AMERICAN NOTES: Et Tu, Junior? (Contd.)

When 14-year-old James H. Gronen of Boulder, Colo., was disqualified two weeks ago for rigging his car with a secret electromagnet to win the 1973 All-American Soap Box Derby, it seemed that he was a boy whose all-American ingenuity was exceeded only by his guile. Now it turns out that his uncle and legal guardian, Robert Lange, founder of a ski-equipment firm called the Lange Co., taught him all he knew. In a letter to the derby director in Boulder, Lange said not only that the magnetic nose "has been around for years" but that he had to urge...

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