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

Thanks. If we don't get out to eat right now I may not live to celebrate another 56 years.
Hope we don't have to have ID to get a drink.

 

Turned 62 the 11th and retired. more time to dick around with my toys. Don't know how I have lived this long with some of the stupid and crazy stuff I have done!

 

Time for an update after 5 years. Besides, the old photos in the previous post went into the bit bucket when Webshots shut down public access so here's an update.


Next year will be 50 years with the same hot rod I bought when I was 19. It wasn't, by any means, my first but it was a keeper. Just like my '68 GTX, 74 Norton Commando, '76 Duster, all of which I've had since new.

Unlike a lot of hot rodders, I never quit when marriage and kids came along.
I'm still at it. Working a full time job as an auto-elec (currently 51 hours a week) and wiring hot rods at night. Just finished wiring Jim Farley's '32 roadster (TRJ #59 cover car) last December and Rob Montalbine's chopped '34 coupe TRJ #60 cover car) in January.


Photos:
This past September and in the same spot in '66 when the car was black and I had more hair.
Spring '65 re-enforcing the frame in the back yard to handle the recently "built" hemi.
'64 a couple of months after I bought the body and dropped in a '52 Saratoga hemi.
A shot of the "garage" where the chain fall hung most of the year.

 

That's me in the passenger's seat 1960. I'm 68 now.

 

I'm 70, closing in on 71. Growing up in a small town in Arkansas had certain advantages. When I was 14 I had traded my fishing boat for a rough '51 Ford conv. Thought I should finally go for a drivers license. In those days the local state trooper gave the tests. I flunked the written test and was surprised when the trooper signed a form, handed it to me and said "take it to the tag agent and he'll give you your license" (about $3). I said "Don't you want me to take the driving part of the test?" He said "Hell no, you might wreck the car! You've been a couple of years haven't you?" That's how I got my Arkansas driver's license in 1957. One of my sisters got her license when she was 13 without any test. The trooper was a friend of my father's.

 

I'm about to turn "52"...I'm "NOT OLD" !!! Don't know how old "jalopy junkie" is, but here is an "OLD GUY" story for the "kid" !? This doesn't happen in Georgia ! Here in "TAXACHUSETTS" in the early to mid"70's" during or after a SNOW STORM....we (myself & a couple friends) used to "GET RIDES"; without people knowing...called"MUSHING"! With the streets still covered in snow, we'd hide behind a snow bank at a stop sign. A car or truck would stop...then we would run out behind the vehicle and grab on to the "metal" bumper, crouch down and go for a thrill ride ! Sometimes we'd get caught by the driver...it usually didn't turn out good ! Not too often...we'd "mush" a "cop" car ! Large Oil Trucks were a challenge...we'd litterally be standing straight up ! ....It was a"bitch" if we hit pavement, possibly kissing the "metal" bumper !
That's how us "kids" used the older cars at that time ! It was FUN !!
Years later, I got my license and "mushing"seemed to have disappeared....good thing(for the kids)!!

 

I'm sorry...did somebody say something???

Ive been busy playing video games since I woke up from my nap,now I'm off to pump up the tires on my tricycle,then call it a day after I have a jar of Gerber for dinner

 

