Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Tales from the Garage: Rodney Kemerer’s Journey of Timeless Stories

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Tales from the Garage: Rodney Kemerer’s Journey of Timeless Stories · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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  designers, and everything in between.
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  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
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  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  Tonight's guest understands that car stories can be the gateway
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  to every aspect of our lives.
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  His heartfelt book, Half Memoir, Half the Memoir of Others, is truly a pop
• 0:39
  culture snapshot of modern society told through the lens of the automobile.
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  Author Rodney Kemmerer's tales might appear to be about cars, but they are
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  also tales of an American life and the many objects that embody and reflect it.
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  So pull up a chair and your favorite beverage as you meet a
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  new friend who is happy to share his favorite tales from the garage.
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  And with that, let's welcome Rodney to BreakFix.
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  All right.
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  Thank you, Don.
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  Great to be here.
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  Happy to be invited.
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  Welcome aboard.
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  And joining me tonight is regular co host on BreakFix, Don Wieberg from
• 1:13
  GarageDom Magazine, so welcome back.
• 1:15
  Thank you!
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  Well, Rodney, like all good BreakFix stories, there's a superhero origin.
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  So take us back in time and tell us about young Rodney.
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  How all this came to be before the genesis of Tales from the Garage.
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  How did you become a petrolhead?
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  I don't really remember a time when I wasn't.
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  I believe that you are kind of born with a car gene.
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  I think you just get it.
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  You either care passionately about them or they're just a way to get you around.
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  So was there any car mark or even decade or period of design that really got you
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  excited, something that pulled you in?
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  It's really funny.
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  I have never been brand specific.
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  I can remember as a nine year old when the Chevy Impala came
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  out with the cat eye taillights.
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  I must have walked 10 blocks as a kid to go see one because another friend
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  said, there's one in the driveway.
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  There's one in the driveway around the corner.
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  And we took off because I wanted to see that car.
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  And I remember that car specifically to this day.
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  Those cat eye taillights, those flat fins coming across it.
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  It wasn't like anything else.
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  And I think that obsession has been with me my entire life.
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  And so in the book, if you follow along, it really takes you from
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  my first dealings with toy cars.
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  All the way up and through today.
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  Do you think that excitement is still around us today with young people?
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  I mean, do you think they see something from somewhere and they
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  tell their friend, Hey, little Joey's dad just got the latest whatever,
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  and they go running off to see it.
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  Do you think that's still around?
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  I don't think that exists at all.
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  I really don't.
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  Cars have become, you know, way too similar to each other.
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  Kids, for the most part, see cars as appliances.
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  Gets them from A to B.
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  It's not the same passion, nor do I think it evokes the same excitement.
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  And they speak to me, you know, the way art does.
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  Cars are the same thing.
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  They're emotional responses.
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  I go down the street and I see a car and I go, Oh wow.
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  It's something in me is stirred up and I'm looking at it
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  going, well that's really cool.
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  I really like that.
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  As you grow up, your appetite grows and changes and you get more interested.
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  And it got to the point where I started writing about cars and found that I
• 3:26
  had a real passion for doing that.
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  Part of the book's Origin Story is actually rooted at Garage Style
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  Magazine and it has a lot to do with your relationship with Don.
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  And so I, I wanted to just bring the audience up to
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  speed into how you guys met.
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  How you work together at Garage Dial, what you've been doing and how that eventually
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  turned itself into Tales from the Garage.
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  You remember where we met, Don?
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  I do.
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  I do too.
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  It was that strip club in LA by the airport.
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  All you can eat steak.
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  It was a great place.
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  And I said, how do I get into this line of work?
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  And you said you're too small.
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  I gotta look like you to be a bouncer?
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  Oh, well, okay, great.
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  Thanks for that.
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  That's the place, baby.
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  No, it was uh, San Marino show.
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  No, no.
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  No?
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  Go back further.
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  You did the Greystone show in Beverly Hills.
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  Right, right, right.
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  But see, my problem is I don't remember meeting you there.
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  You remember me there and I was there, but Well, I can tell you where you were.
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  You remember there was a Port Cochere and then next to the Port Cochere was
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  a single car garage at that estate.
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  And you had your little table set up there.
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  I think we shared the garage with an old Mercedes, if I remember correctly.
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  And you were in that little garage with a little table, and
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  you had your magazine spread out.
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  And that's where I first met you.
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  But you're right, it was San Marino when I pitched you a column.
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  Yeah, I remember that one pretty well.
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  It was hot.
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  You came up and reintroduced yourself again.
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  And you had this idea for a column.
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  Yeah, what did I know?
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  I could write a column.
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  Why not?
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  Yeah, why not?
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  That was gonna say, Rodney, were you an author or journalist before that point,
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  or is it just something inside that drew you to say, I want to write about garages?
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  God, what year was it?
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  2011.
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  I was reading Heming's Classic Car, and I was sitting at home and I was
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  reading this magazine, and I read this story, and I went, This is terrible.
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  I went, this is just bad writing.
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  And I thought I can do better than this.
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  I know I can.
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  I closed up the magazine.
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  I sat down, I wrote a piece.
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  I didn't know anything about how any of this worked or anything.
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  I sent it to Hemings classic car as a cold submission.
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  What was the story about?
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  It's in the book.
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  It's the model car story.
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  Oh, that one.
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  Okay.
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  So I sent that to Hemmings, and of course, I did not hear anything back from him.
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  And I thought, well, okay, that's how that works.
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  You send it in, and they ignore you like everything else in life.
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  A month later, two months later, I go to the mailbox.
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  I pull out the new issue of Hemmings Classic Car.
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  I'm sitting there reading, and I open up, and all of a sudden, I go, Wait a minute.
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  That's my story.
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  They stole my story.
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  And I'm looking and looking and there was no byline.
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  Wait a minute.
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  They stole my story.
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  They didn't tell me and they didn't even give me a credit.
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  I thought, this business is really cutthroat.
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  You know, I thought, Man, these guys, they don't take prisoners.
