How I got Hooked on Old hemis.
That sound is absolutely amazing. When I was eleven years old, we lived on a
lake in western Massachusetts. There was an "old" guy (about 25 or 26 maybe)
who lived at the other end of the lake, and when he got back from Korea, he
built himself a boat. It was a very traditional mahogany planked three point
hydroplane. Not quite as big as an unlimited, but it was about twenty feet
long or so. He had put a flathead V-8 60 in it, and on certain mornings, he
took his hydroplane out about 8am and would make four or five laps of the lake.
I'd run down to the dock and sit there listening and watching. Then, one day,
I was laying in the hammock in our backyard when, coming from the lake, I
heard what sounded like a whole squadron of fighter planes in a dive. I ran
out to see, and it was PJ in his hydroplane, but it was definitely not running
like it had before. Besides the incredible sound, it was sporting a rooster
tail that must have gone thirty feet in the air, and the hydroplane was only
touching the water about every hundred feet or so. Once he finally went home,
I got on my bicycle and pedaled for nearly an hour around the lake road until I
got all the way over to where he lived. His hydroplane was pulled up on the
sandy beach, the cowl was up, and he was working on it. He had shown me the
V8 60 earlier that summer, and this was definitely no V8 60. In response to my
"What is it?", PJ explained that it was a Desoto hemi with six Strombergs, an
Isky cam, and eight short stacks. I had been reading enough hot rod magazines
to know what a hemi was, and at that moment, I became fully hooked. My dad was
a bit of a hot rodder, and thought his 98 Olds was tough. I kept after him,
and kept after him, until in the late fall of 1956, he bought a brand new 1957
Chrysler 300C, complete with 392 hemi. I ended up getting my license in that
car, and driving it through most of my high school years. I have owned and
driven just about every kind of motorized animal you can think of, but my heart
has always belonged to hemi.
Dick J In East Texas
Steve Pitt <stpitt@zipcon.net> wrote:Wes & all.
There is a great sound clip of the streamliner on the Hoffman Metal site.
http://www.hoffmanmetal.com/
Follow along from Race Cars to Bonneville then Streamliner and you find the
clip. Big file but worth the wait. That little Desoto sounds really sweet.
Steve Pitt
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