CROOKSTON, Minn. – Folks have seen Allen Dregseth tooling around town on his oversize red Radio Flyer wagon for weeks. “Test drives,” he calls them. The official debut of the adult-size wagon will be Thursday at Crookston Crazy Days merchant promotion. Dregsten, 83, said he was inspired to build the wagon by childhood memories of the iconic Radio Flyer. After spotting a junkyard 1993 Pontiac Sunbird convertible for $300 there was no stopping him. Dregseth fabricated the wagon’s sides from aluminum he intended originally for a truck trailer. A Cookston body shop helped. Dregseth himself created the facsimile Radio Flyer decals for the wagon’s sides. It all took three months.
Radio Flyer flies again. Dregseth’s Crookston wagon is in the spirit of similar adult-size Radio Flyer recreations by hobbyists in Kentucky and Idaho. The originals, first in wood and later in metal, were manufactured by a Chicago cabinet company starting in 1917. The company’s original product was cabinets for the rage of the era – radios. And hence the name Radio Flyer.