Cul-De-Sac Memories

At the end of next month, I will have been without a running hot rod for one year. Per my math, that’s one year too long. It’s something that I think about often and, on the good days, it serves as motivation to get the newest version of my car finished.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell. “Don’t it always seem to go / you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” she sings in her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi.” It’s true—oh so true—and almost applies to my project. Then I remember that the car is not gone. Instead, it’s just taking on a new form.

That said, the first version is mostly just a memory at this point. I remember it well—the way the door clicked shut and the steering felt as I made hard right turns off Fulton towards the Inner Richmond. Photos of the car exist—lots of them, ranging from cell phone snapshots to professional shots taken by some of the best in the business. Yet, when I was at work today, I randomly found some images on a memory card that I took in the summer of 2021.

In those days, the car was freshly on the road in its hopped-up form. The almond white of the firewall was still pristine, and all the silver paint hadn’t yet burned off the header. Nothing was really leaky. It was, for all intents and purposes, an untested car.

Back in those days I was settling into a new job and, as part of that process, I was testing cameras. As I worked to get the feel of the new Canon, I figured there was no better subject than my Model A roadster. Stumbling upon these was a treat for me. I hope you’ll get a kick out of them too.

—Joey Ukrop