I love hearing my dad tell stories about his mis-adventures as a teen in the North Carolina mountains. Most of them include a car. One in particular... Dad and his friends were gallivanting around the county when he was pulled over for speeding...85 MPH in his '49 Ford mild custom. The magistrate called my grandfather to come pick him up and pay the fine. It was fairly late at night and Grandpaw was not very happy! He was a great man and had a little mischief in him as well...dad got it honest! But he was a very hard father when he needed to be! Well, Grandpaw was still steaming on his way home...not much was being said. Being so mad, he was not paying much attention to his gauges. He was clipping along pretty well, so dad leaned over slightly to peer at the speedo. To this day, dad knew he shouldn't have said anything, but to share the guilt, he spoke up. "yep, that's about what they pulled me over for", he muttered. Like throwing gas on the fire!!! Grandpaw swung his right hand off the steering wheel and hit dad square in the chest! The rest of the trip was quiet! Share your stories passed down...Please not YOUR story, but ones passed down from an older generation.
My folks were coal miners in Margaret Alabama. The mines were located about 30 miles North East of Birmingham up US11. For a long stretch of about 4 miles Hwy 11 parallels what at that time was the Central Of Georgia Line. It's now Norfolk & Southern. Any way going way back at least to 1930, anyone with a "hot car" would try to race this particular locomotive pulling a freight. This locomotive was black with red wheels and white drivers. It was very distinctive as most freight locomotives were very plain. Well the cars usually did well as first. That is until the engineer realized he was in a race. Then the fireman literally poured on the coal and with much thick black smoke the Train pulled ahead. As he would pull ahead he would give that whooooo-whoo who who. As far as know, no one ever beat that train to the Margaret Crossing.
My Dad , working in Oakland Calif. Studebaker dealership Body Shop after WWll , Had a job assigned to him for a new car owners customer complaint of a strange knocking sound when turning , he test drove the car and determined the problem sound was coming from the passenger door , when he removed the trim found a half pint liquor bottle hanging on a short wire with a note inside = " bet you had a hard time finding this "
My old man started playing cars and motorcycles before the start of the second war. He was working at the Mare Island Naval base/ship yard before the war. Lots of stuff got chromed or modified there although it was against the rules. That was actually still going on into the '60s that I know of. He was from Oakland but had moved to *Frisco before he joined the merchant marine. He used to tell about his channeled Plymouth coupe that he channeled at work, had one of everything plated, and he got drunk and decided to chop the top of the steering wheel off one night at home. ( yes all that stuff was done before the war at least in Nor Cal). I guess in his inebriated state he didn't take into account that his wheels were curbed (turned) to keep his old car from rolling away. The only time the cutout was on top was when he was going around a corner. *be insulted if you want to I earned the right to call the city that and if it is a real problem I got to be in Oakland in July. We can discuss it then.
After WWII my father was making extra cash by picking up old cars for scraping. Often he would drive them home and sometimes drive them until the plates expired. GM cars were his favorite because when they were "BURNED OUT" he could put the metal in better made cars. Scrap dealers did not want any glass, wood or fabric.
Here is a funny story, not exactly car related but funny story. When I was really little my dad had a friend (close friend) called Cocomo. One night that were drinking in an establishment called the Bucket of Blood on Market Street and decided that fun with a fire truck was in order ( there evidently was one parked for whatever reason up the block). So the Ol Man and Cocomo hot wired the truck and went careening around the city in the fire truck. Well until they pulled over for the policeman who proceeded to arrest them.
