Folks Of Interest R.I.P. Our Hot Rodding history.........

Reading over the forum recently and noting the number of older people in our group who have passed has got me to thinking(sometimes a very dangerous thing):
With the demise of these people go a lot of knowledge and history that,if not preserved, will be lost to us forever. I'm sure there are many of us who come into contact with someone(maybe even on a daily basis)who is getting along in years and has a tremendous knowledge of our sport;whether it be hot rods;customs;race cars;motorcycles or whatever.
A lot of these people are usually more than willing to engage in a conversation about the things they really care about if only they were asked. A case in point:
Recently I was contacted by a person who was inquiring about purchasing some art work I had posted. During the course of our conversation it became apparent that we had mutual acquaintances from the past even though we had lived on the opposite sides of the country. This led to recounting of some experiences we had back then and a great friendship is developing.
But to the original purpose of this post: I would propose that if you know of such a person that you engage them in conversation and if possible take notes or even better tape the conversations(with permission of course).
I would wager that you will not only enrich your own knowledge of our sport but will be able to share it with others on here as well.
Just thinking and wanting to get some input.

 

I agree completely. I have always talked to the older guys, and gathered information. Now I am becoming one of the older guys.

 

I'm an old guy and I talk to myself.

 

Back when I worked in body/restoration shops, the first thing I did was find the old guys and work with them. They always knew the right ways to get things done and could tell the best stories all day long. Most days it didn't even feel like being at work, rather just working on old cars with friends. I miss those days, working in the corporate world with people that think doing an oil change takes a brain surgeon is a slow death.

 

^^^^^ I am an old guy and I listen to myself!^^^ Sometimes I even give myself the wrong answer! Joe

 

Safarinut: That's a great idea. It would be a lasting tribute and a wonderful resource.
There will come a day when there are no longer any folks from "back in the day."
Sort of like the legacy of WW II vets who are recording their experiences for posterity. How could this be coordinated at a national or regional level?

 

Fortunately,much of the knowledge that has been shared by some very astute members that are no longer with us can be found by searching their profiles.

I frequently see threads bumped that was originally posted by a Emeritus member that helps both new members and long time Hambers with a question. HRP

 

I figure as long as I don't lose the argument with myself,,,I'm OK.
Nobody wants to hear what I've done, or my cars. I have 3 rollaways overloaded with everything from Wentworth to some NASA wrenches. There is a Snap-On, 100-750lb, 3/4" drive torque wrench, for example tonsa junk.
45 years of buying every tool I needed twice. If I need it twice, I bought it.
I told the wife, "When I croak sell it all for $1.00. But they have to take it all".
Sad, eh?

 

I really miss Frank (AKA FAB32). When he spoke, I listened.
Your advice is well placed but may I add that not only car, cycle, etc....but listen to any history lesson one is willing to give. My dad never talked about growing up until the last few years. Now I hear all kinds of stories every time I talk to him. Concerts, fishing, camping, Army (he was an MP in Germany), you name it, he'll tell you about it. I listen....now more than ever.

 

"Nobody wants to hear what I've done, or my cars."
Au contraire. I bet there are folks who would be interested.
Remember, the best of what you do can be left for others to enjoy.
Your foot prints may wash away, but the walk you took will be remembered.
flatheadpete's account is living proof.

 

Well I aint tellin you guys shit. That'll teach you to be mean to boomers.

We loose someone every day and they seem to be getting younger all the time. I depend on the guys that are older then myself to remember the things that I have either never known or forgotten over the years. Sometimes ( actually lots of times) they get away before I have a chance to really pick their brain. It is a sad fact of life. I imagine that a lot of what I have learned will go to the grave with me.

One of the things that bothers me is that while I was pretty young I was there for a good part of history and remember things differently that what is commonly said by the younger historians. It is as though newstalgia is replacing nostalgia. It is not just hot rod history that is in danger, even our history books have been rewritten to reflect what is historically acceptable today.

 

Truth. We need y'all to speak up, teach, spread the gospel!

 

Way back when I was a teenager, I took one of my best friends over to see my grandfather. Grandpa was born in 1905 and had a pretty hardscrabble upbringing and spent a goodly part of the Depression serving in the Army Air Corps. He regaled us with tales of flying in the 30's, how he met Amelia Earhart while she was touring in an autogyro and how his unit was assigned to help Texas Rangers secure some coastal Texas towns from looters after a hurricane.