Back in 1963 at the wonderful age of 13 I went to work for my uncle on his farm. I was already a bonafide car nut, and spent every dime I had on car mags, or accessories for some dream car that might be my future ride! My uncle paid me what I thought was a huge salary of $10 a day, especially considering it was cash, and no taxes taken out!
He had a wheat farm, and our days consisted of up before sunrise, and stop when it got too dark to see, plus a short stop for lunch and dinner during the day.
Every day we worked the fields I hooked up equipment and ran the tractor. One day while getting some tools from the barn I spotted an old panel truck sitting outside, behind the barn. I took a couple minutes to do a quick check, and saw it was an old International. Each time I went near the barn I'd take a couple minutes to look it over some more, and eventually at lunch I asked my uncle what was wrong with it? He said he'd gotten a new truck when it started leaking coolant, and he'd looked it over enough to know it was soft plugs on the flathead six, and not hoses or radiator.
After a few more weeks, I asked what his plans were for the old truck, and he asked why I wanted to know. I told him I'd be interested in getting it running for him, if he'd buy the parts. He replied that if I could get it running, he'd sell it to me for $25, but I'd have to buy the parts myself, as he wasn't throwing good money into the old '47 panel truck!
I proceeded to spend every Sunday, and every evening after quitting time working on the panel. My uncle would haul me into town to buy parts, and occasionally knock off early enough to get there on a week day before the parts stores closed.
I spent most of the summer's spare hours putting soft plugs in the side of the block. Then finding an old bench seat from a Simca or Renault that fit the narrow cab on the panel. Pulled the carb and put my first rebuild kit in, and got a new battery for it. Changed the oil, and drained the gas; then one Sunday I gave it it's first crank over after a 5-6 year rest. The truck fired up pretty quickly with some gas down the carb, and I proceeded over the next few days to run 5 gallons of gas out just driving the field roads around the property.
Over the next few years I don't know how many miles I put on the panel during my summer stays, and weekends occasionally during school months, but I kept spending my summer money on a lot of gas until I turned 16 yrs. old! On my 16th birthday I got my license, and the same day I gave my dad insurance money and went out to get my truck!
I painted the whole inside black, and the outside was dark blue, brush painted. It had worn smooth from weathering, and I rubbed it out to a nice shine, then sprayed the fenders and running boards gloss black. What a looker it was!
When I drove to school the next day I got the usual teasing from the guys with real hotrods, but none of it meant much to me, as I was in heaven just having something to drive to school in! I eventually sold the panel to a neighbor who talked me out of it for his business, and bought my mom's '57 Chevy BelAir, but the International was always special, and I'll never forget it.

 

Now, that is funny, right there.

 

Hello jalopy junkie....like your sense of humor !.... It is "COOL" (a northern slang I suppose) to hear stories from older guys and their past experiences... I shared a story with ya.....isn't that what you wanted !? Sorry for the "KID" line.... just having FUN !....BTW...Gerber is all you had for dinner ? OMG !
Enjoying the thread ! Thanks !

 

No man,your right,"mushing" ....I never saw it in Georgia-great story nonetheless! as is all the others...every once and awhile some of these are hard to visualize or get,but 95% of the time I feel like Im standing right there,either I relate it to something thats happened to me,am jealous that it never happened to me or am laughing my butt off at something someone posted,(doughnut making,grab this plug wire while I kick the motor over,etc...) which is what makes makes these stories so "cool" to me

 

I'm not real old either...only 55, but once in the 70's (shortly after we'd been to see American Graffiti at the drive-in theater) we decided it would be cool to chain a buddy's car to an old hay rack filled with scrap iron at a local gas station. He had left the car there and hitched a ride with someone else to a party. Well needless to say we sat in the back of the gas station and drank beer all nite while he was partying hard himself. Sometime in the wee hours he comes back for his car, three sheets in the wind. He started out slow enough that he never did get that "rear-end removing snap" of the movie, but dragged that old rack right out on the highway wondering why the hell his car wasn't goin worth shit. He dragged that poor old pile of scrap for a half a mile before he looked back and saw it coming behind him. We laughed our asses off!

 

man, that brings me back. i didn't race on wharf st., but caught a lot of submarine races there! THE place to race was hall st., which has to be about a mile long and is four lanes with a divider. all the trucking companies were there. when the cops came to break it up, they'd turn on the fire hydrants, so everyone would move up to riverview dr., which was just as straight but shorter.

 

this is what I'm talking about....LMAO !

 

You are my kind of guy......!!