My most memorable hotrod story involved a friends 50 ford 2dr sedan that we had installed a 55 T bird 292 in as per a 'how to do' in the small books. Now Al the owner had lost his license due to the unfortunate of a fatal accident. As we where and still are very close (70+) years later he asked if I would take over the car and we would continue to have the good times we were used to having. We were out one afternoon cruising and decided to see just how fast this 50 would go,so winding it up watching the speedo as we are approaching 80 in 2nd overdrive the hood flew up and smashed the windshield crushed the top of the dash and dented the shit out of the roof, fortunately we were able to stop and not die. Anyway having good insurance (as part of my Dads policy) off to the body shop to be repaired with brand new Ford parts. Couple of weeks later called to pickup the finished car, I drove of admiring the beautiful repair work and "Slam" right into the side of a United Van Lines Tractor. Now I'm still on the same street as the body shop so I walk back and tell them the bad news. This time the Insurance company said we'll fix it only using junk yard parts. The 50 lived on for many more years and Al eventually got his liscense back. The car did suffer one more wreck in later years sliding into a stone wall. I enlisted and lost track of the car after that. One thing, we found the car was faster in 2nd OD than in 3rd gear. Ralphie
This story is actually a big part of the history for my Scout. The Scout was featured in the 1973 Hot Rod Yearbook which added to it's local fame for being stupid fast and squirrely. It went out of Province in the late 70;s then all but disappeared in the early 80's. During that time the stories were always the same ... huge burnouts and the most common one ... "I remember seeing that thing going 100 mph down (add street name) with 3 guys hanging off the roll bar" Fast forward 35 years and I purchase what was left of the Scout. During the 3 year build I heard more of these stories but they were mostly the same... 100 mph, 3 guys, roll bar. Then one day Gord Forman walks into my brother's shop and I tell him how I keep hearing this story... he grins and laughs then tells me "it's true" ..."I was one of those 3 guys". 2 weeks later I met the 2nd guy as he was the owner of the speed shop I was buying parts from and Gord's ex racing partner. "Boots" Juskiw.
Some of my personal stories of my misspent youth are petty funny. But most of them have been told and retold so many times that I am not sure if they are even true any more. My dad worked for Studebaker of Portland Oregon when I was born. He had a Willys truck with a nailhead in it and often took me into the shop. One Friday night him and a friend of his named Danny were replacing the Flathead 4 in a friend's family sedan with a Stude V8. The old man had an English Bull Terror and I was wrapped up in the cab of the truck with the dog. I guess they decided to go for "Coffee" [that is how he always told it] and Danny didn't think just flung the door open and jumped in, the dog decided that he was protecting me and latched onto Danny's shoulder. The motor swap carried into Sunday.
Here's another one dad tells... Back in '59, my dad was a senior in high school. A buddy of his had just bought a year-old '58 Olds Super 88 and really talked it up as far as performance goes. There was also another guy in the area that had a BAD '55 Chevy 2-door with a "full house" motor...supposedly the fastest thing in the area. So a race was set up. At the starting line, the '55 tells the '58 to leave as hard as he can and , when it shifts to second, tap his brake lights...that's when he would leave the line. SO the '58 shoots off (dad riding shotgun), shifts to second, and taps his brakes. Dad is intent on watching the speedometer needle as it sweeps higher and higher! Just as the needle approaches 120, the '55 passes the '58, seemingly 6 feet off the ground, as if the Olds was tied to a tree! I would LOVE to know what was under the hood of that '55!!! Surely it was a fabled 301 turning 7000+!!!
This is a timely thread for me as my dad just passed this past November. Dad always told the story of going to the 1967 Nationals in Indy. He was over at Chanute AFB for training before heading to Guam during VietNam. At the last min him and 4 buddies decided to go to the Nationals. Dad had the biggest car of the group (a 61 impala) so him and these 4 other guys pile in the car and head off to Indy. The only thing they had with them was some money, a couple changes of clothes and a trunk full of beer. They got in the gate but there were no hotels to be had, not that they looked that hard as money spent on hotels was less money for beer... And it was a record weekend for drag racing as over 100,000 people were in attendance... so they ended up sleeping in the car and on the ground for the long weekend. He got to see some of the greats in action that weekend. This is from National Dragster Mag: "History was made almost by the minute in the Nationals Top Fuel ranks. Don Garlits, who was just as impressed as the spectators by the early smokeless six-second shots of nine of his competitors, tuned in on the latest tricks and emerged Top Elim with one of his own–6.77-220.58." Somewhere I have some super8 film of the event including some frames of Garlits shaving his beard off on the starting line because he finally broke into the 6's Garlits ended up winning the event but dad always said it was more about the weekend and the memories than the winners.
