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I was driving home from a night meeting in Portland when I decided that it was all my father's fault. No, not everything; just my fascination with Porsches in general and my 928 in particular.
It was a cool evening in Maine. The road was largely clear, but a little rain was falling and the road was wet. The trip up the coast from Portland takes about three hours no matter which way you chose. I took Interstate 95 to Augusta, then on to Bangor, with Route 3 taking me home.
The 928 was unaffected by the rain and I set the cruise control at seventy, muted the CD player, and settled in for my favorite nighttime 928 pursuit: philosophizing. "Yes," I thought. "I should blame all of this on Dad."
When I was a little boy, my father was an elementary school principal. Times were different then, and he used to be able to walk home from the big, brick school building in Walnut Square. I can remember seeing him walk up Columbus Avenue to the house we lived in. I knew that he had had to walk past the little store. The one with all the cars.
Very often he would bring me a little plastic car, and by the time I was four I had a lot of them. I remember being truly happy playing with them by the hour in the sand pile under the apple tree in the back yard. Cars were fascinating, and by the time I was five I knew the name of every kind of car on the road.
Ten years later, I saw my first Porsche. I didn't know what it was, all little, low, and red. It had a canvas top with plastic windows that were fascinating in their claustrophobia. I thought it was a foolish Volkswagen. It had a strange name that I couldn't pronounce on the rear lid. Since I didn't know what it was, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Later, I read about the Carrera Pan Americana. The romance and excitement of driving like that…in, now I knew…a Porsche…sank the hook. I knew then that I wanted, no, had to drive a Porsche.
When Jennifer was born, her mother and I had a new 912. We belonged to the local sports car club, and Jenny was our unofficial navigator on rallies. She knew that Mommy drove a Porsche before she knew that Porsche was a kind of car. When I went off to war, I sent Jenny a little stuffed seal and a die-cast Porsche 904 (Continued on page 26)
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