Eventually, I considered the possibility that I might have to give up on the Field Car and find something that inspired a little more confidence. I liked Kathy’s folks and all, but they seemed compelled to follow us around picking up parts and pieces “just in case we might need them.” I knew nobody would consider buying it for much money, so I decided to just take it to a salvage yard and see what they’d give me for it. I drove it out to the largest junkyard in the area and asked them how much they’d pay for a good, running vehicle.

“$10.00,” said the man.

“$10.00? You must be joking! This is a good running car, with quite a few parts still on it! Surely it’s worth more than $10.00.”

“If it’s such a good running car, then what’s that cloud of blue smoke? It doesn’t even sound like it’s running on all four cylinders. Plus, there’s something dragging underneath.”

“Oh, come on, it just got some bad gasoline. Besides, even if you parted it out, it would be worth a lot more than $10.00.”

“Not really. Dog food cans and coat hanger wires are pretty cheap around here.”

Well, I was indignant, to say the least. It was clear to me that these people knew nothing about the value of a classic like the Field Car. I threw the muffler in the trunk and drove home to get another mounting bracket out of the coat closet.

A few weeks later, my friend Tom was up visiting from Texas. He was in the market for a car, so I decided to display the depth of my friendship by bequeathing to him the Field Car as a gift. He was suitably grateful, but his father was convinced that I had ripped him off. How could I have ripped him off, when I gave him the car for free? If Tom’s father insisted that they replace the solenoid and the plugs and wires, rebuild the carburetor, give it a brake job, and install an entire exhaust system before allowing Tom to drive the vehicle from Michigan to Texas, why, whose fault was that?

Coincidental to Tom’s visit, I found myself between jobs and taking a break from college. Once I’d seen all the work he and his dad had done on the car, I was inclined to accept his offer of spending the summer in Texas, where jobs were more plentiful. I figured I could work for the summer, and save up some money before returning to school in the fall. Kathy’s father was sure the car would never make it out of the state, let alone all the way to Texas. He used to believe that mankind had walked on the moon. When he looked at the pictures I sent him of me and the Field Car in Texas, he figured that they were fakes, and he reasoned that if a hick like me could create such convincing trick photography, then NASA could fake a lunar landing. To this day he’s quite certain that the car died somewhere en route, and we took a bus the rest of the way.

When I left Texas in the fall of that year, Tom was still driving the Maverick every day. I don’t know what happened to it after that. I hate to think it ended up in some junk yard, but it probably did.

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