 

I'll be 67 if THE RAPTURE doesn't rear its ugly head before Jan. 13, '14. Many years I would see a highboy roadster cruising down the street and think to myself, "What's an old fart like him doing with such a cool car.?" Well, fast forward decades and I am that old fart, and I have heard my exact quote slip from the lips of young ones. If I am just cruising around, I'll backtrack and offer the kid a ride(NO, I am not a pedophile). The experience of driving your old hotrod is unexplainable, and, yes, I am living a second or maybe third childhood, and I love it. My wife and I cruise every chance we get. I sometimes think it would have been great to live on the West Coast during the 50's and early 60's. So, in closing, there is something cool about getting old. HOTRODS !

 

Enjoying these a lot,thanks to those who have posted them!
I'm 71 now but a short time ago;

It was about 1958 and Bob Williams was putting a Rocket 88 V8 and tranny ,into his 47 Ply coupe under the shade tree that had a great size lim for the greasy old chainhost back behind Tim Bliss's house,a good spot at that time away from all other eyes we'd been using for other motor job's and stuff,,Bob ask if I'd stop by to help fig the new motor mounts and Ex out,well when I get there Bob and Tim already had the motor inplace and setting there with the chain not hooked laying on the fender,the car up in the front on some blocks. Hay Bob says,"just take a look under there and think up some mounts we can fab up?" Sure,I get only part way under and then come out fast,I say"What's holding this biggass 88 inplace anyway??"
Bob said "Why? It just set down as nice could be"
But I saw nothing stoppen it from coming down more from the front pulley back,so we start looking hard all around from over top of the fenders and I tell Bob and Tim I see nothing !!! Right then a big cracking sound and black dist.cap parts flying up as 88 is dropping to the ground,the cap was on the fire wall and the only thing holding that big mother from swinging the tranny on down,these guys had set it inplace so soft and it had looked so good in there too them,they had removed the chain,then my dum butt went and broke the power of stupidity magic, telling them there was nothing holding it up[boom]the "magic power of stupidity" was gone
It fell like a really big rock,wow if we'd been under it!!!!!smash-O
So careful how and when ya tell some one ,someten don't sposta work,or BOOM! Now days is this called ?"A rip in the Force"???"May the Force be with ya!"

 

Hot damned! I just realized I'm the luckiest kid alive. I was born and almost raised in central Illinois. We did that bumper hangin stuff in winters to, mushing. Used a shade tree to pull motors and did many of those other normal things.
How many of ya played bumper tag? Get a bunch of guys in cars and whoever was IT had to drive all over town to bump and tag someone else. Not good with modern cars. Since Halloweeny is near how about "borrowing" pumpkins and rolling them out the door in preplanned places. Works well with "borrowed" watermelons too.
The one that I'm still scratchin my butt and laughin about is lettin the air out of the tires and running the rails along the train tracks. We had lots of gravel roads and lots of tracks to do it on. No one thought of it.
Jumpin off the RR trestles into the ole swimmin holes neekid was the closest to that. Had to ride the old Harley or car to get there. That should count for somethin.
I keep coming back for all of these old geezer stories. Sure beats TV and video games.

 

Yeah, I might have a few more, hey does the Statute of Limitations run out on this stuff?

Let me preface by saying when the wife and I were in a position to buy our first house:

I said: "No corner lots."
Her: "Huh, why not?"
Me: "Kids and shit."
Her:"Uh, whatever you say, I guess."

Senior in high school in '68, the old man sold the farm in Wisconsin and we moved to a Kansas City, KS suburb in the middle of the school year. First day of school I pull into the parking lot and see all the bad boys were reversed in in the back row. Became quick friends with a few guys; a couple BB Chevelles, '55 Nomad, '56 Bel Air, '66 GTO and my '66 Belvedere although I moved my winter beater '55 Chev 150 with me.