Sorry for your loss my friend. It is never as easy as we try and make anyone believe. I lost mine in '03. I was there for a lot of the stories he liked to tell. Not all of them, he used to like to tell about him and *Connelly regrinding cams and arguing about it the whole time back in the later '30s then again in the later '40s. He would say, "Well the problem was that Connelly was always out running everyone. " I guess him and Connelly decided to build a drag bike, they were going to haul it with a closed cab A pickup. I guess they had adapted some Chevy parts to it and it really ran, uh until it didn't. The bike was a 21" Harley (Connelly's bike of choice). So they were on their way to some track on the Oakland side of the bay when the A broke and they had the idea that they could ride the bike home to get a car to tow the A home. No back seat and its beyond me why they both had to go but Connelly convinced the old man to ride on the handlebars like they did with their bicycles when they were kids. The story goes that Connelly evaded the Oakland police with the old man sitting on the bars. *Connelly Cams was a bike came company, but he would grind a cam for anything if he knew ya.
When my mom was a little girl Mom and her brothers lived on the family Homestead in Wamic, Ore with my granddad. He had an old flathead Caddy that they drove once a year to Los Angeles, Calif to visit family. Grandad said that they stopped over in Humbug Mountain State park on the way south and again on the way north. They always had to lap the valves on the way home and Humbug Mountain was where grandpa did that. Guess the old caddy just wouldn't make the last 200 miles.
The following is the story of 2 brothers in World War II. One is my Grandfather the other my Great Uncle. They lived in Margaret Alabama, a coal mining town. There were 6 brothers and sisters. My grandfather was 2nd to the youngest, my great uncle 3rd from the oldest. My great uncle was 4f in 1942 due to a hernia. He still worked in the mines and played a little minor pro-baseball. In those days the Mine towns would have little semi pro teams. My great uncle's best friend was Tidwell. Tidwell was in the Navy and was aboard ship at Pearl Harbor December 7 1941. Tidwell was burned and had a portion of his intestines removed due to injuries sustained that morning. The Navy discharged Tidwell due to his wounds. Tidwell came home and after a short recovery he joined the USMC reversing his front and last name. On his last week of basic training he was figured out. The Marines were so impressed they gave him an honorable discharge with a warning not to try that again. Tidwell who was a wounded veteran and my uncle who was 4f were great friends. As the War dragged on my uncle was more and more the subject of scorn. People could not understand why he was not eligible for service yet he could work in the mines and play baseball. It got to where he quit going to Church. Some even called him "Chicken Shit Brown". One night a carload of boys pulled up at the commissary in a Ford sedan. "There's Chicken Shit Brown!" came from the car. Tidwell who just happened to be close by ran up to the door. "Who said that?"a kid in the back wearing a sailor hat replied " Uncle Sam's Na--" that was all he got out before Tidwell laid his ass out. My grand father could drive even though he was too young to have a license. He even had a car...a Model T Ford that my Great Grandfather pulled home for him with a mule. My grandfather got the Model T running and he rigged up a "Cork" for the muffler pipe. Up the road he would pull a string and pull a plug out of the muffler. In 1942, since all the men were either in the Service or working, there was no one to drive the school bus. So eventually my 15 year old grandfather got the job. He did pretty good at first. Then he quit running the route. All the school kids would just come to his house load up in the bus. He would sleep in and at the last minute, drive the bus to school....no stops. One morning the St.Clair County Superintendent wanted to see how their 15 year old bus driver was doing. He was in a brand new 1942 Chevrolet. The Chevy could not keep up with the bus on those mountain roads and thus ended my grandfather's school bus driving career. My grandfather continued working on the Model T and even had a date! He was all dressed and ready to go. He started the T and it jumped time. He just sat on the running board with his face in his hands. Seeing this, his brother in law said " Hey boy!" and pitched him the keys to his 1941 Torpedo Body Pontiac. While this was going on, my great uncle played a little ball in Florida. On the off season he would work in the mines. One night he was out drinking and catting around with a bunch of boys (5 of them) in a 1941 Chevrolet. There was a dive joint in St. Clair Springs. On the way back they were going too fast for those mountain roads. The front wheel of that Chevrolet slipped off the road. It was a gravel road and off the bluff the car went. The car rolled down that mountain and when it came to rest it was a steaming ball of sheet metal. All those boys climbed out of that wreck almost without a scratch. One of them cut his finger to the bone. It was like a miracle no one died in that crash. By the summer of 1944 my Great Uncle