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  And then I looked very carefully up at the very top, near the edge,
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  is my byline in the smallest form.
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  Font they could afford.
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  Less than a sixteenth of an inch.
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  There it was.
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  Probably one thirty second of an inch was my byline.
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  But it didn't matter.
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  Because what that article did for me was said, You can write this stuff.
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  That's what they gave me.
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  And then I started submitting to other magazines.
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  And everything got published.
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  As my wife said, How are you doing this?
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  You know, I said, I don't know.
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  It was very hit and miss until I met Don.
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  And at that point I'd had a couple things published and so I thought, well
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  I could probably write a column if I could find somebody to run it for me.
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  Did you have a background in writing?
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  Was that what you went to school to do?
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  No.
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  I'm a theater major.
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  And I always like to say that being a theater major is probably the best
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  major for anybody because it absolutely prepares you for everything in life.
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  There's nothing that being a theater major can't cover for you.
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  You know, writing, I did some writing, college and stuff, but never really
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  kind of seriously sat down to write.
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  And it was late in life that I started doing this, I mean,
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  really, when you think about it.
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  But really what it was, was Don was incredibly encouraging and incredibly
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  brave to take on somebody he didn't know.
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  But Don's instinct was Correct.
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  You sold me when you said you had two Mercedes.
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  I thought, this guy's got something going on.
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  I'll trust him a little bit.
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  You know, two Mercedes, he's okay.
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  Yeah, one hasn't run in 40 years, and the other one, say,
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  more rust than car, you know.
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  Yeah, but I didn't know that.
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  Don was in the same position as the bank manager that gave
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  you the loan for the Honda.
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  He was like, oh, he's got two Mercedes.
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  That's collateral.
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  That works.
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  And he wants to write for me?
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  Bring him on.
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  Okay.
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  So let's talk a little bit more about the book.
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  We've had a lot of authors on this show, right?
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  Novelists, academics, people that have put together some tomes that are
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  incredible, and I've asked them before.
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  A journey of 80, 000 words is an incredible thing to accomplish.
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  When you set out to put together Tales from the Garage, what was it
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  like going from writing a column to putting together your first book?
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  You have to remember, the book is It's essentially a collection of columns.
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  So it wasn't as though I was sitting down to write thousands of new pages.
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  I was taking pre existing material.
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  The question was how to take that material and put it into
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  a unique and interesting form.
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  So two things emerged in the process.
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  One was I'm a very visual person.
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  I'm very driven by what I see.
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  And that's the love of cars is always visual first.
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  Then performance, but it's going to be the visual thing first.
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  It's going to pull me in.
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  I like that it goes fast.
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  I like that it hugs the ground.
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  I love all that.
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  You got to get me visually.
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  When I decided to take the columns and I thought, well, maybe I
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  can make a book out of this.
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  But it can't just be you open it up and it's a bunch of text because they
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  said no one's going to care about that.
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  They don't know me because nobody reads the byline of magazine writers, right Don?
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  No comment.
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  For all practical purposes an unknown writer.
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  So an unknown writer says here's my book of car stories Well
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  yawn, you know who's gonna care?
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  So I thought what can I do to make it different than just that and that's when
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  I kind of hit on this idea of combining magazine graphics in a book form.
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  And I had not seen that done before.
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  I don't think you had either, Don.
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  Not really.
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  Because that's what appeals to me when I open a magazine.
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  It's the graphics that pull me in.
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  It's the visual thing that gets me.
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  And then I'll get to the text.
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  So I thought, well, I'll do a book and I will illustrate it.
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  Each chapter will have its own visual language.
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  Each chapter will have its own color template.
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  Each chapter will have its own Thought or title pages and so forth.
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  That way you can pick up the book and whatever appeals to you.
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  Whether it's the car appeals to you, the image, the color, whatever.
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  So you can pick and choose what you read because it's not a narrative.
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  It doesn't start in chapter one and end with a happy ending and the final chapter.
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  And that's kind of the way people are today.
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  We're all members of short attention span theater now.
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  You know, that's us.
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  His book, Tales from the Garage, when you read it, you get a real sense of all over
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  the boredness, all over that autosphere, as Matt Stone always called it.
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  But then another one of my favorite stories is Split Second, where you're
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  literally hitchhiking home and a brand new 63 Corvette is what picks you up.
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  You know, you talk about how much that car was so cool back in the day.
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  These are sort of bite sized stories.
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  Some of them are two pages.
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  The longest, I believe, is six.
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  So then I took all the stories that I wanted to use.
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  Suddenly, at some point in the process, I went, Oh my God, this is a memoir.
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  These are just stories about me.
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  Here and now, this is what I did.
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  And da da da da.
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  I thought, well, that's horrible.
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  So then I took them and I went, All right, how many of them are really about
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  me and how many are about other people?
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  And fortunately, when I kind of laid them all out, it turned out that half
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  of them were my stories and half of them were stories about other people.
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  And I thought, perfect.
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  I laid them out and I alternated.
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  If you read the book from the beginning, the stories alternate
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  between stories about other people and stories about my experiences.
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  So it is a memoir in many ways, but it's not a memoir that you say, okay,
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  now here's this guy's life story.
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  It's really only my life as seen through cards, and that's really what it is.
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  But, if you're reading carefully, you will begin to realize that
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  it is in chronological order.
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  So you can run through my entire life, from my first experience
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  with toy cars, up until today.
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  As Don pointed out, the book is sort of all over the map.
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  And again, it's partially your memoirs and those of others that
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  you know, and it's those stories that were swapped in the garage.
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  But there is a car that stands out in the book, and that's your Honda.
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  Don alluded to, on a previous episode, the story about how you acquired the Honda and
• 12:04
  came to be, and then you, now you have a second one, and all these kinds of things.
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  What's so special about that hatchback?
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  Well, and I talk about this in that particular chapter, everybody has.
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  The rite of passage as a young adult of buying your first new car is a
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  serious, serious step into adulthood.
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  And most people can recall that first new car.