When WWII broke out, he had been out of the service for a few years and had a wife and kids. He marched down to the recruitment office and wanted to sign back up. Since he was an aircraft mechanic in a Douglas plant and was 36, they told him to stay put and build planes. This did not sit well with him and to his dying day he was still a bit pissed about it. We listened for hours and we both learned a lot about planes, cars (he was a heckuva mechanic) and life in general. We listened and laughed and learned a lot from him that day.

Flash forward twenty years, and my grandfather succumbed to a stroke at 90. He had a good run and I will never forget him. I wish that I had recorded a lot of our conversations, because all of that is all but lost now. When my buddy found out about Grandpa's passing, the first thing he said after "I'm sorry" was "Do you remember that Saturday afternoon we sat around his place and shot the shit for hours?" Yeah, Jeff, I do and I'm glad that you did too.

Grandpa would have been a great HAMBer.

 

Maybe some of the older members could start threads where they recount past hot rod memories, tech stuff, or anything relevant.
I'm only 49, with around half a year until I hit Gezzer status.

I have a 74 year old car buddy, who tells me car stories, but sometimes repeats them totally different.
Sucks he's getting to old to recall his past, but I have converted him from restorer to like hot rods.

 

My grandpa would have pissed most of you guys off.

My granddad was one of the main instigators of my going out on my own at a very young age. Then he moved in and out of my place a lot until he passed away my junior year in high school. I remember being mad because there were things that I hadn't managed to learn from him yet. It was common for me to come home from work during one of his stays with me, and find my friends sitting in the living room with him eating or drinking coffee with him and talking. He was well over 100 when he passed, and a natural born teacher/story teller. I would walk in sometimes bone tired and he would stop in the middle of whatever he was talking about and hand me a cup of coffee, then pick right up where he left off. Lots of those nights would turn into day and we would all travel to school together. Even my history/social studies teacher would show up for long nights on occasion. We all learned a lot from that old man.

Damn it @traffic61 I started out to say you are a lucky man, your granddad must have cared a great deal for you.

 

My wife and I have been together since we were 15(we're 33/34). She's always thought it was funny/strange that I have more friends that are in their 50's-70's than I do my age. Where I live, very few folks my age have a passion for american history(specifically the 40's-70's) like I do. I enjoy nothing more than just sitting in a garage and listening to "old guys" ramble on about the "good old days". From the cars, the girls, the politics of the time, the music, the over all culture. I try to soak it all in and preserve their memories in my brain.

 

often we just take them for granted. how often do you write down stories that an older family member told you to pass on to other younger family members? on here Jonnie King does a great job in preserving history, conversations and more at www.legends.thewwbc.net

 

You're not wrong. I've used the term neo-traditional on here often to describe what is the bastardized combination of traditional and something else. For example, chopping your car 4" is traditional, chopping it 15" is neo-traditional. Kinda like what pyschobilly is to rockabilly.

 

Went w/Cad-Lasalle yesterday on a tour of the upper valley haunts. Saw a fella's collection of older rods, tri-fives, Ford and Chev PU's. Most were period history of rod building. Many later builds as well, 70's-80's-90's era. There's a story in every one of them worth looking over.

 

the trouble I find is that most of the "younger" set,thinks that they know more than you..half of them have very poor reading and especially spelling knowledge...I'm so glad to be "OLD"" and not much longer for this wotld...I had a guy
email me about a car I had advertised..He was more concerned with how many miles were on the engine than what was condition of the whole car.My asking price was low enough that it was worth my asking price WITHOUT the damn engine..go figure...

 

Old guys: If you value our hot rod heritage, make yourself available. Instead of sitting on your ass on Friday and Saturday nights preaching to the choir on the H.A.M.B., fire up your hot rod and go to the local hangout, sit by your car and wait for the crowd to form...and it will.

Most of the people who attend our local cruise night gathering have no idea what a hot rod is or what the history behind them might be. It's true, many don't care beyond the colorful paint and the flashy chrome, but some will stay and listen...and learn.

Our heritage is in our hands. Let's not piss it away by being too lazy to share what we love.

 

I will always regret not picking the brains of a couple of my Uncles, now long deceased. Both were incredibly knowledgeable mechanics and fabricators.

 

As long as this board is around we should good.

 

You Too??

