When I was six, my parents were going to trade our 1967 Mercury Park Lane in on a 1969 Ford LTD Country Squire and were making me go with them.  I ran and hid by the creek behind a neighbor's house.  My logic was that someone else would buy the other car while they were looking for me.  My ploy did not work.  Years later, my mother's best friend was going to trade in her 1967 Cougar on a 1972 Pontiac LeMans, so her daughter and I tried my strategy again.  It failed again.

In 1994, my friend and mentor in the Air Force, Jim Miller, found a 1967 Cougar in San Antonio, TX and called to tell me.  He sent pictures and I told him to buy it.  I flew down and drove it back to Chicago with my friend Amy Dayton, who was stationed in San Antonio at the time.

I kept it at my place in Evanston until I took it to Breck's house in Virginia.  I was supposed to move there, at that time.  It didn't work out so I went and got the car and brought it back to Chicago.  I parked it in my friends, Lorette and Jim's, garage.  Lorette's brother-in-law kept asking her to ask me to sell the Cougar to him, but I resisted.  When their house caught on fire, Lorette called me to tell me that the house was in bad shape, but the car was untouched.  (She thought I'd be more worried about the car than her and Jim's stuff!)  Since I rarely drove it, and worked on it even less, I finally sold the car to her brother-in-law.

Jim and I have since started working on a 1977 Corvette and my own 1967 Mercury Park Lane, but we both wish we could get that car back.