MAGAZINE

Hell yes, it is. It's about bad-ass roadsters, speedy coupes, hammered sleds, belt-drive motocycles, racecars that look good, and the sounds and smells and vibes that go with them.

It's about something in your gut that makes you different than someone who doesn't get it.....and different from a whole bunch of them who think they get it........and between you and those that think they get it, what are there..a million of us? A million people into Jags, Monster Trucks, hot rods, street rods, classics, antique farm implements, tri-five Chevys (don't you EVER call 'em shoe boxes), customs. Really. A million, although a lot of people, is still a fairly small percentage of nearly 300 million humans in America. (Can't call 'em all Americans, ya know?).

So, maybe it ain't such a big deal to find out you know one of them when some cat you just met knows the other guy. And him, and him, and him?

Talkin' to Swell Tom the other day (you know, Sure-fit Seatcover Emporium of Canoga) and he'd met this guy and I said "Hey, I know the guy who has his old roadster" and, you know, sometime when we come across the two of them together, there'll be jivin' and laughin' and not-a-little bench racin', and whadaya wanna bet the two of them treat the two of us like old pals? It's the hot rod way, Duke. Then we'll go off and the next time it will feel even more like old home week.

If you done-dedicated all your free time, most of your money, all your excess passion and 99% of your attention to cars for about 35 years, then.........you're going to meet some folks along the way. And they become the humans that populate your world, and most of them are cool and some are assholes (like there's not assholes in tennis, or chess, or bird watching or ballroom dancing groups?!!) but that's the probability factor that we factor out. There's just too many good ones and proof of the validity, the goodness, the positiveness of the thing is ..........look at the Galoots. They're always one of these encyclopedic, still-impassioned Grandpa characters who radiates peace - la paz - shares stories, facts and tips and savors the enthusiasm of (slightly) younger dudes who are still in their 'formative' years.

54 and 'formative'? Christ!

One of our race car patriarcs came by for lunch the other day and ..........we have to record these guys. He's one of them treasures you've always heard about; crotchety, got every part in the world , not a very (?) fancy dresser and really was there and did it and kicked up some dirt of his own, they say. Knew the players and, kind of like my Ol' Cowboy Uncle usta say, "Seems like if he's not tryin' to piss, he's tryin' to remember somebody's name!"

That's what got us t' thinkin' about all this.

But it's not just the old coots. There are wizardly graybeards, too ........(and greasers..count on it).....and there are players out there whose role is to be themselves: Hop Up Guys who are enthusiasts, consumers, life-long patriots quietly doing the deal right, without the preoccupation of 'getting it into the magazine'. (Once a very tall writer we know of was heard saying about a cat we hung with at the time, "..I gotta get outa here or that guy will be asking me to put his car in a magazine again.....") The rest are the real deal, the true majority among us, and, Hey! This Hop Up swindle and e mail and just old age, we s'pose, is causing us to meet more and more of you out there who are so cool, so skilled and so unpretentious, so .... we are quite aware that there'd be no IRON ................without the people. Yeah. The ones with the dirty fingernails.

'Gotta work on that.

GRAB A GEAR