History So you want stories on the HAMB

This is part 1

SPEED WRITING

It was a dark and stormy night, but there was still enough light to finish my 8th grade journalism class homework assignment due the next day. It was the fall of 1954 and my state of the art writing machine was a Royal portable typewriter that my mother had received as a graduation gift from my grandfather in the late nineteen thirties. I really don’t remember what the homework assignment was, but I do remember getting my fingers dirty changing the typewriter ribbon and using carbon paper to make sure I had a copy of the assigned work. I was lucky in as much as I was allowed to take a journalism class in lieu of 8th grade English. That class influenced me for the rest of my life.

The teacher was a no nonsense lady named Mrs. Sullivan. An ongoing assignment was the production of the school newspaper with eight editions during the school year. The printing of the paper was done by students in print shop using individual lead type and an old platen press.

The biggest take away from Mrs. Sullivan’s class was learning how to outline a story. Dangling particles and confusing pronouns take a backseat in the learning process if you can outline a story in a logical manner. I still maintain that a writer who knows how to outline a story ends up with a better product than the writer who uses the cut and paste features on a laptop. By the way, I didn’t outline this project!

When I got to Hoover High in San Diego, I took journalism in my junior and senior years instead of English. Under the tutelage of Mr. King, we continued to create content for the school newspaper. Photography was added to our skill set and thanks to a friendly commercial printer down the street, our photos were processed and we got zinc plates for the school printing presses.

A quick side note on California schools in the late fifties. The school district allocated $390 per student (about $4,000 in 2024 money) and the schools were rated number one in the nation. Now ranked 47th in the nation, California schools spend more than $20,000 per pupil! It’s been said that a high school diploma in those days was the equivalent of an AA degree from a jr. college.

The Southern California car culture in those days was accurately portrayed in the film AMERICAN GRAFFITI. High school parking lots were filled with hot rods and mild customs and cruising the drive inns after a dance or football game was a rite of passage. I took the idea of writing a Car of the Month column to Mr. King and he bought into the concept and I had my first byline column!

The month before I graduated in 1959, I gathered copies of my car columns and sent them to ROD & CUSTOM magazine along with a request for an interview. Got an interview with Dick Day, publisher of R&C, and started my 40 year journey in the hot rod industry. Petersen Publishing was headquartered in an old Safeway grocery store at 5959 Hollywood Blvd. There was a parking lot in back with a pepper tree that had a chain fall for pulling engines! Wally Parks had just been replaced by Bob Green as editor of HOT ROD.

to be continued

 

Great story!!!!! Keep them coming.

 

Cool

 

Participles dangle, not particles. Mrs. Sullivan would be so embarrassed.

 

Dennis,
It ended too soon.... a dangling thought....

and ole Otto Kerreckt will get you every time.....

 

More to come!

 

In the early days of the 12 Port News publication by the Inliners International I wrote quite a few stories usually about Bonneville Speedweek and enjoyed doing and luckily got a few who mentioned to me that they liked them.
I even got a story published in the Bonneville Speedweek program once under a pseudonym…..
All those were long ago…. I was lucky to get a C in English but loved speech and public speaking. Seems I had knack for telling folks to “go to hell” and have them look forward to the trip.

 

I write down some of my life’s experiences don’t really show them to anyone but put copies in a three ring binder for our kids and grandkids to read someday. This happens to be a true story from my youth:

I grew up in a small town suburb of Detroit. I was maybe 14 but hung around with guys older then me who already had cars and were driving. My buddies and me were really into cars. During the summer we noticed a very early 50’s Mercury, baby blue, chopped top, lots of pin striping cruising around. No one knew who the guy was. One day while working on my buddies car in the street this guy pulls over to the curb in front of us. When he got out he had the waterfall haircut and looked a bit rough was probably in his 20’s but that was old to us. Introduced himself but I don’t remember the name.

He said he was from California and came to see his sister. He said he was looking for odd jobs as a mechanic but also did pin striping and other custom work. We would see him around town and he would stop every now and then to talk. Seems every time we saw him he had a different girl in the car and often times talked about his exploits. That was cool and entertaining for teenage boys. He did some pin striping on a small outboard hydroplane I had at he time for a buck or two. My dad didn’t like him around the house and my mom didn’t seem to care for the girls hanging on him.

Car was really cool to us at the time. Flathead, early aluminum wheels nice interior and lowered. I guess he was around four or five weeks then poof and he was gone. No one really knew him or much about him or where he went.

