Art & Inspiration Street is Neat and Hot Rods were cheap.

I was just remembering the old days of Rod Runs, stoker hats, bellbottom jeans, girls in mini skirts, and all the cheap old junkyard parts. We were just plain having lots of FUN back then! Yeah I missed out on the pre 1965 Hot Rod years. But in the 70's the wife, and I would jump in our Hot Rod, and go to one of Nationals or to the nats east, or south. Or we would head down to the Daytona Turkey run in Fl. We just put some cash, and our little Fellow pages in the glovebox. When we burnt through the first half of our money? Then we knew it was time to head back home. lol Rod Runs were so much fun back then. They had Bull roast, corn roast, seafood roast, ect. Nothing seemed to ever stop us. We were just poor Hot Rodders that didn't know any better. The host clubs would have games, poker runs, cool Bands, and dances. Halloween runs with costume parties, hot apple cider, ect. So yeah, I did miss the golden years. But we made a lot of great memories from the 70's until now. Do you have any cool memories of when Street was neat, and our Rods were Cheap er ? Ron....

 

Any corner Parking lot at any major cross roads vulnerable to host rod shows.
The rules were lax about years or finish levels.
Some late model Muscle jobs, some Gennie antiques. and a lot of whatever inbetweens.
Usually any decade was represented.
As I said, and stress, from rediculous comp motors, to just clean waxed and polished stock.
Somebody selling hotdogs and a small amount of used speed parts for offer.
Seemed like if it wasn't raining, weekends were made to congregate.

 

The First event we ever went to as participants was the 1973 street rod nationals in Tulsa driving the 48 410 miles to get there from McGregor Tx Fun memory from that trip was spending over an hour in line to get into the Saturday night Barbecue with Tex Smith and getting to listen to a bunch of his stories.

One weekend a group of us from the Waco area went to a rodrun in the Austin Area that Skotz here on the Hamb was involved in that was open to customs up to 54 or so. These musician Friends of Skotz showed up with a couple of cars and a roudy group of followers including a gal who was brawless while wearing a mrsh net top. I talked to one of them about his car but remembered the gal more than him. Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughn pre fame when they were just Skotz's musicisn friends with cool cars.

Back in the Mid 70's we went to a lot of rodrons in Texas. often taking the tent or putting a spare mattress in the bed and making a bed with sheets and blankets and sleeping in the back if the truck. Entry fees were usually 10 bucks and you most always got a T shirt along with a dash plaque for that ten bucks. Motel 6 was pretty cheap and you weren't too good to stay there in those days.

 

Great thread! Thanks, Ron. Wish I could have bought all the cool stuff that showed up at every swap meet/show. 32 Fords for under 5K, nice cars for 10K. A cherry 32 three window body in the back of a pickup at the Nats South one year. 5K, and it was very nice. 50 Mercury, excellent condition, good running, dang near perfect, $1200. But I had less that $100 in my pocket for the whole weekend.
There's tons of these stories.

 

Those were the good old days and we just didn't know it.

 

We know it now, though. Wish we could dial it back a bit, to those times, when we started.

 

Very cool thread Ron, Brings back great memories of better , simpler times for lots of us.

 

Yeah good old days. Running car shows on weekends with clubs CB radios no phones

 

1970. Bought my first old car (nail head powered 39 deluxe coupe) on a farm sale for $500. Brought it home cleaned it up, had it repainted bright red, added Torque Thrust style wheels, rechromed the bumpers, headlight rims, added a chrome Argentine grille, polished the side trim, put in all new gl***, cleaned up the wiring and had a local upholstery shop do a *****in saddle brown interior in the original style and headed for the NSRA show. Out the door for under $2500.

 

Yep, the heyday for me was the 70s. Got my first old car (just a Model T shell) in 1972, then got my 32 coupe in about 1974. Lots of rod runs and swap meets around back then with affordable cars and parts. Ah nostalgia.....

