The Car Cult From Rumpsville
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
Excerpt from original article publish April 24 1961:
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 it's 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.
