Shaw scours swap meets and estate sales for vintage photographs, particularly those taken at Indianapolis. "I have quite a few of the ones used back in the day as well, with names and dates engraved." It takes 10 minutes to make, but once you have it, you're connected to that tradition," he says. "If you look at the old photos, every chief mechanic at Indy had one of these. There's a T-handled Offenhauser spark-plug wrench Shaw made during his stint at Zakira's. "The purpose of a hot rod is to make noise and cause a ruckus." "I’m from the old school in that regard," Shaw says. From there, it was a short step to restoring older sprint cars and an even shorter step to building his own hot rods. Six years later, he was behind the wheel of everything and anything, up to an International Motor Contest Association Modified dirt-track racer, usually at the pointy end of the grid. Josh grew up in the sprint-car scene around Cincinnati, Ohio, following his father to dozens of races before beginning his career in karts at the age of 10. It wasn’t the only thing that Dan Shaw taught his son. He said that I’d never go broke if I knew how to paint a sign." "My father showed me how to do pinstriping and lettering. "It was my second job, after the Valvoline Oil Change," Shaw laughs. Before Josh Shaw became the man in vintage-sprint-car restoration, before he rebuilt a single Miller Indy car-heck, before he drove his terrifying Shark Bus ( exactly what it sounds like) to pole position at the Lawrenceburg Speedway-he worked the T-shirt air-brushing booth at an amusement park.
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