MAGAZINE| Contents |
|---|
|
Contact Us Magazine Info Previous Issues Cool T-Shirts |
|
Book Sales Rattle Can Nationals Night Riders West Coast Primer Nats Faux-Cal National Roadster Show Service With A Simile Mort's Shorts |
MAGAZINE
It really was simpler. It was the fifties....... they thought they were cool ......just discovered the word.......and they were....and they had the best of the style and design and heart of the car life that buzzes us. Yeah, Daddy.
Jay had a '52 Ford that was a done car. He was my older brother's buddy, he somehow had more car than his buddies....or more dedication..... to finishing a car, anyway. That took/takes sacrifice. You had to give up something else if you wanted the pressed-out iron. The '52 was lowered. Painted a metallic blue. And TJ upholstery. All over it. Headliner, carpet, the whole magilla. And he came by to say hi to my Bro on a Saturday morning. I musta been....oh, 12? That little Ford is etched in to my brain and I knew there were reasons it was special. I knew I could be that guy. Could do that car. I could direct the customizing of a '52 Ford every bit as good as Jay.............now that I'd seen it. I hadn't missed anything. Dash, guages, pipes, piping, caps, pipes.........all of it. Just needed to be ..........16. Maybe might coulda used some scratch, too
But I had to wait. (Isn't that what the girlfriend said in 9th grade?) So it was magazines and probably a little more OJT than most kids: see, I lived across the river from Barris, around the bend from Chrisman, down the street from Art Chrome and there were quite a few of those pieces you see in Drake and Barris books............. all over the hood.. We grew up in the cross-hairs of the rod/custom target area and, other than the maybe more obvious Pasadena area with its notorious hot rod founding...our turf was only 20-30 miles or so from that, so there wasnt much different....there was a pretty good act goin' on where we were. Now, there was a lot of these lowered, scalloped and not de-chromed 56-58 Chevys and Ponchos and Fords, and even I knew that that was cool for that today but they made it too easy for todays today.
Cloning compromised style is not cool, even if it is in vogue for nothing other than nostalgia.
There was this little drive-in called Tracys within walkin' distance (for a kid with a curfew), where I started out with cinnamon rolls...... and ended up with Old Golds; some of those guys came in there: Rector. Carter. May. Any of you geeks out there? Betcha you're retired accountants now, who haven't had a cool car since your girlfriend's first unwanted pregnancy.
Later, it was 64 Impalas at the Long Beach Arena with metalflake and lots of sounds...and still nothing dechromed..................OK? And we ran with guys what slammed Ponchos, put Buick wires on 'em and didn't mess much with usually tasty factory colors. And cruised (yeah, Harveys Broiler) and played Jimmy Reed.......ya got me runnin'...hidin'...anyway ya wanna...
This street stuff was the daily...but if you were extreme, ya had a hot rod of some description goin' on, too. Remember streethot rods were dead at this time. But a few guys kept the flame flickerin'........... and a few young moths were drawn to the light.(Blink)
A bit later we were entering cars - modest - that were hot rods- in some of the indoor car shows. .
Once, when we came of age the Early Times entered a club display, sometime in about '69, I suppose, at a show in San Diego. I took a square little coupe down there, got full o beer on move in, we all did, and took a memorable ride back home... 100 miles - 100 miles per hour through the port to port coastal fog............... in a black, slammed '64 Coupe de Ville, with one of the other guys, and he drove that bad sombitch right past a CHP unit in the friggin' fog and the cop musta not believed anybody would do that - or thought they were filming Batman or something, and the driver pulled it up a little bit and..kept on cruisin'....and I eventually got dropped off at my Mom 'n' Dads house (yes, you pricks, I lived at home after I went back college...... but got thrown out again soon enough.....OK?). Even in those times...it was simpler.
The forum itself was simpler. Smaller world. There were fewer of us; our own reach was shorter, and in that small world, fame was unimportant since you knew nobody thought much of the act anyway. You had your Buds and your car. Today its a world- wide forum, everybody on the internet is a publisher, images can be shot around the world in a minute by a guy in Cleveland or Hong Kong.................and ambition might be the norm more than the exception.
Now we got clusters, large and small, physical and electronic, and we all want to have indemnification, peer approval. The mantra of some of us is a narrow profile for the cars. Traditional? Yeah. Of course! Now, we don't doubt that there's cool people in Fuschia Clubs, too...or bowling leagues or sport bike clubs................or street rod clubs.....but we want to hang with cool people who have our kind of car.
So when we roll over and embrace somebody; allow them in to our cluster solely because they chose us, solicited us..... and they don't have a proper car...do they hang because of the wrong car or... because they liked us first?
If were gonna claim to have standards of aesthetic and style, then we have to have the balls to tell the really nice people with stupid cars (no, not SS) that they missed it by....oh.....this much...and oughta go away and figure it out first. Unless yours is just a social group..... with cars as bangles. In some outfits, if you want in, you're in, and damn the supposed standards. Hey. It's their outfit to run as they please. But they shouldn't claim a certain style. Or Period. See, if some unlowered orphan car with hokey graphics, (but a really nice homemade this or that) is a turd............... its a turd. If the guy has waltzed into your life and embraced you.....but has a crappy car, then don't forget that oversight when you discredit somebody else you don't know......who has good taste .......expressed in his gold-chain car. He might be a cooler guy than the loser that chose you .......who has NO FUCKING TASTE at all in cars.
And if your guys an asshole to boot...WTF then? You cleave to a dick like that?!! Because he chose you?
Some of it is about the act. Were told that what rankles true-heart, long-time car guys is that the most visible of the multitudes are beach-chaired-out, looking for the glory, trolling for praise from the unwashed and unknown, self-promoting at every parking lot car show in town and kind of cheapening, diluting, what is a pure avocation for the Boys; so the Boys tend to stay away from large populations that, actuarially, are likely to have some of those people included. If you act like one of them - the other kind of guys.....it doesn't matter if you are primer or billet....you are one of them. What supposedly pisses off traditionalists is the behavior of so-called gold-chainers. Well. Maybe we ought to rank on our own rust-chainers, some of whose posing, name-dropping acts are identical,
but.............who are (notso) coincidentally transported by traditional iron.
If we claim standards..........of iron or behavior.........maybe we should stick to them.
Or be a fraternity.
![[Previous page]](/graphics/prev.gif)
![[Next page]](/graphics/next.gif)
|