Ed Roth was the creative inspiration for millions of car crazed kids for many generations. I was one of them.
I met him twice. The first time was at the SEMA show in las vagas in the mid 90s, when I was part of the Hot Rod Heritage art show. Roth had his latest build, Beatnik Bandit II, displayed next to the art show. We talked, he told me he wasn't thrilled about artist using the Flying Eyeball design without Roths OK. Von Dutch had given rights to his work to Roth before Dutch died. I had a couple of Flying Eyeball pieces in the show, and they looked nothing like the Von Dutch designs, besides my works were 3 diminsional, oak and headlight lenses.
He went on to tell the story about getting the letter from Von Dutch willing him the rights to his work. Roth lived on a culdesac, a little girl had seen a man, a mailman, go to the boxes and put stuff in them. So, she went around to all the boxes and removed the mail to play with it. While she was playing with the mail, an adult notice her and redistributed the mail before any was lost or destroyed. Wonder what would of happened if that letter had got lost? Anyway he signed my Roth made Von Dutch Flying Eyeball T-shirt, that I wore so much the permanent marker signature washed out.
The second time we met was here in Wichita, at a car show, I bought a rat fink comic book and had him sign it, he told me to get some foam and fiberglass and build a car. Someday...
