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In my home town, there was no kindergarten or preschool that I know of. My mom set up a little chalkboard in our living room and taught me to read and write the alphabet, so I'd at least have that going for me when I walked into my first classroom. I was five years old. The alphabet was all I needed to get started in my lifelong addiction to car magazines. My older brother Wayne always had a nice stash of them, which I would beg, borrow and steal. The tech info was all over my head, but I loved seeing the exploded photos and cutaway drawings of parts that were just greasy mysteries in my five-year-old world. It helped me make some sense of these complex assemblies. I learned quickly what I did and didn't like about certain cars and/or components. I came to understand why some design elements that excited me and others turned me off— mostly by looking at photos and reading the captions. I was enjoying the education so much that I moved on to reading actual text. It was tough sledding, sorting through the mix of proper English and slang, but worth it to discover the inner workings of this wonderful world of chrome and speed. As a bonus, there were occassionally some cartoons. I liked cartoons. Still do. Time passed and my reading skills improved. The more car magazines I read, the more personal the stories became to me. After a while, I felt as if I were getting to know the writers and found myself looking for favorite bylines when choosing which story to read next. Since we're free to interpret the words to suit our understanding, it's almost as if the writer is writing directly to us—very personal. The other thing I liked about leafing through a magazine was how it reminded me that I'm not alone in my passion. I can drive across town in rush hour traffic and still feel like some kind of ghost—the other drivers seem oblivious to my efforts to improve my ride and they just don't get it. But crack open the new issue of "Street Hero" magazine and suddenly I'm a part of something much bigger than myself—I find that very reassuring. And inspiring. That sense of emotional connection with the writer(s) can be a double edged sword when a favorite suddenly disappears from the masthead, only to be replaced by a new name that I'm not sure how to pronounce. There's a natural suspicion of this intruder and I realize after a time that I'm subconciously demanding that they prove themselves to me. Very unfair and unreasonable, but true, nonetheless. And I now realize, a total waste of my energy. The reality is, working for a magazine means a lot of long hours (basically a 24/7 deal) for very little pay, and no matter how passionate a writer is, there comes a time when you have to grow up and pay the bills. So the burnout rate is high and the best a writer can hope for is that some doors open somewhere along the line, before the writer ends up in a straightjacket or on skid row. Also, getting emotionally involved on any level means that we become vulnerable to any changes taking place within the magazine. For example, I was just as upset as anyone when I heard that Gray Baskerville (of R&C and Hot Rod Magazine) had passed away. I'd met Gray on several occassions and felt a strong connection with him. About that same time, Hot Rod introduced Steve Magnante, who not only wrote with Gray’s passion and humor, but even looked somewhat like him (same glasses, anyway). I thought of Steve as "The Ghost of Gray Baskerville". Then, before I was even done grieving Gray’s passing, Steve was out the door and all of my unresolved emotional issues transformed into anger at the Hot Rod management for blowing their golden opportunity to keep Gray’s spirit alive in their pages for the sake of his faithful readers and the magazine’s credibility. I genuinely felt betrayed by their corporate blunder. Another silly waste of my energy, but hey, what do emotions know about logic? All they know is that they exist and must be dealt with, or they'll deal with us. The point is, we're blessed with some great writers here at R&C and although their passion for hot rodding comes across loud and clear, you may wonder about what's behind the word juggling. You'll find out when we cross paths in the months ahead, out there on the hot rod trail. But for now the answer is: they're all the kind of guys that you could trust with your daughter, they all build their own cars, they all pick up the dog poop in the yard, and they all pay their taxes. And they all get the emotional thing and value it. It's going to be okay...
—Scotty Gosson
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