had saved enough money to have his hernia fixed. He was newly married with a baby on the way. After he healed from the operation he enlisted in the United States Army. One night there was a commotion outside that woke the Browns up. A group of men were trying to steal the wheels and tires off the Pontiac. At this time tires were a premium and rationed. My Great Grand father with a double barrel and my Great Uncle with a .22 rifle went outside. My Great grandfather fired into the air. He looked down to see my uncle on one knee taking aim. He grabbed the barrel and my uncle shot into the ground. He meant to kill them. While my uncle was in basic training those boys got out of jail and each one of them thanked my great grandfather personally for saving their lives. Christmas 1944 My Great Uncle was home for Christmas. He was told he would be going overseas after the first of the year. He had leave through the Christmas and the New Years Holiday. On December 16, 1944 the Germans broke through at the Ardennes. Shortly thereafter my Uncle received a telegram that his leave was cancelled and to report to The Birmingham Terminal Station that Saturday at 8AM. There he was to catch a train to points unknown. So the Browns had Christmas early. That morning before daylight My Great Grandmother fixed a Breakfast Feast. All the family was there. Everyone said their goodbyes. My Grandfather, Great grandfather and Great Uncle load up in the 41 Pontiac and head to Birmingham. They arrive at the train station. The clerk looks at my Uncles telegram and says, "Soldier this is wrong. This train will not be here until 8 O clock tonight. Somebody fouled up." My Great Grandfather put his arm on my uncle shoulder, " Come on son. Lets go back home." My uncle looked at him and said, "Daddy I can't go back. I have said goodbye to my Mama, My sisters, My brothers, My Wife and My little son. I can't go back. I do not want to go through that again and I will not put them through that again." So that day they all saw a movie and stayed in Birmingham until he left on the train. My Great Uncle was in Patton's Third Army. In the end of January he wrote home saying he was being moved out of the infantry and into a new tank unit. He said he would be riding instead of walking from now on. On a dark February Day my Great grandmother was working at a munitions plant in Childersburg Alabama. She collapsed. "Miss Irene whats wrong" "It's my son son." she said." He's dead" a lady tending to her said "you don't know that"...."Yes I do" she said. A while later they get a Telegram....Missing in Action A while later....Missing Later still...Missing In Action Presumed Killed. They receive a letter from his CO saying he was killed and a was a good soldier. The war ends.... He was still listed as Missing. In 1965 a marker was found in Holland with his name on it. 741st lost one tank that day crossing the Meuse. In it was a gunner named Charles Edwin Brown. My grandfather who was on a basketball scholarship at the University of Alabama goes into the United States Army that Spring. He goes to the Pacific. More on him in another post. BTW.... The 1941 Chevrolet that rolled off the mountain....All of those boys in that car, were killed overseas in the War.
I was 4A for Vietnam. No one ever figured that one out either. With my draft status the only branch of the service that would even consider me was the Corps. My grandpa was the CO of the Gun Battery in Marine County and the Skipper of the mine sweeper in San Francisco Bay (not there is a piece of real Govt intelligence), he was regular army and his crew were all sailors. I digress. He had a Chevy Sedan that his driver was supposed to chaufer him around in. I guess his driver managed to get on a bad one when they were in San Francisco one time. In a fit of wisdom Grandpa decided that it would be OK for the driver to ferry him back to Marin County. Well the local constabulary get after them and the his driver said, "What should I do?" My granddad leaned over the seat and pulled the cutout he had had installed and said, "Drive young man, we'll settle this later." Well halfway across the Golden Gate the cop was supposed to stop the chase, which he didn't. He followed them right onto the base, and grabbed my grandpa and said, "Buddy you are in a lot of trouble." As the MPs were escorting him back to his car my grandpa walked over an said, "Well sir that's Major buddy to you." I guess his driver got a good scolding and a lesson on how to pull the handle on the cutout.
My FIL is a car guy. Hee said him and his buddies would steal hub caps etc off of the cars in the school parking lot. About a week or two later they sell the items. He says most of the time they went back to the original owner. A few years ago, my in laws were visiting, he took my youngest son with him on day, my son was about 10 or 11 at the time. They stopped in and was looking at cars at a cruise in. My FIL get to talking to some of the owners about transmissions, 3 speed, 4 speed, etc. Then he taught my son an additional lesson, 3 on the tree, 4 on the floor, and a fifth under the seat. He was a little young to learn that lesson, but it was one he would've learned eventually. He turns 21 tomorrow, and he is definitely a gear head. He has probably owned more vehicles than I have.
