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Hot rods and custom cars aren't just a Los Angeles tradition. The Sacramento Delta was once littered with them.

John Callahan grew up during the car craze as it came to life in River hamlets like Isleton and Courtland.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If you've ever traveled the Delta roads from Freeport to Antioch along the Sacramento River, you may think you've been transported back to the 1940s. The Delta region was home to some of the best custom cars and hot rods in the country.

John Callahan grew up during the car craze as it came to life in River hamlets like Isleton and Courtland. He knew the people. So, he wrote a book, "Hot Rods and Custom cars of the Sacramento Delta," chronicling this fading moment in time.

"I just wanted to make it a story about the people and their love of cars and hot rods," Callahan said on a warm late morning, sitting in the same custom 1951 roadster from the cover of his book. The roadster was even parked in same spot from the book, in front of what was then Fran Awalt Ford sometime in the early 1950s.

So why were so many of these hot rods and custom cars built in towns like Walnut Grove and Rio Vista? Simply put: Space. There was plenty of room on farms, and everybody knew how to work on motors already. It was different time back then in the 1950s and '60s Delta — the clock moved slowly. There was time to get under the car with your Dad.

"It's amazing the father-son connection with building a lot of these cars," Callahan said.

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Callahan interviewed 150 people for his book, many of them the sons of the dads who have long left us. Each chapter in his book is a story told by car owners.

"[People] didn't know we had these cars in the Delta," Callahan explained. "It's like L.A. or the East Coast, Detroit and all those places. But nobody knew this little pocket down in the Delta had such fabulous cars. It's just a story about what small towns did. Small town America."

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