Everyone loves a hot rod story. Whether it’s about the big street race or picking up a cute girl, it’s always a fun read. Hot rod tales bring us back to a so-called simpler time. You were young, no house payment, no kids, just you and your car. It didn’t matter where you lived. We all had the same experiences.
Roger Jetter grew up in Iowa. Not the first state that one would think of when it comes to hot rods and customs but cars are cars no matter where you live. And so are car guys, Roger being one of them. Bangin’ Gears and Bustin’ Heads are stories from his youth. From driving Dad’s car to getting his first Studebaker, to ‘rat-racing’ and getting speeding tickets, Roger gives you all the sordid details.
There are some great stories included in this book, some real, some a tad unbelievable. But a good story is supposed to be entertaining so I’ll let a little embellishment slide. It took me awhile to get into this book. The book is laid out with the chapter first then ‘Episode Thots’ after. I didn’t spell that incorrectly, I’ll get to that in a minute. I guess the ‘Episode Thots’ is just a summary of the chapter. I’m not really sure why you need a summary of a chapter you just read. Also on more than one occasion the author mentions someone in ‘Thots’ that has the same name as someone in the chapter but isn’t the same person. It’s really confusing.
Now I’ll get to the spelling. The author is trying to write like he speaks. Examples are thought-thot, night-nite, coupe-coop, etc. This works when you are trying to represent a certain slang or accent but using it all through the book is quite distracting. I mean what accent is he trying to do? He’s from Iowa!
The stories, while good, tend to be redundant. The scenes describing ‘rat-racing’ all blend together and the author also jumps around the timeline quite a lot. One minute he has one car, the next he’s talking about a car he had previously and then the next he goes back again. It makes it very hard to follow.
This is an interesting book that I did actually like. But it needs to be cleaned up. More variation on the story subjects and please stop the creative spelling.
www.rajetter.com