They didn't have curbs per se, they were just a concrete radius from the street to the yard. One afternoon I was riding with Greg G in the Nomad when he drives over the curbing into a front yard and spins up a bunch of sod and then back on the street. We cracked up and were talking about it with the other miscreants that night. When we cruised, everyone took there own car and we'd cut around as a pack. You followed suit and did whatever the guy leading did.

Well, one night Greg G was on point when he shuts his lights and takes a right turn across a yard digging up turf and laying rubber across the driveway. We all followed and furrowed up the landscape. Thus,"Farming" was born. We did this for month's through different neighborhoods, great sport.

One Friday night around midnight, Dennis B was in the lead in his SS396, which had a tri-power L89 427 out of a '67 Corvette that was about to get repossed that got swapped for the 396, that's another story. Anyway, there were 5 of us, I was bringing up the rear in my '55. Dennis hits the lights, takes a sharp right and nails the corner yard, we'd hit this guys yard a few times before. About the time the third car is farmin up the yard the front porch light came on and a guy steps out in his pajamas and plaid house coat and lifts a double barrel to his shoulder. I had just hit the yard and made a left to get out of there when a blast goes off shattering my LR taillight and back window. Freaked me out! I wound that 283 out for all it was worth and about broke my knuckles hitting the windshield shifting second with the tree shifter. That ended my farming career and most of the guys.

Bob S kept farming, solo, he couldn't help himself, he was doing stuff like going the whole block and then back on the other side of the street in his Chevelle. His old man Ernie owned a small garbage collection company that we all worked on Saturdays, 4:30 am to 4:30 pm, got paid $20 and all you could eat at the Sweden House, big money.

One morning, we meet at Bob's house to go get the trucks when Ernie comes out and says, "Say fellas, is Bob a little hard on his car?' We look at each other and start to snicker. Glanced over at the car and he's got snow tires on the back, caked mud and grass behind the rear wheels and a tricycle hanging off the front with the handle bars wedged between the bumper and grill. "Naw, not Bob, Ernie!"

Another guy, Lobrecht, we called him Lobe as in "Wiped Out a Cam Lobe" because he didn't have a lot of ramp upstairs but a good guy. He's out in his '57 Ford on a Sunday night in Mission Hills when he decides to take out a few yards. Now Mission Hills is home to not 1 per centers but .1 per centers. He was churning up a lawn when he said he could see a thick hedge in front of him so he gunned it to get some speed up. Turns out there was a retaining wall and about a 10 to 15 foot drop to the next yard and the hedge was actually a row of trees planted close together. He said the car first went almost straight up, hovered for a second then the front dropped almost straight down but didn't touch the ground. He had to climb out the window and grab a branch to lower himself to the ground. It made the Kansas City Star the next day.

 

Hey Stingray you and your buddies might be responsible for my Dad putting small boulders in the edge of our corner lot in Kansas City in that time frame, we live just off of Blueridge blvd. And 93rd st. At that time.

 

No, it does not. Trackin', Farmin' . . . love it.

 

Beautiful.

 

Stingray wins!!!

 

I am 77 and sold my race car in July. The car was getting faster then I could think. When I grow up I want to a blown Olds.

 

I can always be sure I'll get a belly laugh when I see his posts,last one was no exception

 

Cracks me up you guys getting a kick out of my mis-spent youth, except for maybe das858's Pop, I'm not sure that was our work. We did most of our Agri-bidness around Overland Park and Prairie Village.

When we moved to KC, the high school I went to had a student body of 2000 and the nearest town we came from had just over 2000 citizens. Big culture shock but I met those guys my first day of school and I'm still in contact with those cats to this day.

Everyone had an after school job, usually pumping gas and the stations closed at 10 pm, that's when we'd meet up at the McDonalds on Metcalf Ave. and go cruising for trouble, races and girls. If not much was going on we'd head downtown which was always big adventure. To get home you had to get on a freeway for a little while and then take an exit that took you to another freeway that went to the suburbs. This exit was elevated over the river near where the airport used to be off of downtown. It was narrow and banked more than roads are today, it also had a tighter radius than what's built now and had concrete walls on each side of the lane that were higher than the car so you couldn't see over. It was also marked as 45 mph max.

