My mother did not allow “wasting film” on pictures of cars. Film was meant to be wasted on pictures of clothes. So, when she bought me my first raincoat for the spring of 1959, she had me dress up in my boots and that yellow slicker, and pose on the porch that my father had added to the front of our first home in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

As a picture of a smirking kid in a too-big raincoat, so the sleeves have to be folded up, it is kind of lame. But it is one of only two pictures of our 1952 Studebaker Commander, which is the car sticking out of the carport behind me. That car meant the world to me because in deepest, darkest suburbia, nothing ever happened unless you got in the car. It took you to the drive-in movie, and Dairy Delite ice cream. Home was boring. Cars were exciting.