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  They can recall it in vivid detail, because it's this rite of passage, it's
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  this maturity that you don't have to drive beat up used cars anymore that
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  are always breaking down and are an embarrassment to you and your family.
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  Suddenly you're getting a new car of your very own.
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  So because I was such a car person.
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  The idea of buying a brand new car, it was so exciting to me,
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  you know, it was just like, wow, I had no money to buy a new car.
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  I mean, I was just out of graduate school.
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  I had a bunch of loans.
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  There's no way I could buy a car.
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  So I had to get a loan, obviously, but I had to convince the
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  bank that I was loan worthy.
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  But as is in the story.
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  I also had two beat up Mercedes that I was tooling around in.
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  But when you're going to a financial institution, they don't
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  ask for a picture of the car.
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  They don't want to say, are the seats torn?
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  They just look on the piece of paper and it says, Oh, the guy
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  has a 62 Mercedes 190 sedan.
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  He's got a 220.
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  There's a kid with two Mercedes already.
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  Well, he's doing okay.
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  Well, the combined value of those two cars was maybe 500.
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  They weren't worth anything, but I knew enough that what I looked
• 13:35
  like on paper was going to help me get the loan to buy the new car.
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  It was kind of this long journey to get there.
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  And most people don't keep their first new car.
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  It goes away in college or girlfriends or wives or rainstorms, whatever.
• 13:51
  Then as they get older, they go, Oh, I'd really like to find a 78 Accord
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  that I had when I was 21 years old.
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  And then they spend all kinds of time and money tracking that car down and
• 14:02
  then getting it and then restoring it.
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  And what they're doing is they're just restoring their youth.
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  They're capturing their life the way it was.
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  And the vehicle becomes the embodiment of that former self.
• 14:15
  And I've seen people do this where they will chase that car, crazy chase it.
• 14:20
  And then they find one, and then they spend crazy money restoring
• 14:24
  it to a condition far beyond what it was when they had it.
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  But it's this thing of reaching back and grabbing your youth and
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  having this kind of symbol of it.
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  And I also know that when you get in that car, it makes you feel younger.
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  All of those memories are there.
• 14:38
  The moral to your story is it's cheaper to keep her.
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  How does that work out when you keep your first car for so long?
• 14:44
  Well, my advice to anybody is buy, don't sell.
• 14:47
  I mean, you know, that's the kind of rule.
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  I would always encourage people to keep their first car because
• 14:52
  they may not know it now.
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  But they're going to want it later.
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  They're going to wish they had it.
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  The Accord was the car that I moved from the East Coast to the West
• 15:01
  Coast in, and literally everything that I owned was in that hatchback.
• 15:05
  Things have changed.
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  My life has changed.
• 15:07
  I have a different life now.
• 15:08
  But I still have that car.
• 15:10
  And then you ended up with a second one.
• 15:12
  So what's the reasoning behind that?
• 15:14
  Honda Accords were never meant to be collectibles, and
• 15:17
  particularly the first generation.
• 15:19
  I mean, it changed the Honda Motor Company completely, changed the
• 15:22
  trajectory of that company, absolutely.
• 15:25
  But they were not meant to be collectible or to last as long as mine have lasted.
• 15:30
  And the result is There are no parts for those cars.
• 15:33
  So you have to go online and you're typing in Honda parts, Malaysia,
• 15:38
  you know, and you kind of go, Oh, what can I find in Malaysia?
• 15:40
  What can I find in Czechoslovakia?
• 15:42
  What old Honda dealer in the back room in a plastic bag has my head gasket.
• 15:47
  And that's what you end up doing.
• 15:49
  So for years, I would scroll the internet looking for another 78 Honda Accord,
• 15:55
  thinking it'd be cheaper for me to buy a whole car and store it somewhere
• 15:59
  and then take parts off at like the Thanksgiving Turkey five days later.
• 16:03
  You go, there's still something good here.
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  You know, I'm always looking.
• 16:07
  But, mechanically very well built, but thin sheet metal, and if
• 16:10
  they are left outside, they melt.
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  Essentially, the ones that I would find online, I'd get real excited, I'd
• 16:16
  see a picture, then you start looking and you went, there's no car left!
• 16:19
  It's just been sitting outside, rotting away, not worth buying.
• 16:23
  I've been doing this for years, literally years, looking and anytime
• 16:26
  one would come on the market, I'd look and I'd say, is this worth getting?
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  Then, I was on good old Bring a Trailer one day, and up
• 16:32
  pops this 78 Honda Accord LX.
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  And I'm looking at it going, Damn, that looks as nice as mine.
• 16:39
  Is this even possible?
• 16:41
  I'm looking at it.
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  I read the stuff, and it had like 103, 000 miles on it.
• 16:45
  And I thought, God, it looks pretty good for that much mileage.
• 16:47
  And then I read the description, and it says it's a two owner car.
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  And I go, Whoa.
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  And then it says the second owner kept spreadsheets on all the maintenance.
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  Now I'm in, I'm just really excited because it's like, Oh, wait a minute.
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  Here's an obsessive compulsive guy who has obviously kept his 78 Accord.
• 17:06
  The thought was that I would get it and it would be the donor kidney for my car.
• 17:11
  Well, I won the auction as they say, and the car shows up and
• 17:15
  my jaw drops because it was.
• 17:17
  It was stunning.
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  It was in unbelievable condition.
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  Much better than my original car.
• 17:25
  So now, I'm looking at my car like it's the donor kindy.
• 17:28
  Uh oh, when is the day going to come when the new one needs something
• 17:32
  that I can't find and the maroon one is just sitting there trying
• 17:36
  to get small and not be noticed.
• 17:38
  Very afraid of that day because that would be a cruel, cruel
• 17:42
  thing to do to the original Honda.
• 17:44
  But I also, I have to tell you, when I drive the silver one, the newer one, I
• 17:48
  still have the same feeling of driving the original one, because it's the same car.
• 17:52
  And when I compared the VIN numbers on them, they were a few
• 17:55
  hundred cars apart on the assembly line, which is pretty cool.
