How old's the oldest H.A.M.B. member?60+?Tell us a cool story

My dad graduated in '64.He once told me of a story of when he was 15, he worked part time at the local grocery store as a butcher's apprentice,his boss was a heavy drinker and had my dad to chauffeur him around one night after work all over creation in his bosses brand new turquoise 61 Ford Starliner,well of course my dad gets pulled over by the cops,and being underage w/o a license...the cop lets him go after seeing his boss passed out in the back seat,small insignifant story but it certianly creates a visual for me,of a day in the life circa 1961,the landscape,mood of the country,and overall vibe of a time a million years ago.If you lived back then,share a cool story w/ us...

 

I'll be 41 tomorrow, that's old!

 

I feel your pain brother,I'm 41 also,was hatched 4/23/67,but we're to young for this thread,lets hear from the father [grandfather] figures...

 

Well i am 52 and counting the years (9 1/2 ) till i dont have to get in that plumbing truck.
Man i want the years to fly by. But untill then i am happy with my 1st grandchild 6 weeks ago. And when i stop plumbing i am out of Calif. anywhere but here
Dave

 

I turned 67 this past August. Grew up in SoCal and drove a Deuce 3 window in High School. Old Fords were everywhere, we could buy a nice "A" Coupe for $25.00. Pasadena was the place to buy beautiful Vintage Tin, the "Little old ladies from Pasadena" were real and they kept their old Fords in beautiful condition. A bone stock, cherry '40 Coupe could be had for $300. Street Racing in the Orange groves, crusin' every night. Gas was .25 cents a gallon and the car lots in Maywood and South Gate had Hot Rods & Customs for sale every day. It was even better than American Graffiti.

 

This is what I'm talkin about!We're up to 67,anyone older than that??

 

i've held garage night every wednesday going on 15 years now. many guys in there 70's and 80's stop by from time to time to share memories. i never grow tired of them. tonight we met at one of these old timer's garage. he's 72. he's currently working on his 50 panhead. he went down on it a year ago and broke some ribs. in his other garage he showed off his 35 ford 3 window, 36(cause that's the year he was born) ford sedan and the 64 gto convertable he built for his wife.
he brought out a half dozen photo albums and his high school yearbook from chicago vocational high school. he went to school with thirdyfivepickup's uncle. tonight, one of the guys was almost in tears as he recalled an incident on an island in the pacific during WWII, a piece of hose and a 6 foot 5 guy deathly afraid of snakes in a pup tent. since i've been laid off, they've invited me to their friday lunch group. i've heard hundreds of stories that i'll treasure forever. alot of history.

 

During WWII, at the tender age of 14, got a job washing dishes at a small hole in the wall diner for the big sum of 25 cents an hour!! After all the dishes were washed, pots & pans all shiny, boss said he needed hamburger patties to be made, sitting on a low stool with pan of hamburger meat on the left side,empty pan on my right side, I removed my tee shirt, grabbed a small amount of meat with my left hand, placed it under my right armpit, bringing down my arm swiftly to compress the meat to a nice round patty. Then raising my right arm again, the patty would fall into the pan on the right side, I had made about 1 dozen patties in this fashion, when the boss came by to check on me & was amazed at the operation before his eyes!!----After regaining his composure, he asked me if there was anything else I could do??? My immediate answer was simple---Sure----You outa' see me make DONUTS!!!!!!----------Don-------I'm 90now!!!

 

Yeah, me too. Great idea! I can't wait to read some cool stories. I am 43 and my lame stories won't quite qualify. But, I am all ears - or eyes anyway. I am going to subscribe to this one.

 

Awsome!If you were 14 during WW2,I'd say you were born around 1930,so were up to 78??Thanks,I think I'll pass on the donuts...

 

I'll be 66 this month on the 30th. I can remember My Mom and step Dad being out of town. We had a 49 Olds at home, I think I was about 12 at the time. A friend and I took the car out and drove the crap out of it. We lived out by the Oil fields so we went out in the fields so we would not get caught by the cops. I had to sit on a pillow, because I was short for my age. We got scared and hid down an old road for almost an hour. When I got the nerve to head for home, my heart was going so hard I could hardly drive. My step Dad ask me where all the gas went out of the Olds, I lied and told him I siphened it for my Doodlebug. Never did own up to that one.--TV