My dad mentioned that, he served on a Diesel boat in the Navy and a bunch of guys got tired of polishing all those brass wheels and accouterments & shit so they took a whole crapton of brass stuff in and got it chrome plated. They figured the higher ups would like that, and they saved themselves all that labor, because polishing brass is a big pain in the ass. They figured wrong, the first inspection came and they did not like that at all! Oops. They made 'em take all the chrome off. So much for that idea. Dad had some great stories. They had a slot machine in the control room that somebody stole while on Liberty somewhere. They used it as kind of a sailor relief fund when emergencies came up they had a petty cash fund. Well when the boat was in dry dock getting repairs some civilian contractor took a likin' to playin the slots. Seems the base commander got a phone call from this guys wife, who wanted to know why they didn't have any money for groceries this month, he'd lost his paycheck in a slot machine, so the machine had to go bye-bye. Stupid fucker.
When I was a junior in high school, my buddy, Jim would grab me on Saturday and we'd drive his 50 ford with 255 merc 16 miles to Bend, Oregon for the races. "The races" were held on an abandoned 2 lane highway that was left when the new [hwy 97] went in and to keep pesky kids from accessing the old one, several dirt berms were bulldosed up. Well, hell...we just drove through the pine trees around them to get to the old hiway. We were all racing on this skinny abandoned road one Saturday night when the police came and kicked us out...again. This guy from Bend had a dark gold 48 Merc coupe...sat nice and low and he had his girl with him and his buddy and his date in the back seat. We all headed back to the main highway and at the end of the abandoned road we turned off through the pines, back to the hiway to avoid this 6 foot tall berm of dirt across the road....all except this guy in the Merc coupe. As Jim and I drove past we looked to see this Merc coupe balanced on top of the berm with 4 pale faces peering out....all 4 wheels in the air. Later the driver told everybody his brakes gave out....yeah.
Old fellow that used to do my diesel work, gone now, grew up in the depression and war years. He bought a T for $5 when he was 14, took the fenders and muffler off and terrorized the dirt roads. Him and some of his buddies got the bright idea it would be fun to cut donuts around the school flag pole, he said it was, cut some good grooves around it. Somebody recognised the T though, and the law came calling to his house. He had to take a shovel and rake and level the school yard back out again. One of his buddies got a A four door. He found a coupe body in a farmers field, the farmer had made a doodlebug tractor out of the frame and gave him the body. He went on a cool Saturday morning, unbolted the four door body and rolled it off, then rolled the coupe body onto his frame. Took him most of the day to get everything changed out, and he then went home and took a bath because he had a date that night. It was still a little cool that night, so he turned on the heater, don't know if it was a hot air or hot water heater but I think it might have been a water one. Anyway, with his girl sitting close, she felt something brush her leg. He told her it was probably a leaf, then it done it again. She screamed, he stopped and opened the door and got a flashlight from beside the seat and turned it into the floorboard.........there was a huge snake! Apparently it had been curled up around the heater, and the warm air livened it up and it started crawling around! He said he still didn't know how his girlfriend got out of the car, she must have jumped over him because she was about 100 ft away in a field when he found her. He said it took a lot of coaxing to get her back into the car, but it all worked out OK, they were married a short time later.
Thirty years ago, I had a small body shop in a building that had been a body shop for most of the time since the 1920's. A previous proprietor, retired, had taken a job with a local paint store, and would stop and chat with us when delivering PPG products. He got to talking with one of my guys one day, and discovered he knew the boy's father and uncles. It turned out that he had repaired one of the uncles' Hudson, and left it outside for him to pick up after his graveyard shift. My bodyman's father, the Hudson owner' s brother, happened by and decided to take it and go bar-hopping. He got a bit too drunk and wrecked it, on the same side it had been hit on before. Thinking quickly, he dropped it back off at the shop without telling a soul. When the brother/owner showed up to get it, it took a little while for them to figure out what had happened.