• 17:59
  You mentioned in that story the other cars in your collection, so do you still have
• 18:04
  the Benzes, or have they been replaced?
• 18:06
  Nope.
• 18:06
  You know, like the stock market, I'm a buy and hold guy.
• 18:09
  I don't sell a lot of cars.
• 18:11
  In fact, when I think back, the cars I've sold have all belonged to my wife.
• 18:14
  I have no guilty conscience about selling her cars, but I do about my own.
• 18:21
  I still have the, uh, 51 220 that's on the cover of the book.
• 18:25
  That's kind of a long story in the book, too, how that came into
• 18:28
  my life and is still in my life.
• 18:30
  Even though I haven't driven it in 40 years.
• 18:32
  Most car guys have a someday project.
• 18:34
  They've got something under a tarp.
• 18:36
  They've got something squirreled away somewhere.
• 18:39
  And in the back of their car fantasy mind, it's going to be,
• 18:42
  yeah, I'm going to restore it.
• 18:43
  I'm going to fix it and dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 18:45
  If you don't have one of those, you're not a real car guy.
• 18:47
  A real car guy has something squirreled away somewhere
• 18:50
  that they are going to get to.
• 18:52
  Mine just happens to be this 51 Mercedes Benz sedan that I fell in love with
• 18:58
  for no particular reason when I, again, had no money, no job, and no
• 19:01
  place to put it, and bought it anyway.
• 19:03
  And I've been kind of dragging it around and thinking, well, I'll get to it.
• 19:07
  It's just got an interesting history.
• 19:08
  It's a great piece of automotive history for Mercedes Benz in particular.
• 19:12
  It was the first, after the war, luxury car they built.
• 19:16
  It was introduced at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 51, and it was a
• 19:20
  four door, six cylinder car.
• 19:22
  It was a big deal for them.
• 19:23
  They'd never imported it to the United States.
• 19:25
  They only made about 3, 500 of them, so there's not that many of them out there.
• 19:29
  Is it worth anything?
• 19:31
  Eh, not much.
• 19:33
  If the top wasn't on it, or it only had two doors, it would be a different story.
• 19:38
  But four doors is always two doors too many, and it doesn't
• 19:41
  get any love, and it doesn't have any love in the collector market.
• 19:43
  And I always maintain the value of that car will go up the day I sell it.
• 19:47
  That's the day that the car world will discover this rare Mercedes Benz, and
• 19:52
  I'll go, why did I sell it so cheap?
• 19:55
  That's probably how that story is going to end.
• 19:56
  Do you do a lot of your own work?
• 19:58
  Do you maintain your own cars in your garage?
• 20:00
  Yes, to a limited degree.
• 20:01
  I'm not putting on head gaskets.
• 20:03
  I'm not changing brakes.
• 20:05
  I have done oil changes.
• 20:06
  Mostly it's trim, cosmetic, that kind of thing.
• 20:10
  General maintenance, but I'm not a wrencher.
• 20:12
  Part of the premise of the book, and I know Don talks about this a lot as
• 20:15
  part of the ethos of Garage Style, is the garage can be the sanctuary, right?
• 20:19
  It could be our racer's den, it could be our hideaway, it could be that place
• 20:23
  you go just to go look at your car, buff your car, just spend time with those
• 20:28
  memories as you painted that picture.
• 20:30
  Why the garage and not the house?
• 20:33
  Try to explain it to people that are going to be picking up your book as that
• 20:37
  underlying premise of the importance of spending time in the garage.
• 20:41
  This is for people who have relationships with their vehicles.
• 20:44
  I mean, they care about them.
• 20:46
  They are part of the family, not people who, the car, what's the car?
• 20:50
  You know, they're just, But if you care about your car, and many, many people
• 20:55
  do, it's just shocking how many people have relationships with their cars.
• 20:59
  So they are a member of the family, but they are a member of the family
• 21:01
  that doesn't get to come in the house.
• 21:03
  They have to live out in their own little house.
• 21:05
  They're in the garage, which is their area.
• 21:08
  So I know this sounds a little crazy, but it's like, That's the place where
• 21:11
  you can go to spend time with it if you're not driving, if you're working
• 21:15
  on it or cleaning it or whatever.
• 21:17
  And sometimes it's just a way to get away from everything else.
• 21:20
  It's a little car churchy in a way.
• 21:22
  You're going to hate this word, but there's a little spiritual aspect to it.
• 21:26
  There is a certain sanctuariness.
• 21:28
  To a garage.
• 21:29
  It's the place where you can lay down your sword.
• 21:31
  It's a place where I'm not a wrench or either, but I love going out
• 21:35
  there and just bonding with the car.
• 21:36
  And for me, it's detailing.
• 21:38
  We have a Caprice classic, a 79.
• 21:40
  If you know the grill on that car, it's literally a bunch of squares and to go
• 21:43
  through each one of those squares and clean them out, I mean, you talk about
• 21:47
  obsessive compulsive and focused on that, but I think for me, my mind, when it gets
• 21:52
  so focused on that task, everything else that's going on up here in the brain gets.
• 21:57
  to sort itself out somehow.
• 21:59
  When I come out of that garage, I feel better.
• 22:01
  My thought process is clear.
• 22:02
  Things are just a little better.
• 22:04
  Even though it's an inanimate object, doesn't have a heartbeat or it doesn't
• 22:08
  purr or bark at you, you depend on it.
• 22:11
  You care about it.
• 22:12
  It cares about you.
• 22:13
  So I think that the garage then becomes the sort of house of the car.
• 22:17
  People get a little obsessive about it.
• 22:19
  You know, they will give it a nice floor and a paint job and, you
• 22:22
  know, get really fancy artwork.
• 22:24
  I can't tell you how many garages we've featured in Garage Style Magazine
• 22:28
  that literally have a porcelain floor.
• 22:30
  You know, you kind of look at it and say, wow, you sprung for a porcelain floor.
• 22:33
  What's the story behind that?
• 22:34
  Well, it's impervious to everything.
• 22:36
  Brake fluid, oil, transmission fluid.
