Thanks for being a gearhead,Dad....Happy Father's Day!!

Father's day is Sunday and I thought I'd pay a little tribute to my Dad and all the others that caused us to love musclecars. Except for maybe Shirley Muldowney or Linda Vaughn's kids-It's almost always Dad who turns us on to cars. When I was really little my dad had a 1959 Pontiac Catalina with the Tri-Power 389. That car hooked him on Pontiacs and set the path for me and my brother. He later had a 1964 GTO. It was a 4bbl model, but it had a 4-speed and 4.33:1 gears. It was lightning fast in a drag race, but a little buzzy on the freeway!!  Then we got a 1965 Catalina Ventura. It was red with black interior and had American Racing Torq-Thrust mags on it. My mom was furious-because he traded in her beloved '58 Chevy Impala without telling her. Dad was a mechanic by trade-and he was always working on the side in our garage when he wasn't working at a car dealer. He got really good at tuning and sychronizing multi-carb setups. Word got around the local speed shops and race tracks-so he had quite a fan club. Our street was always packed with GTOs, 'Vettes,Road Runners and Super Bees, 409 Impalas, Hemi Chargers,-anything with a 3-2bbl or 2-4bbl induction system. Street Racers and Bracket Racers alike all wanted an edge-and if my old man jetted your carbs and adjusted your linkage-you definitely had an edge over someone who's car was stock or tuned by themselves or a run-of-the-mill mechanic. He also had the sports-car crowd-Porsche 911s, Datsun 240Z's, MG's and Triumphs,Austin-Healeys-even a couple of Shelby Cobra owners. Dad was good at tuning snd syncronizing SU's and Webers too. He also did motorcycle carbs too. That's how he met Dave Aldana-who was a factory-backed Honda motorcycle racer. Dave's battles at the San Jose mile with Gary Scott and Kenny Roberts were legendary. The neighbors must have hated us. Any weekend it looked like a car show was going on on our street. Like I said in an earlier post-I didn't think it was odd that people like Dave and Gary or Dino Fry or some other racing celebrity was hanging in our garage. I read magazine tech articles religiously-and helped my dad work. My mom always says I could swap valve springs in a small-block Chevy cylinder head before I could ride a two-wheel bike. My little brother's first words weren't "Mama" or "Dada" I think they were "Wace Caw". ( "Race Car" ). I got to hang with these guys-and "The Kid" ( me ) carried a repected opinion. When I was about 11 a neighbor who was always screwing with his car, messing it up and wanting my dad to fix it-asked dad to set the firing order on his Chevy Impala one day. Dad tells me to go do it. I knew all GM V8's were 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2, so I went and got the car started in about ten minutes. I guess it embarrased him, because the guy never asked my dad for help again!!  Dad got another '65 Pontiac-this one a 2+2 with a Tri-power 421 and the 8-lug wheels. By the time I was in junior high I was getting letters and articles published in Popular Hot Rodding, Hot Rod and Car Craft. By high school my dad had bought a service station and we had moved to Nevada. Nevada was adopting California's smog standard's and My dad had gotten one of the first smog liscences in Nevada. We had ever car dealer beating down our door to get cars ready for sale.  I had a smog liscence before I had a driver's liscence. My first car was a Ram Air III, 4-speed, 4.33:1 geared '69 GTO Judge. Who buys that for a 16 year old?  My awesome dad-who over-rode my mom and my uncle who was a cop. The Judge was King Kong. I smote all challengers in biblical fashion. I also lost my liscence in less than a year. About this time dad also had a 1978 400, 4-speed, WS6 Trans-Am. My mom has a great picture of the Judge, the 2+2, and the The Trans-Am all parked side by side in front of our house. Because of me-my brother's first car was a '69 GTO-although his wasn't a judge. He also carried on the fine tradition of losing his liscence in less than a year. In my 20's I also had an SS396 El Camino, a couple of Disco-era T/A's and a '71 Ventura that I swapped a 400 into after totaling one of the T/A's. My brother got into circle track racing. Through it all, dad was always there to burn the midnight oil with us fixing a motor or a clutch, or whatever, and he was usually good for bail money when we needed it!!  His big gripe when me and my brother would screw up was-"Now I have to listen to your mother about this."  Like he didn't give a shit that we'd led the police on a "Smokey and the Bandit" chase, or had a "RoadHouse" fight in a bar-no he didn't want to hear the "Wrath of Mom" which in his mind would somehow be directed at him, not us-Because-"Who raises people that do shit like that??""  I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He couldn't lecture us too much because his brothers- good old uncle Herbert and uncle Bobby would tell us storys of his antics in the '59 and how they had to come and tow him in or back him up in a fight...Good times.  Were citizens now with kids of our own. My brother's an executive with a liquor supply company that supplys all the casinos in Nevada, and I'm a Service Writer in a car dealership. My son's 20 now-and he always marvelled at how I knew when he pulling shit like I was psychic or something. Dude-do you think I lived in a monastery before I married your mother and had kids?  Anyhow-Dad just celebrated his 75th birthday and him and my brother were talking about turning my brother's old GTO into a "Judge" clone and maybe building a faux RAIV with Edelbrock heads and putting in a Richmond 5-speed. Much to mom's dismay, because that would mean the garage would be occupied for about 6 months!!  Anyhow-Happy Father's day dad-and thanks for all the things you taught me. Some of which we don't talk about or don't mom to know to this day....But I've passed the lead foot, hard fists and hard head on to your grandson-much to his mother's dismay. DNA is a wonderful thing.....Mastermind