I parked at the bottom of my widowed father’s driveway and just sat there and listened to the robins. The driveway ran past the side of the little stucco house where I’d grown up and into the backyard, where the garage was open. Inside was a classic car with its hood up. The neighbors weren’t even awake yet, and my father was already working.
He’d run Slim’s Service and Gas for thirty years, and now he was retired and worked out of his home. Everyone in town knew him and knew that he fixed only American cars and accepted only cash, “so the criminals in Washington can’t steal a dime.”
