Cindy stood beside me clutch­ing my arm as I flipped the dead­bolt, opened the door, and point­ed my shot­gun at the chest of a black, angel-winged Led Zep­pelin tee shirt worn by a stranger. In his mid-twen­ties, tall, and thin with shoul­der-length blond hair and a hooked nose, he froze in the act of bring­ing a cig­a­rette to his mouth and stared at the busi­ness end of my twelve gauge as though he couldn’t quite fig­ure out what it was.

His look of bewil­der­ment slow­ly mor­phed into a scowl. He dropped the cig­a­rette and moved his hand toward his pants pocket.

“Don’t,” I said, lift­ing the shot­gun to aim it at his face.

He froze again and glared at me.

My fin­ger tensed on the trigger.

Nei­ther of us moved. Five sec­onds passed. Ten.

This stand­off occurred in 1976 in the mid­dle of the night at the back door of our apart­ment in Los Ange­les. When I signed on as an attor­ney with Lath­am and Watkins the pre­vi­ous sum­mer, we moved into a small apart­ment in San­ta Mon­i­ca. Six months lat­er, Cindy was preg­nant with our first child and we were search­ing for a big­ger place when a Lath­am lawyer offered us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take over her lease on the down­stairs unit of a duplex in Han­cock Park.

Estab­lished in the 1920’s, Han­cock Park is a spec­tac­u­lar­ly attrac­tive neigh­bor­hood near down­town LA.  Howard Hugh­es, Nat King Cole, and Mae West built pala­tial estates in the heart of the com­mu­ni­ty in the 30’s and 40’s, and Muham­mad Ali, Anto­nio Ban­deras, and Melanie Grif­fith lived there in the 70’s and 80’s. Cov­er­ing a 1.56 square mile area, the neighborhood’s typ­i­cal home is a large Tudor or Ital­ian Renais­sance-style house set back from a qui­et tree-lined street.

Upscale duplex­es sit on its west­ern bor­der. The Lath­am lawyer’s two-bed­room unit had a big liv­ing room, din­ing room, and kitchen, and nice­ly land­scaped lit­tle front and back yards. It was locat­ed on South Orange Dri­ve, a half block from the Third Street bus line, which I could take to Latham’s offices on Flower Street, free­ing up our car for Cindy when I was at work. Best of all, the rent was low and locked-in for two years.

We moved in that win­ter; our son was born in Jan­u­ary; and we came to love the place in all respects. Except one. An island of afflu­ence sur­round­ed by eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tressed neigh­bor­hoods in LA’s urban cen­ter, Han­cock Park expe­ri­enced a high rate of break-ins and bur­glar­ies on a per capi­ta basis, and once in a great while we’d hear about a rob­bery that turned violent.

I didn’t wor­ry about this much at the time because the odds were still heav­i­ly against some­one break­ing into our apart­ment. Han­cock Park’s ten thou­sand res­i­dents stood only a one in six hun­dred chance of being bur­glar­ized. I men­tion it here because the neighborhood’s rep­u­ta­tion for break-ins crouched in the back of my mind like an ugly lit­tle gar­goyle the night the stranger appeared at our back door, and it was part of the rea­son I con­front­ed him with a shotgun.

My back­ground played a sig­nif­i­cant role, too. I grew up in rur­al Vir­ginia. Most every­one in Sug­ar Hol­low and Brown’s Cove owned guns for hunt­ing wild game. They kept them close and knew how to use them. Bur­glar­ies on a per capi­ta basis in those neigh­bor­hoods were zero. If you were stu­pid enough to break into a house there, you’d be lucky to get out alive.

At two a.m. the night the intrud­er approached our apart­ment, Cindy had just fed our baby and put him in his crib. It was a hot night, and we had the win­dows open. Our bed­room was at the rear of the duplex next to our dri­ve­way.  As we lay awake try­ing to go back to sleep, I heard foot­steps tread­ing soft­ly on con­crete and saw the shad­ow of a tall man pass by our window.

“Who’s that?” Cindy whis­pered, alarmed.

The dri­ve­way was a nar­row lane between our duplex and the one next door. It led to our garage and a small back­yard that was walled in and com­plete­ly closed off from the lots around us. There was no rea­son any­one would walk down our dri­ve­way except to gain access to the back of the house.

I got out of bed and looked out the back win­dow. It was a moon­less night. I could bare­ly see the dark form of a man dressed in black stand­ing at our garage. He seemed to be try­ing to open its locked door.

“What’s he doing?” Cindy said.

