I don't know if this is the car, but early in the life of NASCAR, Bill France Sr. invited Hershel to race at a track in the South. Hershel DROVE a new Olds to the race, raced it, and drove it back to Portland where it was sold by the dealer as (slightly) used car! Last I heard he's still alive and kicking (in his late 90's) and ready to cut some laps when he turns 100!
@j hansen Hello, When I was trying to earn some money to go on a long surfing road trip towards the end of summer one year, I was hurting for a job of any kind. Not just cutting lawns or newspaper deliveries in the neighborhood. I could have delivered prescriptions from our neighborhood drug store to various homes, but they fell through or were not the most interesting of jobs. A friend said that the local trailer company just a few blocks down the street from our Westside of Long Beach house was hiring. It was on the same street as the Speed Engineering hot rod/drag race/custom shop run by Tom McEwen and Ronnie LeGrand. Also, just around the corner from Clay Smith Cams location. So, I bicycled to the office and got an interview. They liked my experiences in building hot rods and knowledge of mechanics. They did have an opening in the mechanical installation section of the assembly line. But, they said a young teen like me would not fit in with the “older” seasoned veterans that had been working at the same job for plenty of years. (Well , isn’t that in most assembly line work? ) The job offered was an assembly line cabinet installer and door/drawer assembly. The photo of the flat panel doors with exterior hinges and handles was the same in the whole trailer cabinet portion of most companies. In looking at those in the photo, we had several models with the same spiky designs. Jnaki It was my job to assemble the door with small finish nails shooting into the wood with an air powered hose unit falling down from the ceiling. I was able to stock pile a huge stack of doors and panels to get them ready for the next portion of my cabinet door section work. Once the doors were ready, I picked each one and used of all things, a triple head bench top drill for the next level. I had to use the drill press to put the hinge holes in place. At first, there were markings on the table top to show where the edge alignment was to be matched, then down comes thy triple head drill. Flip the door over and do the same thing to the other edge hinge section. Then once again a large stack for the next assembly line job. I figured out that if I placed a stopper on the table, I could slide the whole door up against the stopper and the triple drill would be perfectly aligned to make the precision three holes for the hinges. That way I could drill plenty of doors and stack them up. Then the doors would go to the next station down the line. I made a huge pile and then I could rest because there were no more doors to drill. The guys down the line did not like it that I was resting while they were chipping away at the huge stack I made. I got the message indirectly with shouts to “slow the sh… down..” They did not like the youngster showing them up with a faster, more efficient ways to get the job done. Note: Finally, the foreman came over and told me to take a break to slow things down. They could not think of anything else for me to work on, so they gave me a nail gun and thin frame work sticks to put together. Nail two thin sticks together, with no frame jig or other ways to get them even. Just make a “T” section and use the power air driven nail gun… that worked for a dozen, but I was slightly off one unit and the nail went into my finger about a half inch. They did nothing at the so called, “first aid station” and the office staff did not like seeing blood on a paper towel to stop the bleeding. They gave me two Band Aids, no antiseptic solutions and said get back to work. I collected my measly check and walked out of the door. YRMV Note 2: I still went on the Southern Baja, Mexico surf trip with my brother and friends. He loaned me money if I would make all of the breakfast, lunch and dinners when we were camping and surfing for the whole week. Minimal effort on my behalf and it was a well deserved vacation riding those outstanding waves all day and into the night. The things we did to be allowed to go ride waves during our teenage years!!! YRMV Note 3: My week's stint at the trailer company also satisfied the parental, "go out and get a job" requirement, even if it was for a short time. So, Iwas given permission to travel South of the Border to go on an extended surf vacation, riding outstanding waves in several different spots. Yes!
The Jalopy Journal