 

im 65 lived the 50's an 60's you had to be there to understand that time in history.it was simple ,but very hard .gas 19.9 gal. smokes 15-20 cents a pack 6pack beer a buck or less.you made a buck or less,a little over 30 bucks take home pay no benifits you got treated like crap in the factorys. all hand work,no tigs ,migs,bondo,air tools,no tire changers,the stories are the fun times that we all seen to remenber an thats the way it should be.ifeel blessed on living that time in history.now i feel blessed just living

 

68 grew up in kearney mo..dad ran a gas station and my uncle owned the chevy dealership. started driving at 12. i remember going down after school and seeing the new 55 chevys come off the car hauler at my uncles. had my cousin set me up with a 327 motor out of the leeds chevy warehouse and had it in my 57 chevy before they were out in the 62 model year. not every thing was great in the good old days, i saw segeration first hand where blacks could not eat in the same drugstore, later vietnam.still building in the garage most every day.

 

That may be the funniest thing I've ever read.

 

Well Im 61 and fell it to.When I was 15 I had a faded green 55 chev.One night four frends and I decided we needed to paint a start finish line on a strech of rd. we drage raced on. This strech is around a turn from a little village.Park and walk down rd. to do paint job. Last house in village calls police hearing us and thinking a fight is taking place.Frends haul ass into woods and I have to go back to my car due to flaashing red lights. Cops shined light on my hands put me in cop car and rode off looking for others.The wet paint splashed as we drove through it.Me in the back seat sweating blood but thay are too busy looking for fighters. After rideing me up and down the rd. finaly released me at my car.To this very day I can still here that cop car splashing through that wet starting line.Dont live in that city anymore and a wall mart now graces that strech of road.

 

I'm 61. I remember my buddy and I going to a country dance when we were 17. We got thrown out for getting drunk and making a nuisance of ourselves, so we drove home, but were so drunk we got lost. We ended up driving alongside the stop-bank (I think you might call it a levee?) of a decent sized river that was running pretty high. Well next thing we woke up and it was daylight, and the car was perched up on top of the stop-bank with the water running a few feet below us. Fortunately it had stalled.... the lights were still switched on and the battery had gone flat. We must have both passed out at the same time....

 

I'll be 62 in a couple of months.... Don't seem to remember much of anything, 'cept when it's time for lunch. I've even forgotten what my package was used for...

 

Hey I'm only 56 so I'll tell one my late father told me. He grew up on a farm in the depression and had a model A convertable that the top had rotted off of. THey butchered a calf and he took the hide and stretched it out over the top of the A. He thin took the scrotum and streched it over the gear shift knob. HE said that the wooden bows sure did creak when the sun warmed up the hide and made it shrink. The girls were grossed out by the shifter knob too.

 

I'm 75 and have too many storys to tell...One that will show you how times used to be..A friend of mine in high school(1951)had built a 32 channeled roadster,flatmotor of course.and asked me at school one day if I'd like to buy it.I said of course,I'll come by your house after classes today to do the deal.When I got to his place he said "now to be honest with you,its got a cracked block."He was wanting $35.00 for it and I passed....Duh!!!!I might add that one of the seniors was driving a chopped 49 Merc
the same 49 Merc that was the "Sam Barris Merc" little did we know then.He bought it off a car dealer in Lancaster,Ohio.Rodders Journal was looking for the link from then till it showed up in New Jersey.I forwarded his name and address to them.and sent my former classmate a copy of that issue of TRJ..Kinda neat !!!!

 

I am 62 from the Bronx, then Yonkers NY, am now on LI and PA, been into cars from the age of 14, went to Saunder Trade School for auto, and still working on the old cars. Mine is a 47 Chevy,and a 55 F100, 60 Chevy. helping a friend with some of his projets, 66 Marlin, 40 Olds coupe, coverting it to a convertable, 56 chevy and a 48 Chevy coupe, made into a convertable , and he is only 80, and does most of his own body work and fabrication. Its still fun, and as long as it is, I will keep doing it!

