Art & Inspiration How far back do your Hot Rod memories go?

I can remember it as clear as if it were yesterday. I was about nine years old and it was 1957. My Dad and Mom and I went to hit some golf balls at a driving range near my home in Southwestern Pennsylvania. After we were done we started back to our car when I noticed headlights coming up the gravel road that went to the parking lot. Dust and headlight glare gave way to a raspberry roadster, I recall it being a Deuce. After the driver parked it, I went over to it as the dust settled. I had never seen anything like it. Chrome, wide whites, cycle fenders, full wheel covers and a glistening white interior. It was exactly what I would see on Hot Rod, Car Craft and R&C in later years. I was hooked... and remain hooked.
This is NOT the actual car. Like I said, I was nine years old and didn't have a camera. I thought I'd make that clear for Bob. Bob thinks I'm pulling a fast one. Think of it as a visual aid. It was a car very similar to this one. Sorry for your confusion Bob.

 

I'm only 32 and we didn't have any cool cars growing up but I was raised around Motorcycles so that meant we'd go to Buffalo Autorama in the winter but summers were spent at the JaFaFa Hot's Cruise night.

Probably one of my most prized memories was watching a Milner Clone coupe and another hot rod hold up traffic doing 40mph in the dead of winter on the "33" after the Buffalo Autorama was over. Watching those two cars leave was a real defining moment and probably has a lot ro do with my love for '32 5w's.

 

My first hot rod memories are from when I was around 3 ('69/70). I remember riding with Dad, to pick up his '32 sedan fenders, from the sand blaster's shop. The car's been apart since before I was born, and that was shortly before he bought his '34 sedan. Around that same timeframe, I got to ride in the St Louis St Patty's day parade, in my aunt's all stock 26 T touring.

 

When I was very young my Father was stationed in Germany, in the ruins of British-occupied Hamburg specifically. I'd guess we were 3,000 miles from the nearest hotrod...even US Forces in area were living garrison lives with no hobby shops or anything yet.
A friend of my Mother's sent me a toy car as a present...it was a HOTROD, a fairly big toy with a clear plastic engine that had visible pistons that went up and down as the car rolled!! THAT made a deep impression on me...and my '48 Ford was the family car, so the flathead sounds and smells were already burned into my brain...
Later, maybe 1955 or so, back in the USA...there was an ODD looking black car permanently parked near our house, frequently surrounded by young men pointing at bits and pretending to work on it. It was something fairly late model (as a '48 Ford person, I was very aware even as a child that the world had changed about 1949!) and had unusual lines...its alterations were more than token dechroming or skirts, the car's fender lines did not match anything I knew. My Father could only answer my questions with something like "It's a homemade car." I wish I could remember more about that...
Our area near Washington DC was mostly Government, diplomatic, and Military people, upper middle cl*** and largely people who were re-posted frequently and so could not take apart their cars anyway.
Those interested in cars tended toward furrin stuff that was driveable or allegedly driveable, sporty finds from overseas posting. The area was always a zoo of foreign cars, including many not normally in the US market.
By the time I was getting towards driving age and was allowed to dis***emble and mess with the family rides (my parents were surprisingly trusting, and expressed only a little alarm as I laid out there carburetor in bits), early Fords other than ours were essentially gone from the general motorpool and were locally represented only by a few considered antiques or hotrods around the area. The rodding culture had become almost entirely '55 Chevies with minor dechroming and the biggest small blocks the owner could afford; very soon, even that was largely blown away by first Super Stocks and then musclecars...
With nearly nothing around, my education continued from the declining numbers of early cars in the magazines and a little contact with antiques.

