Birth of a Gearhead.

"How'd you end up working in the Auto Industry?"



What's a Seat Belt?

I get asked this frequently when I meet new people, and I start into the tale pretty much in the same way every time, talking about growing up around cars, watching my father work on them, my mom telling stories about racing on country back roads with her brothers.  I often forget that growing up with terms like cherry picker, dual carb, Deuce...these are things that are pretty rare nowadays.  I forget that your mother punching it hard, aggressively cresting a hill just for a rush of adrenaline while reminiscing about the long-gone Chevelle with the 396 is a bit of a storied, all-American childhood.  It's hard to believe that not every child got to be carted around (sometimes even in the rumble seat) in a '28 Model A Roadster.

Carcinogens? Nahhhh....

As a child, I crawled around under my father's project cars, screwdriver in hand, unafraid and unprotected from the hazards of such an occupation.  I listened to my mom ask questions of muscle car drivers, like "you running a 383 in that Road Runner?" 



I rarely find myself in the position where I'm waving an American flag and feeling immensely patriotic, because I've always been on the skepical side about our country, our motives, our actions.  After reading "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer, my notions about the corruption of the USA were solidified. (This is a must read.  In order to advance and improve, we must know our own past indiscretions. )  Buy here:   http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341080506&sr=8-1&keywords=Overthrow



'Cept for the desk job is cleaner.

Still, minus the politics, minus the negatives, minus the mass-displays-of-ignorance...I feel lucky to have grown up in a culture of Americanism that many missed out on.  It instilled a passion for history, for individuality, for independence...for adrenaline.  I feel bad for the apathetic youth that don't have something that they feel is worthwhile, worth fighting for, worth pursuing. I never thought these early exposures to the automobile would seal my career destiny, but alas, it did, and I can't say I don't feel like it's appropriate for me, and that it hasn't paid my bills. It is, and it does. 

Passions are valuable.  There are a lot of different people who have famously said that if you find something you LOVE doing, you'll never work a day in your life. I find that a lot of the generation coming up behind me don't know yet what their passions are, and thus...they live an unsatisfying existence.  Growing up a gearhead, filled with passion for cars, landed me in just about every positive experience of my life, from being able to shoot films in Los Angeles as both a driver and an actor, working on cars to help my friends, and eventually, for the Big L, in the air conditioning, with benefits.

Genetic destiny at play.

It's not the 80's anymore, and I don't know a lot of people that have access to the type of freedoms I feel like I had as a kid.  Maybe trying to find one's passions in such a restrictive environment is a futile edeavor.  We've traded a lot of our freedoms for security, and it's in the opinion of this skeptic that in some cases, its the freedoms that we need more desperately.

 Skeptically Yours.