MAGAZINE

T 'n' A

Don Small has appeared here, and will again. It's inevitable. There has been a continuum of cool stuff coming out of his home-shop and we went looking for this one. T 'Bugs', or Bobtails (don't call 'em modifieds) are in the convulsing minds of some T fanatics. Some move on it. Some don't. Don came up with a genuine Bug that, although it was cute, running, (kinda) functional, and nostalgic, it lacked real useability. A remade, kicked chassis was in order as a foundation for the ROOF 8 valve T motor that came along with the rest of the jitney. It's, in fact, the motor that WON the Signal Hill hillclimb in 1979. Must be a hard-chargin' T-Bone!

At the '98 Antique Nationals when he showed up and putted around the pits; the ol' scar looked a little too hairy for a quarter mile pass. Nostalgia is one thing but the integrity of you own ASS is another. He'd await another day for this piece's return to GLORY. So it was for display only, and he went home. These pictures demo what he was thinkin'. Probably not a runner at the '99 races (it's not like he hasn't accomplished anything else in the last year!) but probably a Holiday Tour entrant, we'd bet.

WORKMANSHIP KINDA SURPASSES THAT OF YESTERYEAR

WHIPPET SHELL IS THE RIGHT PART, NO?

ROAD AGENTS

They've added muscle cars which says they are good business people because they reckon we're all gonna die and leave them with no readers, so they have to invest in another market. ALL the rest of them have done this.

It may be that Hop Up is the only albatross, dead-end, doomed, no-foresight, but FOCUSED, title out there. They have all realized that there in not enough fresh material out there to do a monthly magazine that is totally in good taste. To fill those pages, ya gotta show some bow-wows too. Maybe that IS OK after all. Those people and their cars are a part of it and the mags are reporting on IT. The phenomena. It sure makes Hop Up Guys look good.

Phone calls and handwritten notes have sufficed until his visit to this coast in the Spring when he will pick up some parts, including a B motor for the car he is resurrecting right now.

WADE JENNINGS is a car guy. A Hop Up Guy. An automotive art collector. Car collector, too. Exotics are fine, but hot rods are in the core. One in particular. Seems there was this '31 Coupe that he was building in the family driveway. Spartanburg, South Carolina. 1953. Wade's artful eye hasn't lost any of the memory. It was imprinted. Etched. Forever in his mind's eye. When they turned up the photograph of the kid (Wade) surveying his not-yet done rig, with the Orange Nehi soda bottle in hand, top still cut completely off before repositioning with about half the pillars, he was gratified. But not at all surprised. He'd retained the image perfectly. It was SO cool, though, that two things happened. He decided to start soon on the construction of a clone. Parts would have to be chased, but no problem. He knows some 'magnets' in places as far away as Cali. However, first thing's first. He commissioned Tom Fritz to paint the scene. Oil on canvas. Whoa, Daddy!

Some say that Fritz is the Rockwell of our generation. Say Hallelujah!

The following is a photo of the original art, shown here with permission. Let's imagine it's our own scene. Our own youth, our own A-Bone, and the beginning of our own journey into the innersanctum of automobilia. This art should work for every lovin'one of us. If it doesn't, what are you doin' here?

"SHADE TREE QUARTET" BY TOM FRITZ COMMISSION FOR WADE JENNINGS

If you are somebody who has been there all along, or someone who bloomed late but got it because you knew what 'gettin' it' was, then you FEEL something in this art: like what you feel when you and a Pal discover a car, look at it and both of you are silent. You don't even look at one another, but you sense the other cat slowly shakin' his head. No words need be spoken. It's too perfect, and all the words you've ever uttered about a clean car apply here, and it would be rhetorical......redundant....repetitive....trite.....to try to say it over again.

We can, in fact, be MOVED by art. Not impressionistic images of ladies with parasols next to a lake with wildflowers all around and a puppy frolicking in the background ..............although if you stuck a hammered three-window in there, so low that the crank-hole is totally obscured by poppies...........but, ...no, if it is something meaningful to ya', like a guys' first car, you can relate. Maybe real art fans all knew ladies with parasols? We don't know. But if the art MOVES you, and Fritz, Dennis Brown and a few others can make that happen.....it leaves you speechless, like the piece shown above.

Maybe that's why it's so quiet in art galleries...................and at certain times..... in our garages, too.

ROAD ZOMBIES