Thought I would share this since I think it was funny..and strange. 1971 I was stationed at Shaw AFB in SC. I had my 66 Fairlane,390/4speed and liked to go a little fast coming out of the gate on the approach to the highway going into town. On a Friday I punched it and got to going at a good clip just as I was on the highway. Well a South Carolina patrol man pulled me over and gave me a little talk. Told me how he knew how it was to be stationed away from home in the service and let me go with a warning ticket. So, I learned nothing because Monday evening, same place, same patrol man pulled me over for the same thing. He gave me a little talk and wrote me another warning ticket. Guess he has a bad memory or he stops a lot of service men speeding. I quit speeding.....at that place. Another weekend, heading out to Charlotte to see my girlfriend after dark I am doing about 70 or so through some little town when I come over a little hill and nearly rear end a car going down the highway slow (probably the speed limit), just as I am standing on the brakes my headlights highlight the words on the trunk lid...HIGHWAY PATROL...could have said state trooper, I don't remember, but it wasn't good. So he slows down to about 20 or so and finally I pass him. He follows me for a while then stops me. Gives me a talk about how he knows its tough to be stationed out of state from my girlfriend. He gives me a warning ticket. Moral of stories to me is that I love South Carolina patrol men, they always treated me more fairly than I deserved. Oops. Just reread the initial post and see that the op wants hand me down stories and not our own....so....disregard the above post. Move along...
Oddly enough, as close as I am to both my parents, my father never shared any stories from his younger days. But through other people and family I know he was a street racer in he 70’s, lost his license and lied about it, had to sleep in his car after getting popped racing, etc. But he never talks about it. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
My dad was born in 1935, in OK. His father was an oil worker, and his parents divorced when he was 12. After that his mom could make enough to put a roof over his head and one meal a day, but everything else was on him so he started working at whatever would pay. Needless to say, cash was tight. He never talked much about being a hot rodder, but things would come up now and then about him and 3 others putting together enough cash to buy a used car off of a friend's parent's dealership back lot, something like $5 for a Model A in 1950. Using a shotgun to blow the fenders off when the bolts were rusty. Seeing as how OK was still in prohibition at the time, him and some friends found a way to bring liquor in until a nice man in a fancy striped suit met with them and suggested they stop.....He joined the Navy at 17 in 1953. I later found out that with whatever he was up to it was that or go to jail...he never was very specific on that part....
I will add some more. My uncle Emmett was born in 1930. He was always known as "Hud", as he would run around grandma's house as a youngster, making car noises. When asked what kinda car he was, he was "a Hudson 8!" So naturally, his first job was as a mechanic, at Merle Ogg Ford in Glouster, Ohio. His first car was a '38 Ford coupe, DeLuxe. He tinkered with it a little, installing a "3/4" cam in it, dual exhaust and I believe a different intake. He also painted it with many coats of black lacquer, and then traded it in on a new 1950 Ford. A friend of his snatched the '38 up, and one night when my dad was with him, they were challenged to a race by the new owner of the '38. Well Hud was a bonafide gearhead back in the day, and his '50 had been warmed over under the hood similar to the mods he had done to the '38, and so the race was on. Going north on Ohio 13 from Millfield, as you enter Redtown, there is a good bend to the right, and the '38 did not make it around. No one was hurt, but the little coupe rolled and was trashed, and my uncle Hud's racing days were over. A few weeks later, he was drafted, and turned the keys over to my fifteen year old dad, with instructions to "Keep it clean". Dad did so, using Hud's drivers license as a cover. A few years later, and after Korea, my uncle was the service manager at Ogg Ford. He called my dad one day, and told him he needed to come look at the new '56 Sunliner the dealer had. 2 tone green, 312, 3 speed w/OD, dad made a deal for it on the spot, and drove off in his first new car. Not being one to leave well enough alone, it quickly recieved a "3/4" cam and glasspacks, the glasspacks annoying my mother every time she drove it (a schoolteacher, showing up in a noisy convertible, you can imagine). They drove it for about a year, but Dad had taken a job selling insurance, and the mileage was not good. His next new car was a Volkswagen bug (I wonder if a '57 VW is worth more than the Sunliner) for the insurance route. A side story from Ogg Ford, from 1957.... They sold one new retractable there, and I have the buyer's name on the tip of my tongue, but can't quite remember it. Anyway, one or more of the switches, relays or motors screwed up, and here came the owner, with the roof askew, and the deck lid screwed down tight on one side. Mr. Ogg said that one would be the last on he would handle, and anyone else who wanted one would have to go elsewhere.
The Jalopy Journal