 

More, Denis. We can be both mechanically and literately inclined, and tell stories that illuminate our love affair with the geared world.

 

What he said ^^^^^^^
Dan

 

Man, these bring back memories of Jay Carnine (C9) from way back in the dawn of the HAMB.

 

was waiting to see it was von dutch....

 

Second installment:

This is as good a time as any to explain the car culture in San Diego county and how it influenced me. There were at least 20+ car clubs and there was car club council that met once a month to discuss issues. Generally there was a representative from the police department at the meetings. The predominant clubs were the Prowlers, Chiefs, S.D. Roadsters and Bean Bandits. Our club, Piston Pounders, was started in 1957 and I think that I’m the only surviving charter member.

Indoor car shows were held in the old Electric Building in Balboa Park. Barris, Roth and several shops usually sent cars south for these shows. I met Barris and Roth at these shows and ended up getting a call from George a week after one of the shows. Seems he was doing a photo feature for MOTOR TREND and lost the info on the cars. I was able to help him fill in the blanks.

Speaking of Barris, I was selling cars at a local Rambler dealer in 1960 and someone traded in a ‘27 T with a hemi for a Rambler! I called George, brokered the sale and drove it up highway 101 to his house. Head lights were marginal and I must of made at least four gas stops in 130 miles. This car was to become the Twister T, an AMBR winner.

San Diego county was home to a number of speed equipment manufacturers in the fifties and sixties. Bruce Crower split from Schneider and formed Crower Cams & Equipment Company. Ed “Axle” Stewart created the dropped axle forever known as the “Dago” axle. Paul Schaefer’s shop on Adam’s Avenue was a bike ride from my house, Autopower did 90% of the flame cut header flanges before the advent of die punching them. Marv Hall started HallCraft wire wheels found on almost all dragsters. Jackman Wheels started the off road wheel business. Then there was Paradise Mesa drag strip, Cajon Speedway and the Balboa Stadium quarter mile oval right downtown. Bob Hardy was a free lance photographer that covered everything in San Diego county for HOT ROD, CAR CRAFT and ROD & CUSTOM. When he passed away, thousands of negatives were pitched into a dumpster.

Not long after doing six months active duty in the Air Force Reserves, I moved to Carlsbad and needed a couple of local residents to vouch for me on my library card application. Drove over to Dragmaster and had Jim Nelson and Dode Martin sign the application. Later on, Dragmaster became one of the first clients I worked with at Fall & Associates along with Sandy Belond at Carlsbad Raceway. Sandy had some sage advice on my articles in HRIN (see below). He suggested that I limit my word count to the amount of time it takes to take a dump sitting on the can as that’s where most trade magazine are read!

I had several jobs in the real world before making a living as a full time writer. As mentioned above, I sold Ramblers in 1960. Took a job as a sales rep selling high end Swedish tools in Southern California and Arizona. The owner of the company was a general officer at the Peenemude V-2 rocket launch site in Germany. He was responsible to see to it that the US Forces got access to German scientists and engineers at the end of the war. Through this association, I was able to meet Wernher von Braun, the architect of the NASA space craft program.

A short stint at a radiator shop gave me the info necessary to write my first published tech article in the 2/62 issue of ROD & CUSTOM. I met Trigg Stewart, owner of Autopower, and put together a marketing program to build and market bolt in roll bars for sports cars. Used the SCCA and NHRA rule books to come up with a design that would pass tech for both organizations. Looked at a number of wrecked sports cars for some ideas on how to build a product that worked. I took a wrecked Sprite and turned it into couch with a roll bar for an SCCA convention display. Sales took off and I started looking for greener pastures as I was never going to be a principle at Autopower.

More tomorrow

 

you ABSOLUTELY have us on our seat edges--wonderful!-- a history travelogue thru socal!

 

Lots of SD history there. I'm going to the bean bandit show on Saturday. Do you recall Bobby Waleen from the Prowlers?

 

You can make your stories longer now. It takes some of us a lot longer to take a dump these days.
Thank you for writing this history.

 

WoW

 

Wow and what a good read. Proof too that most of the time things don't magickly happen in the work world you have to bust your but and make them happen.
This also shows that high quality teachers who push you and make you work a bit harder help a lot with one's success in life. I still say that they need to quit teaching to a test and give an actual education like we got in the 50's and 60's and up through the 80's before "the test" controlled education.
Now I have to wait for the next episode.

