Letter of the Month: Major Influence

"I’ve been reading your magazine since the beginning and like many of your readers, I too was hit by the car bug in the early 1970s. I bought a 1965 Corvette 327/365 in 1976, when I was 19, and paid it off by working in a casino (though I was going to college at the same time). I never sold the car and to this day it is still driven 30-40 times per year. I can’t remember the exact date when I caught the “bug,” but vividly remember when one of my future third graders did. It was in 2004, when Pierre was a kindergartner, and as I was leaving school one day in my Vette, he just stood there staring at my car with “the look” we’ve all experienced. Three years later, he was in my class and at this time he became even more addicted to cars. After  he left my school in the fifth grade, he still stopped by every year on my birthday to catch up. I retired from teaching in 2017 and left California for east Tennessee, but we are still in contact. I made out my will and Pierre will inherit the Corvette, all my tools that are in 70-year-old Snap-On toolboxes, and all the parts that I’ve saved. He is 22 years old and a mechanical engineering student. If you could have heard his voice