I grew up in Detroit, graduating high school in 1958, so i got to see a lot of the growth of the business. First car was a '38 Ford coupe, 60 hp.I paid $60 for it and 60 was the absolute top end for it!! Then a '51 Ford shoe box, '61 Chev convertible, '64 Goat, '66 427 vette and a T Bucket. I was fortunate to see Detroit Dragway open as well as "New Baltimore", which was built by members of the Michigan Hot Rod ***n. I witnessed the first-ever car to break 100 in the 1/4 (a vette). I ran the Goat for a few years and did pretty well with it (it was my daily driver), beating all the non-sponsored cars and some of the sponsored ones, too. That all came to a halt in the spring of '67 when I staged against Wally Booth in the very first time trial runs of the year. On his first p***, he took almost a full second off the NHRA B-Stock record. So I deferred to building the T rather than fight the cubic dollars wars. I recently sold a '66 Cutl*** I had been working on for 10 years and now re-working the T again (for the fourth time). I'm in Tampa now, forcibly 'retired' and getting the rodding itch all over again. Right now I'm struggling with some design changes. I had to dump the old Corvair steering in favor of a Vega cross-steer and trying to find room to mount the box, a front panhard bar and maybe shocks. I actually wrote in all of this a week ago; don't know where it went. Anyway, I was looking to find Li'l John ****era, ran into a flock of posts about his medical situation. I understand he's OK now. I am trying to find out about the T Bucket he took to the Louisville NSRA Nats. I saw it there and was blown away by the innovations. If anybody can steer me to pictures of it , I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for letting me rant and thanks to you good people for building this awesome site. It's good to be here, and THANKS! Richard P. (T-Bone)
The Jalopy Journal
