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Hilo Hot Rod Legends and
the Road Devils Connection
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For now, not getting full-page
coverage in Hot Rod would have to be enough for Papio, due to a
chain of events that were to unfold later.
Meanwhile, Joe was spear-heading the
club. In the days that followed, he held meetings with 17 of Hilos
notorious hot rod misfits, signing their names to an infamous list
of would-be Road Devils.
Ninth down from the top is Tony
Rodrigues, the most recognized name among hot rodders in Hilo today.
"I joined at the age of sixteen." Tony said. "Got me a black leather
jacket, engineer boots with blue jeans rolled up, a pack of
cigarettes rolled up on a white T-shirt and enough pomade on our
hair to hold it slick back. Boy those were the days."
Two years later, in 1960, the Big
Island was struck again by another killer tsunami. This time it
destroyed much of Hilo town and Front Street, taking Bell's Fountain
with it. In the aftermath several businesses were wiped out for good
or relocated to outer islands. Papio's workplace, Motor Supply, was
one of them.
No more than a week after the
tsunami's destruction, Papio sold the '39 convertible to Eddie
Mattos of Hilo and moved to Oahu to continue working for Motor
Supply as a tire re-capper in Honolulu.
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Photo
taken '57-58 at Kailua Pier in Kona, Hawaii. Across the
bay, Mokuaikaua Church (1837) the first church built in
Hawaii.
Click photo
for bigger view. |
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As for the Road Devils car club, that
took a backseat to Hilo's clean-up and rebuilding and the club
simply faded away. Joe Correa will tell ya' they had no dues, no
regulations - just a group of guys having fun who, one-by-one moved
on to start families of their own.
But that wasn't the end for the Road
Devils '39 just yet. Eddie Mattos had big plans. Tony Rodrigues
vividly remembers what occurred next. Technically, he was the last
to own the Custom.
Shortly after Eddie bought the car, he
took the flathead out and installed a '52 Olds Rocket 88 motor.
"This was a real powerful mill for all of us after only having
flatheads." Tony said. "Well one day while trying out a new clutch
he lost control driving on Kaumana Drive and hit a tour bus totaling
the car. He sold it to me, I think for $150. as a wreck."
If Tony had his way, it wouldnt stay
wrecked for long. So he paid a visit to Joseph H. Correia, master
welder and metal-man of Hilo. If Correia couldn't fix the '39, no
one could.
Yep, there are two Joe's. Joe Correa,
creator of the Hawaii Road Devils and Joseph H. Correia, master
welder and metal-man of Hilo.
Correia carefully looked over the
convertible, examining its undercarriage inch by inch. Then,
concluded that it would be better to just part-out the car than to
repair it.
"I looked for a while to see if anyone
could fix it," said Tony. "I couldn't find anyone so I gave it away
to Joe Correia. He said he couldn't fix it the frame was [too] badly
bent."
And so the chopped, channeled and now
twisted beyond repair little '39 was dismantled and sold for scrap.
Jumping fifty years into the present;
a cropped photo of the '39 - absent of editorial - from that 1958
Hot Rod finds its way into the hands of the still active national
Road Devils C.C., triggering off an Internet-wide search for what
mistakenly appears to be part of their heritage. But what
convincingly looked to be their legacy actually had deep hot rod
roots of its own - sprouted in Hilo Hawaii some fifty years earlier.
While some of Hawaii's original Road
Devils have left us, others are still around and remain involved one
way or another with hot rods.
Papio, now 72, hopes to get a chopped
49-53 Merc one day soon.
Joe Correa is 72. Hes had his own
real-estate business for several years now and loves what he does.
He also stays in touch with Papio.
Tony Rodrigues is 67 and still
building hot rods out of his shop while conducting regular classic
car cruises around the Big Island.
Joe Correia, master welder and
metal-man of Hilo is in his 80s, and hes doing ok too. Papio
visits him every so often to say hello.
On those clear days in Hilo when warm
trades blow just so, somewhere between the tops of gently swaying
palms and the peak of Mauna Kea, you can almost hear some old radio
broadcast from an era gone by, while 17 of Hilo's future hot rod
legends talk-story about becoming Hawaii's first official Road
Devils.
©2009 Honolulu Streets Magazine. This story and photos may not
be
copied, published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed without the express written permission of
Honolulu
Streets Magazine. |
