Schreiber Mite

(click on photos to enlarge)

Harry "Pop" Schreiber in his hobby shop in Kansas City

The spring and summer of 1968 was a terrible period in our country's history.  The assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee triggered mass racial violence across the United States.  Dozens of major cities were rocked by race riots, with Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Louisville and Kansas City being among those cities which were hardest hit.  The violence continued through the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late summer.

Old-timers in Kansas City say that few residents of that city were aware of the unrest which Rev. King's murder generated.  And veteran police officers maintain that the level and extent of the violence in Kansas City was never fully reported.

The April 9, 1968 edition of the "Kansas City Star" reported that after the first two nights of violence, the toll in Kansas City totaled 5 killed, over 20 injured, more than 150 arsons being reported, and over 100 adults and 11 juveniles being arrested.  The National Guard had been called in to quell the violence.  But the violence would continue for 3 more days.

The lead story in that April 9 edition of the "Star" began:  "Violence erupted for the second straight night on Kansas City's East Side last night, turning a large part of the area into a battleground where snipers dueled with police and National Guardsmen in the glow of high-reaching flames of fire-bombed buildings.  ...the most severe trouble was in an area bounded roughly by Twenty-seventh and Thirty-ninth Streets, extending about eight blocks in both directions from Prospect Avenue.  (A major fire) was at Thirty-fifth and Prospect, an area which appeared to be entirely engulfed by flame.  Virtually every building on all sides of the intersection was caught in the blaze."

Yet one little building at 3507 Prospect Avenue, the address of Harry "Pop" Schreiber's hobby shop and appliance repair, the home of the "Model Aircraft Institute", was untouched by the violence.  In fact, the "word" in the neighborhood surrounding Pop Schreiber's shop was that it was not to be burned or looted and Pop Schreiber was to be protected from the racial violence on Kansas City's East Side.

Harry Schreiber immigrated to the United States shortly after World War I and opened his shop at the corner of 35th and Prospect on Kansas City's East Side.  Located in the front of the store was his real love; a hobby shop where Kansas Citians came for their model airplane kits, engines and tether cars.  While the front of his shop was a labor of love, the rear of the shop was devoted to his small appliance repair business.  And it was the appliance repair business which put bread on the table at the Schreiber house.  A visit to Pop Schreiber's hobby shop would usually find no one working in the front of the store, but Pop could always be found whistling in the back of the shop while he was busy repairing a toaster, or mixer or whatever.

As the area surrounding Schreiber's shop deteriorated in the 1960s, he more-often-than-not found himself helping out of the poor families that now lived in the neighborhood by offering to repair an appliance for free, or perhaps by giving away a small balsa glider to one of the neighborhood kids who liked to hang out at his shop.  Pop's kindness to his neighbors was recognized throughout this East Side community, and the favor was returned to him during that awful week in April, 1968.

But the late 1940s and early 1950s were a much better time around Pop Schreiber's hobby shop.  The post-World War II boom in tether car racing was making itself felt in the area and Kansas City was considered to be one of the hot-beds of tether car racing in the country.  Pop was an accomplished speed plane flyer and in response to the growing interest in tether cars, he designed and produced a mite car kit which he sold to members of the local tether car club.  The car was well engineered, relatively inexpensive, easy to build, and the finished car was quite competitive against most of the mite cars of that era.

Pop patterned the car after the wildly successful Hornet .60 powered Matthews V-car which Fresno's Roy Imhoff had used to become the first tether car racer to officially exceed 100 mph on September 7, 1941.  Pop's car was teardrop-shaped with the cylinder head exposed at the front of the car, reminiscent of the Matthews V-car.  The body was rather short and stubby with a V-shaped trailing axle at the rear.  The car was initially designed to be powered by a Bantam .19 engine but most of the finished cars were powered by McCoy .19 race car engines.  Pop's kits included the two-piece body, cast in either magnesium or aluminum, along with a cast mount for the engine and drive axle.  The car utilized a spur gear drive unit with a 2:1 gear ratio powering the front axle.  The kit also included a stainless steel trailing axle, reinforced with a silver-soldered cross brace, and a pair of Pac-A-Lite aluminum ball-bearing wheels and knife-edge tires, identical to those found on the front of Pac-A-Lite's Scat Cat race cars.

Selection of the drive wheels and tires was at the discretion of the builder, with either Real McCoy rear wheels or C&R two-piece aluminum wheels being the usual choice.  A small steel flywheel was mounted on the crankshaft alongside the pinion gear on those cars equipped with the lightweight aluminum C&R drive wheels.  The added mass of the heavy steel inner wheel halves of the Real McCoy drive wheels negated the need for a separate flywheel for those cars which were so equipped.  3 inch diameter C&R semi-pneumatic tires were typically mounted on the drive wheels.  The choice of fuel tanks was also up to the builder; some cars were fitted with modified Perfect tanks while other builders installed their own custom-built tanks.  All fuel tanks were fitted with a vent tube out the front of the car to pressurize the tank.

Built and raced in an era when modified Thimble Drome Champions still dominated the competition on most mite car tracks, the Schreiber "teardrop" car easily outpaced the venerable Thimble Dromes.  And even with the introduction of the Scat Cat and, later, the Martin Flash, the spur-gear drive Schreiber "teardrop" still held its own in the .19-class.

The yellow painted car, shown below on the left, is an example of a magnesium bodied Schreiber "teardrop".  The car is equipped with Real McCoy drive wheels and a custom-built fuel tank.  The polished aluminum car (serial no. 2), shown on the right, is equipped with C&R mite wheels, a small flywheel on the engine crankshaft, and a modified Perfect fuel tank.

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This website was created and maintained by John Lorenz (e-mail:  mitecars@gmail.com)