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Kickin' Rocks with Don Pennington
Ramblers, Tanks and Cool Wheels For years and years there has been this cartoon stuck in my brain of a guy sitting on a rock chipping away with a hammer and chisel on a bigger rock making what appears to be the first wheel. As is the case with most things in the newspaper these days, the picture is fake, staged, created to warp our minds and create artificial support for overthrowing a small country with vast oil resources. The reason I know this picture is fake is the hammer and chisel, where did they come from? Hammers and chisels? Wasn't the Iron Age long after the wheel, there might have been sharp rocks that were smacked against big rocks to chip small things out of bigger things, but no hammer... no chisel. And... AND... that wheel he was making had a hole in it! For what... who's idea was that? Did the big rock come with a hole already in it? Uhhhhh...no, someone must of had plans for an axle! Someone had a plan, therefore there must have been a plan maker, somebody that knew hot rodding was destined to control the world, somebody like... Honest Charley. It is clear that we, the true car people of the world, have been entrusted with the well being of the wheel. At first glance this may appear to be a huge responsibility, but not so. In the first meeting of the Committee to Control the World, it was decided that wheels will only come on cars. There are a lot of things that appear to be wheels, but wheels only come on cars, all those other wheel looking things are just round things that look like and work like wheels, but they are not wheels! Further, the real deal wheels only come on cool cars, the rest like Taurus wheels and Vega wheels are probationary cousins waiting for the time they can sacrifice themselves to cutting and grinding and welding and melting to make real wheels for cool cars. To finance this take over the Committee believes that if "The Donald" can trademark the phrase "You're Fired" we should be able to do the same with "wheel" and then sue everybody that uses it, creating giant piles of money which we need to do car stuff and give free wheels to every real car guy on earth (all the yellow wheels can be given to our special friends, like France). People on the outside of the true believer's circle may think cool wheels are just immature and childish fixations that exist solely to regain the power that we lost during the first marriage. Actually we know what wheels do, they make everything right, they center our universe, they... are cool. If you took you cool wheels off your cruiser and replaced them with some "functional" versions from the take-off pile at the tire shop, what happens? Aside from burning the forty bucks for the changeover, your world immediately goes in the dumper, your attitude towards everything changes, the axis of the earth shifts and everything is all cattywhompus. It's true... wheels are everything. The ongoing debate that says hot rod guys are cooler than custom guys takes a hit here, if your car is sitting there in cool wheels, you could care less how fast it goes, it looks good... GOAL! For you new guys with short cash, your first car can be a real beater, but the wheels must be cool, it will amaze you how cool you look ...and think you are... with cool wheels. No matter what life does to you, or you to it, EVERYBODY after having parked their current phallic substitute and are walking away, no matter who you are or your station in life, you always look back to see how cool it looks, and of course... therefore you are cool too. The other day I was down at the Mike's Tire Shop checking in on what is happening in the real world, when a guy came in looking for "Bob". Bob wasn't there, actually there never was a Bob, but it's easier to play along than run the story out about why there isn't a Bob. "Uh, Bob's not here right now, can I help you?" Having decided not to tell the no-Bob-here story in hopes of getting to lunch on time, it seems this visit from the outsider also begins to threaten our fast track to afternoon Z time, he just has to tell the "I bought this car from the original owner, it needs a little work, but it's a good car " story which goes on and on and on and on. He sharing with us goes on for so long that Mike has started doing the yellow water tap dance. Cummon guy, get to it... then the magic words of "original owner" and "sell cheap" come together. Suddenly this guy is the only person in our wold, dropping tools and hanging up phones we are all ears as the rubber necking begins looking for the cherry of cherries parked outside. Turns out his description was, shall we say... generous or kind or way off base. This thing was a true beater, the beater of beaters, but.... but... it had a cool set of wheels on it, looked pretty damn good too. The car (in case you are wondering) was a 1958 Rambler 4 door, pink and green (not factory colors... ya think). Long story short- bought the car for the value of the wheels, jerked the wheels off and marooned the car high and dry out in the street on some chunks of wood. As the guy left, counting his sixty bucks, he says "I don't want that car, will you guys call the scraper". Guy gone... the shop kid says "Mike what you want me to do with these wheels?". Make says... "put them on that Rambler out there and cut two coils, it's my new driver". Shinny wheels have more power than a 48 stick box of Crayons. It came to me the other day when looking at the front page of a month old daily newspaper, which was a complete accident but you have to dig through the pile past the paper to get to the rod and custom magazines. It came to me that the wheel has a chance to change the world once again, in the front page picture there was this tank parked on one of those squeaky clean Iraq streets, the guys sitting on the tank didn't look too happy. Wouldn't it be cool to tweak the tank just bit, a set of hot rod wheels and chrome plated tracks on the suede painted M1A1 Abrams tank with flames, a giant Goodguys logo painted on the turret, ‘32 grille shell bolted to the nose, and Panama style hats and hot rod t-shirts for the crew, that's quite a picture don't ya think? Wouldn't that be better? The really cool thing about this is that when one of those smelly gutter rats slithered out to wage their personal holy war on our guys and gals, the sight of our "new look" Abrahams would freak him out just long enough for our GIs to get the jump and skillfully place a mythical 2000mm projectile (that's about six feet in diameter) squarely between his eyes. Our guys are smiling now... and looking good too. The power of the cool wheel has no bounds! Kick a Rock DP
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Kickin'
Rocks
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