• 22:38
  It doesn't arm it.
• 22:39
  A week, a month, a year can go by and you just walk in there and pfft.
• 22:43
  Wipe it right up.
• 22:44
  But on that same note, every one of the guys I've interviewed with
• 22:48
  that porcelain floor, they've all kind of said the same thing.
• 22:50
  I think I'm the only guy in town with a floor that's more expensive than any floor
• 22:55
  in my house because it's the only room that they've got with a porcelain floor.
• 22:59
  It gets fancier and fancier.
• 23:01
  Why are you doing that?
• 23:02
  You say to someone, Why did you just spend all this money decorating your garage
• 23:05
  nicer than the inside of your house?
• 23:08
  It's because you care about your car.
• 23:09
  Well, it's also, there's something else too in terms of the style of the book.
• 23:13
  The style of the book, I write in a conversational tone, which
• 23:16
  I'm sure Don is very aware of.
• 23:18
  Right.
• 23:19
  Which is essentially me telling you a story.
• 23:21
  It's not always grammatically correct, which my wife, who is a terrific editor,
• 23:25
  is more than willing to point out to me.
• 23:27
  But I say, no, I'm just telling you this story.
• 23:30
  So this is the way I speak.
• 23:32
  And so this is the way I write.
• 23:33
  But I had a person who had read the book said to me, and I knew they got it right
• 23:37
  away because they said, you know what?
• 23:39
  The experience of reading that book was like, you and I were sitting at a
• 23:42
  bar and you were just telling me story.
• 23:45
  And that was the experience of reading the book.
• 23:47
  And I said, well, then it was success because that's what I intended it to be.
• 23:50
  Me just telling stories, but they're stories that have
• 23:54
  beginning, middles and ends.
• 23:55
  They have payoffs.
• 23:57
  Each one.
• 23:57
  So there's an added layer of complexity here.
• 24:00
  When you were working with Don and submitting columns, you know, month
• 24:04
  after month, you've got an editor behind you that's looking at your work,
• 24:08
  that's critiquing, building you up your strengths and things like that.
• 24:11
  And so it's nice to have that audience, right?
• 24:13
  That peanut gallery that can give you that immediate feedback.
• 24:16
  But in this case, you took a new turn in terms of publishing.
• 24:21
  You went through Amazon and you self published and I've only.
• 24:25
  I've spoken to one other author on this show that went down that route, and I
• 24:28
  wanted to investigate just a little more technically for other people that might be
• 24:33
  thinking, you know what, I want to write a book and I don't know what the process is
• 24:37
  like, and I'm intimidated by Random House and Penguin and all these other places.
• 24:42
  What was the journey like when you went through the self
• 24:45
  publishing through Amazon?
• 24:46
  Because I really had never done a book before.
• 24:49
  It was all brand new to me.
• 24:50
  So I just started asking my friends who had written books.
• 24:54
  Called all my friends who had written books, not always car books.
• 24:57
  Some of them are car books, but others are academics and all
• 25:01
  kinds of people that write books.
• 25:02
  So I'd call them up and I would say, tell me your experience of writing
• 25:05
  your book and your relationship with your publisher and financially
• 25:09
  and how does that all work?
• 25:11
  The basic publishing model is essentially the publisher is
• 25:15
  going to give you an advance.
• 25:17
  And then after that, it's pretty much 10 percent of net.
• 25:20
  That's it.
• 25:21
  That's what you're going to get.
• 25:22
  Most people will not see anything past the event.
• 25:25
  You're going to get paid the advance.
• 25:26
  Your 10 percent of net is like in the movie business,
• 25:29
  you're not going to get it.
• 25:30
  I kept thinking about that and I kept going, well, I believe in the work and I
• 25:36
  put the book together in such a way that it is what we call evergreen, meaning
• 25:40
  There's nothing in it that's dated.
• 25:42
  It'll be green forever.
• 25:43
  You could read these stories 20 years from now and you'll still react to
• 25:47
  them because they are about people.
• 25:49
  They are emotional stories that are about people.
• 25:53
  So I thought, this book could sell for a long time.
• 25:55
  Why do I want to give all that money to the publisher?
• 25:58
  With the Amazon print on demand model, you participate on the first copy printing.
• 26:04
  You get money.
• 26:05
  And you get money for every copy thereafter.
• 26:08
  into perpetuity.
• 26:09
  That's a much better model.
• 26:12
  The downside?
• 26:13
  You don't have a publisher who's going to essentially create the book for you.
• 26:17
  You have to create the book.
• 26:18
  They'll give you a template in which you plug your book in, but you have
• 26:22
  to create it from front cover to back cover and everything in between.
• 26:26
  They're not going to do any of that.
• 26:27
  Normally a publisher would do it.
• 26:28
  They're obviously going to take the bulk of the money too.
• 26:31
  That's really became the decision, and also I had a much more control
• 26:35
  over the design of the book by doing it the way I did it.
• 26:38
  And Don can attest, when we were doing the column, I was heavily involved
• 26:43
  in the artwork for the column.
• 26:45
  To the point of driving his art director a little batty, because
• 26:49
  I cared about how things looked.
• 26:51
  I thought about it, and I thought, you know, I'm probably going to
• 26:53
  make myself miserable if I have a publisher who's giving me stuff I
• 26:57
  don't like or not what I intended.
• 26:59
  That was the other reason to go the self publishing route.
• 27:02
  Self publishing has a bad rap, but I believe that is changing,
• 27:06
  and I believe it's actually changing with books like mine.
• 27:10
  Because people are looking at this going, Well, this is a real book.
• 27:13
  And look, he's got real quotes from real people in the front of him.
• 27:17
  That's a real book.
• 27:18
  That's not just some self published ego trip.
• 27:20
  I believe if you really think about it, publishing the way it has been
• 27:25
  is really horse and buggy culture.
• 27:27
  It used to be the printer would print the books, load them into wooden boxes,
• 27:31
  and the wooden boxes get loaded into a wooden cart, and the wooden cart goes
• 27:34
  down the street and unloads into the bookstore, and then they sit on the
• 27:37
  shelf and they hope somebody buys it.
