Early Hot Rodding

In the last writing I talked about bicycles and Carl Siefert being a car nut. My father liked cars as his early photographs show various family setting where the automobile is the central focus.  In Santa Monica in the 1950s there were several new car dealers mostly on Santa Monica Blvd. with one Cadillac dealer on Wilshire. There was a Packard store also but it might have been on Santa Monica. 

Lawrence Welk hosted at the Lick Pier with live dancing and later television. He was sponsored by the Dodge Corporation and there was a Dodge dealer  

Claude Short that sold Dodges and Plymouth's. Members of Welk's orchestra were given new Dodges to drive and a  couple of the musicians lived on Michigan, the next street over from Olympic where I lived so you could see the shiny new cars all the time.  I spent a lot of time behind the wheel of a Dodge and some time under the hood, 

There were two high schools in Santa Monica. One was Samohi the public one and there was also St. Monica Catholic. The Lennon Sisters went to St. Monica and they were also the stars of the Welk TV Show. When I was in High school the sisters appeared at my school.
They were so sweet and also cute

As I tend to jump around here lets go back to cars. Southern California could claim to be the start of hot rodding but many in the mid west would differ with that. The dry lakes on the other side of the mountains 


were El Mirage and Edwards (Muroc). The dry lake racing predated the local drag strips that were later situated on seldom used airports. My mentor to this world was Carl but my cousin Ronald Powers was a hot rodder and his sister Gloria's husband Pete Hoffman raced at El Mirage. Pete had a 1936 Fiat Coupe

that was seen first in my Uncle's driveway.

Carl was into Fords but he also had a friend named Russel that was into MGs. My first ride in a sports cars was with Russel driving over Topanga Canyon in his semi-hopped-up MG. Russel had a 1918 Dodge roadster with a Model A in it. Carl kept the roadster in his garage and we worked on it until one afternoon it blew up setting Carl on fire. We would work on the old Dodge body for a while and after the banging session Carl would try and start the motor. He would crank the starter a few times with negative results then quit. One day after a few cranks the gas that had been slowly seeping past the pistons into the crankcase exploded out the breather pipe blowing the cap off and hitting Carl in the face with flaming oil. The garage floor was dirt so I grabbed him and pushed him down and rolled him in the dirt. I then ran into the house and got his mother who drove him to the Santa Monica Hospital. He was badly burned and his face was a mess for awhile but he recovered. The Dodge didn't.

Carl joined the T-Timers Car Club which was in Santa Monica. It is hard to find any information about this early car club on the web as like so many things prior to digital cameras and computer usage information is not popping up in a Google Search.

My experience is the club started in Santa Monica by three individuals. One was  Mr. Petrie the Dean of Boys at Santa Monica High School, a Hal J. Hild from the local Elks club and a Santa Monica Police sergeant. I can't remember his name but he had a white 51 Ford coupe that was completely stock on the exterior but everything under the hood was either chrome or polished aftermarket. 

The first car plaque for the club was a T that was a cigarette with a ash on the tip. A the "T" was a reference to marijuana. A slang term used by Jack Kerouac and the Beats when referring to marijuana, seen in Kerouac's novel On the Road.

The club had a garage on Lincoln Blvd. between Broadway and Colorado sharing the building with a local welder. Across Lincoln was an old Italian market and deli with a swinging screen door at the entrance. Once you entered you knew where you were as the your nose lit up. 

To raise money the club would throw car washes at the garage. Most of the club members were 21 or over and the deli sold cold beer. So the car washes often turned into a beer party. 

The club met once a week on Wednesday night in a elementary school at next to the Little League Field around 14th and Olympic. The club had officers and required dues plus you had to be voted into the club by the existing members. There was an actual box for black balling those trying to join. You had to be a car nut and have a working knowledge about cars. 

After the meeting we would all pile into the cars (early ride sharing) and go cruising the drive-in eateries. There were two haunts on Wilshire plus the Clock in Culver City Bob's Big Boy in the Valley and one Scrivner's on Manchester in Inglewood.

Gas was around 30 cents a gallon then.

Carl and I used to drive around the canyons searching for metal that we could resell to the local auto junk yards on Colorado at 11th Street for a penny a pound. The junk yards were across from the lumber yards and the tracks. 