 

Tell us what you remember about Oscar's ... when I was down there '64 - '67, it was a continuous car show every night at any Oscar's ... and after the drags, wow .....

 

I’ve been a member of the San Diego Roadster Club for over 40 years eventho I live about 90 miles north. Many of the older club members lived in and thru that era and its great to hear additional stories..

 

Well I knew you were an experienced hot rodder from back in the day, based on your posts down through the years, but was unaware of your legit bona fides. This is rich, looking forward to more!

 

Part 3

Saw an ad in HOT ROD for a new Petersen trade magazine called HOT ROD INDUSTRY NEWS. I sent a letter to Ray Brock, publisher, with some ideas of stories I could contribute to this new publication. Got the go ahead from Ray and submitted an outline on a two part story on manufacturer’s reps in the speed equipment industry. Figured if I broke it into two parts, I had a shot of becoming a regular contributor. I interviewed Herbie Goldstein aka Mr. Phone, Dennis Holding drag racer turned rep and Norm Wishoff. That two part series turned into a five year stint as a free lance contributor to HRIN. Along the way, I started a byline column dishing out news, notes and rumors about the industry. Wrote over 70 pieces for HRIN over a five year period.

I also started writing business stories on a regular basis for MOTORCYCLE DEALER NEWS and one of the Chilton publications. When the Bagnall brothers came out with PICKUP, VAN & OFF-ROAD INDUSTRY NEWS, I was a regular contributor. Bank of America commissioned a booklet for people seeking business loans for speed shops based on my HRIN stories.

Did a few car features for HOT ROD and R&C and vowed never again. If I shot a car feature in the first week of the month, I’d start getting calls from the owner at the end of the month asking why his car wasn’t featured in the issue that just came out on the stands.

Tom Medley gave me pointers on shooting a car with a twin lens reflex camera and a 12 image roll of film. The Yashica was a cheap knockoff of the Roliiflex German camera used by professionals around the world. Lower Broadway in San Diego catered to service men with tattoo shops, locker clubs and pawn shops. Sailors returning from a deployment in Japan usually pawned their cameras and I could pick up a Yashica for less than $30.

Every story I wrote on my trusty Royal portable was done with a carbon copy and was submitted to the magazines via the US Postal System. Petersen actually had retired English teachers and librarians that went over the copy pointing out errors with a blue pencil. Some of the errors were corrected on the spot, while others called for a rewrite. At this point in time, I was glad that Mrs. Sullivan had pointed out the importance of outlining a story.

Deadlines are critical and missing one often times meant missing a pay check. I had a backup story for every one of the publications that I wrote for in the event I got sick or a bad case of writer’s block. Depending on the mail to submit material on time could be sketchy. My secret weapon was the Fleet Post Office serving the navy ships in San Diego harbor. If I had my story dropped off by 11:30 PM on Sunday night, it was guaranteed to arrive at the Los Angles terminal and be out for delivery Monday morning.

There’s a book, THE BUSINESS OF SPEED, The Hot Rod Industry in America 1915-1990 by David N. Lucsko that takes a deep dive into the speed equipment business. I’m proud to say that there are more than a few quotes attributed to me from my HOT ROD INDUSTRY NEWS stories.

In conversations with free lance writers today, I’m appalled at the pay rates in today’s market. I supported a family and owned a house in the nineteen sixties on free lance income. About eight or nine years ago I did some writing for FOUR WHEELER and the free lance pay rate wouldn’t cover my bar tab! Ended up being fired when I wrote a byline column on why side by sides were costly and owners lacked trail etiquette. Seems side by side manufacturers were heavy advertisers!

Stay tuned for part 4 tomorrow

 

Thank You denis4x4
Neat to get a look behind the curtain of the biggest influence of my life.
That is to say,, I pretty much ignored parents teachers and bigger kids ( aka the in crowd )
My guidance came from the pages ( pulp and slick ) that you helped create

 

Thank you Denis4x4, I’m on board. Hopefully you have enough material for a bunch, I mean months worth of posts.
Dan

 

Last one for this week

There were three advertising agencies that specialized in the high performance accessory aftermarket in the sixties. Stan Goldstein, Elliot-McMullian and Fall & Associates. Bob Fall was in San Diego and I made it a point to introduce myself and offered to write copy along with press releases based on my experience. It wasn’t long before Bob hired me full time to handle some accounts as well as going out and getting new accounts.

