Flying in style

Everywhere Fred Keller and Judy Foster drive their red scale-model “Radio Flyer” wagon these days, people stop them in gaped-mouth wonderment.

“Why?” they ask.

“For fun,” Keller replies. “Why else would someone do this?”

The two artfully sculpted the one-of-a-kind wagon using marine plywood covered in a composite of foam, epoxy and fiberglass and repurposed parts from a 1976 Mazda pickup Foster inherited when her father died in 1988.

“He’d just be grinning,” she said of her father.

It took the two 11 months – from Aug. 6, 2009 to July 2010 – to sculpt this fantasy ride in the garage of their home near Wolf Lake, between Palmer and Wasilla.

Keller said they got the idea when they saw a similar vehicle at an Oregon car show.

On the highway to Anchorage, they cruise along at 55 to 60 mph, turning heads the whole way.

“How fast does it go?”

“As fast as you can pull it,” they tease.

Some people ask to take photos of the car; most have questions about how Keller and Foster sculpted their fantastic ride.

“Invariably, people look at us and just smile,” Foster said.

Perhaps no one in the Mat-Su Borough loathed this rainy summer more than Foster and Keller.

“Oh, it hurt,” Keller said.

Day after day, they’d get the wagon ready and moments before they were ready to roll, clouds would gather over the Talkeetna Mountains and the rain would begin.

Both Foster and Keller are long-time Alaska pilots.

“We sold our airplanes a few years ago and started into cars,” she said. “Neither one of us is too sane when it comes to this.”

Somewhere between art and science, the licensed and insured drivable sculptured is a scale-model – 363 times larger – than the classic children’s toy. The details are all there, right down to the shape of its 8-foot handle and wheels with the big full-moon white hubs and red plastic caps covering the hubs.

It took weeks of searching to find just the right steering wheel.

Foster had the idea of using a real wagon wheel for a steering wheel. But the challenge was finding one that looked just right and that Keller could adapt.

“He has to make it work mechanically and I just care what it looks like,” Foster said.

“We’ve had a few discussions about that,” Keller said.

Bending down, Foster spins the red center cap on one wheel to show off a bit of their ingenuity.

They’re the twist-off tops from laundry detergent bottles. Keller attached the threaded part of the plastic bottles’ necks to the wheels and the caps spin snuggly into place.

Most of the notes, drawings and calculations he used to craft the car are on one sheet of paper. “I create a lot as I go along.”

The wagon’s detailed craftsmanship and unique appearance earned it top honors in the Exotic Class and the Show Stopper award at a local car show.

“They were really impressed with Fred’s work,” Foster said.

Keller’s talents for fabricating the ideas his brain creates “mostly in bed” also extend to model airplanes, small robots and five, full-size experimental aircraft.

In 1981, Keller won the Wright Brothers Trophy and the Wright brothers’ niece Ivonette Miller presented it to him at the family home.

“When she sat with me in their house and told me about running through the fields to get a ride on their ‘flying machine,’ the hairs on my neck stood up.”