Hot Rods The necessity of our old car hobby

It's all interrelated, though. The world intersects our hobby and often threatens it. At the same time our hobby provides some pointers to understanding some of the things that are wrong with the world.

 

There's not a single thing within these pages that matters. I know how harsh that sounds but take a brief moment and consider that statement. Everyone reading this could live a long and complete life without it because it's not one of those things that anyone must depend upon in order to sustain a family or themselves. Sure, it can be theraputic, a welcome distraction, a release of creative energy and so on. Will it cleanse us of waste? Provide shelter? Feed you and yours? Is it even necessary in an historic context? Removing the aspects of making a living from it it's not now nor ever will be a staple of survival.

The fact that it's a thing that doesn't matter is probably one of strongest arguments as to how much it does matter to so many. I know, oxy*****, right? Well maybe it is since there's an awful lot of folks that do indeed count on it for one reason or another, and you can count me in as one of those. It won't fix my house, won't transport me and mine as needed, won't provide healthcare, won't feed us, or at least not directly. This **** we like so much is how I make my living so in an indirect way I have to count on it to do those things. If you live each waking hour for any form of it you'll soon realize that it can all disappear in the blink of an eye. It can be a Model A Ford or a Model J Duesenberg, one wrong move outside the norm and it becomes insignificant. I won't turn this into a political rant but that's one of the forces against that we face daily. There's a very large and loud force that would love to see all that we love and are about destroyed forever. They'd love to rid the landscape of the old fossil fuel burners cherished by the likes of us. Some may see it in a polar opposite way, but I embrace that meaningless life choice. It makes me rebel in ways not directly related to our chosen staple. Makes me do more and do better, keeps a single finger raised to any that would oppose it or try to shut me down. At the end of it all I simply like the fact that me and my life choices are well removed from mainstream ideals and definitions, that I can indeed feed myself and my loved ones with it, that I can also provide shelter and transportation. Even healthcare comes from it, but the fact remains that it's not a necessity in the big picture unless you find a way to make it so. I think I have and I'd be way off and dishonest to declare otherwise because it's been very good to me for a long time.

 

Ahh the good old days of OLD cars. I am glad we still have pictures.Bruce.

 

I can't shake the sense that there is a reason underlying our love of this stuff, and that it is that we sense some fundamental but utterly elusive sanity in it. That is, perhaps it does not matter at all, but it is a reflection of something which matters a great deal, which very few of us or anyone else can really grasp.

After all, what we're dealing with here is sinking our fingers into technology, and who would deny that the state of the world today is deeply bound up with technological development? be that for good, ill, or bits of both? And that is only one of a hundred aspects to this.

 

Wow !!

That's an awesome post highlander!

This thing we love here is really nothing more than a little niche of the auto industry. Eliminating the auto industry and its related support structure would impact the entire system of life as we know it. Eliminating fossil fuel would do the same, so I don't see it happening. The powers that be make tooooo much money and have too big of an investment.

In the big scheme of things everything under the sun is vanity and chasing after the wind. But --- there are folks who seem to know how to grow food and those who know how to hunt. They need tools and weapons and shelter. Enter the fabricators and carpenters. So the farmers, hunters, fabricators, and carpenters need some distraction and entertainment in order to do their jobs even better and then comes the artists, some from the ranks with their skill some from out with different skill. Every culture has had the same basic outline so I guess it's just the common thread of the way mankind sets itself up.

The artists are here in this hobby with a great love for automotive arts. Within the group of artists are the storytellers and historians. Skill, art, stories, history & knowledge revolving around a specific era of automobiles - the Hamb.

 

Damn. I would've never guessed you guys were so profound. No offense intended.
No, it's not a cure all but it sure as hell eases the stress of the new zeitgeist.

 

I would love to contribute to this profound discussion, but since English is not my native tongue, I'll have to p***. I do agree that to scant in my workshop on any kind of vehicle takes my mind at ease. It's the perfect way to create flow (in your mind and perhaps in a manyfold)

Sent from my A0001 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Highlander old cars and old bikes are important.They keep people like me sane and reasonably content.Our other problems are solvable but no one here wants to hear by what methods.(Ot anyhow )

 

Just something to think about. Whatever it is that causes you to retreat to your garage, all of it's been happening for a long time. Over all, the worlds been kinda ****ty for a few hundred years. The difference is, you have better access to it now or maybe it has better access to you. The world works in real time, so bad news and good news travels in milli-seconds. In a world where ****ty news is a money maker, you get what's on the plate. Working in your garage seems to make it go away or slow it down... a little. But you can't stay out there forever.

So, do what ever it takes to cool your heels. The house made out of bull **** will keep the light on for you and you will be back. You always come back.

 

My garage is my peace!

 

Just read this thread for the first time. I try to follow what's going on in the world as much as I can, and read many different perspectives each day, and have very strong opinions. But...
I remember trying to explain to my ex once that after a ****ty day at work, and when everydamnthing is going to hell in a hurry, all I have to do is go to the garage. I swear that the simple act of opening the door, turning on the lights, the music, maybe the heat, and turning to look at my project will bring my blood pressure down immediately, the stress will magically evaporate, and, no matter what, it always seems like life ****s a little less at that moment.
She never understood, but then again, her only hobby was *****ing at me.

