IMPALA, SOMEWHAT STEALTHY

SOME KIDS PLAYED SPORTS AFTER SCHOOL. S Some were buried in homework. Others went out and found trouble — or made it. But from the age of eight, Barry Blomquist of La Crosse, Wisconsin, was bound to his dad’s used car business. “Bob Blomquist Used Cars in La Crosse was a small operation — we only ever had 20 cars at any one time, and we had a three-bay garage. And when I was eight years old, in the mid-1950s, Dad went blind.” From then on, Barry became his dad’s eyes — and, to a degree, his hands — at the shop. “It was very much sink or swim then,” he recalled. “If you grow up on a farm, you learn how to milk the cows; it’s part of the drill. So after school I’d head straight to the garage; by the time I was 14, I was a decent mechanic, and I also did paint