Folks Of Interest Pat Ganahl, The Hot Rodder Next Door

That's Beautiful, Tim! Marty, I think you captured the spirit of the man (and his Wife)!

 

Thank you so much for your post.

 

great read - thanks for sharing....

 

Fantastic tribute to Pat!

 

After reading all these entries this makes me want to be a better person. Pat helped us to add integerty to this hobby/sport. May Pat RIP and his family comforted with blessings from on high............

 

Hello,

Thank you for posting a great tribute to those classic warm up runs in a neighborhood. Everyone must have known about Pat and his “hobbies.” Having done similar things during our 1940 Willys Coupe SBC build in two stages. We knew and so did the neighbors that the loud idling and acceleration mode was fun to watch in the beginning, but they did not want a daily occurrence. So, for the later 671 SBC version, we idled down the street and when we found a fairly empty street, did a few acceleration runs. That was fun.

That little boy in the photo reminded me of our next door, neighbor girl who came over every day to have fun with our mom. Our neighbor was an at home industrial worker. She had a mini factory in her house and made contract clothing for various larger companies. So, after spending time with her mom, the little girl ran over to play at our house until dinner time.

Her little daughter loved coming over to our house. Our mom told us that the little neighbor was like a daughter, after having two tough rambunctious boys. She did tell one of her friends that after two boys, that was it!!! So, now, she was having fun with a "daughter" while the two teenagers were out in the backyard doing their thing...

We were usually in the backyard garage working on our hot rods, surfboards or later on, desert racing motorcycles. The little girl would come over and visit with our mom, first, then wander outside to the backyard to see what the two older brothers were doing back there. The scene played out almost everyday in the vacations and summer when we were home. But, our mom actually had a “little daughter” after those two mostly out of control teenagers.
Westside of Long Beach

Jnaki

Our favorite “little daughter” story was that she knew our Impala made some noise when doing some fine tuning in the backyard garage area. She was always walking up to the black car and looking at her reflection in the deep paint color. But, when we first built the 283 SBC motor with 6 Strombergs with open Hedman Headers we were anxious to get it fired up. We painted the Willys a Red Primer paint color and there was no reflection for our neighbor girl to see herself.

She just wandered around and asked a million questions. She seemed to enjoy the 283 SBC when we finally fired it up later. But the odd thing was, once we drove the 283 SBC Willys Coupe and raced it, we decided to go to the next level up. By the time we spent many hours of tearing down the Willys 283 and getting a relatively new 292 bore from Reath Automotive, we were in the throes of rebuilding it with a 671 supercharger.

When we fired up the new 671 on the 292 c.i. SBC motor, our neighbor toddler must have been surprised as she ran back screaming to our mom in the kitchen. The sound of the powerful 671 SBC motor scared her as we idled it then did a few rump rump revs. Our mom instantly came outside and chastised us for scaring our little toddler neighbor girl. Ha!

Then as we backed up in the driveway to the street and started down the street, she came out front to wave goodbye to the both of us. Still her favorite teenagers…