This is the picture I was looking for. Why? Wishful thinking – on a rainy dark afternoon – what else? It’s how I would have liked to spend Saturday mornings…or even more so, what was done with the rods on Saturday afternoon. Some of us had Dads like this, others not. LIFE is cruel!
Nothing to add, just a smile: “California Dreamin’, on such a winter’s day…”
Just up the hill from me–doesn’t quite look like that anymore but still a nice neighborhood in places.
It is hard to imagine that there was life before the small block Chevy.
Before the small block Chevy, there were Ford flatheads. There were starting to be a few guys who would use an Olds or Cad, or even a Chrysler hemi; but if anything, flathead Fords were even more ubiquitous than small block Chevies are now.
There was a time when I could have one on the garage floor in about an hour if I had a backhoe or a chainfall.
It looks like 386 has an OHV straight six with triple carbs. Perhaps a stove bolt? The down-draft carburetors seem unusual, and I can’t tell what the curved tubes over the valve cover are about.
GMC was the 6 cylinder of choice. Some could be made to even outrun the flatheads.
Curved vents from the valve-cover mounted breathers? They’d direct the oily blow-by away from the chrome.
At least, that’s what I’m going with until someone says differently.
1950, the year my parents were married. And my dad never learned to drive even though he lived in the US for 40 years after he moved here. I never saw many people working on cars – let alone cars like these! – in their driveways when I was growing up. But they were all over the Hot Rod magazines that I could sneak a quick peek at on the newsstand at the grocery store, and in already-dated black and white photos of Southern California drag strips and dry lake beds in the handful of young adult car books in the library. My early education in SoCal geography came from the Hot Rod scene: Pomona, Irwindale, Carlsbad, Lakewood, and of course Ascot Park (the one in Gardena, not the UK).
Welcome to why someone from the mountains of Western Pennsylvania had a combination envy/hatred of anyone who was lucky enough to live in California. Adolescents/young adults had everything out there that we didn’t: Gorgeous sunny weather, a hot rodding attitude that existed in very few other places, and a parental attitude that tolerated (if not actively supported) such activities.
Back home, the prevailing conditions would be: dank rainy weather at least half the year, an almost non-existent hot rodding community, and a parental attitude that pushed you to spending any spare time you might have at some mundane, unpleasant, job.
Yes, we did have that. Of course I was a transplant from Maryland to the San Fernando Valley. I didn’t have a car when I was 14 so I couldn’t work on one but my friends and I did have mini bikes which we could. They were big back at that time in 1966-68.
You’d like my Dad then, in 1961 he moved from Southern California to Western Pennsylvania (talk about bucking trends!). We moved from Glendora to Monroeville when my Dad left Hoffman Electronics and started working at Westinghouse. To be fair, his family was in (eastern) Pennsylvania, sure that had something to do with the move….though we had gone to San Francisco (maybe San Jose?) sometime before that but apparently my Dad decided to go east…never asked him who he interviewed with (he was in semiconductor industry since 1956) but likely a big decision. Westinghouse transferred him to Catonsville (actually worked at Baltimore Washington Airport for some reason) back then he changed employers frequently, but not really jobs (pretty much did the same thing as he was a chemist, he only had one non-semiconductor job after graduating from college, coincidentally when my sister and I were born.
We have no friends/relatives in Southern California as it has been so long since we lived there (and for only a couple years), but the last “fun” (not involving family visit) we went back in 2005, my Mother even got to tour the first house they ever owned which they bought in 1959, while my father and I tried to look invisible hovering in the front yard…neither had been back in 40 years. We stayed in Duarte (not far from Altadena). Guess I’m overdue, haven’t been on such a “fun” trip in the 16 years since then.
This isn’t extinct. A couple blocks north of me is a father and son who build and improve various machines. The son is always roaring around the neighborhood on the latest go-kart or trike.
Yea, my friend’s neighbors in Texas were a teen son and cool dad who worked on their hot rod in their driveway on weekends. My dad, not so much.
Much of Altadena still looks exactly like this .
I live right South of the Altadena line .
Pops wasn’t cool in any way shape of form so when I bought my car @ 14 Y.O. I had to keep it elsewhere…
I didn’t live in his house but a few months anyway .
Back then we had no idea how bad an idea it was to drive sans license but we did it anyway…
-Nate
Last week I was cruising around the South Bay in my Mustang, while Texas suffered with freezing weather. As a native Bay Area resident I’ve chosen to stay here, except for the short time I lived in the LA area. It’s easy for me to take the weather for granted. I never saw any hot rods while I was growing up in Oakland during the 60’s and early 1970s. They were mostly gone by the late 60’s. Muscle cars, Pony cars, 55 Chevies and the like as well as chopped HDs were what I saw. Oh, and lots of Cadillacs! It was a great time to be a car guy.