The rail roads tracks divided Santa Monica both physically and racially. Santa Monica was segregated as where you could live and go to school. The High School was not segregated but the two Junior Highs were. Lincoln Jr. High was north of the tracks and all white. John Adams was south and a rainbow of students.

Several members of the T-Timers had serious dry lake race cars. El Mirage dry lake ran two associate groups. The SCTA
and the RTA. Our club belonged to the Russetta Timing Association and when we went to the lakes each club had to perform duties similar to the SCTA does today. 

At that time racing was on Sunday and we rode there in the back of a pickup leaving very early to get started . My first job as a teenager was to perform fuel checks on the race cars. If you were in a Gas Class you had to have your fuel tank contents checked to make sure you were really running gasoline.

I also worked as a crew member on Dick Gish's 32 alky flathead. Dick's full fender car ran 132 mph on the dirt when is extremely fast. 

One meet I was a crew member on a Triumph powered 2 wheel stream liner than the owner had trailer hauled over from Riverside but didn't have enough helpers.  The thing ran on fuel and needed to be held up and push by hand until it could maintain balance. 
We got it pushed off at the starting line and we jumped in a Ford pickup chasing it. The stream liner beat us to the end and was circling as we approached . Dallas didn't realize how fast we were actually going and jumped out while we were doing forty. 

 Funny how life is as I was a crew member with Don Vesco many decades later.

Work in progress needs a lot of editing

Saga of Sorts My Early Bike Riding

During Junior High at John Adams I started working at Cycle and Sports in Santa Monica. It was summer time and I got to open the shop and put up the awning. Sweep the floor and put things away.
The shop was ran by Ernie Zamora and was a family business. Ernie's father and brother Eddie came in to the shop occasionally and the family lived in Santa Monica in a big house north of Wilshire.


The kid that did the bike repairs was Carl Siefert. Carl was 4 years older than me and he lived down the street at 6th and Broadway in a wood framed house. Today you would find it hard to find a small house to rent in that area so close to downtown at Third Street. Carl was going to Samohi (Santa Monica High School) and was also attending summer classes so he go finished school and help support his family.
Carl was a racer and was missing his front two teeth after crashing at the wooden track in the Valley (wasn't there when I started). He had a black AutoMoto with two sets of wheels. One set was clinchers for training with a single cog in the back and the other had sew-ups for racing. 

I was still riding my 26 inch balloon paper route bike. Earlier I really wanted a Schwinn Varsity with a three speed but that never happened.

I not sure as I was not keeping notes at the time but I came up with a red Schwinn frame with 27 inch wheels and a rear shaft shifter and hand brakes, This bike was so different, so much lighter and faster. My first grand tour was to ride from where I lived at 10th and Olympic Blvd. to the Los Angeles Air Port on Century Blvd. I rode on Lincoln Blvd up and back.

At the corner of 9th and Olympic there was the corner liquor store and there I met this guy who was a cyclists and he asked me if I wanted to go for a weekend ride and I said sure. Little did I know what a weekend ride was. Saturday we left and went to PCH and headed up the coast towards Topango. He told me to follow Topango over the hill and take Ventura Blvd to Beverly Glenn  and come back over the hill to Santa Monica Blvd.

He took off over Topango leaving me behind and I followed his route plan. I have no idea how long it took me and how many stops for soda I took probably most of the day. The ride down Beverly was so scary and fast. I was hooked.

Then I got my Schwinn Paramount from my friend Larry Niles who lived in Los Angeles and visited his grandmother on Tenth Street. After working for a year at the bike shop I was able to buy a Italian Arbos Road Bike using my employee discount. The retail price was $135.00. 


So I had the Arbos and the Paramount frame. I rode the road bike and slowly built the track bike. In bike racing there were two classes: Juniors 16 and under and Seniors. Most of the road races in Southern California took place in the Santa Monica Mountains and some were in the valley. There were not any criteriums. Track racing took place on the streets that were closed. The Rose Bowl was used and the strip next to Long Beach Stadium. 

Even in the fifties there was a division between trackies and roadies. Roadies trained by themselves or in small groups and the track guys in Southern California rode twice a week by Griffith Park next to the Los Angeles River. Carl had a car but we rode the track bikes from Santa Monica to the Park area with our stiff hubs and no brakes. When the sprinting was over we rode back in the dark. I did have a front mounted brake on the Paramount I used when riding around town with my friend Bill Morris who also had a fancy Paramount he bought from a fellow named Tony that worked in the bike shop in Westwood.

