Underground forts...wth candles.... We were so bored we went out and dug a hole in the ground Kept us in good shape though
Totally was into slot cars ...Toms Bike and Hobby in Brea, had a big Slot Car track with a huge talladega type banking turn in one corner of the building... the cars would occasionally go off of the track and there was an open area in the middle...a "spotter" usually a teenager (we were all in jr.high) was in there, he could put the cars back onto the tracks fast... Mine was a sidewinder motor with a gloss orange Lotus body...on the track right in front of us controlling were a series of "S" Turns, usually 1 or 2 cars coming off the long straight right before the S Turns would stay on thier controllers and the cars would fly....luckily we could put them on right there........WHAT MEMORIES....
I remember getting dropped off for kindergarten in '67 by my Dad and his 312-powered '31 Coupe and knowing it was cool. I remember driving the same coupe to high school ten years later and knowing it was cool. I remember standing up in the front seat of Dad's '57 Chevy so I could see better when we went on Sunday drives. I remember seeing my first funny car at a local gas station around 1975. It was a '70's Vega called "The Hoot Owl" out of Olympia, Washington and was on an open trailer. I thought it was the coolest car ever. I remember one of my Dad's buddies keeping his injected Chevy dragster in my Dad's garage around '69. I would've given anything to sit in it. Still would. I remember the first time I went to the drags. I saw a wicked '62 Corvette drag car and thought it looked great. To this day I cannot understand how anyone can have a stock '62 Corvette. I remember going with my Dad to visit his buddies garages and see their hot rods. Until I was 12 I thought everybodies Dad had hot rods. I've often wondered why they don't.
38... What a Story.....It would be so awesome to take these types of stories and put them in a book with a few photos, if available. The generation growing up will never know how it was....Your father (is) was a fine, fine man....
Wonderful memories. Here in New Zealand we were about 10 years behind the US. Being able to outrun cops in my mate's chopped and channeled 32 coupe with triple carbed flattie. (the traffic cops had English Ford Zephyrs). Three pieces of fish and a scoop of chips (fries) for one shilling (10c). Gas was 1/9d (19c) a gallon. Some of the traffic cops (we had traffic cops and regular cops back then) still drove 47/48 club coupes. Approx 1/3 or less vehicles on the road in the 50s-60s compared to today. Teachers and cops could give you a good thump if they thought you needed it. I once had a teacher throw a lump of plasticine that hit me fair between the eyes because I wouldn't stop talking. Laid me out cold. I didn't dare tell my old man, he would've given me a hiding too. The pubs closed at 6pm and some had sawdust floors. I bought a 37 deluxe sedan, a daily driver, for 3 pounds ($6), gutted it and went stockcar racing. I bought a 36 coupe for 85 pounds ($170) that was absolutely mint. After a couple years I swapped that for a channeled 34 coupe. I could go on for days....
Here you go, Skip...Landy's Dart in the Santa Anita Race Track parking lot, just up the street from where I grew up............ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWDprSdH2xQ
Little Skeet : I was there ,,Canary Lake Grade School ,,,outside of Des Moines ,,we lived on East 9th ,,i walked the 4 miles too school,,and back ,,in the early '50's ,,ran home just in time to watch that theme song on my Folk's Admaral B&W TV ,, ,"When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain" ,,that's when Roy Rogers ,,Gene Autry and Sky King came on ,,
Starting the lawnmower with a loose pull rope. Going to the Army Navy Surplus. Levi's weren't pre washed or pre shrunk....
