The Official Low Rider Hall Of Fame

Gary MayA Man Ahead Of His Time And Ours.As part of the Lowrider Hall of Fame inductions, it gives us great pleasure to share with you some of the memories that we have of friend and legend Gary "The Wizard" May. Gary passed much too early, but he left an indelible mark on the people he loved and the passion known as the lowrider culture, specifically, the kinetic part of the sport known to us as hydraulic hopping. We spoke to both his dear wife, Betty, and his long-time friend and buddy Ted Wells, a true lowrider guru and the recipient of a spot in the Hall of Fame, which was bestowed on him in 2007.

Ted's first encounter with Gary was in the mid 1970s during car show season when they were hitting all of the shows such as R.G. Canning at the L.A. Sports Arena. "Gary was one of those guys you kinda just clicked with right away," Ted recalls. "Gary's one of the few people in life who everybody loves. I don't know anybody who didn't like him, except for the guys who hopped against him, but they still respected him. Other than that, everybody loved Gary."

With Gary, hydraulics was always a friendly competition thing. Never was a negative remark heard from the guy. He loved lowriding too much for it to be anything but a good time. As for Gary's take, or should we say philosophy, on lowriding, 99.9-percent would be all about hopping. He could appreciate a lay and display ride, but for "The Wizard," it was all about getting that front end off of the blacktop.

"You know, that was his thing," agrees Ted. "My thing was posing, laying your car down, and looking good. Gary liked lowriding, but his trait was hopping." In Gary's view, if a car didn't have hydraulics and didn't hop, well, it wasn't his type of lowrider. As for working on cars, Gary would always be working on something. "You know, Gary's name was The Wizard, but I don't know who named him that," says Ted. "All I know is that he had been called that and kinda stuck with it."

Gary was so hardcore back then that he had contacted Fenner-Stone and asked them to make him some hydraulic pumps to his specs. Just as the hot-rodders would tear down their engines and figure out how to get as much horsepower out of a powerplant, Gary would dissect the pumps and blocks with all of their gears, valves and ports just to see what he could do to push the envelope. Gary would have pump heads made especially for him, which he would use to the point where he'd do different configurations on a pump, to see what it would and could do.

If and when that pump went out on him, he'd save it for parts or reference just in case he came across a similar situation with another of his units. Gary would take something from, say, Stillman and mess around with the different size ports and fittings. "He even designed his own blocks," Ted remembers. "And I have one original block that he made out of steel some 25 years ago. I have it bolted to the wall on my garage as a memento of him."

"Gary didn't mess with show cars like my car, he'd just do hoppers, that was his thing," Ted adds. "He was the kind of person who could take something and make it work better. You know, he invented that Z-block thing with two armature casings on one pump."

Once on the streets, Gary didn't want to miss a hop and rarely did he lose in a hopping contest. "Well, one day there was a hop in Alhambra, okay," continues Ted. "This was a while back and there was a bunch of guys there waiting to be in the hop and so when they see Gary show up they just say 'aw forget about it,' and want to leave. Now, I know in a football game that one fumble can change the course of the game and, sure enough, that day Gary fumbled. He knows exactly what his car can do, how the setup is and the way it should work."

Gary had some sort of mechanical breakdown that prevented him from actually doing something to the competition that Sunday afternoon. That was indeed a rare occasion, but Gary wasn't one to sulk; oh no, he wa just as much a gentleman after a loss as he was in victory. Gary was the kind of person who would actually come to the aid of his some-time competitors like "Ragtop Ralph," who would actually compete against Gary for real money when going toe-to-toe. Usually, though, he'd do it when he wasn't in direct competition, but Gary was never the spoilsport and did so at his discretion.

By now, Gary's car of choice was either a '63 or '64 Chevy Impala. Gone was the old '59 because it just wasn't as feasible as them "newer" Impalas. Many who were around the hopping circuit back then remember his red Impala and the things that it could do. When going up against a '63 or '64 Impala hopper, Gary had somewhat of an advantage because of the intimate knowledge gathered when working on his own rides. He knew what the cars were capable of doing.

