History Richard Heathfield: The Same Old Story

Ryan submitted a new blog post:

Richard Heathfield: The Same Old Story

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

This is not reality at all... For instance, this is just one of the front page spreads that included a story about Richard:



Stories about Russian spies, KKK parades, a 17-year old suicidal mother, exposed Nazis living in Detroit, police budgets, a librarian skimming from the top, government misappropriation, etc...

Times only look simple in the rearview mirror... which is one of points of this story.

 

I read it more as a story full of mistakes and wrongdoings. No heroes. All bad guys. Chaos that somehow finds a way...

 

Another big part of the puzzle... If you go by newspaper reports alone from 1945 to 1951 or so, hot rodders in general were absolutely seen as a menace to society.

You drive a car without fenders? You are a scumbag.

You drive a car with modified exhaust? You are looking for trouble.

You painted your car red?? Oh man, stay the hell away from my daughter.

Hot rods were in the headlines far more often during this period. Seems like almost every edition from California had some sort of criminal article featuring hot rods in it... and even in other states, it was incredibly popular to sensationalize what young kids were doing with fast cars.

Then, around 1950 or 1951 or so, you started to see the rewards of Wally Parks' (and others) work. Quite literally, you started to see little articles leak into the papers about building race tracks to curb the menace, etc... almost all of them quote Wally or one of his followers.

Starting around 1956 or so, as hot rods began to gain more acceptance, the complaints about youth culture switch from fast cars to Rock & Roll. And by 1960 or so, the use of hot rods as subject in papers drops dramatically - almost 90% nationwide.

The research work I've been helping with deals with this in great deal... And it's actually pretty interesting to see as raw statistical numbers.

 

That's a very real part of the story, right? I mean.... you gotta guy that is fighting for our freedom during WII, dies, and leaves a family back in Detroit. This crushes his son and starts a path of absolute destruction for many years.

But there's another side to that story too. Who's the cop that pulled the trigger? How has he lived with the guilt? Was he just a bad guy? Or, was he just a poorly trained cop put in a position he didn't know how to handle?

And it seems as though the only thing that stopped this path of destruction was a judge that you could argue unconstitutionally locked up a kid by labeling him as a psychopath. Did he do this for the right or wrong reasons?

There are no heroes. It's all just a big ole mess with no right or wrong side... It's complicated. It's not simple. It's not black and it's not white.

We have plenty of stories like this today... But in 1948, one of the major menaces to society was the HOT ROD... and so this is the part that is sensationalized in the media and in the public. And, to me, it's really interesting to see these issues from that perspective... cuz, well... I'm a hot rodder before I am anything else.

Absolutely. If you read one of the news stories that I posted, James' father is quoted quite a bit.

 

yep.

 

From what I understand, Watts did give the designation... but only after a hearing with a district judge... All that after a "psychological exam" proved to be "inconclusive."

I did find some stuff that was written after his admittance to the ward (that I don't feel comfortable publishing) that essentially said - Yeah, Richard has some psychological issues, but no more so than any other that kid that lost his dad.

 

This is an interesting topic as well... See, I believe hot rodding has an age limit... and once you reach that age limit, you can still hot rod... but at that point, you are just pretending.

Why? Because to my definition, hot rodding is 100% rebellious punk rock shit... and most people, as they age, lose the stomach for that sort of thing.

Think about it... In 1947, most hot rodders were pretty radical fellas that had no concept of being risk adverse. They took cheap shit and used innovation and labor to create machines capable of doing more than the sums of their parts - laws and ordinances be damned.

It was the Wild West and these guys were running for their "lives"...

These days, most "hot rodders" enjoy going to a fairground somewhere, unfolding their lawn chairs, and telling stories about the days they USED to throw caution to the wind. I mean, no one is chasing them... Why run?

There's a lowrider club in East LA called The Groupe. Those guys aren't crooks and don't break laws of real consequence, but they are still running. I think something along those lines is the closest thing we still have to actual hot rodding as it was born in the 1940's... Better or worse...

Editor's note: I was born in 1976. I know nothing about what I write. This is just the shit that goes on in my head... curiosity of sorts..

 

Ryan's Quote...."Editor's note: I was born in 1976. I know nothing about what I write. This is just the shit that goes on in my head... curiosity of sorts.."

Most people romanticize about the past.
Most fellas who came back from World War II got married right away and started having kids.
The ones that didn't - they had seen the worse in life of war / death and at that point Hot Rodding a jalopy was freedom.
Raising some hell was fun because they've been through hell and Hot Rodding was now on their terms of Raising Hell and being alive. Sometimes it feels good to be bad.

 

May dad used to tell me that I had SPITE in my DNA. But I think he had it wrong... I just didn't mind all that much when I got in trouble so long as it was profitable from a fun standpoint.