At that time, Fall’s client list included Crower Cams, Dragmaster, Offenhauser, JE Pistons, Carlsbad Raceway, Weber Equipment, W&H DuCoil and Jardine Headers along with others. My job was to get new clients and get existing clients to increase their billing. A couple of the clients I brought on board were Flex-A-Lite, EELCO and Per-Lux (now Pertronix).

Before the first Speed Equipment Manufactures Association (SEMA) show in Dodger Stadium in 1967, there was a small show the year before at the Disneyland Hotel. Noel Carpenter published SPEED & CUSTOM EQUIPMENT NEWS and promoted the show. I attended the show and manufacturers had rented the small bungalows on the grounds to display their merchandise. Quite frankly, it was nothing more than a collection of wet bars. Once Robert E.Petersen backed the SEMA show, it was the establishment show. Noel did one more show that was a disaster and threw in the towel.

There were several ad campaigns I was associated with that stood out, a couple of them were great, one not so good. Let’s get the not so good one out of the way first. I was having lunch with Jerry Jardine and Don Nicholson when Don mentioned the lousy gas mileage on his ramp truck. Jerry offered to make some headers to see if that would help.

Several weeks later, Don reported that the headers helped a bunch and there was a 10% increase in mileage. When I heard that, I convinced Jerry to run some ads in CAMPER COACHMAN and MOTORHOME LIFE. Prepared a couple of ads and ran them in those magazines. The number of inquiries and orders overwhelmed Jardine’s order desk. It took months to fill the back orders and customers were not happy campers. I shudder to think what the reactions would have been if YELP! had been around back then.

Jerry called me in a panic as he had received a letter from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for documentation on an advertisement claim that Jardine Headers would increase power by X percent. I was able to smooth things over with a few calls and letters. I suspect that some FTC dude was reading his kid’s HOT ROD on the can and decide to make some brownie points with the boss.

Ironically, when Jerry retired, he moved to Jackson Hole WY and opened a shop devoted to building headers for the GMC motorhomes equipped with Olds, Cadillac and Buick front wheel drive trains. This was a very successful operation.

When the AMC Javelin hit the market in 1968, we cut a deal with HOT ROD magazine to get a vehicle and use a Crower Cam, Jardine Headers, an Offenhauser intake manifold and a Weber clutch and flywheel. In return, we ran a double page color ad featuring the car and the equipment. It created a lot of buzz and sold product. Of course, the ad tied into the HRM editorial coverage showing the installation of client products and test results.

There are still hot rodders today that complain that the magazines are nothing but editorial advertising. To some extent that’s true. If Jim McFarland or Tex Smith said that brand X headers were the best thing since sliced bread, sales would go up. To make sure that Jim, Tex and writers at the other magazines were dialed in to client products, I sent out newsletters touting the latest news on client products. And, buying ads certainly influenced editorial coverage.

Over the years, I had a couple of my own project cars that ended up being in ads for clients as well as being used in how to do it stories in a magazine. It was shameless promotion on behalf of the client, but I got over it pretty quick!

Back in the day (I hate that term), all of the Petersen magazine titles had a two tier ad pricing policy. As more and more generic ads from Sears, Pep Boys, Keds, etc starting using these magazines, word got out that speed equipment manufacturers had a deep discount from the rates the generics paid. Meguiar’s Polish sponsored a funny car and as the ad agency of record, we paid the discounted hot rod equipment rate. Somehow the word got out about the discounts and the threat of lawsuits ended up with a new rate card that leveled the playing field. While Petersen refused to take alcohol ads, there were plenty of tobacco ads. That gravy train went off the rails when Congress passed laws that the tobacco companies couldn’t advertise on radio, TV or in publications read by 18 year olds.

To be continued next week

 

Fantastic

 

Many years ago, I stopped buying Streetrodder magazine after I counted 86 pages of content and 176 pages of advertising. That magazine should have paid the reader to look at all those ads

 

Hey @denis4x4
Such a cool first installment.
I noticed right away, the mention of the very cool ROYAL typewriter.
I have a vintage ROYAL, that is one of the coolest old school typewriters I own.
It's old enough that the space bar is made of wood.
I always appreciated the very distinct ROYAL logo, so I incorporated it into a piece of art I did of @J.Ukrop of Joey's then coming together 2.0 roadster.
I turned it into a series of laminated place-mats, and Joey has a copy, so does David DiFalco, and so does Matt @Hitchhiker .

Your style of writing, and the attention to detail, is exemplary of the time period you went to school, I am from that time period as well !

Thank's from Dennis for your contributions, this is an excellent thread indeed!