I've always been around cars. My father was always working on a car engine.

Last I heard, about 40 cars ... made it for the car-only cruise.

McGee’s old touring car had once been green. It had also been painted black, but this had worn thin and you could see the original green coming through on the hood. The fenders were still black. The speedometer said 53,562 miles, but the motor was smooth. McGee drove as though he had a horse in front, saying ‘Giddap’ when he wanted to start and ‘Whoa’ when he was stopping. I was scared he would forget the horse wasn’t there sometime and try to stop by pulling back on the steering-wheel. He didn’t, though.

We probably had a fifth-place car, ... The Mopar had been running great so we put another engine in and it would run wide open but that was it. I couldn't throttle it. It wouldn't take off, wouldn't do anything. To run across the bottom you had to lift a little bit. But I'm just tickled. We're making progress. A top four for us is a victory. We had an opportunity to run better, but as long as we're going forward that's all we're working toward.

With each replacement of parts, a car slowly becomes Chinese.

This is all testosterone here. It's tools. It's TV. It's stereo. It's cars.