• 27:38
  Look at all the wasted resources there.
• 27:40
  With a print on demand format, Notebook sits in a warehouse.
• 27:44
  You're not wasting any resources.
• 27:45
  That book doesn't exist until you hit buy on Amazon.
• 27:49
  Then it is printed and shipped.
• 27:50
  Done.
• 27:51
  Environmentally, it makes a lot more sense.
• 27:53
  And financially, it makes a lot more sense.
• 27:54
  Because the quality of that print quality entails, if I did that in
• 27:58
  a normal publishing world, you even said, Don, would be grossly expensive.
• 28:02
  I learned a lot about the Amazon process just Hiding you as you went through it.
• 28:07
  And it was very, very interesting.
• 28:09
  And I think not to pat my own back, but I think one thing that kills me
• 28:12
  is when we launched GarageStyle, this was very much the way I wanted to go.
• 28:17
  I really wanted to get orders from retailers, get orders
• 28:21
  from the subscribers, print just what we need, plus 5%.
• 28:24
  Call it done.
• 28:25
  Oh no, said the distributors and the wholesalers and the resalers.
• 28:29
  We can't do it that way.
• 28:30
  You know, we need you to print this man, especially it started with
• 28:32
  the printers who had their minimum.
• 28:34
  You have to print this many to get out there.
• 28:37
  Well, if you're only going to sell that many, the X and the Y don't
• 28:41
  match up and you have to figure out, well, how do we make this work?
• 28:44
  Because if you're saying, I don't want this crap sitting around in
• 28:46
  a warehouse, closet in your house, gathering dust, doing nothing.
• 28:50
  No, I've talked to writers who would say.
• 28:53
  Yeah, I, I bought, you know, 500 copies of my book and I moved them around
• 28:57
  from closet to closet in my house.
• 28:59
  Yeah.
• 28:59
  I didn't want that.
• 29:00
  I didn't want the experience of getting them from the publisher, putting them
• 29:04
  in the trunk of my car, driving down the street to the local bookstore,
• 29:08
  knocking on the door and saying, will you please buy five copies?
• 29:11
  That seems so awful to me because this way I can promote it online.
• 29:16
  I can promote it wherever and say, go to the website, click, click.
• 29:19
  Literally, the book went live on Amazon on a Friday.
• 29:24
  I had friends who bought it that day.
• 29:27
  It was printed and delivered by Amazon on Sunday.
• 29:30
  Think about that.
• 29:31
  That book didn't exist Friday morning.
• 29:34
  And it's being read by someone on Sunday.
• 29:36
  And people talk about electric cars are the future.
• 29:38
  Yes, they are.
• 29:39
  But I think the Amazon print on demand formula is the future of publishing.
• 29:44
  I really do.
• 29:44
  It makes so much sense.
• 29:46
  You talk about the expediency of getting a copy of the book, but as you were
• 29:49
  going through the process, did they send you copies so you could see what
• 29:54
  the printed version would look like?
• 29:55
  Did you work through that process and then iteratively change the book because
• 29:59
  you didn't like the way it laid out?
• 30:01
  Or were you sort of locked into whatever the PDF is?
• 30:04
  Is what they're going to print.
• 30:06
  We did a chapter at a time because each chapter, they're elaborate.
• 30:10
  I mean, these are elaborate graphics and they bleed off the page and
• 30:13
  they bleed from page to page.
• 30:15
  And it's a sophisticated book.
• 30:16
  We really tested the limits of the Amazon print on demand process by this book.
• 30:22
  It really did test the limit of how far they can go currently.
• 30:25
  I think they will get better and better as time goes on because I
• 30:28
  think people are going to realize this is the only way to go.
• 30:30
  To answer your question, I never had a physical book in my hand until the
• 30:35
  very end when you can request a proof.
• 30:39
  But that means you have to have uploaded the entire book.
• 30:43
  There's no partial book, so you're doing everything on a computer
• 30:46
  screen, you're looking at all the graphics, you're doing all that
• 30:49
  stuff, and because I'm an acoustic guy, I would print out those pages
• 30:55
  as we created them and do a paste up.
• 30:57
  So I have half a dozen paste up versions of the book where I would literally
• 31:01
  glue the pages together to create a book that I could hold in my hand and
• 31:05
  look at, because I wanted to see what the experience was of turning the page.
• 31:09
  From this graphic to this graphic, did it work?
• 31:11
  Did it flow?
• 31:12
  Was there a conflict?
• 31:14
  Were these two similar?
• 31:15
  So there was a lot of decisions that were made about how did the
• 31:19
  book experience in my hand feel?
• 31:22
  But the only way I could have that experience was to literally create a
• 31:25
  mock up, paste up version of my own.
• 31:28
  And that's what I did.
• 31:29
  Very labor intensive.
• 31:31
  Rodney, how long did it take you to put the book together from stem to stern?
• 31:34
  Yeah, I call it my pandemic book.
• 31:37
  Because, you know, when we were all locked down at the very beginning
• 31:40
  of the pandemic, when nobody was going anywhere and stuff, I kind
• 31:44
  of started working on it then.
• 31:45
  Where are we now?
• 31:46
  Three years out of the pandemic.
• 31:48
  So do you think that's on par with, let's say, standard publishing?
• 31:51
  'cause I've heard it takes years to get a book out going
• 31:54
  through the standard channels.
• 31:55
  Or is it because of your fastidiousness or your perfectionism that you wanted
• 32:00
  it to be as good as it could be in your eyes that it took longer?
• 32:05
  I think that it took longer because of my compulsiveness and some of those chapters.
• 32:10
  There were upwards of.
• 32:12
  15 different draft layouts of that artwork.
• 32:15
  Some of them just didn't want to happen.
• 32:17
  You know what I mean?
• 32:17
  You'd say, gee, this isn't quite right.
• 32:19
  And let's change this and this and this.
• 32:21
  And some of them just didn't want to be born.
• 32:23
  Some of them drew drafts and they were locked.
