My dad, Don, was always a car guy. His dad was a car guy, his uncles and cousins were, and their kids became car guys. I am, belatedly, becoming a car “guy,” too.

The family story is that my dad’s first words were “doo pipes”—dual pipes. He has been buying and selling muscles cars since he was a teenager, and he worked in bodyshops his whole career. His meticulous restorations, on behalf of others, have been featured in magazines. A few years ago, I started bugging him to work on a car with me. Well, he could work on it, and I could buy and sell it. So when I was in Tucson, Arizona in the summer of 2022, I decided to look for a car. I found the Oldsmobile on our first full day in town, by asking around at the car wash I’d stopped into. It’s almost entirely original, except the seats have been reupholstered and some hoses have been swapped out. And somewhere in the two years since we had it shipped back to Wisconsin, we’ve caught the tinkering bug. My dad tuned up the engine, and he and I polished the chrome and cleaned up the door panels, and somehow it just never was the right time to sell it.

Now my husband and I are continuing to fix little things between taking it to local shows. So, we’re sharing our little updates on Youtube and Instagram. The car is for sale, but we’re not too sad that it’s still ours, for now.