 

Back in 1968, I was 5 and my sister was dating her now Ex-Husband and he had a 56 Mercury convertible and a Ford roadster. I don't know if it was a Model A or a 32 but that roadster was nice. It wasn't some ****Rod. It was shiny black with the doors welded shut and filled so it had a smooth look. I don't remember the interior or the rims but engine was a nailhead (I don't know what size it was) with dual carbs, all finned and chromed out.
He was living in Long Beach at the time (near Signal Hill) and after they were married, I would often spend the night over there and sometimes I would go with my brother-in-law to pick up the roadster (he was renting a garage for it) and he would take me for a spin and we would drive up the signal hill road that was famous for antique car hill climbing.
A few years after they got married, my sister was expecting a 2nd child, so her husband sold the car and used the money for a down payment on a house. The sad thing is that he doesn't have any photos of the roadster.

 

My dad came up through the fifties and was a hotrodder. My earliest memory of any car was his '59 T-Bird. It was light metallic blue, had a white gut and chrome reverse wheels with a lowered, level stance. My memories are from '67 and '68 when I was 4 and 5 years old. At the time the car sounded really tough and I think that is part of the reason why it stuck in my memory. Years later, I found out that the engine was a real home brew having different pistons, rods, etc and the car flat-out flew!

I have some photos of dad standing by the car. I will try to scan it and attach it.

 

I really got into hot rods about 1964 when I was 10 yrs. old. This was when my dad began taking me to the drag races at National Trail Raceway and Avilla Dragway. I was also building Weird-Oh models, listening the music of the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, and racing my slot car at OK Raceway in Columbus, OH. I still have a lot of memorabilia from those times which brings back many fond memories!

 

Some of my earliest memories revolve around hot rods. I don't know which came first, but I remember my older brother and I riding with our Dad in his seaweed flamed and lace painted '62 Vette "whistling" at pretty girls. Both of us sat in the p***enger seat with the top down...probably without seat belts. It would have been about 1973 and I would have been about 4. About the same time-frame I remember going to look at a worn out '33 Tudor that my Dad bought and was the car he built when I was little. They must have been pretty cool times for me to remember them all these years.

 

View attachment 2639527 View attachment 2639527 I was 14 when I went to the first Oakland Roadster Show in 1949. After we moved to Walnut Creek in 1940, me and Tommy Grove became pals until after high school when we went our separate ways. I remember seeing ads with Tommy and his "Melrose Missal" sponsored by Dodge. He also was in ads in Popular Mechanics for Eskinderian Cams. When I found that the NHRA has his "Missal" on display I wrote asking about him but got no response. I sure wish I knew more about him. My son and I worked on car together - he's a tech at MB of Fresno. And I got into horses but keep some oldies.

 

The Black Road auto club and two cousins cars kept me interested and car crazy. Some photos of my cousins 49 & 33 Chevy's plus some other Black Road Cars

 

Always liked cars but when I was about 12 I was walking home from school and a neighbor from across the street picked me up and gave me a ride home in his 62 corvette. I was walking on air and always remember that car.
Mark

 

Growing up on a military base, in the mid to late 60's, I was surrounded by the cars that the G.I.'s drove. Years later, they would be referred to as muscle cars. A cool beginning, but not an impression.

I saw "American Graffiti" shortly after it opened. The seed was planted, but it needed something to make it grow. That came in my high school library. I was in there for detention and had to write a report from a book in the library. After looking around for a while, I came upon the magazine rack. There she was. The July '72 issue of Hot Rod Magazine.

A whole new world was opened for me. So many cool cars. But it wasn't a feature car that peeked my interest. It was an adverti*****t for, I think, Mothers Mag Polish. There was a an old lady standing next to the coolest looking purple Hot Rod I had ever seen. I didn't know what the car was at the time. All I knew was that I wanted one. BAD. It was a T Bucket. That's when I stopped noticing Muscle cars and concentrated on Hot Rods. Mainly, T Buckets.

I truly do love this ****.