Ben

 

One of the reasons I started this thread was that my grandparents were responsible for my early upbringing. My grandfather was probably the biggest influence in my life and there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of him. I have chronicled much of him in a book I have been working on for several years now. If I may I will share a little about him.
He was born exactly one hundred years after the American Revolution(July 4th 1876).His mother died shortly after he was born and it was feared that he wouldn't make it either. He grew up on a farm in Nashua NH and at an early age became involved in all things mechanical.
What amazed me about him was that he was born before the advent of electricity in homes;the automobile;the airplane;and a host of other inventions. In a time when the average person didn't attend school much past the 3rd grade he was a high school graduate.Although his interests were primarily mechanical he would study about virtually any subject.
He began fooling with automobiles at an early age and by the time he was in his early twenties,he was working for a wealthy gentleman from Boston as a chauffeur(he held an official chauffeurs license # 6 issued in Massachusetts)and mechanic. This person had a passion for automobiles;particularly French vehicles which at the time were state of the art. My grandfather used to tell stories about the cars he worked on for this man such as a Darracq; a Panhard-LeVasseur(sp?) and a DeDion-Bouton. He also told the story of another car this man owned: a 1903 Stevens-Duryea. He liked this car most of all as it rarely broke down(as the French cars were wont to do frequently)and was easy to drive.
The man soon tired of this car and decided to put it up for sale.This was around 1910 and cars were pretty scarce and expensive at the time.My grandfather really wanted to buy the car but couldn't afford it so he approached his boss and asked if would be possible to buy it and pay for it on a time basis.
The man must have appreciated his work because he wound up GIVING the car to my grandfather!
Around 1912 the so-called self starter was invented and marketed by the Detroit Electric Co (aka DELCO) and fitted mostly to Cadillac automobiles. There was also a kit available to fit them to earlier vehicles and my grandfather was kept quite busy doing this for various people.
Just prior to the USA entering the Great War he went to work for General Electric as a machinist and didn't retire until he was forced to at the age of 72. World War II was over and a lot of the returning GI's were in need of employment and so he reluctantly retired.
Even in retirement he was always working on one project or another. One of his creations earlier in life was the fabrication of multi-cylinder model airplane engines. He had two of them in the cellar where he had a small workshop and on occasion he would set one of them in a vise and fire it up.
These gems were a work of art. The crankcases were machined from a block of aluminum(one was a 9 cylinder and the other a 14 cylinder which consisted of two rows of 7 cylinders) and the screwed on cylinders featured cast iron liners.All the parts including the master rod;connecting rods and pistons;carburetor etc. were all machined by him. The only out of the box parts were hardware and glow plugs.
Sadly after he passed away his house was sold and a lot of his tools and the engines disappeared.
When I bought my first car(a 1933 Hudson coupe body and frame for $5)and installed it in the back yard he would come down and help me work on it and let me use his tools with the proviso that they be kept clean and returned to the box every night. Even in his eighties he was still very active and his memory was razor sharp. He even drove his car(a 1952 Studebaker Champion)up until 3 weeks before he passed away due to pneumonia complications. The 52 had replaced his 1948 Champ that was totalled a few years before.
He was driving and had stopped before pulling out onto a main road. He started to pull out when a dump truck came barreling down the road at a high rate of speed(and defective brakes) and broadsided with such force that he was catapulted out of the car when the doors flew open and sustained a good case of road rash. The impact tore the rear axle out of the truck and flipped it over. There was a young boy riding in the back of the truck and he was decapitated when the truck flipped.
My grandfather spent ten days in the hospital before the nurses got sick of his complaining and had him released.
He passed away while I was serving in the Navy in February of 1965. I never did get to say goodbye to him.
A couple of things I remember very clearly about him: From a man who got to see the birth of the automobile and airplane and even got to see a man orbit the earth,his first statement when Yuri Gargarin made that historic flight:"Well you might know it would be a RUSSIAN!"
One of his favorite sayings and one I have tried to live my life by:" If you don't learn at least one new thing every day.... then you are probably dead!" Rest in peace Arthur Rose Holbrook.

EDIT:Thought I would add a couple of pictures.My grandfather and grandmother in the Stevens-Duryea circa 1910...........My mother and uncle in front of what I believe is a 1903-04 Oldsmobile with a foul weather cover and windshield attached...........my grandfather in what is(according to the writing on the picture)an
American Underslung circa 1905............My mother and aunt in an unknown sppedster that I believe my uncle built.

 

Cool story - Thanks

 

What I want is an apprenticeship with the "old guys" from this thread. I'm willing to trade labor for the teaching!

 

Great story Safariknut!
I always thought it to be the right way to teach my son & grandsons every thing I could about hand tools, metal fabrication, welding & cutting both with torch & later, plasma.
Now, in my "golden years" I can look back & be proud of the way each one picked up on my teaching principles thru the past years.
Born in the good year of 1932!!-------Don

 

My wife has gotten used to me talking to myself, but the dog looks at me kinda funny.

 

Dang it, Ray......you got me wanting more.