Tell you what, if you've never made the trip out to the Goodguys West Coast Nationals, you're missing one of the biggest gatherings of hot rods, customs, and classics anywhere in the country. This year marks the 39th running of it, and it all goes down August 21 through 23 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California. Three days. That's a car show the way a car show ought to be, big enough that you won't see it all and you'll know it.

Per the announcement over at Freep, the event celebrates Northern California car culture with everything you'd expect from a Goodguys show. One thing I'm glad to see on the schedule is the autocross, where drivers actually get to flog their machines instead of just wiping them down with a diaper all weekend. That part matters to me. I've said before I reckon the stance and the soul of a build count for more than whatever's on a spec sheet, but it's still good to see a car move the way it was built to move.

Northern California has been hot rod country going back to the days when guys were cutting up Model A Fords in garages from Oakland to San Jose. The West Coast Nationals sits right in the middle of that tradition. You'll see everything from traditional rods with flatheads and steel bodies to gleaming pro touring builds with modern suspensions, plus trucks, which is where my heart lives. Somewhere on those grounds there's always a patina'd old farm truck parked next to a forty-thousand-dollar build, and the crowd gives both of them the same respect. That's how car culture ought to work.

A show like this is really a big swap meet with a car show attached, or maybe it's the other way around. You ever notice how the best finds in this hobby never come from a website? Same as antique shops, it takes digging through the physical stuff. I found a set of original hubcaps at a swap meet down in Springfield a few years back for twenty bucks, and I still don't know what I'll put them on. Didn't matter then, doesn't matter now. Some things you buy because they need a home.

If you're thinking about going, a few words of advice from somebody who's done his share of show weekends. Take a wagon or a cart for walking the grounds, wear shoes you can walk eight miles in, and don't plan on leaving early Sunday. The good stuff always comes out of the trailers on the last morning. And talk to the owners. Anybody can look at a car, but the stories behind them are where the real value is. Plenty of cars at a Goodguys event have been in the same family for generations, or came out of a barn, or got finished the week before after a ten-year build. The paint tells you one thing; the fella leaning against the fender tells you everything else.

It's a long ways from southern Missouri to Pleasanton, and I'll admit I keep looking at the map. I've already got a fall trip to the Ozarks planned in my own truck, and a man only has so many weekends between now and deer season. But three days of hot rods out west is a hard thing to shake out of your head once it gets in there.

If you make it out there, wave at the farm trucks for me.