 

1961, Dad was a local cop and the advisor to the local Hot Rod Club. One night he took me to see the club presidents project, a full race flathead in a '32 ch***is. It was going to get a '27 T coupe body, but I never saw that. In my mind it was the neatest and best built ch***is a 10 year old had ever seen. Some time around 1978 the ch***is was given to me and reality hit me, it was a learn to weld special, with a lot of torch cuts, I flipped it ar Hershey. One of my big regrets as I look back at it, they were real '32 rails and could have been saved. Bob

 

GaryC. When did the Rick Nelson '32 get repainted and arrive on the East Coast? Bob

 

For mine I'll go back a generation.

My dad got into hot rods because he had to. Father was very ill and unable to take care of mechanical things so dad learned how. Turns out he liked it and messing with cars.

My parents built a few rods together, including a T-bucket in a SMALL stoage shed, and cut down the wall to drive it out.

A few years later they sold it to start builling a Model A sedan and have room for me. I was born and put the model A on hold. First memories are working on the A, and the pedal car they got me to keep me from pounding out dents on the A all the time. Been hooked ever since

 

About 1961 the older neighbor kid built a 47 Merc coupe with a nailhead in it. Living out in the NW Michigan boonies we were all short of cash. As there was no funds for one of those catalog shifters. I was elected to pull and push the two re-rod stubs sticking out of the floor. I would set on the floor. He would tell "SHIFT" and I would pull the one and push the other for a 1-2 shift. Then the easy 2-3 shift pull.. Great times for a gear head kid.. Later got expelled from high school for terrorizing the school parking lot with a nailhead "T" roadster.. Used nailheads for years. Only 300 hp. engine that you could buy for $35.00 exchange!!!

 

Well I came home from the hospital in Nov 1946 in this 41 Ford ragtop. It was said to have the loudest pipes in Yakima County when my dad owned it.

Probably my first regular exposure to what one would call a hot rod was when my stepfather came home with 52 Vic hardtop with a 56 Thunderbird special under the hood that had run C Gas at Ellensberg Wa in the late 50's .

 

For me it was when I was around 5, 1948. My father took my brother and I up to the mountains behind Pasadena, CA, and when we got to a parking place there, some guy in a hot rod was doing doughnuts in the gravel, and later, as we were driving down, he raced past us at a really high rate of speed. My father loundly denounced all hot rodders as criminals and worse.

That was the point when I knew I wanted to be a hot rodder....

 

For me it's my Dad's car.
Yup... That's me. It was 1972 and I was around 3 years old.I don't remember much,but it must have made an impact on me. A couple months ago I bought the car back. My Dad and I are going to restore it back to the way it was when it competed at the Oakland roadster show.
Shane

1972



Now


Oakland 1972 Glamour Rod of the year.

 

My first hot rod experience was at my grandmothers house, far from the city. It was countyfair time,
and everyone in this county went to the fair( they still do). I was 7 yrs. old at the time. Around back of one of the animal barns was a '37 Ford coupe. All shiny with whitewalls and the hood sides off. I told my mother I was going to look. I stared at every detail, and it had a flathead with three deuces and chromed air cleaners and acorn nuts, the red fuel lines were the neatest thing I had ever seen. It's consumed my life for 60 yrs. so far.

 

My father started building the "HEMI32" coupe in 1954 ... I was born in 1961 ... so I guess you could say I was "Born a Hot Rodder"!

I can't honestly say that I remember the day that this pic of me "driving" the coupe was taken:

1963 (Fremont, California): Moon discs ... new driver (me @ age 2)​

... but I do remember the day in 1964 that my father's Hot Rodder buddy Dino (@fremont32 on the HAMB) and his two boys (both older than me) were visiting us ... The coupe had recently been painted:

Late 1963 (Fremont, California): Molded (bobbed Model A) rear fenders ... Custom rolled rear pan
and aluminum hood by Jack Hagemann, Sr. ... '56 Cadillac "Mandan Red" lacquer by Art Billings ...
American Racing (magnesium) LeMans series Torq Thrust front rims (with narrow white wall tires).​

... and one of us 3 boys thought the coupe's trunk lid & bobbed rear fenders would make a great SLIDE ... Although none of us got spanked, I do remember the very stern talk that my father gave me and Dino gave his sons

I have vivid memories of going to the Fremont Dragstrip, the Oakland Roadster Show, and to Andy's Picnic in the late '60s and throughout the '70s ... as well as attending dozens of "Rod Runs" & "Shopping Mall Car Shows" with our car club ("NOR-CAL EARLY IRON") in the '70s!

