Chapter 2 (page 7)

The car moved from the center of the garage to the far back corner. I can remember playing in the car with my friends. We would pretend that we were everything from race car drivers (my Dad took me to many professional races, both Nascar and Indy Car) to whatever we could think up. We would steer with the steering wheel (take note of this as I'll come back to the steering wheel) with reckless abandon and open and close the hood, trunk, doors as you'd expect spirited kids to do. It was a big toy to us and we were determined to enjoy the hell out of it. Actually, I always loved opening the doors as they would make this incredibly distinct "ping" sound that only the Porsche would make.

As time went on, we got older and weren’t playing pretend anymore, the Porsche slipped to the back of the garage, sometimes in the corner, sometimes in the center but all the while, falling silent, resting in the shadows and becoming more or less a storage bin of sorts. Things got piled on, in and around the car and then removed only to be replaced by other “stuff.” There were several events that took place and if you’ll spare me a moment I’ll briefly run through them.

We had a vintage wooden boat that developed and hole needed repairing. My Dad decided to simply refinish the entire boat while fixing the hole. So in order to make room for the boat, the Porsche was moved outside. It was thoroughly covered up with tarps and sat outside for about a year. Dad then secured a storage area in a barn about a 1⁄2 mile from our house. So we towed the Porsche up there for the winter and swapped out the Porsche for the boat in the summer. Then one "rough" night, I (your author) was moving my MGB in our driveway and decided to try and short cut the process. I didn't get myself fully into the car and tried (fully admitting - LIKE A COMPLETE IDIOT) to move the car using just one foot and yes that's 3 pedals with one foot. Somehow I managed to get the car moving and when I intended to push the clutch, I pushed the accelerator pedal - to the floor! So the car accelerated straight ahead and straight into the garage. I hit the lawn tractor and drove that straight into the Porsche....well actually under it! As my Dad would always say when describing this story, "How do you get 2 cars into a 1 car garage? You stack them!" And that was true, I literally stacked the Porsche on top of the MGB. But in the end my Dad heard the commotion, ran [like hell] into the garage and after a big "Oh S*it!" he was very concerned if I was OK. I was fine as he quickly determined and then we got to the job of taking everything apart and assessing the damage.

The G (my MGB) was banged up a bit, the tractor was totally “F’ed” up and the Porsche took some damage. Not horrendously, but enough to make sure that it was going to need considerable work in order to be drivable again. It was at this point, that the car slipped further from the road and became more of a permanent garage fixture.