's kind of old-fashioned," said John Miller, one of the partners who built the track just east of Cokato. "We do a flag ceremony every day. The parents camp out on weekends and have barbecues. Kids play games in their campers. Families use kart racing to spend time with their kids when they otherwise wouldn't."

Miller, CEO of Miller Milling, did it partly for his own kids.

Kids are drawn not by technology gadgets, but the smell of grease and exhaust, the roar of old-school motors and head-to-head competition at 40 miles per hour -- a "secret subculture" of weekend gearheads.

Karts cost from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, but the track offers inexpensive rental packages so those who can't afford karts can still drive. Racing is a money loser for the track, said Miller, who augments income from corporate team-building events and bachelor parties. The track has been open for about seven seasons; several communities turned it down back when racing had image problems and long before it mushroomed into arguably America's most popular sport.

Typical is the Graaf family of Becker, Minn. Jason Graaf manages a propane gas distributorship in St. Cloud and seized his son Tyler's love of racing as a family bond. Tyler, 14, rented the extra-fast karts a couple of years ago and was hooked. They bought a kart, then another when daughter Ashley, 12, showed interest. Jason bought a book on "racing for dummies" and a trailer to haul the karts. Since then, they've spent every other weekend together in a camper at the track.

Ashley has passed up weekends with friends for this family time. "We spend about half an hour racing, and the rest of the time with family and friends here," she said.

Also a gymnast, Ashley considers kart racing a sport, "but it's more of a mental sport than physical. It gives me confidence [to compete directly against the boys]. Believe it or not, I used to be shy."

An hour later, Tyler waited in line for a practice run. As his kart moved to the front, his face tightened with focus. With his dad standing nearby, he gave a quick thumbs-up and was gone.