LITTLE ROCK — Spend a few moments with the word “goldbrick.”
Once upon a time, it meant a solid brick of gold shaped for ease of shipment to places like Fort Knox. Today, the dictionary says, it’s a block of something cheap gilded for use in a swindle, or it’s military slang for an unreliable worker - a shiftless shirker.
Once upon another time, an ancient mariner told me that goldbrick was Navy slang for an uncooperative woman who wouldn’t dance or make herself pretty.
None of those is flattering. So what were the forebears of today’s Malvern Runners thinking in 1982 when they named themselves The Gold Brick Runners?
I’ve been wondering about that because the 30th annual Brickfest 5K is 7:30 a.m. Saturday in Malvern. The festival has a new venue; the race has a new course. But its history remains, a history intriguingly mentioned on the website of the Arkansas Road Runners Club of America.
People who are likely to know about the club’s original name appeared to be few and hard to find last week, including a longtime race director who “married and moved off years ago” and a pharmacist who was on vacation.
But Hot Spring County Judge Bill Scrimshire had a minute to reminisce (because the local couple he had been expecting to marry didn’t show up for their wedding). Scrimshire might be expected to be the source for insight into that club name because he was one of the city’s first running enthusiasts.
He directed Malvern’s first 5K during its first Brickfest festival, 30 years ago when he was city mayor and still a runner.
But “might” also means might not.
“Let me just say I’m not real sure,” he explained, laughing. It’s true that for its first two years, Scrimshire planned, conducted and did the work that was the Brickfest 5K. But he never joined the club.
The Malvern area has two Acme Brick Co. plants, one in town and one just outside city limits at Perla. These plants were (and are) 3 miles apart, so he came up with a run straight through town from brickyard to brickyard.
“It worked out real good,” he said. “We tailed off down a little old gravel road down by the Perla plant, and we got our 3.1 or whatever it takes.”
It probably matters that this route was uphill all the way.
“Then, all of a sudden, another group got to jogging around here, and they organized them a little club,” he said. “I never was a part of the club. When I started, nobody else wanted to do it much. But they kind of gathered up and ran together, and they called themselves the Goldbrickers.”
He figures they were just playing on the city motto, “Brick Capital of the World.” But, as he said, he doesn’t really know.
Before the third Brickfest they called him and “very graciously asked me would I mind letting them take that 5K so they could administer it and sponsor it and put it on starting that year. And I very gladly let them have it,” he says, in a pleased tone recognizable by anyone who has ever shed a thankless job.
The Gold Brick group changed the race route.
Scrimshire went on running and jogging for decades, until knee pain made him stop eight years ago. He has had both knees replaced, but he hasn’t resumed running.
Dale Burns has been a Malvern runner for so long he also might be expected to remember the original group - and he does. He knows who died and who moved off.
Alas, “when I joined the Malvern Runners in ’92 or so it was already Malvern Runners,” Burns said. “Why they named it [Gold Brick] I don’t know.”
Burns is once again the Brickfest 5K race director. He’s bracing for a huge turnout, because last year the 5K drew more than 400 runners. It’s once again part of the Arkansas Grand Prix series, which is once again setting participation records. By Wednesday, 402 runners and walkers had signed on to the annual series (and you thought last year’s record 387 Grand Prix runners was a lot).
Meanwhile, the Malvern club doesn’t have a team in the Grand Prix.
“The Malvern Runners, actually, we’re almost non-existent because a lot of the runners have passed on,” Burns said. Or moved off.
Burns has made his 5K volunteers automatic members of the Malvern Runners. Some of them are Chamber of Commerce staff, because the chamber used to present the race as part of the annual festival. This year the festival will be conducted by a separate nonprofit. “But the Chamber of Commerce president is on the board of the Brickfest,” Burns notes.
“They all help in some way or another.” No goldbrickers.
If you’ve run the Brickfest 5K before, don’t head there Saturday morning expecting to start on the north side of the courthouse, as the race has for about 15 years.
The new staging area’s on an old Wal-Mart lot behind Auto Zone (1611 U.S. 270 West) reached by turning west off Martin Luther King Boulevard at Collie Road. The certified, 3.1-mile, out-and-back route crosses some rolling hills but includes about 2 miles with views of the Ouachita River.
Registration is $15, or $7 for runners 18 and younger. Race-day registration will be $20 for all ages.
The goody bags will include a popular keepsake: miniature bricks.
“A couple of years ago I made trophies out of great big bricks, but that was a pain - 140 bricks with trophies on them. We had to mount and glue everything,” Burns said. “We tried that once. Now I just give them medallions.”
In addition to the unusual generous assortment of overall and age division awards for runners required of all Grand Prix races, Brickfest will have awards for the first 10 walkers, male and female.
Burns, by the way, will be walking his first event after a two-year layoff. “It’s the first time I’ll be a walker,” he said. “I’ve walked in races, but not as a walker.
“Runners can walk, but walkers can’t run.”
The 30th annual Brickfest Festival actually begins Thursday, at Malvern City Park. Three days of festivities will include everything from the usual beauty pageant and a three-legged race to a “Ouachita River Regatta” - a white-water float to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday below Remmel Dam.
The schedule’s posted at www.malvernbrickfest.com. See especially Saturday’s brick toss, duck drop and wave-surfing contests.
ActiveStyle, Pages 24 on 06/21/2010