The Car Cult From Rumpsville

"Holy gaskets!" exclaims one of the cats. "We never realized our departure would work this kind of hardship upon future generations!" They drive up a mountain, unplug the powerful pipes of their beast and blast out a message to Catalina:" WAPP, wapp, wapp, wapp—WAPP, wapp—WAPP, WAPP." Catalina gets the message. "Using their normal amount of ingenuity, the entire population of Rumpville returned to the mainland now that they were convinced that they were needed—and rod-ding again assumed its helpful place on the national scene!"

The Saga of Rumpville is a fair gauge of the literary taste of much of the hot rod cult, but it does point up the strong desire of the movement to prove that hot rodding has a helpful—and rightful—place in society. This is the constant theme of the Petersen magazines and the National Hot Rod Association, a close ally. The NHRA was founded in 1951 by Wally Parks, then the editor of Hot Rod Magazine and now the editorial director of Petersen Publications, with the help of a $1,500 loan from Petersen himself. Under Parks's guidance the NHRA has fought against shot rodding ("Names that include such words as 'Maniacs,' 'Killers,' 'Hell' or 'Wrecks' have a tendency to give the public the wrong impression of hot rodding") and sought to have hot rodding recognized as a safe, sane and useful sport. Since its founding NHRA has enrolled 100,000 members, all of whom are pledged to uphold the law, and it sanctions and insures 150 of the 250 drag strips in the country and runs a semiannual National Drags Championships and a National Custom Car Show.

Los Angeles, birthplace of the cult, continues to spawn fads. Five years ago hot rods in L.A. were tilted up in front. Now they are tilted up in back. In the East, which is generally reckoned as being three to five years behind in style, cars are still tilted up in front.

Color schemes change all the time. Five years ago flames on the hood were the thing. Then they suddenly went out, and scalloping came in. Pin striping followed, then paneling. Now the fad is to paint the car a solid "candy" or "pearl" color. Candy, made from toners and clears—the unmixed ingredients of pure paint—makes a finished job shine like a candied apple. Pearl, made from fish scales used in nail polish, not only gives clarity and polish but a satinlike sheen. " Indianapolis is going real wild for pearls and candy colors," says Dean Jeffries, a painter who claims to have been the first to pearl cars. "I've got quite a few of them lined up for this year. Jim Hurtubise, who set a record there, had an orchid pearl with candy burgundy scallops, and the crowd went wild over it, the women especially."

Larry Watson, another custom painter, is working on pearls that change color with the lighting. One pearl glows red in the sun and turns green in the shade, while another is blue in the light and gold in the dark. "Guys like to come down to my place, lock the doors and get high on the fumes of the lacquer," Watson says. "When I painted my '59, man, I got so high. I went out and got a haircut, man, and the guy was cutting burgundy-colored hair."

Like all cultists, hot rodders have their shrines. A favorite in the Los Angeles area is Harvey's Broiler, a drive-in in the suburb of Downey. Here high school hot rodders gather to partake of the glorified "chubby," a double hamburger, gape at one another's cars and check on the latest fads. On weekend nights hundreds of cars jam the parking lot, and eager drivers waiting for a berth circle the block. Occasionally an impatient driver races his engine twice in rapid succession, sending a throaty whoom-whoom into the soft night air. Instantly other drivers respond in automatic litany. In the old days this ritual, called "rapping the engine," was a challenge to a street race.

I visited Harvey's one rainy night with two guides, Lieut. Ron Root of Pomona and Sergeant Bob Thomas of Lynwood, both of whom serve on the Police Advisory Council for Car Clubs in Los Angeles County. From our car, I pointed questioningly to rods with huge rear tires. "They're racing slicks with no tread," Root said. "It's a fad." In turn, he pointed to a car that had no hub caps on the wheels. "That style," he said, "comes from the drag strips. The strips won't allow hub caps because they might come off and get in the way of an oncoming car."

Several cars had bongo drums on the rear window shelf. "It followed the beatnik craze," Root said with a shrug.

Thomas said some hot rodders prefer stuffed lions to the drums. "It was the answer to our making them take graduation tassles and baby shoes off the rear-view mirror," he said. Still other hot rodders encircle the mirror with a soft fur muff known as a "fuzzy."

"One of the things the kids do," said Root, "is to take a cocktail glass, fill it with acetate glue, put a red marble in it for a cherry or a green one for an olive, and glue the base of the glass to the dashboard and let her sit. Looks strange.