• 32:26
  Some of them just came together very quickly.
• 32:27
  Others didn't.
• 32:29
  It was a learning experience.
• 32:30
  The thing is, and Don knows this about me, I love a challenge.
• 32:33
  I just love doing new stuff.
• 32:34
  I love the challenge of something new.
• 32:36
  I don't like repeating things.
• 32:38
  And the challenge was to create a book that I had never seen before.
• 32:42
  Visually have it be interesting and exciting to read.
• 32:45
  And then we came on this idea of doing it in the shape of a car owner's manual.
• 32:50
  So it felt familiar when you held it.
• 32:52
  It's funny you mention that.
• 32:53
  The only other book I've ever seen that is designed that way, I have a copy of it.
• 32:58
  Lynn St.
• 32:59
  James's Owner's manual for women.
• 33:03
  No kidding.
• 33:04
  It looks just like something out of the Ford factory.
• 33:07
  And we also went for this shape because cars are horizontal.
• 33:11
  They're not vertical.
• 33:12
  Books are vertical.
• 33:14
  How are you going to show cars unless you start turning the book sideways
• 33:16
  all the time to look at pictures?
• 33:18
  Gotta go with a horizontal thing so when you turn the
• 33:20
  page you can see the whole car.
• 33:22
  But I think Don can appreciate my attention to detail in terms of the
• 33:26
  artwork because as I say, I did drive him a little crazy with some of the
• 33:30
  stuff that I wanted in the magazine.
• 33:31
  Part of this journey is also overcoming technological hurdles.
• 33:36
  A lot of writers are not technophiles.
• 33:38
  They're not IT nerds or geeks or whatever you want to call them.
• 33:41
  Well, into that category is, but there are limited tools in their tool set, right?
• 33:45
  It's like, Oh, I know how to use Google docs or I know how to use, you know,
• 33:48
  Microsoft word or whatever it is.
• 33:49
  What was the Amazon software like?
• 33:52
  Was it easy to learn?
• 33:54
  I did not create the master file.
• 33:57
  I hired someone to do it because.
• 33:59
  I don't have those technical skills and nor did I load it into the Amazon process.
• 34:05
  We had some technical problems with Amazon which just about broke my
• 34:10
  heart because we loaded it in and then I got a proof and it was not good.
• 34:15
  They blamed us and we're saying, you know, we did it the way you asked.
• 34:20
  So we had to actually recreate the master file.
• 34:23
  I think it was in October.
• 34:24
  So it cost me an entire month of rebuilding the book.
• 34:29
  And to this day, I don't know what caused it or why or whatever.
• 34:33
  I think it had to do with our pushing the limits of their technology.
• 34:37
  But I believe this is all going to get better.
• 34:39
  I just do.
• 34:40
  I just think this is the way to print books, to sell books, distribute books.
• 34:44
  And I just was on the phone today with someone who said they had bought a copy,
• 34:48
  they really enjoyed it, and now they decided to give it as Christmas gifts.
• 34:51
  And one of the things I loved about giving it as a Christmas gift, they
• 34:54
  said, you know, all I got to do is send them the address and they'll put
• 34:57
  in a gift card and I don't have to wrap it or mail it or do anything.
• 35:00
  So I said, yeah, I like that.
• 35:03
  There's a lot to be said for that.
• 35:04
  You read a book and you really like it.
• 35:06
  You want someone else to share it with you.
• 35:08
  Click, Amazon, phone, printed, delivered in their hands in two or three days.
• 35:12
  That's pretty amazing.
• 35:13
  So speaking of futures, knowing what you know now, would you do it again?
• 35:17
  You think there's another book on the horizon?
• 35:19
  Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 35:20
  In fact, there's two books that are squirreling around my desk right now.
• 35:24
  One is in the draft called Tales from the Garage Beverly Hills
• 35:28
  because there's a lot of cool garages and cool cars in Beverly Hills.
• 35:33
  The second one has to do with the house that I live in that I've restored and
• 35:38
  has an incredible history that I have uncovered over years of research.
• 35:43
  It's an amazing story that I have now fully documented from raw ground
• 35:48
  up until today, and the building's almost a hundred years old.
• 35:52
  Give it a catchy title like In the Shadow of the Garage, right?
• 35:55
  In the Shadow of the Garage, yes.
• 35:57
  So Rodney, not to add more things to your plate, in the advent of the new all
• 36:03
  digital version of Garage Style Magazine, are readers going to be seeing more Tales
• 36:08
  from the Garage columns and short stories showing up there as well in the future?
• 36:12
  Mr.
• 36:12
  Weeberg, oh me.
• 36:15
  I don't think you need permission at this point.
• 36:18
  Well, that leads into our final question, Rodney, any shout outs, promotions,
• 36:22
  or anything else you'd like to share that we haven't covered thus far.
• 36:25
  John is a terrific editor, by the way, in the sense that he did encourage
• 36:29
  me constantly on these stories.
• 36:32
  You know, I mean, I would say to him, what about this?
• 36:34
  What do you think about this?
• 36:35
  He would say, absolutely do that.
• 36:37
  Do that.
• 36:38
  Don't do that.
• 36:38
  Do this one, do this one.
• 36:40
  He was incredibly encouraging and supportive in ways he doesn't even know.
• 36:45
  For that, Don, I thank you.
• 36:46
  Oh, thank you.
• 36:47
  That's a nice compliment.
• 36:48
  If anybody was the godfather of this book, it was you.
• 36:51
  Because without you, this book would not exist.
• 36:54
  I mean, it wouldn't have happened.
• 36:55
  Because of your encouragement and allowing me to do that column, then
• 36:59
  I went, well, okay, maybe there's a second life for these things.
• 37:02
  You know, maybe there is an audience for this outside of Car Magazine.
• 37:07
  And what we're learning is there is a noise, there is a hunger, because
• 37:10
  if you look at the reviews that people are writing on the Amazon
• 37:13
  link, a lot of them are saying, I'm not a car person, I don't really care
• 37:17
  about cars, but I love this book.