Here's my younger brother & I at "ANDY's 3rd Annual Picnic" in 1969:

July 27, 1969 (Turtle Rock Ranch - Walnut Creek, California): Two Knucklehead kids checking out a Nailhead​

Later in the day, we (sans our plaid ****on-down collar shirts) were eye-balling a 327ci 'Vette motor:

Dennis DeBenedictis' orange '23 T​

I'm not quite sure what our fascination was with GM-powered T-Buckets?

Here's a 1972 pic of my whole family (all 5 of us) arriving at "ANDY'S 6th Annual PICNIC" held @ Crow Canyon Park in Castro Valley (~20 miles from our house in Fremont) ... Dad drove ... Mom sat in the p***enger seat ... I sat in between my parents ... my younger brother sat on the floor between my mothers legs ... and my mother held my little sister :

image from the "Andy's Instant Picnic" article in the December 1972 issue of STREET RODDER magazine​

I had just turned 9 years old when I became afflicted with "SALT FEVER":

August 1970 (Wendover, Utah): Checking out the famous "L****N & ***MINS -
CAL CUSTOM" streamliner on the salt at the 22nd Bonneville National Speed Trials​

In 1975, my father & I spent many long hours at Don Stortroen's (DONZ) racecar/oil pan fabrication shop (near the Fremont GM ***embly plant) ... where we built & installed the '58 Chrysler Imperial (392ci) HEMI and the '69 Dodge HEMI torque-flite that the coupe still runs today:

1975 (Fremont, California): Fresh ~405.5ci Chrysler HEMI ... coupled to a (manual shifted) A727
transmission ... '32 Ford steering replaced with a Volkswagen Bus unit ... polished aluminum firewall.​

We'd work on the coupe (or "bench race") until about midnight ... and then head over to nearby "Mission Pine Cafe" for some hot Apple Pie à la Mode ... those were good times ... and great memories!

As a teenager (mid '70s and early '80s), I hung out with my father while he was coordinating Street Rod events (e.g., the NCSRA West Coast Mini Nats in Lodi, the NSRA Western Nats in Merced & San Jose, etc.) ... I would "help out" during these events (i.e., I drove a golf-cart around the fairgrounds and tried to look official ) ... This is where I first met many of my Hot Rodding Heroes (including Tom Medley). I also have fond memories of attending the '74 NSRA Nationals (in St. Paul, Minnesota) ... and it was always cool when I got to ***ist my father with the photo shoot for one of the many magazine (e.g., "streetscene", "RodACTION", "STREET RODDER", "ROD&Custom", "HOT ROD", "Goodguy's Gazette", etc.) articles and/or features that he (& Gary Meadors) had published in the '70s & '80s.

 

In about 1957 Dad had a 54 Dodge Cornet Coupe with the stock Hemi , dual gl***packs and a three on the tree. I loved to listen to the twin pipes when he would wind out the little Hemi.
I read all the Henry Gregory Felson books , hanging on every word.
Then in High School in 1964 , a guy in a little Model A coupe would come pick up his little brother from baseball practice. This was in Kentucky, not California !
WOW.....channeled, small block Chevy, some chrome here & there, light grey in color..........I could go on, but you get the idea............I was hooked. Long before the yellow Grafitti coupe excited us all, but when he twisted the steering wheel and those open wheels quickly moved the car , I knew I had to have an open wheel car.
A 48 coupe with the flathead in the trunk was as close as I could get that year, but I built the engine and installed it in the backyard with my swingset for an a-frame.
The open wheel car FINALLY came about when I turned 30. Still have one today.
circlek454

 

1956 at grade school.
the school was located on the corner of two streets that led to hubs of hot rod activity in Portland, Montavilla and Park rose. I would look out the window and day dream as the cars went by. My grades were terrible.