I remember; three on the tree was the first time I got second the smell of the red gas ethyl the chicks in the Petty Blue Daytona that waved at me every morning at the bus stop flippin over the air cleaner lid Macon county line at the drive in 42 cents for a gallon of gas lucky strikes were 50 cents red hots at the D&C 5 and dime the soda jerk at Spagnuolos' Spending my entire 13th summer digging out a crawl space under a house for my first car the smell of a girl with her moms perfume and my dads aftershave bombin the two tracks in the corn field across from my house with my first car my first donuts in that same field the first time in a car that did a burnout ......forever the smell of tire smoke in that same car skippin school to go my first drag race . Raging Fury was the fastest! Bicycle ramps 3 foot high and 15 foot long hahaha ether hahaha behold the power of the wheelie building models
I remember most of what has been talked about. 25 cent hair cuts and when they went to 50 cents dad saying come with me to Sears so you can pick out the clippers that I am going to cut you hair with. Bubbly gum packs with picture cards of cars, airplanes, and movie stars. Inner tubes in car tires. No tubeless tires Having to get dressed up to go downtown to see a movie in New Orleans. 15 cent hambergers at McDonalds. Nickle phone calls 7 cents to ride a bus anywhere in town with a transfer. Red lights on police cars and other emergency vehicles. Paper routes when you delivered the papers on a bike and collected on Saturday. Folded the paper and tucked it, no rubber bands or bags. Chain falls and swing sets with a board on top to pull and engine. Two concrete strips for the driveways. No TV or air conditioning. Listened to short wave radio. Corner grocery store Original high top tennis shoes only came in black. Those were the good old day, wish I could go back. This is a great thread.
When phone numbers started with a name.... Harrison7-xxxx Our next door neighbor tearing up and down the street backwards in their '65 Impala.... dark blue w/ chrome reverse and baby moons and glasspacks - slamming on the brakes to "adjust them." Playing kick the can with all of the neighborhood kids most every night in the summer. Dad yelling out the front door when it was time to come home..... and we had Pee Chee folders in MO too. Man, what a great thread. You forget how much things have changed and how good things really were, even though we didn't know it at the time.
Almost forgot. Talking my Dad into stopping at the Santa Ana drags on the way to Corona Del Mar. My Dad taking me to Colton dragstrip and seeing the Bean Bandits and the Speed Sport T. Fontana drag strip. $1 in. The first Winternationals. An outrageous $3 in, including parking. Going to the March meet with fuelers trying to qualify for 64 (yes sixty four!!!) spots. Oh! And one of the better memories. Being told I was 4F in '66. I do believe I (and anyone else who grew up in the 50s and 60s) lived in a better time. And I would do it over in the blink of an eye. Despite 8,000 HP fuelers, the ability to buy just about anything you need for a hot rod I'm not jealous or envious of the youth of today.
Mazooma1 - Did you ever do the Helms Bakery tour? I did back in elementary school as a class trip and we got a freshly baked mini-loaf of bread to take with us.
#### I saw a cat pop a fizzie and then just chase it with a glass of water !!! Poor bastard damn near choked to death !!! I miss the shit out of those days !!!! >>>>.
Cool shots! This is Fontana, 1964. Brownie box camera. Still have it. The trees are still there but the place has gone to hell. [/IMG]
Going to the corner grocery store in the 1950s......they were attached to the front of the house of the family who operated them. They were the "convenience stores" in our small midwestern town. You would reach into the Coca Cola cooler containing ice and water for a bottle of Nehi Grape, or other soda. On Saturday night, the stores downtown stayed open until 9 p.m. Everybody came to town then, cars filled every space up and down Main Street. I remember the 1950 or 51 Studebaker Starlite coupe parked across the street from our family's clothing store. During the summer, there would sometimes be a band concert and ice cream social on the public square, on the lawn of City Hall. The high school band would play, and my Dad would sit in with them on his tuba. When our store closed at 9 on Saturday night, my Dad and Granddad would go next door to the drug store and buy a container of hand dipped ice cream from the soda fountain. Then our family would enjoy cake and ice cream together when they got home. Often, I was the "entertainer", playing my plastic ukeleili and singing a song. On Monday nights, on the way to our Boy Scout troop meeting, 4 or 5 of us guys would ride our bikes around town as fast as we could go. A dip in the street made a good "jump". Not very much traffic to worry about then. In high school, you'd be cool if you managed to catch a ride with some guy who had a neat car.....when classes let out. It was a straight shot from school to downtown, where a lot of the kids would go to the Rexall drug store for cokes, sodas and phosphates. If you knew the soda jerk, you could ask for a little extra cherry syrup in your cherry coke...... The earlier you got there, the better booth you would get.....and hopefully some of the good looking girls would want to sit there too. After the rush was over, we would go up to the front of the store where the magazines were kept, and read those little hot rod books. Lots of good memories from those days.
