Cars continued to be a major source of fascination for me. I spent hours drawing pictures of cars, reading Motor Trend and Road & Track. I built model cars. I particularly liked to build Fords and make them look fast. I always bought AMT brand model kits from the small Twin Pines store on Main Street, making sure I has enough glue for the job. As I recall the kits were $1.49. I liked to put on the decals and, when I had an extra 50 cents, would even paint the car body. In late September or early October, I would often ride my bike to the two car dealerships in town, Pennington Ford and Blackwell Chevrolet, when the new car models would arrive. One time Dad took us boys to an open house at the Fisher Body Assembly Plant in nearby Ewing. We toured some of the inner workings of an automobile factory and saw all of the newest General Motors cars in person — and we could actually sit in them. I collected as many of the buyer’s catalogs as I could take home. My favorite car that day was the Buick Electra 225. What an enormous boat of a car! Once I got home I poured over the pamphlets and made believe I had all the money in the world. What car would I buy with what accessories? I remember thinking that if I ever went to prison, as long as I had car magazines, I’d be all right. That was obviously before I discovered girls. My auto passion also extended into collecting Matchbox Series toy cars. Made in England, these small metal models cost about 50 cents each and actually came in something that looked like a matchbox. It was my first introduction to foreign car brands like Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, and Rolls Royce and I collected hundreds of them. When I was in sixth grade, Dad said I was too old to be playing with toy cars, so I took them across the street to the O’Donnell’s and gave them to their youngest boy to play with. I never saw them again. I wasn’t too broken up about it though, because there were other distractions of the female persuasion that started to attract my attention. Alas, Dad was right.