MEMORIES OF A 15 YEAR OLD. It was back in 58 as I recall, Leon's next door neighbor started it all. We was watching Leon's dad work on his 36 ford, Not much to see so we was kinda bored. About that time Leon's neighbor hollered at Leon and me, He say's com'on over boys I've got something for you to see. Now the neighbor's son was older than us, And we thought he was cool cause we'd heard him cuss. So we wandered over and hopped the fence, Then winked at each other cause sometimes his neighbor didn't make no sense. It was getting dark and kinda hard to see, This better be good Leon say's to me. The neighbor took us in the back door to his garage and turned on the lights, And there before us was a magnificent sight. His son Terry had been working on this old Ford sedan, We hadn't paid much attention cause when he got it it hardly ran. What I saw that night burned a spot in my brain, And since then it has been the cause of a lot of pleasure and pain. It was a black cherry shoebox ford with fresh laquer paint, And at that moment I thought Terry was a saint. I stood there speechless with nothing to say, That black cherry shoebox is still in my mind to this day. There was three sixty watt bulbs and one neon light, The sides looked black but the top of the fenders glowed red that night. When Terry opened the hood it took my breath away, A full dress flathead laid in that engine bay. Finned aluminuim heads and three stromberg 97's, I thought I was looking right into heaven. White tuck and roll and appleton spot lights, By this time my throat was felling kinda tight. Then Terry asked what do ya think now boys? Let's start her up and make some noise. There was a knot in my gut that I can't explain, When I tried to breath I almost doubled up in pain. When he fired that flatty it was music to my ears, It almost brought this 15 year old to tears. Till the day I die I'll never forget that night, That awesome sound and that beautiful sight. It started a sickness for which there is no cure, And I relive that night everytime I drive Ol Blue that's for sure.
I am far from a poet but I can give my experience. The date was 1963. I was a 10 year old spending more time and interest in the Stingray bicycle not the the car. These bikes were smaller than normal with the banana seat, high rise handle bars and sissy bars. And I thought I was cool then...... My brother 7 years older had a silver 1957 Chevy, I thought was the coolest car on the planet. The car.. 6 yrs old then.. was always missing the hubcaps every Sunday. My mother always was giving him hell for drag racing and we listened to his denial. Then One day.... he drug home an old ford....1939 sedan.. original engine, mohair and everything. The body was in beautiful shape and he decided to park it two blocks away behind my grandmothers house. Suddenly Stringrays fell distant to the Cool car behind her house. We used to sneak up there without my brothers knowledge and crawl inside the car to pretend to drive this thing. I still to this very day...remember the musty smell of the mohair and the double rear window and gigantic steering wheel that I used to steer imagining............. I was pulling up to the lights at Dragway 42................. Hooked forever...........
The trad police will get me for this, but it was a neighbor down the street, when I was about 10. They went on a family trip down south, and brought back a 71/72 SS Chevelle. Red with black SS stripes. He had it about a week, then tore it apart for a frame off. One thing led to another, and it became a bad ass race car. I'll never forget riding my huffy by thier house every afternoon for hours. Round and round the block to watch their oldest son (about 7 years older than me, I was 10) work on that car. Stripping it down, then seeing him block sand a primered shell in the driveway, then hearing it run with no exhaust... pulling wheelstands in the street in front of the house... Then they built the subdivision behind their house, and they moved away. He'd still come visit some of the older neighbors with the car. We could hear it long before we could see it. I started painting my matchbox cars with "primer spots" not long after that. Then my pedal car got "black primer" and brushed on flames. I'd pull it up on dads ramps in the center of the garage. He got mad and threw the pedal car away cause I "ruined it". Damn, I wish I could go back and relive that summer.
My dad was who got me hooked on cars. Before I was born he had a `49 shoebox and was in a club in Anaheim. Then he got a `64 ss impala and traded it on a new 69 pontiacfirebird (he still thinks this was a mistake), but the one that stands out for me was in the 70's he bought a 54 F-100 that was a pile of shit. He worked on it all the time after work in our garage and got it pretty good but never got it "cherry" before he was in an accident and was/is a parapaligec. His first car after his accident was a 66 buick rivi in rootbeer brown. my grandfather installed hand controls in it so he could drive and he drove it off and on until he bought a brand new coupe de ville in 1980. In my mind I kinda took over as the car guy in the family. this reminds me, I gotta have hime dig up some pix.
Soon after my parents divorced, about 20 years ago, my pop's bought a project car, in the form of a '27 roadster/pu. I helped out as much as I could around the shop that we rented a space in to work on the car (mostly sweeping up). There was about 7 or 8 different guys with projects in the shop including an old Willy's gasser and a '47 Crosley sedan w/'29 Model A fenders, an Ardun equipped flattie and funny car style flip-up body!!! Soon after our project was up and running we moved to Fresno and I never saw that Crosley again. If anyone has a stash of old Street Rodders check out the Jan. '76 issue it's on the cover.
I've been hooked on cars since 1951 when I was 4 years old.An uncle who was retired from the railroad and lived with us drove a 1946 Ford coupe.Dark green.Stock as can be but all flatheads have a nice sound to them so when he sat me up on his lap behind the wheel to drive it down our street,I thought I was king shit. Then when I was 14,an older kid my Mom knew from church,started hanging around our house and when his older brother went into the Marines,he got to drive his brother's '53 Ford 2dr.hardtop.It was black primer,frenched grille opening but no grille,'55 Merc tailights mounted upside down,stock flathead with duals and glass packs.Stock wheels with Cad sombrero caps and blackwall tires. The suspension was shot so it sat right on the ground and would scrape the rocker panels if you took a corner tight enough. I used to wait on my front lawn to hear those glaspacks make the corner onto our street. He'd load us kids in and we'd go to the A&W. But my favorite times in that car was when he'd pick me up on a Saturday afternoon and we'd explore the local junkyards looking for parts. Man,those were good times.. Oh, in 1965,that '53 Ford got parked in the woods next to the kids house and rotted right into the ground.It never got finished.
