The Rockabilly, Greasy Hot Rodder's Way

I may offend some people with this blog/rant, but the 1^st amendment allows me to speak my mind and piss you off.  If you take offense please do the following: go fuck yourself, take your elastic-jean, loafer-wearing ass to a shop and let guys like me bone you in the wallet.

I’ll go back to a bit of my background.  I am currently working as a white-collar Test/Reliability Engineer in the Aerospace industry.  Hey, I gotta pay them bills, white-collar work be damned!  But before this, I was blue-collar all the way.  My first two jobs were fetching shopping carts all summer at Home Depot and Costco.  Then I worked in the tire shop at Coscto for six years (fuck I miss those days) until I graduated college and work where I do now.  The transition to white-collar work was hard to say the least.  I’ve been here for five years and still find myself going into “shop-mode” a lot, i.e. kicking my computer when it freezes up, dropping f-bombs when tests go wrong, etc.  It’s hard not to swear when talking to my co-workers.  Office folk don’t seem to understand the Greaser shit.  Casual Fridays sees me wearing blue Dickie’s pants, a black t-shirt and my black Dickie’s jacket (to cover the tattoos).  My wallet chain and pomp top it off.  I stopped wearing my cuffed Levi’s since the comments of “hey rebel” got on my fucking nerves.  Point is, I can never leave my blue-collar roots and my Greasy ways.  I’m a Hot Rodder Greaser all the way, I spend all of my money on tools and car parts and I fucking love beer.  I make a decent amount of money; my bills are paid and I have enough left over to take my wife and daughter out to dinner when we feel like it.  I can barely afford new billet street rod parts.  Forget about paying someone to paint my shit, upholster it or do any work on my projects.  I could probably budget for it, but that shit ain’t gonna happen on my clock.

I carry this attitude over to my projects.  My old man is a mechanic by trade and taught me most of my wrenching skills.  My favorite saying from my dad is, “If man built it, I can fix it”.  This mantra allows me to tackle any repair project that I come across, be it on my cars or my house.  Also I’m not afraid to tackle a fab job.  I’ll give it my best shot, and if I fuck it up then I’ve learned something.  If I succeed, then I’ve learned something.  It’s a win-win.  Greasers that turn wrenches have this attitude.  We won’t throw in the towel on our project and pay to have shit done while we sit by with our thumb up our ass.  If we get stuck, we’ll get help and get it done. 

           

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that people want to own old cars and not want to learn to work on them.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to buy an old car and wanting to learn how to work on it.  That’s how we all started.  But the guys who just open up their checkbooks and buy a classic and won’t even attempt to work on them just pisses me off.  I guess the only thing those people are good for is keeping shops in business.  I’ve made my fair share of cash on side jobs. 

What pisses me off the most is people with large checkbooks and pussy hands (no grease under the fingernails or knuckle-buster scars) entering a car show and winning without having turned a single goddamned bolt on the thing.  As they say, “There’s no substitute for cubic dollars”.  They need to have car shows where rich yuppie fucks can compete with their trailer queens to see who got shafted the most.  Real car shows are for guys like us who performed all fab or at least attempted to.  I suck ass at upholstering, but I’ll give it my best shot.  At least I can say I did it myself and I would take pride in it.  Never mind my first carpet job on my Olds.  Looks like shit but at least I did it myself with only a box cutter knife.  When I attend car shows, I always check out the owners of the high-dollar cars.  First thing I look at is their hands.  If you have pussy hands, then I know all you got is a fat checkbook.  You don’t impress me.  I admire the guys who build their cars. The Barrett Jackson auction astounds the shit out of me.  People paying upwards of hundreds of thousands for a car that begs to be driven.  And you know that those cars are just going into some display case.  Jay Leno may collect cars and have lots of cash, but at least he drives them and wrenches on them.  That kicks ass in my book.

Another style where my dad and I diverge on our tastes is Street Rods.  Sorry, but all of the billet, crate engines and high-dollar paint jobs do not impress me.  While we’re on the subject, crate engines to me are cheating.  It’s not that fucking hard to build an engine.  If you take your time and invest in a good torque wrench and micrometer tool set, it can be done.  The machine shop does all of the hard work for you.  Whatever.  I love the spirit that Hot Rodders have, being low-budget and making shit work with what you have.  Can’t afford a spray-gun paint job?  Rattle-can that shit.  Get a pair of glass packs and weld those fuckers in yourself.  Bonus if you install cut-outs. 

