Attending a reunion in summer usually means either attending the family event and eating Aunt Edna's potato salad and pretending it's great or the high school variety where the old girlfriend bends your ear on how fantastic her life has been since the breakup.

    Beginning last summer, I started a new reunion tradition. This involves neither bad potato salad nor an ex-girlfriend, but rather assaulting the senses with nitro fumes, ear-splitting engine noise and blinding paintwork. Sound like fun? Better yet, it's held on Father's Day weekend, and offers the kind of thrills that are best appreciated from the time "when men were men!"

    The event of which I praise so highly is the NHRA Hot Rod Reunion, this year to be held at National Trail Raceway in Hebron, Ohio, near Columbus. It begins June 15 and runs through June 17, which happens to be Father's Day.

    I'm hoping to have the chance to chat with two of early drag racing's legends, Don "Big Daddy" Garlits and "TV Tommy" Ivo. I'm also all jacked up about viewing rows of vintage drag cars, hot rods and collector vehicles. I'll be decked out in Old Cars Weekly logo wear, so if you see a grinning idiot running around photographing everything in sight, that'll be me. Say hello, and I promise to slow down and chat.

    Also, if your in the Wentworth, S.D., area on June 9, I'll be covering the Gene Hemmer Collection sale, presented by VanDerBrink Auctions. In between South Dakota and Ohio, I'm planning on touring some salvage yards in central New York.

    See you on the road....