 

I am heading toward 59. When i was younger i restored a 63 Dodge post car. Through a stroke of luck I was able to trade a 383 street engine I had built for a damaged 426 street hemi complete with even the air cleaner. After redoing the motor with a cam and 12.5 pistons I installed it in the 63 Dodge (not the one in my avatar, this was long long ago and can be found searching DOn DulmaGE) One night me and Alterd pilot John Morton were cruising in it in Belleville. We pulled up to the College street light and a fellow next to us in a BB fury (65 or 66 2 dr hrtp) shouted over "what's in that?" I replied " A big six!" He nodded and hollered back " do you feel lucky?" I nodded and jacked up on the converter. John as laughing beside me. The light changed and i kept right beside him feathering the throttle to keep the fenders even. When i figured he was all done I opened the whole 8 barrels in a roar of Intake noise and exhaust. We vanished in an instant leaving the Fury in the dust. A few minutes later at the next light further down the street the fury pulled up be side. "I thought you said it was a big six!" he shouted angrly. "I answered with a mean smile "It is ! Its a 426!" With that we sped off into the night. That was over 30 years ago and yet i think John M tells that story everyday still. Those were the days!

 

dont that had me laughing for a while, i can imagine your bosses face...

 

I'm 69 going on 25, but the bod just won't agree. In the 50s we would congreate in a parking lot and talk, and set upraces. i had a 50 olds conv. guy came up and ask me if I wanted to race my chevy, of course I replied that I did. started it up ,and he says that sounds like a v/8, well he couldn't back down and did he get ridiculed. not all that funny, but just one of many that I remembered

 

In the mid 70's I had a 70 El Camino that I dropped a 455 HO Pontiac mill in. I used to do stuff like that with it. It still had the 307 badges. Had lots of fun with that one.

 

Well I thought I was old until I saw these old guys. I'll be 68 in January. At 15 my Dad & Mom would be in church and my buddy and I would skip church and go to my house (a block away) and hot wire my Dad's '53 Chrysler New Yorker and go all over the place until it was time for church to be over. Only thing about hot wiring is that the gas gauge didn't work so, of course, on one of those little adventures we ran out of gas and didn't make it back in time. Dad had to come and rescue us. Needless to say that put an end to that. We could listen to the sermon on the radio so all was well if the questions came. It was 1957 and I wanted a '50 Ford that was at the Cadillac car lot. It was $350. My Dad would have no part of that. Wasn't but a couple of weeks later I passed a 1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk on a lot and took it to him. He let me get that. $2100 I think. What kind of deal was that? The fastest car of the times vs a beater! What sense does that make? I couldn't keep Ultramatic transmissions in the Hawk so traded it off for a '55 Chev. The year was 1959 and a dude from California came through town with a '59 Pontiac Catalina with 3 carbs and a 3 speed. All of the juniors and sophmores worshiped him. He hung out at the Dairy Princess all day while we were in school. One day at noon we went out on 66 and lined them up. I whipped him with my '55 and my buddy whipped him with his '58 Impala. He left after that. The whole school was out there and nobody was at class. A kid pimped me and Lindsay out and our Dad's had to come to the school for a chat with the principal. He took our car keys away from us. BFD, we didn't need a key to start a Chevy back then.

Once out of high school moved from Lebanon MO to Tampa FL. What a culture shock that was. Air Force in 1961 and was stationed in NJ. Can you imagine this country bumpkin when I saw NYC? Holy Moly!! Street racin' was good there though. What a time to be alive (and survive) !! Two years ago at 65 I rode my old 1984 Gold Wing from FL to CA and back all alone. What a hoot!! I had to do it before me and it got too old.

 

I'm "only" 61.

In my senior year in high school I had a '58 Olds four-door. A girl I was interested in asked me to double date with her, her boyfriend, and her sister. I was to be her sister's date. Everything was fine until the end of the night when I was dropping the girls off at their house. The sister's boyfriend came driving up. Now he was sort of a big, mean type and I was just a skinny kid so I got in my car and got the hell out of there. He was following me so when we got back to my part of town, where I was familiar with the roads, I put the hammer down and did my best Dan Gurney impersonation and I managed to lose him.

That Monday back in school I saw him coming and I figured he was gonna kick my ass. He walks up and shakes my hand and tells me that was the best driving he'd ever seen. He said he ran off the road twice trying to keep up before he quit. We were friends the rest of that year!

 

I'm 69, not a lot of rod stuff where i grew up in CT back then,,,,but I had less than $100 bucks in my first 2 vehicles,,50 for duece coupe,,,,35 for a '36 PU,,,,it sure was different then. Just before I turned 16 my dad got a second car, for my Mom, a nosed & decked '47 convert',,,with headers, a sweet sound from some long glass packs,,,it became mine later on,,,if only I had it now,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

56--retired last year
Now I wanna live where there's racin year round
Is that too much to ask?

 

autobilly,

Happy B-day tomorrow (my 41st is tomorrow as well)!!!