For the guys who were there: Your parents feelings about hot rods/hot rodders

Born 1949 to a farming family so I was always around machinery. Dad thought my old car addiction was kind of cool even though he wasn't himself a "car guy". He was however a superb carpenter and cabinet maker so the artsy part rubbed off on me. When he was younger he was into free flight model aircraft.

Mom was a different story, from a family of 11 kids and a sharecropper father she saved money, even when there wansn't any to save, and I know she saw my hot rod and chopper hobby as a waste of money.

I built a dirt track jalopy out of a 1956 Buick in the ag shop when I was a senior in high school and to be able to race at 18 a parent had to sign off saying it was OK with them if i got killed. LOL I knew better than to ask Mom and Dad signed, no problem. At least it was not a problem for me, Dad caught hell from Mom.

The one phrase I heard from Dad on more than one occasion when I or someone else would "peel out" was "you could drive to Florida on the rubber you just wasted".

 

My folks didn't care for hot rodders, thought they were the low life guys wasting the money they stole on beat up old cars. When I got my '63 Impala SS and started modifying it they were pretty upset with me wasteing my money. They knew I was into cars and hot rod magazines and allways said I'd grow up when I had more responsibilitys.
I also had some of my girlfriends dads who didn't care for me...same reason. One never spoke to me, I dated her for a year and a half.

 

We was the true s*** of the earth.

 

Gramps was a cruiser - he always had the slick cars, never touched anything under the hood, Uncle Dave was more into bikes(and still is) and Pop, well, he had quite a few muscle cars and bikes, but things changed and went downhill when he met my Ma - they were married the day after they graduated High School in 1970( yeah, I'm a teenage mistake of sorts) From the time I was born, Pop was strickly family first, as was Ma, both busted their ****s trying to give me a good home - when the "gas crisis" of the 70s hit, Pop sold off his pride and joy, 66 Chevelle SS vert, and bought a Toyota Corolla SR5(ugh. prolly one the first "ricers" in the US- bolt on fender flares, spoiler, air dam, fender scoop,5 speed, mags).

The neighborhood I grew up in was all car oriented(old NASCAR drivers, hot rodders, etc) and he knew I had the bug, but didnt fully encourage me, if at all - mainly I think cause he wanted me to be more than he was(stop gettin in trouble with the law, and buckle down and go to school), but deep down I know he loved it when I bought my first 70 Chevelle, and ripped the 6cylinder out and dropped a 350 in...nowadays, he loves my 70 Monte Carlo, and loves the fact I'm wantin to build a kustom, and my plans for a traditional rod as well...went so far as to leave me his compressor, floor jacks(he still did/does his car maintenence) jack stands, etc when I took over my childhood home form them this past March.
Hell he even left me his vacuum sync meter from when he ran dual 3bbl carbs on his Chevelle.

 

You wanted our stories, this one isn't much.
I was born in '48 into a racing family. We lived in Indiana and my dad built midgets and worked at the local Chrysler dealership. I really believe my mom thought that "car people" were beneath her.
We didn't have enough money to pay attention, but we had fun.
He was a body man, and master machinist. We moved to Texas in '55 and my parents went to work for the the brand new Texas insturments.
My uncle lived here and we got seriously into go karts, my cousin having a Mac Kart with twin Mac 20's, and I had a Hornet Kart with twin Clinton A490's.
My dad got sick and we kind of existed with me playing with various street cars and hot rods until I got drafted in '69.
When I came home I got involved with an old school friend who owned one of the last front motored Top Fuel diggers in div.4, and we went racing. It was golden!!!
We ran out of money, and went on to other things, I played with flat track motorcycles for awhile, was really bad at it.
I started running a car parts house on Harry Hines in West Dallas and had all kinds of folks like Bernstien, and Tony Casarus come in.
Went to work for John Deere in '74 and retired in '04. All along I kept playing with hot rods, a lot of them to keep my son in wheels. I bought an old tired altered in '98 and tried running it for awhile. The No Hot Rods Anymore told me the ch***is was too unsound to go fast anymore, ( They were right) and we decided to make a hot rod out of it.
It's an on going project.
I've owned 55 cars, more than a dozen motorcycles, and seven pickup trucks. I still have a Triumph flat tracker my wife bought me as a present for coming home from the army in '69.
Recently started running around with a sprint car, and I've been having a ball with the dirt guys.
Most all of my old hot rod, or race car friends have gone on to other things, as though hot rodding, or cars in general, is something you are supposed to out grow.
My wife of 43 years puts it best when she talks to her friends. She says " The automobile is what Mike is." She takes the good with the bad, she knows that those of us that have gasoline in our veins simply "are what we are".

