I grew up as a kid in the 1950's, working in our family retail business. It was a combination toy/hobby/bicycle store. We sold a lot of the Cox Thimbledrome gas airplane and prop-rod cars. No customer could ever start one of them "out of the box". So......when they came back, "I became the go to guy". I was about ten or eleven years old at the time. Like others have already stated, I also spent my lunch time down at the Ryan Evans Rexall drug store's magazine rack reading all of their small .25 cent car magazines drinking a (a real) Cherry Coke.

Royal Mason was one of our neibours. He had two "daily driver" 1948 FORD's because only one would run at a time. It seemed like he was pulling out an engine every weekend. He was nice enough to let this kid watch, ask endless questions and clean parts.

I bought my first car for $500., when I was 15 years old. It was a nice 1958 Chevy two door BellAir. But it had a high mileage smoking 235 six cylinder engine. The Six engine came out and a 283 with a Duntov cam went in before I would even drive it to school.

One thing that really bothers me is where are the new "car guy" kids going to begin? I still remember my grade school wood shop teacher's name, Mr. Baker. After 50 years, I still have my seventh and eight grade shop projects. He had a brand new bright yellow Austin Healy six with three carbs. My auto shop teacher was Mr. Bartell, he had a three cylinder, two cycle Berkley sports car. The schools today have dropped their industrial arts programs due to cost (and I'd bet liability). I'd be cautious in todays law suit happy world to have neibour kids hanging around while I'm working/welding/grinding etc. But then again, that's where I got the car guy bug.