"I've always been into building model cars and messing with cars ever since we were like 13 years old. I built a 1955 shorty Chevy wagon with my cousin Ken's help. and Ken built a 1935 Chevy coupe. We had dreamed of having our own car club even back then, We wanted to build our own Hot Rods. My other cousin found out what we were doing and wanted to join in his name is Tony AKA Dutch Von Henry. We
were going to car shows looking at different ideas and we kept seeing more and more of these cars that were really cool that didn't have much paint on them or they were in primer and rusty. This was about 1998 when we started building our retro rods, which eventually morphed
into Rat Rods. We noticed at car shows that we were going to, the retro rod rat rod were kind of disrespected. They were unfinished but they were someone's dream, someone's hope. It was a low budget way of being in the scene without costing you an arm and leg, because it's something you loved. It was your dream; why disrespect someone for that? So the Rat Bastards were born. It started out with building our car banter back-and-forth, "Hey where's my 9/16" wrench, you rat bastard?", and I said that would be a great name for a car club. We started selling T-shirts with the club logo and found there were a lot of people building low budget hot rods and or rat rods, which ended up being great for gaining membership. One day someone said to me, you should put on a car show. So we did. I always said if we were to do a car show it would be one that I would like to go to, where no one is disrespected for what they built. in the years that followed, we have grown and chartered two more clubs, one in Wisconsin and our latest chapter, in Idaho. There is so much more to tell but I thought you'd like this little bit of club history. Maybe I should write a book."