10 cent pay phone calls (on a phone with a rotary dial). 7 Up candy bars (7 different ingredients like a box of chocolates). Lucky Tiger butch wax (for your hair ... not the strange woman down the street!) Gas station attendants who asked "Regular or Ethyl?" Going to "Monkey Wards" with Mom for back-to-school clothes. Lots of pickup trucks with gun racks in the back windows, usually filled with a .30-06 or something similar (I was a kid in Western Montana). Going to the auto show with my Dad and seeing the new Corvette ... it really was new, since the year was 1953. Riding an escalator for the first time when my family moved to St.Paul, MN. Seeing the "screwdriver test" for a new oil additive at a Phillips 66 station where my Grandfather worked. The test consisted of dipping a large blade screwdriver in the product and then trying to hold it up by the blade. Since the blade would be very slippery, it would be difficult to hold, therefore demonstrating the superior lubricating properties of the product. What ever happend to STP anyway?! The smell of the institutional liquid hand soap used in public grade schools when I was a kid. 40 years later, the election polling place was the local grade school. On the way out after voting, I stopped to use the restroom ... same smell! Talk about having some weird flashbacks! The look, smell and sound of steam railroad locomotives. My Dad was a locomotive engineer for the Northern Pacific RR (now the BNSF). He had what I thought was one of the 3 coolest jobs ... the others were to be a fireman or a cowboy.
I remember buying my first car at an auction without my Dad. I went with a neighbor-freind to an auction when I was 12 years old and bought a '36 ford slantback body for $20.00 and a '57 Chevy 4dr wagon for $15.00 because it had an elictric wiper motor. It was a little uncomfortable calling Dad to come with a trailer, but after he got there I could see he loved it.
.......our party line home phone number was 162W. ........I would unhook the speedometer on the parents' car on Sat night since they told me not to go out of town. Of course, I went to some of the neighboring towns. Put in some more gas and hooked speedo back up at end of the night. .......when men's Arrow dress shirts came to our store in a box containing six shirts. ........when we had to collect "mills", little plastic coins, for sales tax at the store. Our store sold Red Goose Shoes.....for kids.....and gave out play money coins that could be used by the customer toward their next purchase. ......when the Dairy Queen was a walk-up place only..... ..... the D Q would make a "Jack & Jill" sundae, which had both chocolate and marshmallow sauce on it. We would collect those plastic colored spoons with the ice cream cone on the top. ......when a popular halloween prank was tipping over someone's outhouse. (Never did that myself, but did soap some people's windows). ......when the local record shop owner was trying to show my Mom that the new 78 rpm records were break-proof. He whacked it on the edge of a shelf - and it broke. Our "portable" record player had a pop-out drawer at the bottom to store some 78 records. ......when in high school, I had a new transistor radio. Late at night, when most other stations had gone off the air, I could get WLAC in Nashville. They had some shows sponsored by Stan's Record Shop, Randy's Record Shop and Buckley's Record Shop.....selling 45 rpm record "packages" of blues and soul songs. The "Ol Hossman, Bill Allen" was one of the deejays. That's where I became interested in blues harmonica music.
sweat weighted 60lb wool uniform..standing on the mound dripping in 90*..90% Chicago summer. The drone of a prop plane..lulling you to sleep in left field.. "Hey..I can see it.."...Sputnik Blew every day..waiting for the Atom Bombs to fall Merimack 2-2713 "Can I help you ?
The Jalopy Journal