To wrap this up, I just want to say that we as Hot Rodding Greasers love to work on our stuff.  We’ll tackle any repair job without hesitation.  You’ll never catch us dead with our rods in a shop.  I am reminded of a guy I once saw at the Sears auto repair shop with his ’55 Chevy getting the battery replaced.  Fucking made me sick to my stomach.  Didn’t deserve that car.  As long as I’m old enough to wrench, I’ll be working on my projects.  I won’t be buying billet parts or paying thousands for a paint job.  I’ll be making brackets out of steel on my lathe/mill machine and rattle-canning it.  My gas and stick welders will lead the way with my drill press, chop saw and angle/die grinders.  Just like the Hot Rodding cats of the 50’s built their machines, so will I.  And that’s the Rockabilly, Greasy Hot Rodder’s way.

The Garage Beer Fridge and BAE

Ask any Greaser who turns wrenches, beer and garages go together like a horse and carriage.  You can’t have one without the other (sorry about the Married With Children theme song reference).  For reasons unknown, beer must be consumed while working in the garage.  I myself cannot start working on anything until I make a beeline for my beer fridge, crack one open and down one. 

Before, I had a small Kenmore dorm-sized mini fridge in my garage that I scored on craigslist for $40.  I picked it up in Sherman Oaks, a yuppie neighborhood.  It was funny scaring all of the yuppies with my Chevy truck, greasy pomp, tattoos and Rockabilly music a-blarin’.  Anyways, as soon as I got it into my garage, I whipped out my Craftsman DVOM and attached the temp probe, and placed it in the fridge.  I adjusted the temp control on the fridge to 36°F, right before the point that beer turns to slush.  Any lower and the fridge runs constantly.  I always get compliments on how cold my beer is when I offer one to people.  Warm beer fucking blows.  Yes I’m talking to you Europeans. 

What I liked about my little fridge is that I can fit a case of bottles in there.  The door interior has a dispenser-rack that held about 10 cans (only Pabst cans were allowed in that rack).  It had a nice gash on the front of the fridge, but a large “Summit Racing” and “Hawleywood’s Pomade” stickers took care of that.  The fridge sat on an old IKEA computer table.  Readily accessible are two bottle openers courtesy of my mother-in-law and a Harley-Davidson bottle opener mounted to a stud on my garage wall.  Finally the table has about 6 beer cozies (my favorite being the one that has a pic of the late Mr. Johnny Cash flipping the bird at the San Quentin concert). 

Now I inherited our apartment-sized fridge after my wife and I bought a bigger brand new fridge for the house.  Now my beers are in the “shop fridge” as I call it.  The mother fucker looks like a frat-house fridge upon opening.  All my beers in one place!  And, the handle is all greasy, just like a true shop fridge.

My fridge has its own dedicated outlet.  When I added electrical outlets to my garage, I installed the end-of-the-run single outlet in the corner of my garage, knowing this is where my beer fridge would go.  Up until that time, I was relegated to going inside to the main shop fridge every time I needed a fresh cold one.  My wife got tired of me leaving greasy fingerprints all over the handle and also making space for my beer.  Now with my own fridge, I’m out in the garage for hours at a time.

 Here’s a few beers that I normally keep in the shop fridge with my opinions on them:

Pabst Blue Ribbon – the old classic and the perfect garage beer.  This beer is smooth, with the “American pale lager” taste.  The reason I call it the perfect garage beer is that it tastes good cold and at close to room temp.  There are times that I get so into a job that I forget about the beer for a while and it gets warm.  Not to mention that it’s inexpensive and sold nearly everywhere.  The Greaser has no excuse to run out of Pabst.  And fuck you Hipsters, this is NOT your beer.  Go drink O’Doul’s ironically and be retarded.

Stella Artois, Moosehead, Molson & St. Pauli Girl – These beers are similar in taste to me (crisp, lager taste).  Really good tasty, light beers that I drink while doing small-scale garage shit.  Similar to Pabst in that it tastes good cold and near room temp. 

