MAGAZINE

Tony DiCosta (Hot Rod and Custom Supply) comments that the simpler times evoked by our iron are a solace......a respite............ from the cultural disintegration of this U.S. of A. Whoa Daddy. We don't wear bobby sox and hang fuzzy dice any more (although we may have for about 10 minutes in 1977) and we don't really long for the daily threat of nuclear holocaust, but our avocation has a simpler set of rules with less flim-flam than some. Even within the rod hobby there a factions who show go-go 80's competition, one-upmanship, can-you-top-this mentality. Power-parking for 'the pick' is a fairly 80's thing, huh?

There aren't too many tree-huggers in rodding. Al Gore isn't likely to think we have a great idea, cruising coast to coast just for the yuks........(Al, don't hyperventilate-there are only about 116 of us nationwide, and the collective emmissions from well-tuned hotrods in the whole frickin' country doesn't equal the smokey spews from the unlicensed, uninsured, unchecked cars of illegal immigrant scofflaws in LA County, alone). If Al and the rest want to stop road-building through sacred countryside - stop people-building. Population increase is the reason development has to sprawl.With a static population, quality of life would be enhanced by technology, not by spreading out.

This one's a 'gimme' for Algor:

"I used to think that I was cool,
riding 'round on fossil fuel.
'Til I found out what I was doin'
Was ridin' down the road to ruin."

James Taylor

So what. He might have been on heroin when he wrote it. Cute, .......but we hate cute.

So we find people of our own bent in rodding, although maybe you're not of the same bent....we just don't talk about it. Good. Let's not talk about it. Except here. You didn't pay anything for this (it'll be different in Hop Up 2000-no social/cultural proselytizing) so it's Mort's nickel.

These people - who maybe are apolitical - find kindred spirit in the rod world and plenty to talk about without drawing lines in the political sand. You know what it's really about? You knew it was coming.....It's about the iron. Hop Up Guys are into the iron the same way the early hot rodders of the 20's and 30's were. The concept that you would look cool hadn't occured yet; it was about performance and restyling for the satisfaction of the guy - not for the pleasure of the Barbs. It is their (our) escape from one reality into another reality, which is fixing and improving simple beasts, making them as good as they can be, and exercising the result in a performance test (long ride is OK) of some sort. No one has to be watching. A real Hop Up Guy can appreciate it in the dead of night, solo, and won't have to tell everybody he sees for two weeks the same, rhetorical, memorized tale of glory. Fraud-rodders (we know you're readin' this): note how many times you tell the same story of self-praise, and note further how many times you volunteered the information........weren't even asked a question. If you have to set up the opportunity to tell your story.....who cares?

Hop Up Guys are genuine. 14 karat. Maybe they don't show as good as some. Maybe they show better. But the show doesn't matter. It's the escape, the departure into an existence of cast iron and sheetmetal (sometimes shitmetal!) that makes it all figure.

Moral to the story? It's you guys I want to be around....................if I decide to pull my head out of the sand.

****en hopup verita****