Barely 30 years from your '58 I fell in love with cars, too, at the age of 15 (it began at 14, but Infection was full-tilt in a year). Living in an area of So Cal bent on avoiding lawyers & lawsuits, so this minor couldn't find someone to hire me just as a mechanic's aide. One shop in particular was Tony's Auto Body in Temple City, walking distance from my house. They always had some sweet old iron projects going on, and yes I was relentless in the quest to work there, hell I volunteered free time just to get to work around those cars and learn from them (but to no avail). Wasn't 'til 2 endless years later I got my first job at a GM dealership garage, co-worked with a car nut with - among cars - a '34 fenderless Ford, the dream car. Riding in that chopped rumbler helped the sickness grow, 'til next year I towed to the Arcadia High shop a '24 Dodge basketcase coupe (a surprising find stashed in South El Monte). Got busy with a cutter 'n welder, but before you knew it graduation loomed, and with it an escape from L.A., after practically giving it to a friend. Have been trying to find out how far Joe Anderson got with that project. But then I think a lot about that with the other unfinished rides, sold too soon man, sold too soon. Great post.
Tommy Ivo let me sit in his T-Bucket at the track! I musta been like 6 or 7 years old My fat ass wouldn't fit in it today... Then we moved to Hawaii and dad got a Crown Vic & we put 6 carbs on it right after Hawaii became a state.
It was the summer of 1958. I spent a month or two with my grandmother in S.E. Pa. My older cousin had a (shiney) black 46 Ford business coupe with a Buick nailhead in it...original drive train with an adapter. I went over his house while they were working on it. His younger brother was my age. We have to stick our nose in and see what the cool guys were doing. He had the Vertex mag out of it. I think he was putting in a hot rod cam. Up the driveway comes the coolest car I've ever seen. A chopped, yes chopped, 40 Ford convert. The owners dad had a Flying A gas station. He was wealthy by our standards. I almost shit myself when he popped the hood to reveal a genuine Chrysler Hemi with 6 Strombergs. He says, with his chest pumped out, "it's a California car!" It had to be. Nobody around there had anything like it. Plenty of shoebox Fords and some split manifold Chevys, but a chopped hemi powered 40 convert? Only in the magazines! I must have drooled on his fender. Because he grabbed the vertex (without the cap) held the little "peter" thingie up to my arm and gave the mag gear a big spin! Holy shit! what a shock. They chased us all over the lot until we got the hell out of there. The older cool guys always win!
I've been nutty over cars as long as I can remember. My Dad was big into kars as well, but that was before he met my Mom and got married. I guess having a family and lots of responsibilities can "quench the fire" a little bit. He always told me of the '41 Chevy he had in about 1954. He leaded the doors (shaved the door handles) and used starter solenoids with a switch under the running boards to get in. Then he had a buddy paint it a bright metallic green. He also had a split manifold with Smithys. He always loved the sound of an inline with pipes. He was always telling me of the mild kustoms that used to prowl the old Westside here in Denver where he (we) grew up. His tales always made me want a kustom. Hopefully a Chevy with an inline 6 and rappety pipes. I always bought the magazines at the store that had anything to do with kustoms. Back then, it was hard to find anything on kustoms, unless you knew someone with a stash of little books. Some of you might remember when Hot Rod would occasionally do a story about kustoms or the Leadsled Spactacular back when the KKOA started in the early 80s. Also, Classic & Custom magazine was one of my favorites as well. On to my story. One day in about '81 or '82, me and one of my friends were coming back from Cinderella City Mall in Englewood. We took the bus out there and back, and had to transfer alot each way to go and come. Back then, there was a big bus stop at the corner of Alameda and Broadway. We had to transfer off of the Broadway bus to catch the Alameda West bus to get home. We just missed the transfer bus so we were going to have to wait about 30 minutes for the next one to show up. I was sitting on the bus bench talking with my friend when I saw it. It looked like a big emerald rolling up to the light. I elbowed my friend and told him to look. We both couldn't believe our eyes! We watched as she kroooosed on by. It was a '56 Chevy 2 door sedan, and it was a kustom. It was the prettiest kandy green I had ever seen. It had a '58 Buick grille in it, nosed, decked, and shaved handles. It had wide whites on it with '56 Olds Fiesta flipper hubcaps, lake pipes and a rappety 6. I knew what they sounded like because of Pops. I noticed that it had white and green kandy stripe tuck 'n' roll interior as it went by. It had skirts and set plenty low. So low in fact that it scraped the ground because of the ruts from the buses stopping at the bus stop on hot days. The back had the '56 Buick style Lee lenses painted white with a diamond pattern for the light to shine through. I also remember the kar had awesome looking white pinstriping on the hood and trunk, and personalized Colorado license plates that read "SHBOOM". The kar was incredible! Needless to say, me and my friend had lots to talk about for a few days after that! It's been over 20 years ago, and I can still picture that kar kruising by when I close my eyes. It's weird though. Me and my folks used to go for rides on Saturday evenings to get ice cream or a root beer float or something, and we'd always manage to find the local criuse nights. We'd always get out and look around. I never saw that kar there, at indoor shows or anywhere else! I never saw it in a magazine either, and it was a quality kar! I wonder what ever became of it. Looking back it was almost like seeing a ghost, but it is burned in my memory. I thank my Dad for showing me his love of kustoms.
The Jalopy Journal