 

1968 and I was an apprentice mechanic at the local Cadillac dealer. One of the car jockeys asked if I could give him a ride home after work, and since it wasn't out of my way I told him yes.
We turned into his driveway and sitting there was a satin black '40 Chev coupe! I was driving a '57 Belair I bought from my parents, but a coupe was pretty exciting to me! I asked whose it was, and he said it was his; then asked if I knew anybody who wanted to buy it? I asked how much and he said $50.
We jumped out and I looked it over. Asked if it ran, and had a ***le, and he said yes to both. No interior left in it at all, but I handed him $50 and said I'd be right back with my dad to pick it up! Drove it home with a folding lawn chair in the driver's position, and began working on it soon after.
I originally just put an old wrecking yard bench seat in it, but that winter the block cracked on the old 216, so I bought the neighbor's '59 Imperial for $150 and his son and I swapped the 413, Torquflite, and rear axle into my coupe.
Drove it until I got drafted fall of '69, and when I got out I drove it gain until a friend offered me a whopping $475 and I sold it. He still has it to this day, but it's a whole different drivetrain, and show car now.

 

I have some of those stories, also. Even though it's different now, I still enjoy the shows. The social life can be great. Those gray beards are the same guys starring at the fish net top girl way back then. Starting a conversation may end in the highlight of your weekend.

 

Yeah, I stopped and looked through the windows. Nothing in there that I could see.

 

I miss the social life that revolved around it.

I remember driving down the main drag and there would be muscle cars, hot rods etc parked in the parking lots on about every corner. You'd pull up to a stop light, check out the cars parked in the corner lots, give a yell to the guys you knew and wait for the light to turn green and do it all again at the next stop light.

Then you'd find your parking spot and pull in, your buddies would pull in and the bench racing would start along with who had what race parts for sale and how much they were asking.

Hot rod parts were just about everywhere if you knew who to ask, and parts swapping with guys was more common practice than handling cash or trading parts for help.

Hoarding wasn't common place around here, if you needed a part for your ride guys were more than happy to pull it off their shelf, stick it in your hands and let you float until next weekend when you could get your parts you were trading or your next pay check came in.

I remember guys pulling up to my house looking for a part and then spending the afternoon helping them put it on.

And I can't count how many engines I watched, helped guys build in their kitchens, I know I put at least 4 together in mine much to the dismay of my ex until the guys showed up to get them and put a nice stack of cash in my hand.

I knew it was good days I just didn't expect them to end so quickly or to end up being a "market" for parts, instead of helping out buddies do the same thing you loved....

....

 

great thread to wax nostalgia.... remember today is the good old days of tomorrow so appreciate every thing about our lives , family , our hobby / our cars ......and Ryan who devored his time to give us this platform.........Hambers forever ....

 

Hotel parking lot parties that lasted way after mid night.

 

1964 was the first I had any actual money to spend on cars. I had just turned 17 & joined the USN. Got out of San Diego boot & came home on leave for 2 weeks before heading to Great Lakes for BT "A" school. I'd been home for about 15 minutes when I found an ad in the paper for "50 Chev 4dr, $100" ... it was about 10PM, but what the hell, I called. Guy said to come on over. It was clean & had just a few nicks here & there. Paid the man, got ***le transferred next morning, plates, an OZ4 in the radio, the split manifold from a '46 I'd left dead in the back yard, some Cal Custom baldies, wax ... you know, all the quick stuff ... over the next couple days got the coils cut & found a pair of 8.20 US Royal Masters for the back & swiped the 1 piece bumpers from dad's '51, serviced it underneath ... now it was ready for a week's worth of fun on 1st street night prowling, and a 980 mile trip to Illinois. The old gal never skipped a beat until one night we were on the way back to school from Lyndon ... I missed an exit. Ended up in Indiana, tried a high speed run in the right direction so we could get back by midnight (Cinderella liberty) but blew the side out of the block near Deerfield, & hitched from there. Got restricted for 2 weeks & the car disappeared in the Ill. DMV.

 

My wife keeps telling me that I have an old sole, and I was born in the wrong time period, and this is why. Back when my parents were growing up in the mid-late 70s they would always talk about cruising out to the beach at Holland State Park and how it would be this continuous impromptu parade through the park that lasted all night.

 

Notice the { Street is Neat } on my old 9'' Ford rear.

 

Back when a cruise night meant you actually cruised (for me it was Blue Ridge Blvd in Kansas City in my '40 Plymouth coupe) all night long instead of a "park-in" for a few hours of today.

Back when we were young and limber enough that we could camp out at a rod run in a small tent with a sleeping bag on the ground instead of needing a $100+-per-night hotel with a nice, soft mattress and a hot shower.

