Ken Holmes

In the late 30's Ken Holmes and his friends made the roads in South Webster a dangerous place to be. With their hopped up model A's and home built jalopies Johnny Law had no time to rest.

"We always thought we were the best looking gents in South Webster. I now know differently!" Ken "Hot Rod" Holmes, born in South Webster, 1925, spent his younger days building hot rods and circle track jalopies. Thanks to Ken's grand son Jeff, Kustomrama has the chance to share the tale of Ken "Hot Rod" Holmes with the rest of the world. So buckle up and get ready for one bumpy ride.

This is a hot rod Ken built from stuff he had laying around. He used tin as the basic outline and then LOTS of bondo to make the contour he wanted. He said, "You couldn't weld the d*mn thing. There wasn't much metal in it!"  Circa 1957.

Grandpa' Ken lost a buddy while drag racing one night. His buddy hit a train. Actually, he lost one friend in this wreck and a car load in another wreck- same train crossing. He was standing look out for the train that night, tried to flag him down but he didn't stop. He took the engine out at the junk yard, rebuilt it and ran it for a while...

A model A coupe channeled over a 40 sedan frame. Grandpa' Ken took two perfectly good 40 sedans apart to get their frames. Notice the little brown box that looks like a cardboard box in picture no.2......grandpa Ken called it the bumble-bee.....40 amp welder.....can you imagine...... Pictures taken circa 1954

Another A coupe channeled over a 34 frame. Again, they took a perfectly good 34 sedan and removed the body. The A coupe body costed $5 from the local junk yard. Grandpa' Ken kept apologizing for the grille being too high.

This picture was taken a day when they had just pulled two new 54 Fords on the lot. Ken thinks that these were some of the last 54 Fords that came to the local Ford garage. He drove his 39 coupe dlx coupe and his buddy drove his little cut down A.

These pics were taken around 55 or 56. This car belonged to Ken's buddy Karl. The 1953 Mercury is customized with 1954 Ford trim and shaved door handles. The pic was taken in New Mexico.

This is a jalopy Ken built in the mid fifties. Notice the brake handle on the driver side. This was for locking the driver side wheel to do a quick turn around when Johnny Law was behind you! 

This jalopy was built around 1950. Ken said all the bars were for bumping on the track. He claimed that at that time, they did a lot of touching each other on the track.... Ken has some great stories about this one... He said they all put those bars on the drivers side to hang onto... He tried to always use what he called, "luck #13" on his cars...

Another '36 belonging to Ken. The guy in the picture was one of Ken's best friends. He begged Ken to sell him the car because he was messing around with some guy's wife, and the guy could catch him with the car he already had. Rumour has that he got away in this one.