One of the great things about being an editor of a car magazine is that you're surrounded by other car guys. Now, not all magazine editors are car guys, but they should be, as it's a lot easier to teach a car enthusiast how to write a car feature than get a journalism or photo major to live and breath cars.
Growing up in Southern California, the world-recognized Mecca for car-crazy culture, I wasn't really into them. My dad was never into them, really, though for many years he liked to buy new ones, but that was before I was born. I learned to drive sitting on his lap while wheeling our near-new '66 Pontiac Catalina down a safe, less-traveled four-lane road. I even took the turquoise '63 T-Bird he rebuilt and restored to my prom (along with a girl who would eventually become a well-known porn star-but unfortunately that was well after the time when I knew her). But for the most part, my dad wasn't "into" cars.
There was a guy up the street who had a bright yellow '57 Chevy that was fixed up pretty nice, and another who was an officer in a local mini-truck club (minis were enjoying their initial wave of popularity then). Then there was the guy who moved in four doors down who had a bunch of chopped '34 Ford sedans and the like. I didn't know what they were, but I asked him if I could take some pictures of his cars on his front lawn-some of the very first pictures I ever took in my life with my own, cheesy, 110 instamatic camera.
When my friends started getting their driver's licenses, we were all into bicycle motocross, and then we all got mini trucks, as did I (a real sharp '69 Datsun that I painted light gray with rattle cans in my parent's driveway). Within a few months, everyone was driving Volkswagens, as the little Bugs were going through yet another metamorphosis (plus they were cheap to work on-at least compared to mini trucks).
I immersed myself in the VW culture, went to the original Bug-Ins at Orange County International Raceway, and learned how to drop one arm faster than the other to give my friends an advantage when I started their street races. I eventually owned six VWs at one time, though none would have won any prizes, except a possible "Best Use of Bondo" award, but I didn't attend the shows for the awards. It was the camaraderie of like-minded individuals all having a good time with their friends and their cars. I match-ported heads with a hand-held drill, polished my aluminum dash and alternator with Never-Dull until my fingers ached, and clearanced cases for counterweighted cranks with a wood rasp while sitting on the floor of my apartment, just because I couldn't afford the work by the pros. It was a great time.
My love of Volkswagens led me to being hired as a photographer at VW Trends magazine, published by Tom McMullen, who also owned Street Rodder and Kit Car Illustrated at the time, as well as 10 or so other books. I traveled all over the country writing about and photographing the VW scene, and even went to England once to cover their first organized drag race event at Santa Pod. By 1991 I was hired as a photographer at Street Rodder, where I would spend the next 13 years doing the same sort of work-shooting and writing.
Street Rodder hired me because I knew how to take a picture, not for my prose. I couldn't tell a '31 from a '34 then, and had to sit on the curb of the entrance to a Goodguys show in Pleasanton, California, to try and pick out what was what as it rolled through the gate. After 13 years I still enjoy street rods, and I own a handful of them (chiefly a '32 three-window, as seen on page 19 of this issue, a 'glass '32 roadster, a steel '29 Ford truck, plus lot of steel T bodies and parts).