A friend of mine named Skip Bender gave me his collection of Hot Rod Magazines about 8 or 9 years ago...Almost all of them from the beginning till now... over the next year or so I collected all the missing copies (unfortunately reprints from 48). I built a bookshelf to hold these jewels in my bedroom.
There it was... a simple black wooden bookshelf with the history of all things "hot rod" right at my finger tips. There was that smell....oh that beautiful old magazine smell...all incased in red binders. My whole bedroom took on the old book smell as I studied each and every article I could. I read them cover to cover from the beginning... all the articles, all the adds...everything! The earliest ones seemed to keep my interest more then the later 50's and newer... Those old dual purpose roadsters really struck me...
You see, I had recently bought a model-A sport coupe... planning to make some sort of a "roadster".. I didn't really know what I was doing. I knew I wanted a flathead V8.. 3 speed... banjo rear... etc... but I didn't really know what was good and what was bad... I just had a dream... that may never have panned out...
Skip was a guy I had known through other friends related to bicycles... I didn't know he was an old hot rodder... I was new to the game... I randomly showed him a photo of my sport coupe... his reply "do you want some old magazines?"
Little did I know that this would inturn change my life...
Just as it had done 50-60 years earlier.... Hot Rod Magazine... made me a Hot Rodder....
I pushed the sport coupe aside... found a REAL roadster... a real '32 frame...etc
I haven't been the same since....
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