We rode these track bikes around town long before there ever was any fixies. Carl stayed at Cycle and Sport then left and went to another shop and I stayed behind as his replacement. When the two of us worked together we would ride each lunch hour leaving the shop headed to PCH then up to Sunset going east then looping back to the shop. PCH is flat and usually you ride into the wind with only one signal then at Santa Monica Canyon. Sunset is rolling hills and Carl and I would sprint to each white line traffic crossing. Carl was super strong, one of the best, and I was a skinny kid trying to keep up. 

Carl moved from Broadway with his family to north of Wilshire where he had a garage on the alley. Carl was not only a great bike rider he was also a avid hot rodder.


 One summer he drove his 1932 three window couple Ford  back to Xenia, Ohio to visit his grandmother. We also had a friend that rode and was also a car nut. Carl's sister lived in Fontana and several times we drove there searching barns looking for old cars. Once we actually found a hay covered deuce in a real barn. Carl bought it for Jim who had it hauled back to Santa Monica where it was placed in Jim's garage behind the apartments on Ocean Park Blvd. Jim was working for General Telephone in the summer while he attended USC in the fall. Jim also had a 1956 650cc Matchless twin. That was my first ride on a motorcycle.

If you plan your life in detail you will miss the strange curves in the road. Bill Morris lived off of 11th Street past Ocean Park Blvd. His mother like so many in Santa Monica worked at General Telephone where the corporate office were located. I also applied for a job there once. Bill had a brother Bob that had a 53 Chevy and a 5 widow 32 Ford couple. Bob joined the Navy and Bill's mother wanted the coupe  removed from the driveway so Bill, Tony Reyes and I pushed it across town (no motor) and put it in my father's garage. The garage was under our house and was huge. My father built a shooting range there where we could shoot our 22s.

Carl took me to the road races in his 39 Yellow Ford Coupe with the giant trunk. My first race was in San Diego at Torrey Pines. I was the only junior there as bike racing was mainly an adult thing. In the race I rode against Bill Disney who was Jack Disney brother. Both of the Disney brothers were skate guards at the Polar Palace Ice Rink in Hollywood. I used to skate there on Sundays but that is another blog.

When I was turning 16 I bought Carl's Yellow 39 and got my learner's permit. Carl was a welder and had added cut out pipes to the twin exhausts on each side. The cutouts were not capped with bolted plates as Carl used gas tank fillers with the original screw on caps. This allowed you to open the door and reach down and unscrew the caps making lots of noise. The 59A was basically stock with one over bore and a set of Navarro heads. It did have an electric 6 volt fuel pump and later three carbs were added. The hood rear mounts were removed so we could take off the hood easily as we were also working on it. The cooling fan had been removed which made it over heat at times. My good friend Don Vesco once said, "Flat heads were only good for boiling water".

I stopped working at the bike shop and got a job in a plastic factory by the rail road tracks on the same street I lived on Tenth. This kinda stopped my bicycle riding for several years. Sixty four years later I still have the Paramount. Carl kept riding and his training became extreme. He worked at a bike shop in Canoga Park and lived in Santa Monica. He would drive his car to PCH and Topango where he would park the car and ride to work over the hill. Then ride back in the evening. Several times I rode by track bike to the top of Topango and waited for him where we rode back to his car.

Carl went to the Olympic trials one year in San Jose but never made the team. Not because he wasn't fast enough but he slept in his car before the trials and didn't wake up in time. Carl then decided he wanted to become a flyer so he joined the Army and left me with  his 40 Ford Couple that had a 8 inch chopped top all custom Barris. Carl and I belonged to the T-Timers the local hot rod club.

 Dick Gish was the president of the club and he raced a 32 high boy with a 296 flat head on fuel at El Mirage. My first trips to the dry lake was as a member of Dick's crew. The lady next to Dick's house had gotten a divorce and the husband left the chopped forty behind. It had no motor and set so low to the ground in the rear it could only across a driveway ways. Carl bought it for $100.00.


The Forty never looked like this one in the picture. The grill was narrower, no skirts and the rear end was higher up.

This Blog started going in one direction and got lost.