I wake to the sound of a revving engine and wonder, what are the neighbors doing over there? It’s Saturday and they’re up early again to beat the heat. They’ve been hammering, pounding, bolting, and drilling on something for weeks now. I look over from my driveway not totally sure that what they’re putting together is worth all of their sweat. I’m new to the neighborhood, so casually waving is as far as my neighbor relations go at this point.<\/p>\n
As summer slowly passes their project is taking some sort of shape, and I’m a little more intrigued. Walking to the mailbox one morning, we exchange some pleasantries and I decide it’s time to inquire about all of the commotion. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’ve spent months building it, and I can tell it’s gone from a pile of parts and an engine to what\u00a0sort of\u00a0resembles a truck, ow what used to be a truck. But it still doesn’t look like any truck or car I’ve ever seen. They inform me that they’re building a\u00a0rat rod\u00a0to take to some car show. It’s a “1949 Ford with a ’51 flat head motor,” and they’ve named it Horatio. I’ve been to a few car shows with my dad as a kid, to drag races with an ex-boyfriend, and I’ve seen classic cars headed down the 10 freeway to the Pomona Swap Meet & Classic Car Show<\/a>… but I’d never heard of a rat rod.<\/p>\n So then one evening I pull up to the house, and a crowd of guys are standing around Horatio. It’s made its way into the street, and is running loudly. I can’t help but investigate. Is this it? Are they done? Where’s the shiny paint, and fancy fenders? This thing is rusty and, although it’s clearly running, it looks flat-out unfinished. They said it was a rat rod, but clearly I didn’t get it. They laugh, understanding my confusion. It wasn’t until my neighbor urged me to take a spin with him that it all made sense. I could see the road ripping underneath me through a hole near the gear shifter. We rumbled \u00a0around the corner and he said, “Okay girl, your turn.” He was serious so I climbed into the driver’s seat, put it in gear, and immediately killed the motor. After a few minutes of coaching on the super sensitive clutch, I was cruising through the neighborhood. There’s never been another vehicle I have ever had as much fun driving and I realized, to know a rat rod, is to love one. Horatio\u00a0was finally ready for the big show: ratty, loud, and proud. They drove their labor of love all the way there. It all made sense to me now, and their summer of long sweat-filled hours had paid off. It may not have been a case of love at first sight, but it definitely love at first ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":6611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cos_headline_score":0,"cos_seo_score":0,"cos_headline_text":"","cos_headline_has_been_analyzed":false,"cos_last_analyzed_headline":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2345,426,2346,2344,13,319],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Capture.jpg?fit=636%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9nnZN-1EO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6613,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions\/6613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}