A family thing?....Are Hot Rods in your blood?

Born into it in 1972, my dad (and mom) drag raced a 65 Plymouth and had a 33 Ford with a hemi. When racing got to expensive for a farmer he got more into hot rodding. My dad started dating my mom when she was 15 YO. When he was milking cows she used to take his 65 "down to the store" well a couple of weeks of this and guys started coming up to my dad and telling him how fast his car was and they had never seen a girl speed shift so well. Turns out she had been going down to the local street drags every night and shutting all the guys down with the 65. My grandfather on my dads side used to dirt track race, and later in life he used to have his Imperials engines rebuilt so he could pull his camper trailers. Good excuse but get him talking about racing and he will tell you about rolling the old Imps to what he figured was around 150 on the highway. Grandpa never talks about it but I think he wanted to build a salt flats car and never could get away from the farm so he just had fun with wat he had.

 

I think the interest must be at least partially genetic. Not only was my dad really into hot rodding at a young age - and passed that on to me through stories of the old days, and working on old stuff with me, but given the cool and interesting cars my grandfather owned, he must have had the interest in cars if not the inclination to build them.

On my grandmother’s side, her younger brother who was killed in WWII had been a regular Indy 500 attendee, so it’s a good bet he might have gotten into the hot rodding thing had he survived.

My mother's oldest sister graduated high school in 1957 and had a '57 Ford with a 312 and glass packs when she got married. She has told me before that if she "hadn't been a girl", she'd have been an auto mechanic instead of a dental hygienist. I know she helped my cousins build a dune buggy in the '70s.

 

No one in my family were ever interested in cars for anything more than transportation, I guess the hot rod gene is not part of my DNA.

I suspect seeing a few older guys in the late 50's and Hot Rod magazine could be what helped ignite the fuse that lit the fire for me.

My daughters grew up traveling thousands of miles in the back seats of early Fords as have my grandchildren.

My daughters have been there ,done that and have no interest in hot rods,,my oldest granddaughter is at the age were she will go to a cruise in with us if she doesn't have anything better to do,,grandson likes skateboards and that's it.

That leaves our youngest granddaughter,,Veda,,,she loves to go ridding with us in the hot rods,,she just might have that hot rod gene.

Being named after a hot rod pioneer,,Veda Orr,,our Veda may just carry the torch for our family and continue to enjoy hot rods for years to come! HRP

 

It's definitely in my blood.

My Grandfather used to paint cars for Lustine's and Pohanka Chevrolet from probably the early to mid 50's until the mid 80's when he died. He wasn't a hot rodder- he had a preference for restored cars and didn't see any sense in modifying them. My father, being the oldest of 5 siblings, was brought in as his "helper" early on in his life and worked alongside my grandfather for many years. He painted his first car at 12 years old, and worked alongside the other painters and bodymen in the shop as well learning to do paint, auto body, and chassis work. He got into building street rods in the 70's-80's with a group of friends, and has always had old rods, customs, and muscle cars around.

I grew up in the Street Rodding scene during the 80's, when he had his '39 Chevy. My earliest memories were in that car- going to Columbus for the street rod nats, Cumberland, Mayo Beach, and all the old Southern Maryland Street Rods events, as well as Bert's Drive in and the Dairy Queen. I was bit by the hot rodding bug early on, although my father prefers street rods with all the modern bells and whistles and I'm into traditional cars. We work on cars together, although we don't always see eye to eye when it comes to the directions we want to take with our projects.

Now I've got a son on the way, due in September. So I'm hoping to pass down the hot rodding interests to him.

 

My moms dad Icaldo Verella use to build flathead for M/T in the Greater Eastern Los Angeles area on 1st st off Lorena.

My dads dad Juan Mata was the President of the South Texas Truckers in San Antonio

My dad & brothers HotRodded in the 70's early 80's through So Cal out of the San Gabriel Valley

 

Dad was in the military(gone all the time) and was the red-headed-stepchild of my mom's side, so I taught myself, but now my dad is definitely getting into it since he retired.

 

Dad was into legal drag-racing in the 70's (Famoso), then after years of marriage/career/kids/divorce he started a race-diff business with a family-friend in the mid-90's; specializing in 9" Fords for sub-9 second cars. I've spent more time under tents at swap-meet's than I care to remember (probably why I groan at the thought of them now as an adult). Dad is big with "DO IT ONCE, DO IT RIGHT".

One uncle is a spoiled-brat chevy freak who was obsessed with Dick Guildstrand and Zora Arkus-Duntov, so I got a lot of handling-theory/suspension/gear-ratio knowledge through the cloud of pot smoke that surrounds him (I'm not judging). He taught me the wrong way to do certain things that I had to re-learn, but is always there to shoot the shit.

Another uncle (my fucking hero) has owned probably 100 classic rides, but is Harley through-and-through. He gave me the gift of ambition, determination, patience, and the importance of being self-made, which ended up being the most useful tools of all.

 

Went to Thursday cruise night with Justis (my son) and now he has the bug. Can't get him to leave without a guilt trip.

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I was born into it. What a story that is.. I didn't stand a chance!