The Wizard really didn't need a crystal ball; all he'd need was some time in his garage to work his magic. "He was always, always trying to do something different and new," Ted says. "He came up with all kinds of new things. His wife, Betty, can attest to that." "Oh yeah," agrees Betty. "Gary would be out back in the garage for hours and hours working on whatever new idea he had."

Betty remembers meeting Gary while still in school. "Gary had already graduated from Centennial High School in Compton and I was still attending Locke High and he was working at a shoe store as an assistant manager," she recalls. "My friend and I were out passing out invitations to her party and we invited him. Well, come the day of the party I got real sick and didn't go, but Gary did." Later on, when they bumped into each other again, Gary mentioned that he went to the party, most likely in hopes of seeing Betty.

As time went on, Gary would invite Betty to different hangouts, usually where lowriders congregated and Betty would sometimes question the place. "He'd ask me to meet him at Church's on Century and Vermont Avenue and I'd be like, 'huh?' I wasn't really into that scene," she admits. "I was more into going to nightclubs and dancing to music."

By this time, we're talking late '70s and early '80s, Gary was deep into lowriders and doing the hopping contests, and he finally got Betty to attend a local car show to see what it was all about. "I went out there and saw how things were," says Betty with a chuckle. "People started coming up to me saying that your guy's pretty good and I'd say, 'yeah, he is, isn't he?' "

As much as Gary loved lowriding, he loved his family more and he would always make time for them, especially during Betty's vacation time, around August after the Bakersfield show. "After that show was done, Gary would get his son and I together and take us out to Las Vegas for a nice little getaway," she relates. "He loved Vegas."

Gary worked as hard if not harder while working his regular job for Kaiser, sometimes doing both swing shifts as well as graveyard. "There'd be times when Gary would be at work and Ted Wells would be calling the house at midnight asking if Gary was still up," Betty recalls. "I'd tell him that he wasn't home yet, not until probably one in the morning and to call back then. I'd then tell Gary that Teddy called and he's going to call again and that I had better not hear more than one ring when he calls."

Late nights were nothing new in the May household. There were plenty of times when Gary would have Betty running around town getting this and that for his projects. "There was one time where we had to make new measuring sticks for a car show out in Bakersfield," she says. "This was when Gary was judging and was working the night before the show. So I go out to Gardena to pick up some piece of Plexiglas. At the time, Gary was doing something else. Well, we were up until three o'clock in the morning and I asked Gary what time we had to leave for Bakersfield and he said something like five a.m.! I said, well, we have to at least get cleaned up before the show!"

Gary loved those times when they were on the road and he was truly committed to being a judge for the hop. "There was one other time when Gary had a real bad toothache, so bad that his face was swollen on one side," Betty remembers. "We were to go out to Houston, Texas, for the show and I felt so bad for him. But he said, 'just give me a bag of ice and some aspirin, I'll be okay.' "

Losing Gary was hard on everyone who knew him, a list that includes a lot of people, but it was hardest on the May family. "When he passed, I closed his garage out back," Betty tells us. "Our dog 'Chevy' didn't know what was going on at the time. She'd wait in front like always with a neighbor dog; a routine that would have happened until Gary got home from work. Well, a week had passed and when the casket car made a pass at the house, my neighbors said the dogs actually got up on their hind legs and finally realized that he was gone. They just knew it then. They seemed to have looked over at the car, which is what my neighbors told me. Funny, huh?"

Well, it would be an entire year before Betty could open up that garage and deal with what was there and clean things up. The dog went to where she usually sat when Gary was in there, but this time it was just Betty tending to the business at hand. When asked what comes to mind when we speak about Gary, she remembers that smile of his. "He could be mad for a bit, but then he'd get over it real quick. I have this one picture of him from a trip to Vegas and there he is, him and his smile."

By Eddie Zamarron

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