 

I was 4 years old and visiting a friend. We were playing in his front yard when you could hear this car's pipes rapping as it was slowing down to enter the neighbors driveway. A 40 Ford Coupe in primer; no hood; red wheels; California rake; and scavenger pipes hanging below the rear axle. The driver was just as cool with a DA hair style, cig's tucked in his t-shirt sleeve; and Levi blue jeans. The first opportunity I had to build a plastic model of that car I did. That memory will never go away.

 

About 6 or 7 I was sitting in an Offy powered Midget.........running. Wrecked me for life! At that same time frame I got a ride on a converted PT boat on the Missouri River and shortly after that dad had a chance a crew chief for Indy.........the 70s ruled more than my young self realized!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The early 50s. Santa Ana airport. My Dad liked to go to Corona Del Mar which meant we p***es Santa Ana airport. He would go and have a look on occasions. I had no idea what I was looking at but t was cool. Then "77 Sunset Strip" came along and the HRM Bonneville issues cemented the deal.

 

I was 3, or 4 years old when Dad had this chopped, Carson topped '41. I remember sitting in his lap and "steering". I knew then, someday I would own a car with loud twin pipes!

 

I went to the GNRS at the Exposition building after the BCRA midgets since 1956. My uncle was track manager at Vallejo; he new Speed Reily , Tommy Cop, Walt Reif, ****ie Dye. I still see Bob Rosen, he still has his midget. I used to work at Bruce Alexander' s tire shop MacAurthr& High on Sats when I was 15, his tires were Bite by Bruce's, drag slicks. We did set up for Fremont, SW&C, Melrose Missle, Gl*** Slipper, Booze Bros they all rolled through. My Dad and I would get pit p***es and go every Sunday in the 52 Buick, he was in the same lodge as Bruce. Once in a while we would go to Vaca Valley Raceway for drags or sports cars. I have a great Kodak brownie pic of my Dad and Lance Reventlou standing by his Scarab. I went to the GNRS with a model car I built, a 57 Edsel custom convertible.
I carried it around and had a chance meeting with Big daddy ER and Geo Barris. Got to go behind the ropes and had my picture taken with them and the Mysterion, it was in the Oakland Tribune.
My first car was a 54 Chev business mans painted Earl Schieb BRG. Had ansens , hurst mystery shift, duals and three ones. Had Cliff Roberts re-cap slicks. I stopped by to pick my cousin up down off of E14th in jingletown near the greeks shop, he laid a couple of tear drops on each front fender and some scallops on the trunk for $5, she was a bookkeeper for the Craig Clemmons father across the street, he was the master of wood grain. Oakland was a great place to grow up, Lee Auto in Diamond district and good ole Simas brothers gas 99.9 for ethyl

 

1961 One of my Fathers employees bought a 1960 Chevy Impala with a 348, 3 twos and a four speed. White with the red hounds tooth interior. He took me for a banzi ride and have been hooked forever.

 

When I became a car guy Car Craft was the size of TV guide and I could keep the current issue in my jeans pocket while riding my bike or my Cushman, Didn't last long that way but I read 'em cover to cover and still had a TON of 'em in my room when I left for Viet Nam in '67...Mom didn't care for them so, out into the trash they went!! Started as I rode in my best friend;s Mom's Buick ragtop, it was a '49 and I LOVED riding in it! I have been a convertible guy ever since and my bride and I had had dozens of them..... Wish we had some of 'em back today!!
I had just sent in my subscription renewal the week before I heard R&C was shut down...again. Sad news. Maybe HRM will try, again, to pick up the slack.