Remembering Author Henry Gregor Felsen (1916-1995) – The Granddaddy Of Hot Rodding Novels

 

Who was this serious looking man and why do I consider him an icon of automotive literature? Like most artists, we remember their work instead of the artists themselves… but actually, without their work, what would we remember about any artist?

Mr. Felsen was an American Mid-Western writer during the 1950s. He wrote fiction, primarily for junior and senior high school-age students. He is best remembered by many automotive enthusiasts for a series of teenage adventure stories, starting with this book:

 

This book struck a nerve in me. I was in the fourth grade when I first read it. I had always had a fascination with cars but I didn’t have a direction or know the language to express it. In Bud Crayne, –the story’s lead character– I found a kindred spirit. Though not so much in his personal life story. Bud had experienced little of a normal family life, he had been orphaned and was raised by an older bachelor uncle. He was a loner, and he turned to his car as an expression of his identity and his individuality. The following passage sums this up:

“No wonder then, that Bud felt more than a pride of ownership in this fellow hybrid that was his car. Made with the work of his hands and the thought of his brains, it was his totem, his companion, his dog, his drawer of shells, his treasured childhood blanket and fuzzy bear.”

Yes, I would say that Mr. Felsen UNDERSTOOD the bond between a youth and his machine.

Years later Henry Felsen’s daughter Holly decided to have a reprinting of this iconic first book. She posted on the HAMB (Hokey Ass Message Board) trying to gauge potential interest before committing her money to the project. It turned out that she was amazed by the outpouring of response. Many older car enthusiasts shared with her the depth and the degree that her father’s stories had meant to them; how these stories touched their lives and helped them form their concept of what a car guy is. Previously Holly had no idea that her father’s writing had been so influential and memorable to those who read them.

Felsen’s most remembered novels besides Hot Rod are:

Road Rocket (Later re-titled to Boy Gets Car)

Crash Club

Street Rod

Rag Top

and Fever Heat.

There is a lot of teen angst and rebellion in these stories, and they do not always end in the happy manner we might have liked. Mr Felsen wanted his stories to have a moral. He wanted to persuade his audience to do the right thing –to behave in a socially acceptable and responsible manner. The car is often the catalyst in a teenage rite of passage.

Besides Hot Rod, I think that my favorite novel is Boy Gets Car –formerly titled Road Rocket.

 

In this story, a group of young car-loving teenage boys have formed an informal car club; the Road Rockets. They have a wonderful time holding meetings in the basement of the young protagonist, Woody Ahern. They get together to discuss exciting topics like boring and stroking a flathead Ford engine, multiple carb setups, and performance-enhancing gearing changes. They get to argue the merits of various modifications, while Woody’s mother brings down a platter of snacks, cookies, and milk. They are just having a grand old time. It’s a good thing that none of them owned an actual beat-up old car, as it was a lot more fun to talk the talk. (That’s still true for me today!)

Mr. Felsen captures the zeal, longing, and naivete of a young teenager, especially in contrast to Woody’s long-suffering father, who is a coach at the local junior high school. One evening Coach Ahern accompanies his son on a foray to the back row of the local, low-buck used car emporium.

The father gets into a discussion with Sid, the owner of the car lot. Sid pulled his hat down: “You ever buy your boy anything like an electric train when he was younger?”

Ahern nodded: “I got a buy on a good train set. Forty dollars for the works.”

“All right. If you spent forty dollars on him when he was seven, it won’t kill you to spend another forty on him now, particularly if it’s his own forty. Look at it this way Mr Ahern. Your boy doesn’t want a car, he wants a big toy. If he wanted a car he wouldn’t be looking in that back row. Believe me, sir, there isn’t anything that will keep a car crazy boy off the streets better than an old car in his garage. Instead of rattling around all night with some older kid who has a car, he’ll be at home, working on his own little pride and joy. I don’t think that it makes any difference to kids like yours, if their cars ever run or not. What they want is a real car to work on, with real gears, and real transmissions, and real engines(…)  Maybe he’ll learn more from an old car that won’t run than you can ever guess. One thing, he’ll find out whether he likes to work on cars, or just thinks that he likes to work on cars. Think of it like an electric train or an erector set, or some big toy like that. Let him have it.”

Well, that is real life for you. We all had ideas and dreams of the future when we were younger, not always based upon a realistic assessment of our situation. Still, life should be about learning, and our best lessons are usually taught to ourselves.

 

All this fun is shattered when Woody actually goes out and buys an old beater. The boys had previously decided that all member’s cars would be treated as “club cars” and they would all work on each other’s cars as they acquired them. Standing in front of a rusty beat-up, smelly old heap, they realized that it just wasn’t as much fun as they thought it would be. Of course, they were happy to ride around in a car while it was still running. In a short time, Woody’s friends abandon him. He is left alone with the reality of a tired old car that needs a lot of time, money, and labor. Maybe more than he can invest in it.

Woody is plagued by self-doubt, but like car enthusiasts everywhere he gets down to business.

I like this story because it captures the innocence of young love; well young car love at least. Meanwhile, Woody’s father isn’t the least bit interested in cars; they are transportation, that’s all. There are more important things in life, like getting an education and later a career. So Woody, as a middle-class kid, is not exposed to the reality of his father just wrenching on some old beater so that he can just make it to work.

In Woody’s idealism, he sees himself working on cars not only as a hobby but as a career. As a mechanic, racing pit crew member, or maybe someday as a racing car designer. Woody’s father sees all this as a dangerous distraction, and even worse as a dead end. Especially for the son of a teacher/coach. Respectability is not found as a grease monkey under some old car! What middle-class parent wouldn’t worry that his offspring was so intent on dropping down the social and economic scale? Could Woody become a JD (juvenile delinquent)?

Unfortunately, this was the reality that middle-class parents associated with hot rodding in the early 1950’s. So many families had escaped poverty after the Second World War, and some of those returning GIs took advantage of the GI Bill to attend college or trade school and climbed into middle-class respectability and opportunity. Losing that was something that these parents took seriously and feared, they knew the harsh realities of life.

 

 

 

What Woody wouldn’t, and couldn’t realize at this age was that cars could be an interesting hobby and pastime. There was no need to make them a career. Of course, there are many types of careers in the automotive world. White collar as well as blue collar.

Mr. Felsen wrote cautionary tales of just how dangerous cars could be. Not only about reckless driving as described so graphically in “Hot Rod” but also how they could become a distraction to an aspiring middle-class kid’s social and economic development. But his stories also captured the hopes and dreams of thousands of young car enthusiasts of my generation.

And let’s end with a more cheerful middle-class image.

 

Related CC reading:

Vintage Photography: The People and Cars of the Cornett Family, As Shot by William Gedney in 1964 and 1972