Safety Second

I think it was 1995. Junebug and I decided to attend the Street Rod Nationals in Oklahoma City. He drove his Merc in from Reno and the plan was to sell our t-shirts out of the trunk. Who needs a vendor spot and the fees that accompany them? Not us.

Junebug was a bit of hermit and I don’t think he had ever been out of Nevada. His eyes were huge with curiosity and questions when he pulled into my driveway. There is no telling what he was wondering about – there is a lot of strangeness between Nevada and Oklahoma. I’m sure my smoking jacket and submarined camel was not lost on him either. This was an odd new world for him.

In any case, Junebug’s brain survived the night and we woke early to hit the fairgrounds. For me, the drive over was comfortable as I tried my best to show my Oklahoma expertise while posing as a tour guide. For Junebug, well… It was hard for him to make sense of the just arriving street rods clashing against the regular traffic of Ford F150s and Chevrolet Silverados. This was not Reno.

Then, we entered the fairgrounds and the world turned on both of us – pink faces with a stylish Southern Sag, old cowboy styles, seersucker coats and button down collars for the contenders… Burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in those faces, not much curiosity at all. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. That’s how Mr. Thompson would have described it anyway.

Junebug, his traditional Merc driver, and I were all aliens to these people. They didn’t know what to do with us, where to park us, or how to label us. In the end, they stuck us in the corner and hoped… prayed… we weren’t contagious. The trunk came open and our Dirty Shirts spilled out. Ten bucks a piece or twenty will get ya two.

It didn’t take long for the man to figure us out. By noon, we were shown the door by way off a smokey burnout and by late that evening, Junebug was back on that weird road between Oklahoma and Nevada. It’s a story that I’ve never really told as I don’t know that we’ve reached the thick of the plot quite yet.

Of course, almost 15 years have passed. Junebug and I are both 30-somethings. He moved on and I’m not sure what became of him. Maybe that scene in Oklahoma was just too much for him to overcome. Maybe he got smart.

The rest of the world certainly didn’t – a quick glance at any automotive newsstand will prove that. Everyone loves curiosity for tradition these days… almost to a fault. Even so, here I am. Here we are. Still doing the same old stuff and still feeling a bit rebellious while doing it.

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The above is a reprint from the 2009 H.A.M.B. Calendar.

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To me, rebellion is the cornerstone of hot rodding and customizing. Going fast and looking good never started with a Beach Boy’s A-Side, a set of Wal-Mart lawn chairs, and a nice sunny day at a Fairground somewhere. Rules aren’t set by a group of middle aged “industry men” that meet at a Chili’s in Louisville once a year. Nor are they set by the folks that think they know better because they run a magazine or a web site.

Rules are your own.

To me, this is hot rodding. This is customizing.

Rebellion.