 

When my dad was a teenager he and his lifelong bud Lyle Browning built several modified cars including an underslung 27 or 28 Chev.
When he came home from WWII he bought a 41 Ford ragtop and had a set of custom made steelpacks put on it that were said to be the loudest pipes in the valley and that was according to the local cops. I came home from the hospital in it in 1946 to the house I live in now. If I ever get the scanner working I'll scan the photo on the mantel and post it in one of these threads.

After my folks divorced, my kids weekends with dad were usually spent going to car races (including the first weekend at SIR/PIR or what it was called then and often the circle track on old 99 in Seattle. Dad had some cool cars during that time including a 53 Olds Super 88 two door sedan and a jet black 57 Olds Super 88 with a J-2 and tripower that had to be my favorite.
After I moved back up here from Texas in 1975 He often managed to meet me at various rod runs for the next 20 or so years. We made a road trip together in my 51 Merc in 1988 that included Taking my kids back to their mom in Texas and then heading to Bonneville for a couple of days at Speedweek. Lots of great memories.

My mom is 82 and can still drive anything that has wheels on it. When I was in highschool she often would drive my 51 Merc (the same one that I had on the roadtrip) to town and to work for a while when she didn't have a car.

 

My dad is hard to figure out. If you point out a nice hotrod or he see's one it's always "thats a nice rod!(or custom)", but at first mention of cutting, fabbing, or any other kind of hard to reverse modification his response is always "if you mess with it, it will be ruined forever".

 

"I hope he knows what he's doing..." I overheard Mom say to my Dad in p***ing more than once...

What a cool thread! This is a great read. I agree, post the paper when it's done. All these stories brings to mind one of my favorite photos:

 

My Father had worked in the mills ... before and after WWII so he was mechanically inclined but he did not really get " IN TO " cars after he married my mother. He always had a nice late model and kept it clean ... but not modified. Mother did not really like the " old cars deal " because here in the South ... most of the car guys were moonshiners. And that was against the law . My uncle says my Dad had one of the fastest 1940 Fords in the area ... prior to WW!!. Dad went back to school, advanced his education ( GI bill ) and went to work for a large nationally known company. He became very sucessful and had the Southeast as his region and 5 or 6 men working under his supervision.

My parents did not like me messing with cars.
But Dad tolerated it. In the late 60's, I had a new 1969 Nova SS with the 396/375 HP engine and a 4 speed. My Father asked me one night if it would outrun a 69 Plymouth RoadRunner. I said ... YES, very easily

A couple of days later I came home from work and my 69 Nova SS was sitting in a different place in the yard. I asked Mom about it and she said your Dad moved it. I did not think anymore about it until a few days later a friend of mine who worked a different shift than I did ... asked me about out running the poo ... out of a 69 Roadrunner on Hwy 17 South. Then I knew my Dad had taken my Nova and outran a big mouth fellow who worked for him ... who had a 69 Roadrunner


We never spoke about it ...

 

Now, THAT, is great story!

 

my stepdad who raised me and taught all i know about motors used to always tell me when i hacked off the single exhaust and put on duels "bubba, that dont make it run a damn bit better". hes dead now but right before he died he bought a perfect 65 mustang pony and he fired it up for me all proud and said listen to them duels i had put on there. you guessed it i told him the same thing. i miss owen simmons he was a better stepdad than a lot of blood dads. r.i.p.

 

my dad let me drive his 67 camaro when i was 14. supportive would be a understatement. hes rad as hell

 

Well, I guess it depends to a great deal upon what your father did. My father raced motorcycles in the Phillipine Islands for Harley, then drove a Mercer and a Samson, then my brother at 14 had a T in 1922 at Cavite in PI, then my next brother had a T in 1934 in San Diego, I had a T in 37-38, my brother had a 33 coupe, and my sisters flew airplanes and one of them was an aircraft mechanic.

My father broke a piston in a Terraplane just south of Sacramento on the way to San Diego, pulled out his tool chest, and fixed it by the side of the road. that was what it was like when I was younger. Luckily my older brother was in the Cadillac following him so he could run the parts.

My mother joined into all of the so she was very supportive, even when we wrecked her new car!