When it was time to head home we'd go through there bumper to bumper and never at the speed limit. It became an unspoken thing that whoever was leading that night had to bring everyone through a little faster than the last time. In the warm summer nights you'd have the windows rolled down and the sound of those big blocks with Smittys or Hollywoods riqocheting off the walls was music. We'd go through there like a freight train at full song. When it straightened out and spread into a four lane it was pedal to the floor and you'd break ranks to see who made it home first.

One week-end night we were downtown exploring an area up the hill from the stock yards and we notice these wide concrete driveways that went uphill and seemed to disappear. We drove up one and at the crest was a huge opening with a metal roll up door that was open. Had to check it out, we get in there and it's a cave with a polished smooth concrete floor. I guess for dry storage, a lot of train tracks near there along with the stock yards. It was an enormous room with no supports or any lights. Of course we start spinning tires and sliding around, it was like being on snow in a big parking lot but with no light poles or curbing to get in your way.

This quickly morphed into being a figure eight race track and evolved into doing it with no lights, you'd pull them on for a second to get your bearings and then shut them off. You could tell if you were close to another car by the sound. The sound was enormous in the cavern. The place was so big you could get up to around 50 in there; to take a corner you'd push the park brake on, spin the steering wheel, let off the brake and gun it. You'd get this great controlled slide making a wide arc, flash your lights to see if you were going to hit the wall or t-bone a guy and then set up for the next turn.

We got pretty addicted to "Slidin" but found the doors weren't open during the week and not always on the week-end. We wondered what the workers thought when they showed up Monday morning and there's rubber marks all over the place.

I should add here that we had a license plate lifted off a used car lot and whoever was caboose would put the hot plate on their car and it was their job to take the heat and protect the rest of the pack.

One night I was in the lead and we found a cave open so we went in. A few minutes into the madness a prowl car showed up and started shining his spot at us. Mike McC was caboose in his '66 GTO and starts doing a huge donut around the cop car while the rest of us headed for the door. The party lights came on and McC was able to run by them while they were faced the other way. We tore through the streets to get to the freeway the whole time the cop about half a block back. When the exit came up we were bunched up tight, four cars in a row with the cruiser in pursuit. We went through at 80, maybe 5 mph faster than the last time. When we hit the four lane we each took one; lead goes straight, two and three take the left exit, caboose takes the next one right, meet back at McDucks. I kept checking my rear mirror and never saw any red lights or headlights come through. We were pretty sure he followed us, maybe he got wadded up, we never knew what happened.

That ended our Slidin times and Fall was coming and we all headed different directions and responsibilities. That was a good thing because what we were doing was not sustainable. We were nicking 85 + on that exit. Three to four hundred horses under the right foot of a seventeen year old in a car jacked up on it's suspension and in all probability, nearly bald rear tires. Sometimes things didn't end well.

 

I'm 69, wasted valuable time this year trying to get a Dana 60 to work in my "41, now going the Ford Explorer route. When we were kids we went to a one room school and had an older woman for a teacher. Looking back we made the poor woman's life hell. She had an old Dodge coupe which she got stuck quite often in the Winter, she would ask us bigger kids to help push but what we would do was hold her back just to see the wheels spin! I guess entertainment was limited back then.

 

Well, that pretty much sums up my high school gang. We thought we were on the edge, and did some slidin', but not with a capital S . . . Jesus, you Kansas boys just don't give a shit! Beautiful.

So far you have given us:

Trackin'
Farmin'
Slidin'

Outstanding.

 

I am 62 . Yes I know I lost as I read there are others older than me . AND thats pretty old. Good going guys, Mike.

 

"That's FUNNY" !!......watching "tires spin"...for entertainment;...been there !! I'm 52 y.o...in the 60's...that was "Awesome" entertainment !!