My name is Richard Reesman, creator of the web site Rumpsville. Originally named after a CARtoon by Pete Millar named “The Saga of Rumpville” and later coined in a Sports Illustrated article “The Car Cult from Rumpsville“. Thirty years later Rumpsville became the first hotrod related web site and is honored to proclaim Pete Millar/Arin Cee as Mayor!

Pete Millar

Over the years there have been many updates to the site Rumpsville has had several looks which I try to keep clean and easy to navigate. I hope everyone enjoys Rumpsville and I want to thank the late Norm Grabowski and the Millar Family.

Excerpt originally publish April 24 1961:

To many persons the automobile is a status symbol. To 1.5 million hot rodders, however, the car is the cornerstone of a cult with its own lingo, totems and heaven. The cats range from wild to mild, but the fuzzy world they live in can be far out, man, far out. — Robert H. Boyle

In the last few years the hot rodders, who used to play “chicken” down the center lines of the nation’s highways, have virtually disappeared from view.

Most motorists assume that the rods broke down, and the boys (if they lived) grew up and the fad died out. Not so. Most of the rodders have left the road for the drag strips, but they have proliferated.

Today a legion of cats shack and shuck in Rumpsville, which is in the Holy Land and strictly scooby-doo (scooby dooby to a square like you).

Rumpsville-Rumpville, depending on how far out you feel-is the hot rodder’s heaven, and to a student of contemporary American culture it is a place of fascination.

For here the modern phenomenon of automobilism, that devout interest in cars entirely apart from their use as transportation, has reached its pinnacle in the creations turned out by one time chicken players, and in the world, they have built around their cars.

It’s a world that invites and rewards study, for the hotrod cult-and there is no better word to describe this movement-is limited only by the fetish-oriented imagination of its cultists.
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