Back when the club had annual "events" (the RodTiques had a Lake of the Ozarks whing-ding) and you got to caravan to the Nats chatting up all the truckers on the CB who are amazed at "all the old cars."

 

The only old car show I want to attend now is the one at Ron's place. Too much cool stuff for one guy to have and I want to see it all.

 

When I was a middle schooler we lived a few miles outside of town. My parents weren't the type who finished what they started. So, a lot of times - most times - I got tasked with hard labor.

One chore along with my work was push-mowing 3+ acres of gr***. The front yard was about a 1/4 acre of gr*** sitting on a leach field. So, every week I had to mow what would be two weeks of growth anywhere else. Gr*** grows different in the rural northeast.

In the corner of the front yard, road side, there was a "rock garden" which my mother had started one spring, planting flowers and such. She finished it off with some pink flamingos and then nature took over. The garden was to be another one of my tasks.

However, that rock garden was my first rebellion as a youth. I wouldn't weed it. The weeds were wild and 2+ feet high.

One summer day I was out there, muttering a string of curse words as I pushed the mower ahead right near the point the thick, sewage-fertilized gr*** would stall it and hurl it back before it died... leaning the mower back so clumps of thick wet gr*** would shoot out.

Over the sound of the Briggs and Stratton I'd hear rumbles and soon a hot rod or muscle car would slow down in front of my house. They'd look in the garden and throttle away.

Car after cool car would come by as the awkward kid with big ol' gl***es would be laboring away.

Eventually, I parked myself on the steps above the yard and watched the show. Each car repeating the same. Sometimes a few would be together and others on their own.

At one point, a young guy leaned out the window and yelled, "Kid, how many flamingos are hidden in there?"

I had no clue, I walked over, looked from the rocky edge and told him what I could see. They said thanks with a rev and rumbled away.

Later some others asked the same and through our brief conversation I got they were on a hot rod scavenger hunt or poker run of some sort.

Guys, that was a moment in life when I realized there was way more to this world and I had to figure a way out so I could be a part of it.

I probably saw a hundred different hot rods that day. It was so much cooler than 50s music at the fairgrounds.

 

I got my license in 72, so I was towards the end of the "good old days". The next issue was I was into dirt track racing, the high performance era cars. After the "gas crunch" of 1974, those performance cars got cheap, it was a great time to be a teenager that was into them!
Doing car repair as both a way to make a living and as a side job, I discovered the value of car parts as extra income. As soon as I had space to store a few parts, things really started to snowball for me. I had some pretty nice cars, and car shows were still a popular thing. Having both a dirt track car and a pretty hot street car was the life in full at the time, and it was affordable at a certain level. Car shows, car clubs, and big car events ruled the roust. When things started getting more expensive, the dirt track racing went away. The street car became faster until about 5 years after that, when I realized I had gotten carried away and toned things down a bit.
I always loved the 30s cars, but they were always above what I could afford. I bought my 1st HAMB friendly era car in the late 80s, but it was a major mess and it took a few years to develop the skills needed to make it drivable. Once I got it to the street, we joined a great car club and enjoyed it and everything attached to it, for several years. We still have great friends from that time, I was one of the youngest in the club, so now age is catching up with us all.

I may not have lived through the "street is neat" era, but I was close, and I still live it today.

 

Your always welcome to stop, and play. lol. I do have a lot of old junk. The biggest reason was the time period of { Street is Neat }. As a kid I loved toy cars. So when I started going with the guys to the swap meets. The old toys, and pedal cars, ect. were fairly cheap. Just not being very collected then. So the pick'n was great for a big kid. lol My first pedal car was a 1937 Ford by Garton for only $5. But I just never stopped going to swap meets and, then to toy shows ect. I've never bought anything on line. So all my old junk just seemed to find me. When I started this thread. I was just thinking nostalgia, and of fun times. Just things from the 60's,70's, and 80's . A lot of us back then would have fit better in the 1950's. Most on here still do! So any more stories from the old Street is Neat days? Photo is of my daughter, and coupe the 1980's

 

In the 50's we would drive up in Tujunga Canyon go down the lower road til it ended and park all our cars in a big circle and put XERB radio from Del Rio Texas to listen to Dr Jazzmo from midnight to six in the morning. In later years he was known as Wolfman Jack

 

never knew about w/man's background--thanks

 

All those years your talking 60’s &70’s especially those years, I wanted a Hot Rod but never afforded it until late &0’s & 90’s and did a ton of events with friends. Americruise!!! (4 years!). Back to The Fifties!!! Louisville (several years! Great Memories with the best of friends! Thanks Ron for the trip down memory lane

 

I pretty much grew up in the era (1969 thru the early '80s).

