Street Rod by Henry Gregor Felsen

First published: 1953

Type of work: Moral Tale

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, social issues, and sports

Time of work: The early to mid-1950’s

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: Delville, Iowa

Principal Characters:

• Ricky Madison, a sixteen-year-old fighting to show his parents and community that he is ready for his first car
• Merle Connor, a down-on-his-luck garage operator, who teaches Ricky how to work on a car
• Link Aller, a bigger, stronger sixteen-year-old, whom Rick desperately wants to outrace
• Arnie Van Zuuk, a local policeman sensitive to the needs and desires of teenage drivers
• Sharon Bruce, a sensible sixteen-year-old girl, who prefers Ricky’s company to that of Link
• Mr. and Mrs. Madison, the concerned and earnest parents of Ricky

The Story

Although set in rural Iowa, the events depicted in Street Rod typify suburban America of the 1950’s as the period in which the teenage car culture is born. The novel not only demonstrates the importance to a teenager of owning a car but also shows how the normal developmental process of adolescence is complicated by the threats posed by a potentially dangerous machine. Street Rod effectively establishes context and setting for a young man learning to develop his own identity in relation to those of his family and peers. Ricky fears being a “car suck,” someone without his own car who has to ask others for rides. Worse yet, he fears he will not be admired by his male peers or attractive to girls like Sharon without his own vehicle. When Ricky withdraws his savings to buy a 1939 Ford coupe from Merle Connor, he begins a new period in his life.

After living through the frustrations of learning that his car needs extensive repairs and is far less impressive than he had thought originally, he gradually learns about how to work on cars. As assistant at Merle’s second-rate garage, Ricky begins to see how he might extend his interest in fixing up his own car to a career as a car designer and customizer. Once he rebuilds his engine and refurbishes the body, Ricky has a “street rod” that brings him respect. Although Ricky has on one level the normal adolescent insecurities related to dating, on another level he displays boundless confidence, impervious to the sort of tragic accidents that befall other teenage drivers.

After a young couple from the area is killed in a hopped-up car, the parents of Ricky’s classmates become concerned. When the parents of the girls in Delville forbid their daughters to ride with youths outside the city limits, Ricky and his pals decide to show the town that they are capable and safe drivers by establishing the Delville Timing Association (DTA), an organization that will oversee the safe and reputable operation of a drag strip outside town; the book clearly states that this sort of arrangement is the safest way to deal with teenagers’ fascination with cars. In working to have a local road periodically open as a carefully and responsibly monitored drag strip, the youths promise to obey all traffic rules and serve as examples of courtesy and safety on the road. When the city council rebuffs this request at a public meeting, the youths are frustrated. They realize that individual council members may like to brag about how fast their new luxury cars will go, but they frown on any idea of a teenager using a drag strip, even a sanctioned one. Arnie realizes the boys are right, but he is afraid to incur the council’s displeasure by championing the boys’ side.

Ricky’s father, a sensitive and responsive man who begins to share his son’s interest in cars, convinces him to rethink the idea of abandoning the DTA. Instead, he encourages Ricky by telling him that the idea of establishing a drag strip is sound. With Sharon’s encouragement, Ricky channels his disappointment at the failure of the proposed timing association into the building of his car into a custom job worthy of a prize at a big regional competitive meet in Des Moines. He believes that if he can win the show and impress people with his car, he will then be able to build credibility and ensure the success of the DTA.

After winning first place in the show with the 1939 street rod designed and built with the cooperation and help of not only Sharon but also other, professional, auto workers, the couple’s mood is highly elated as they return to Delville from Des Moines. Link follows them back, however, determined to prove that he can still beat Ricky’s car, even if it did just win first place in the custom car show. With the new speed equipment Ricky has installed on his engine, he is easily able to outrace Link. Yet a terrible tragedy ensues when the feelings of power and speed overcome Ricky. With Sharon asleep at his side, he cannot stop himself and continues to drive faster and faster even though Link’s headlights are no longer in sight. As the car begins to go out of control, Sharon wakes up; the coupe flies off the road and into the river. Just as the coupe sinks, Link speeds over the bridge, grimly determined to catch Rick. The novel ends abruptly with this unexpected punch.

Context

Street Rod is the second in a series of books related to hot-rodding that Henry Gregor Felsen wrote from 1950 to 1960; in that decade as well as the following one, his popularity with teenage readers was considerable. From the first novel, Hot Rod (1950), through Boy Gets Car (1960), Felsen was read by young people because they recognized in his books the frustrations of adolescence as well as the ways in which a teenager would have to go about customizing or hopping up an old car. He could describe convincingly a young boy’s dilemma over whether to accept sweets from a pretty girl for fear that his face would break out, and he was equally adept at chronicling the proper order in which a budget-minded enthusiast would decide to add high-performance parts to his Ford or Merc flathead engine. With this versatility, Felsen demonstrated that his talents as a novelist were well-suited to the time in which he wrote.

Not only does Felsen present adolescent affection honestly, but he also confronts such typical problems as bullies in his treatment of Link Aller in Street Rod and such archetypal characters as the young girl from a modest background who dreams of Hollywood, memorably embodied in LaVerne Shuler of Hot Rod. Her illusions of stardom parallel in some ways the goals of Ricky Madison in his attempts to build a car that will take the automotive world by storm; in attempting to get Bud Crayne to take her out of Avondale and drive to California, LaVerne evokes the pathos of teenagers living in drab small towns whose dreams tell them of greater lives and greater adventures beyond the horizon. Felsen’s novels are explicit about the dangers of using cars as the means of realizing dreams. Built and driven responsibly, cars are the concrete manifestations of a young driver’s latent ability; the slightest lapse of caution, however, sends the car spinning off the road and dooms its occupants. Perhaps because no other popular young adult novelist knew as much about hot rodding as Felsen, no other writer has surpassed him in capturing adolescent fascination with building a car of one’s own.