Newcastle – My favorite import beer.  I always save it for the end of a job well done.  Don’t let this one get warm.  It’ll taste like shit.

Sam Adams Boston Lager – my favorite domestic beer next to Pabst.  Also got to keep this one cold, as it tastes rancid when warm.  For some reason, I love to drink Sam Adams while stick or flux-core welding.  Don’t ask why.  Maybe the flux smoke complements the taste.

Guinness – Yum, love to drink when I get hungry.  Since it’s filling, it’s basically lunch in a bottle.  Typically have this when I didn’t eat breakfast.

Michelob Amber Bock & Budweiser Select – A couple of tasty American lagers with a crisp taste.  Basically the equivalent of the imported Stella and company mentioned above.

Fat Tire & Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – Some good shit right there.  I love the hoppy-taste.  Also love to drink while smelling welding flux smoke.

Dos Equis Amber & Pacifico – My two favorite Mexican beers.  Light lagers for general work.

Whiskey - Not beer, but reserved for when I get a hair up my ass for a good stiff drink.  I usually drink whiskey on Friday night after work when I go unwind in my garage.  Regular Jack Daniel’s on the rocks is my standard.  If I’ve had a particularly rough week dealing with the chucklefucks at work, I mix myself a Three Wise Men drink.  One of these and the stress floats away.  If I drink one of those, I usually just do mickey-mouse shit around the garage, like re-organize and clean up or just blast some Rockabilly and clean my tools with a shop rag & WD-40.  I like to have Gentleman Jack at room temp with a good cigar when it’s raining outside with the space heater going.  Whiskey is not the best thing to drink while working or fabbing, because of the results.  About 90% of my knucklebusters are due to this swill.  Although I have to admit, when I have to wrench on my wife’s Nissan Altima, whiskey makes me forget that I ‘m working on an import car with no goddamned room to swing a wrench in.  So yes, whiskey is my “beer goggles” equivalent on working on imported crap. 

Now for…BAE (Beer Assisted Engineering).  As a Mechanical Engineer, some design ideas come to me better with a good buzz.  I think what is, is the loss of inhibition when you have ideas for a design that you would hesitate to carry out sober since you’ll think that it may not work.  I have to stress that you should exercise caution while drinking since it’s all too easy to grind off a portion of your finger, chop off a finger on the chop saw or some other stupid injury. 

BAE also contributes to the crap that looks good whilst drunk.  A while back I was helping a friend work on his ’61 Impala.  We got the wild idea to do some pin striping after consuming a case of beer.  How crappy it looked the next day sober, and in the daylight. 

But… BAE can assist in creativity and confidence in tackling any project with no doubts. 

On a non-car related aside, a while back I installed a PVC drain line for my house’s evaporative cooler.  I had just installed a purge pump, so I needed to install a drain line so the purge water could drain into one of my gutters.  I went to Lowe’s and purchased 20 feet of PVC pipe and a shitload of 90° & 45° fittings.  When I got home, I drank about 3 beers and stared at my roof and cooler, while the gears in my head ground (waited for the buzz to take effect).  Seriously, I had the line routed in one try.  No scrap pieces.  Everything came together in one shot, with no errors, all thanks to beer.  In hindsight, this was stupid since alcohol and working on the roof do not mix.  I did slip and stumble a few times, so I now institute a 2-beer max policy for roof jobs.

Metal fab while drunk is a whole subject unto itself.  I highly advise against trying to handle an angle grinder while shnockered.  I’ve had the unfortunate experience of dropping one while it was on.  I was grinding some angle iron and the grinding disc caught and wrenched it out of my drunk hands.  The fucking thing fell to the ground and went crazy like a bloodthirsty cat.  Luckily I still had enough soberness to jump out of the way and yank the plug out.  Lesson learned: 3-beer max policy when using the angle grinder. 

Bottom line is that BAE can bring out the creativity that would otherwise be hiding in your sober mind.  When you get stumped on your project, don’t be afraid to crack open a cold one and let your mind work.  Just be careful around that angle grinder.  Cheers!