During all of this Hollywood futility (as they say, once an extra, always an extra…) I was busy with my first writing gig. The magazine was Roland Osborn’s currently dormant Chrysler Power. I spent three good years there learning a ton about publishing a nationally distributed bi-monthly magazine. The only bummer was that most of the stuff I learned about page layout and the printing process was based on the old hand-pasted method that was quickly becoming outmoded by computerization. We’d send all photographs out to be converted into black & white half-tones, then use Page Maker to flow the text into columns. The half tones and printed slivers of paper text were then pasted onto large
cardboard sheets using a hot wax roller. It wasn’t state of the art by any means, but I sure learned a whole bunch and am still grateful to Roland for taking a chance on me.
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Then one day Cliff Gromer called from Mopar Action to see if I was available to do some freelance writing on the side. Roland gave his blessing and suddenly I was being published in Mopar Action every other month as well. I had read Cliff’s columns in all the CSK automotive titles he worked on and appreciated the fact he was a real-deal veteran writer from back in the day, having contributed to Hi Performance CARS in the late sixties and early seventies.
Throughout all of this, I ran a small business selling vintage car magazines at automotive swap meets on weekends. At these swaps I got to know a rock and roller by the name of Todd Westover. Todd, always resplendent with bright blue or red dyed hair, was a regular buyer of my vintage copies of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated. Turns out, Todd was the art director for Drag Racing Monthly and put me in touch with its editor, the late, great Steve Collison, who hired me to write a bunch of stories about altered wheelbase funny cars and other A/FX stuff.
I knew damn well who Steve Collison was, having read his work in Super Stock, Car Craft, Hi-Performance CARS, Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords and Bracket Racing USA during my formative years. I was in awe every time we talked on the phone. Then around 1997 I came home to hear a recorded message on my answering machine from Ro McGonegal asking me if I’d consider a staff position as technical editor at Hot Rod magazine! He’d seen my stuff in Drag Racing Monthly and liked it. I called back the very next day and within a week was hired and writing my first piece, a story about the emerging EFI offerings for the hot rod market, a story entitled “Say Hi To EFI” that ran in the December 1997 issue of Hot Rod. I stayed at Hot Rod until January of 2004, a seven year run that saw many dreams fulfilled and radical developments in the high performance world – both from Detroit and from the aftermarket.
Currently I’m still writing about cars and doing some TV stuff as I follow my interest in cars onto whatever comes next. I guess if there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s that each one of us must recognize the fact that you only go around once in life. Follow your passion (whether it’s raising a family or restoring a SuperBird…or both) and you’ll have no regrets. There’s nothing worse than saying “if only.” Go get it!