I attended my first NSRA Nats in 1974 (St. Paul MN).

My father (a professional photographer by trade) was a frequent contributor to magazine throughout the '70s & '80s . . . in fact, this circa 1975 photo of our HEMI-powered Deuce 5wd Coupe:

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. . . was used to advertise the 1977 NSRA events:

​

From 1973 through 1986, I spent my summers attending and/or "working" several Rodding events across the country . . . including (but not limited to) the following events in California:

• LODI '73 (1st Annual West Coast Street Rod Mini-Nats) was hosted by our Street Rod club: . . . with Gary Meadors as the Event Director and several other NCEI members (including my father) helping to coordinate the event.
• LODI '74 (2nd Annual West Coast Street Rod Mini-Nats) was hosted by the Northern California Street Rod ***ociation (NCSRA) ... with Gary Meadors as the Event Director and several others (including my father) helping to coordinate the event.
• LODI '75 (3rd Annual Championship Rod Run / West Coast Street Rod Mini-Nats) was hosted by the NCSRA ... with Chuck Corsello as the Event Director and several others (including my father) helping to coordinate the event.
• LODI '76 (4rd Annual Championship Rod Run / West Coast Street Rod Mini-Nats) was hosted by the NCSRA with Chuck Corsello as the Event Director.
• LODI '77 (5th Annual Championship Rod Run / Lodi Nationals Street Rod Reunion) was hosted by the NCSRA with Chuck Corsello as the Event Director.
• LODI '78 (6th Annual Championship Rod Run / Lodi Nationals Street Rod Reunion) was hosted by the NCSRA.
• LODI '79 (7th Annual Championship Rod Run / Lodi Nationals Street Rod Reunion) was hosted by the NCSRA ... with Bob Cress as the Event Director.

• MERCED '78 (1st Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the National Street Rod ***ociation (NSRA) ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western States Event Director ... and my father was Gary's "right-hand man".
• MERCED '79 (2nd Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western States Event Director ... and my father was Gary's "right-hand man".
• SAN JOSE '80 (3rd Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary & Marilyn Meadors were the NSRA Western Nats Event Directors ... and my parents were the NSRA Western Nats Event Coordinators:

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• SANTA MARIA '81 (4th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA National Field Director ... and my father was the NSRA Western Nationals Coordinator.
• MERCED '82 (5th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western Nationals Event Director ... and my father was the NSRA Western Nationals Coordinator.
• MERCED '83 (6th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western Nationals Event Director ... and my father was the NSRA Western Nationals Coordinator.
• SAN JOSE '84 (7th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western Nationals Event Director.
• MERCED '85 (8th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western Nationals Event Director.
• PLEASANTON '86 (9th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA ... Gary Meadors was the NSRA Western Nationals Event Director.
• BASKERSFIELD '87 (10th Annual Western Street Rod Nationals) was hosted by the NSRA.

By 1987, we were no longer "affiliated with NSRA" . . . Here I am at the 1st Annual GOODGUY'S West Coast Nationals when Tom Medley presented the "Stroker McGurk Award" to Jake Jacob's Tub:

RIP Tom Medley & Gary Meadors ​

 

{ HEMI32 } Thanks for the great memories! I took this photo at Nats East. These guys were real Hot Rodders! They drove all the way cross country to be there. Meeting Pete, Jake, and Jim were like meeting royalty for this kid.

 

I can contribute a few pics, since summers of my childhood were spent at NSRA events.

First, me at age 2ish in front of Dad's 38, he was flogging on it so we could drive it to the Nats in St. Paul in 79.


We made it!

A few years later, in 1983 dad won a Top 25 award with the same car at the OKC Nats.




This was a 34 Vic dad had in the late 70's. This pic was taken at the Nats. Sold it to Willie G. Davidson. (of Harley-Davidson) Wille had it for many years. It wasn't right hand drive, the negative was printed backwards. Notice the backwards front license plate.