KICKIN' ROCKS
with Don Pennington

 And So It Begins                                                                                         

 The third Monday of every month is the club meeting of the world famous Road Angels Hot Rod Club. We go an hour and a half or two early to eat and B.S., have a 20 minute (usually less) meeting and go home in time to watch Boston Public. I get home and go out to the shop for a minute to look at the answering machine. 3 messages? Hell I only get one very other day, this night I get three? First and second were no big deal but the third was a doozie. "Hey DP how would you like to write some stuff for us, you know some of that sarcastic humor you do, humorous of course not sarcastic, you know sarcastic humor? You're a funny guy, you figure it out." I prefer to be called humorous.

 Zowie! The man is calling me! The "G" man, the grand pooh-bah, the guy in the yellow cars. Mr. Gary Meadors...sir! Cool! About five years ago at Bonneville Gary suggested I write some things, and then he mentioned it again this year at B-ville. Pretty cool deal I think I'll be a kick, imposing my will in a light hearted albeit "sarcastic" manner upon the masses, hope I don't get sued.

 I went in the house and told my wife and daughter who thought it was pretty cool. My daughter quickly quizzed  "how much are you going to get paid?" Leave it to the youngsters to think of such things. Probably thousands and thousands...of something. For those of us that have managed to just get through life paying most of the bills, and not generating any vast fortunes and therefore not doing much in the way of estate planning, it's not the money (cough) it's the ego, I mean the journey.

 A great thing about the Goodguys organization is that they are closely related to us car people, well they are car people after all and they are truly one of us. You are all familiar with Gary and Marilyn's car collection, a prime example of an "older goodguy" reliving those glory years. If you ask me, I think these are their glory years. I have always enjoyed the Goodguys events, it continues to amaze me how Gary, Marilyn and the crew put on such large events but still manage to keep the "gettin' together at the drive-in" atmosphere. That management style is what allows irreverent humor to get into print outside of MAD Magazine and Popular Mechanics.

 So... here we go. The pressure is on. Deadlines, fresh ideas or at least rework other works so nobody will recognize it, be funny, and try not to upset too many people. Shouldn't be too difficult we all have Goodguys and Goodgals  that we run with that are fodder. There are all sorts of things to talk about as they are forever doing curious things, things that you just can't help poking fun at and every so often they are inspiring or insightful. The hot rod and custom funny road is long and wide, just look around you, your friends are funny people. See... lots of material.

   The Gazette has a pretty good track record with humor writers. I am still a big fan of Billy B.'s stuff, he always hit the spot, if you weren't laughing at him you were learning with him. You know it's been six years since he left us? There is this one picture of him sitting in a lounge chair at Bonneville that keeps popping up, it's good to remember. Then there is Christopher Titus. You gotta paint stripes on me to know if I am standing up or rolling around with laughter when I read his stuff. Do you remember the column about attack of the tent people? Too funny, that guy is a freak. His TV show was fresh and the format was cutting edge, do you think his real life wife is "equipped" like his TV wife? It may not be common knowledge possibly not even to Titus himself, but we both have ‘56 Chev converts. Like minds eat from the same trough, or something like that.

 By this time you might be thinking, "who is this idiot?" Just like Dennis Weaver used to say, "there ya go", that's it, the key is definitely the idiot factor. Mix the car stuff with the curious of the world and a touch of the strange mind and  that pretty much explains where we are going. Like most of us, I have been around cars forever growing up in Southern California. Pasadena High School, Bob's Big Boy (Pasadena and Glendale), Blair‘s Speed Shop where I spent my first four car bucks to lower a ‘50 Chev coupe, The Beach on Friday nights (the drag strip not the sand, well sometimes the sand) Colton on Saturday night Fontana on Sunday, all that cool car stuff of the fifties. Moved to Portland in 1960, did the car shows making weirdo shirts and producing a variety of car shows and rod runs through the years, even took a fling at the publishing business with a car magazine named Motorsports Illustrated. Cars have covered the full hot rod and custom spectrum from beater to fueler,  mostly street toys, 172 at last count. The current list includes a ‘40 Tudor, 20 years now, a ‘54 and ‘55 Chev and a dozen other keepers plus the Titus inspiring ‘56 convert custom.

 I am truly going to enjoy this renewed relationship with the Goodguys team. Jim (the ed.) Said I should pick a name for the column. Thinking long and hard, making phone calls late into the night looking for advise, it finally came to me. Every single person in the hot rod and custom car world has done this. When two or more goodguys gather (goodgals don't do this) sooner or later when the conversation wains, and the good lies die out, someone starts looking down and pushing rocks around with his foot. Now there is a guy thing for you! Then the inevitable kicked rock. I like it, what do you think? KICKIN' ROCKS.

 Next month we are going to talk about how cars affected our lives in pre-school, after that kindergarten, grade school and so on. Should get a full year of columns out of that, what a hoot it's going to be.

 Kick a rock.

DP