 

Years ago, I got a metal sliver in my eye while working on a project. After a couple days, I went to the doctor. He used a dremel tool to grind the rusted metal out of the colored portion of my eyeball. Last year, I ran a cut-off wheel into my left index finger cutting the tendon 20%. And most recently, I smashed my right ring fingernail to the point of immediately turning black. That really ****in' hurt, and I'm glad my kids weren't home at the time because I swore, loud, like a drunkin' sailor. Those are just the 'highlights' of my wrenching hobby. Why would any 'normal' person continue persueing this hobby after incurring serious physical injury? Because those unfortunate mishaps pale in comparison to what so many others have endured to allow me, and you, to escape to a place where there really is two girls for every boy.

 

I teach middle school shop in a high poverty community. We build co2 cars as one of our projects in cl***. The feeling of accomplishment and success upon completion makes their life just a little bit better at that moment.
Going out to the garage gives me that same feeling. My day is just a little better when I work out their with my music on.
Life's good as a whole.

 

without art and creativity, life................ is just existing.

 

I'm a news junkie, so I need my shop time to keep my sanity.

 

Hot rods are like chicken soup,good for the soul.HRP

 

I hope my ramblings don't get taken out of context. It really is an oxy***** to declare how important something so insignificant happens to be. I only brought up how necessary it is from 1 perspective, that being one who makes a living within the boundaries of vintage iron. The only late model (important) vehicles I work on are my own. So why did I put important in there? Because in the mainstream of the lame public regular daily transportation is a must. It doesn't matter if you drive yourself or use m*** transit systems, much like food and shelter we gotta have it. That doesn't mean the rare few who use their p***ion projects as transportation can now pound their chest and get all King Kong about how they use em as daily drivers. And I say that because no matter how hard you fight to try and force the public to grasp your interests or p***ion, or to accept it as one of life's necessities, well forget it. You're not, we're not, ever going to be on the list of things retained in the wake of a national disaster. Whether Yellowstone blows up or that ****in idiot in the Pacific Rim figures out what to do with his "toys", this life as we know it will be gone. Maybe temporary, maybe for good, so maybe you'd best enjoy it all you can. And maybe don't take it, or yourselves, so serious that the wordless meaning and importance becomes dilluted or blurred to the point where the main reason you began can't be recognized any longer.

 

I saw this and it really hit home. More than I care to admit.We all have our reasons and connections to this wonderful hobby/ life style.
Like many here I find peace, brotherhood, and respect from the connections that are obvious to us - yet not so to the rest of the world. It appears that we are all rogues in more ways than one.(That's a compliment ) I have no easy answers for the world around us, but we must remember the connection and above all the freedom it affords us.
I'll finish by posting a picture of my high school ride a few street and race cars along the way. And my old tow rig I built back before Coe/ Lcf were cool. Notice the common link for all of us. We live somewhat in the past. I think there in lies the connection.

 

This thread has been just barely hitting the social rev limiter.
I dig that Ryan has provided this forum for our automotive ways. The Hamb was born from the necessity of our old car hobby.
Enjoy the inner sanctum of your garage.

 

The olde car hobby is important since it gives the enthusiast a timeline for life and establishes continuity.

We often remember where we were at and who we were with because of a project that may have tied a number of folks together or torn them apart due to the outcome.....


IMHO

 

Certainly a degree of personal mobility is a basic need, like food. But consider the scenario where some evil genius with an underground map room has succeeded, despite James Bond's best efforts, to infect the entire world's population with voracious genetically-modified tapeworms. Sure, food remains a basic necessity, but not nearly as much of it as Dr. Whatever wants to sell us. Now, if that isn't ****ogous to our current mobility scenario it is only because the latter is not the result of some dark conspiracy but of plain history which is a matter of public record if anyone takes the trouble to go and look. Our need for mobility is engineered out of all proportion to what it might have been. The only reason we don't see it is because its pervasive: there is hardly any alternative to point to, and few minds are really very good at handling counterfactuals.

New urbanists, bicycling activists, and car-haters see all this but as it were in a gl*** darkly. It takes a hot-rodder to see that the evil is not in "the automobile" but in the infrastructure.

 

Members of the HAMB are all about history. Mostly cars, but we are thinkers.
The world can be an evil place. Doing a burnout or spinning up a motor with open headers can take you to another place and make you feel better for a while.
I choose not to put my head in the sand.
Unless I'm dead, they can bury me that way. Then kids can use my *** for a bike rack and those I don't like can kiss it.

 

"bike rack" - nothing wrong with re-purposing!

 

Canceled my Facebook account 2 months ago...don't watch the news...half of my head might be in the sand and I hear about the **** going on in the world from my kids anyway.

Now if I could just get my carb tuned and my temp down a few degrees im a happy guy.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app