• 37:19
  One area where your book is hitting the nail on the head is it's a
• 37:23
  collection of short stories, but what's even more beautiful about it
• 37:26
  is you don't have to be a car guy.
• 37:28
  These short stories, you can relate to them no matter what walk of life
• 37:32
  you're in, if you're a boy or a girl, if you're rich or poor, it doesn't matter.
• 37:36
  You kind of become that old man at the beach, you know, every small town on
• 37:40
  a, in a beach village, they have this crazy old man who sits on the beach and
• 37:44
  he tells all the little kids stories.
• 37:47
  That's really what this book is.
• 37:49
  This book is your campfire.
• 37:50
  The car just happens to be the sort of catalyst.
• 37:53
  That's where the story begins.
• 37:54
  It begins with a car somehow, but it spins off into the
• 37:57
  human interest beyond the car.
• 37:59
  You know, I've said this to you a thousand times.
• 38:01
  One of my favorite tales from the garage, it has to do with the sun.
• 38:05
  And the father and the father's dying, it's called the last ride.
• 38:09
  And the father and the son don't have a great relationship, but the father just
• 38:12
  suddenly utters on his deathbed out of nowhere, I should have bought Cadillacs.
• 38:17
  And the son asked for clarity on that.
• 38:19
  What are you talking about?
• 38:20
  And he gets into it and you tell it all in the story.
• 38:22
  I don't think we need to reiterate it, but that to me always resonates.
• 38:26
  I just love that story.
• 38:27
  Here's a guy in his deathbed.
• 38:28
  He's a car guy.
• 38:29
  He likes his old mobiles.
• 38:30
  That's what he always bought.
• 38:31
  And he should have bought Cadillacs.
• 38:33
  And now he's saying it and it's too late.
• 38:35
  There is a car guy thing there, yes, but more so, there's a human interest thing.
• 38:40
  Here's been my experience so far in the sort of 30 days that it's been available.
• 38:44
  Still tracking number one new release in the automotive sector.
• 38:49
  That says a lot, given the fact that I'm up against a lot of big boys there.
• 38:53
  What I'm hearing is that people buy one and enjoy it so much that they
• 38:56
  then buy multiple copies because they want to share it with other people.
• 39:00
  And I think it's because it touches something very human in all of us,
• 39:04
  these stories that everyone can relate to in some way or another.
• 39:08
  You may not have had a Rolls Royce.
• 39:10
  But you can relate to that story in the sense of the relationship
• 39:14
  of those people to that car.
• 39:16
  The website has a lot of information, tailsfromthegarage.
• 39:19
  com.
• 39:20
  And there's a bonus, by the way, on the website.
• 39:22
  If you go all the way to the bottom of the website, there is a
• 39:25
  little section called Other Essays.
• 39:27
  And I think there's five or six essays that I've written for other
• 39:30
  publications, including the LA Times, that are not car related.
• 39:34
  They are on different subjects.
• 39:35
  It's like a candy sample at the store.
• 39:37
  You know, I'll just try this little piece here and see if you like it.
• 39:39
  That's what they're there for.
• 39:41
  So if you read all the great advanced reviews and you go, wow, this guy,
• 39:44
  geez, sounds like the real deal.
• 39:45
  And then you can read a couple writing samples at the end on topics other
• 39:49
  than cars to push you over the cliff.
• 39:51
  Never had a website until I had this book.
• 39:53
  Now I can say, go to my website with impunity.
• 39:58
  Rodney Kemmerer's Tales from the Garage, designed with the look and
• 40:02
  feel of an automotive owner's manual, is far more than just a car book.
• 40:07
  As car enthusiast Jay Leno and Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Neal
• 40:11
  have observed, Rodney's warm and personal tales resonate deeply, because
• 40:16
  everyone has a car story to tell.
• 40:19
  These 30 stories originate as essays in a host of publications and now reformatted
• 40:25
  with an entirely new and colorful artwork.
• 40:28
  You can pick up a copy of Tales from the Garage today on Amazon
• 40:32
  or learn more by visiting www.
• 40:35
  talesfromthegarage.
• 40:37
  com or follow him on social.
• 40:39
  At Pales from the garage on Facebook and Instagram.
• 40:43
  And with that, Rodney, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break Fix
• 40:47
  and sharing your story with all of us.
• 40:49
  As a newly minted author, this is a great wealth of information for those of us that
• 40:54
  are sitting out there wondering how we're gonna write the next Great American novel.
• 40:58
  But more importantly, your book isn't just the next Ferrari coffee
• 41:02
  table book or something that you lay out that somebody might.
• 41:05
  thumb through.
• 41:05
  These are personal stories, and it's a great adventure.
• 41:09
  It's a great read, and I think it's a lot of fun.
• 41:11
  And I commend you for doing something different and trying to break the mold.
• 41:14
  It was fun in retrospect, probably not in the middle of it.
• 41:19
  I'm very happy with the result, but mostly I am thrilled with
• 41:22
  the response that it's getting.
• 41:24
  When someone writes you and says, I picked up your book, I was going to read
• 41:28
  one chapter, I sat down, I didn't move until I had finished the entire book.
• 41:33
  I've heard that from a number of people, and that's like the
• 41:35
  highest compliment you can get.
• 41:37
  It really is.
• 41:38
  Well, congratulations, and we look forward to the sequel of Tales from the Grush.
• 41:42
  Me too.
• 41:43
  Yeah, do it again, do it again.
• 41:45
  Do it again, that was fun, do it again.
• 41:47
  As they say in the theater biz, encore, encore.
• 41:50
  Again, thank you Don.
• 41:51
  Oh, no problem, thank you Rodney.
• 41:53
  No, you've been great Don, you really have.
• 41:55
  The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine.
• 42:00
  Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors
• 42:05
  continually delivering information about automobilia, petroliana, events, and more.
• 42:11
  To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, Be
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  sure to follow them on social media at Garage Style Magazine or log onto
• 42:21
  www.garagestylemagazine.com because after all, what doesn't belong in your garage.
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