“Break­ing into the garage.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans. The sin­gle-shot twelve gauge I used for hunt­ing in Vir­ginia was propped in the cor­ner of our bed­room clos­et. I grabbed it, retrieved a shell from our dress­er draw­er, and slipped it into the chamber.

Bare­foot­ed and shirt­less, I head­ed into the kitchen where the back door was locat­ed. Through the door’s win­dow I saw the man stand­ing on our stoop. Cindy came up beside me and wrapped her trem­bling hands around my arm.

The door­knob turned, but the dead­bolt held in place. The man twist­ed the knob again and pushed against the door.

React­ing with­out think­ing, I flipped the bolt and opened the door. The shell in my shot­gun was a num­ber five shot, designed for small game. It would inflict seri­ous dam­age to a man only at close range, so I thrust the muz­zle with­in inch­es of his chest. When he moved his hand toward his pock­et, I gave him a warn­ing and shoved the gun in his face.

It seemed like we stared at each oth­er for an eter­ni­ty. Then he raised his hands slow­ly. “I must be at the wrong place,” he said.

He gave me a long hard look, stepped off the stoop, and walked away.

I kept the shot­gun trained on him until he round­ed the cor­ner of the house. Cindy and I rushed out to the liv­ing room. From the front win­dows, we watched him walk out to the street, turn right at the side­walk, pass under a street­lamp, and dis­ap­pear into the night.

I let out a long breath.

We con­sid­ered call­ing the police, but we didn’t have much to report. The man tres­passed but he didn’t break in, and I wasn’t sure how the police would react to my shot­gun. So, we put the ugli­ness of that night behind us and went on with our lives.

About a month lat­er, the LAPD bust­ed a drug deal­er oper­at­ing out of a down­stairs apart­ment at the end of our street. The duplex­es on South Orange Dri­ve are sim­i­lar in archi­tec­ture. Floor plans repeat about every ten struc­tures. The dealer’s duplex resem­bled ours. My guess is our intrud­er was a user who came to “the wrong place,” as he said.

The reac­tion of my acquain­tances to my behav­ior that night is mixed. My gun con­trol friends point out that the man prob­a­bly didn’t plan to harm us and bran­dish­ing a shot­gun could have pro­voked him to react vio­lent­ly. I could have shot him, inten­tion­al­ly in self-defense or acci­den­tal­ly because I was scared. Either way, he would have died by my hand and my life would have been changed for the worse forever.

My gun rights friends say it was rea­son­able to con­clude the man intend­ed to break in and do us harm, and the police couldn’t have respond­ed to a call in time to pro­tect us. They main­tain I had the right to defend my fam­i­ly with lethal force.

Both view­points make sense to me.

Frankly, I don’t know if I did the right thing that night. I didn’t have time to think about my actions back then but reflect­ing on that con­fronta­tion now as I write this post, I’d prob­a­bly do the same thing again under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Right or wrong, with the safe­ty of Cindy and our baby on the line, I’d put my shot­gun on that guy’s chest and hope and pray it would be enough to make him walk away.

Post Script: Sev­er­al recent fol­low-home rob­beries that made nation­al news occurred in Han­cock Park. A home secu­ri­ty cam­era taped the most brazen inci­dent where two men fol­lowed a mom push­ing a baby stroller into her dri­ve­way and robbed her at gunpoint.

I army-crawled under the house and point­ed my flash­light at the far cor­ner. Through the haze of gold­en dust motes and sil­ver spi­der web­bing, I saw the alu­minum duct lying on the ground. My goal was to reat­tach it to the bed­room floor-vent above it.

In my sum­mer job as a plumber’s helper, I’d crawled under hous­es before. Musty, filthy, insect-infest­ed, dark­er than a moon­less night, it was nev­er a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence, but the under­side of this ante­bel­lum manse was the worst so far. Since its con­struc­tion, the ground had shift­ed and the ancient floor joists had warped. In some places the clear­ance was less than six inches.

Slith­er­ing along on my bel­ly, I came to a joist that blocked my path. I scooped out a trough in the dirt, rolled over on my back, and scuffed for­ward. I pushed my head through, but my chest wouldn’t clear. Squirm­ing around, I got stuck so tight­ly I couldn’t move. Pinned like an insect on a poster board, I was fight­ing off claus­tro­pho­bic pan­ic when I heard a dry rustling sound to my left.

Alarmed, I cast my light in that direc­tion. A black snake lay coiled an arm’s length away, star­ing at me, its eyes glow­ing like lit­tle dia­monds, its tongue flick­ing in and out.

Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines ophid­io­pho­bia as the “abnor­mal fear of snakes.” The genius who put the word “abnor­mal” in there obvi­ous­ly nev­er squared off against a snake under a house.

I tore all the flesh off my chest lurch­ing out from under that joist, set a land-speed record for a man crab-scut­tling on his back, and flopped through the crawl­space open­ing into the twi­light. After check­ing to make sure the black rac­er hadn’t fol­lowed me, I col­lapsed on the grass, my heart pound­ing as loud and fast as the ket­tle­drums in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

This all went down at the tail end of a long hard day. Weeks ear­li­er, the plumber, my boss, had land­ed a sub­con­tract installing air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems in a hous­ing devel­op­ment in Char­lottesville. He trained me to run the duct­work and rough-in the vents, then hired Gilly Fra­zier and told me to teach him to do what I did.

Among the hun­dreds of peo­ple I’ve worked with over my long life, Gilly ranked at the bot­tom in intel­li­gence. Six­teen years old, five-five and 120 pounds with flam­ing red hair and a freck­led face, he sport­ed a cast on his fore­arm his first day on the job. When I asked about it, he said his dad­dy took him and his broth­er, Floyd, to a wrestling match in Char­lottesville where some char­ac­ter named Mad Dog jumped off the ring’s turn­buck­le onto an oppo­nent lying flat

on the mat. Floyd came up with the bright idea of reen­act­ing the match in their back­yard, where­upon he jumped off a fence post onto Gilly’s fore­arm, snap­ping it like a brit­tle stick. “Floyd’s a dum­b­ass,” Gilly said, dou­bling over in a fit of gig­gling, bliss­ful­ly unaware that the big­ger dum­b­ass might be the broth­er who lay still while Floyd’s size twelves came crash­ing down on his arm.

Gilly said he dropped out of school because it was a “waste a time. Don’t larn noth­in’. Cain’t fig­ger what they’s talkin’ ‘bout.” He couldn’t fig­ure what I was talk­ing about either. He for­got every­thing I told him before I could fin­ish telling him. With Gilly in tow, I had to work twice as hard to keep up with our pro­duc­tion schedule.

Despite Gilly’s help, I’d fin­ished installing an AC sys­tem by quit­ting time that day when the plumber got an emer­gency call to repair the AC in an invalid’s bed­room in the old manse, drove us there, diag­nosed the prob­lem, and sent me under the house while he and Gilly wait­ed in the bed­room at the AC vent.

I was still stretched out on the grass try­ing to recu­per­ate from acute ophid­io­pho­bia when the plumber and Gilly walked up on me. In his late for­ties, short and paunchy, the plumber was a good guy, but he oper­at­ed on a tight bud­get and slow-downs on the job lit his short fuse. When he found me lying flat on my back in a cata­ton­ic stu­por on his nick­el, he exploded.

“What the hell are you doing?” he boomed.

I strug­gled to my feet. “I ran into a snake under there,” I said defensively.

“What hap­pened to your chest?” he said.

I looked down to see crim­son blood­stains on my t‑shirt and felt the sting of abra­sions for the first time. I told him what hap­pened. “There’s not enough clear­ance,” I said. “I couldn’t have made it to the duct even if the snake hadn’t showed up.”

The plumber’s tem­per usu­al­ly cooled as quick­ly as it flared. This blast fol­lowed the pat­tern. “Sor­ry I yelled at you. We’ll put dis­in­fec­tant on those cuts when we get home, but first we’ve got to find a way to fix the AC. Old man Wood­son can’t breathe in this heat.”

The plumber knelt and flashed his light in the crawl­space. “The snake’s gone, but you’re right about the clear­ance. You can’t make it back to the cor­ner.” He peered into the space for a while, then stood, and turned to Gilly. “It’s a tight fit, but you’re skin­ny enough to slip through.”

Gilly’s eyes widened. “It’s too dark,” he said.

“Take my light.”

Gilly swal­lowed hard. “I cain’t do it.”

“Don’t wor­ry about the snake. He’s long gone. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

“I ain’t scared a snakes.”

“Good. Then crawl under there and fix the duct so we can go home.”

His face twitch­ing, Gilly backed away. “I don’t want to!”

The plumber’s tight-bud­get vol­cano erupt­ed. “The hell with what you want! I pay you to do what I want! Get under there! Now!”

It was obvi­ous where this was head­ed. In the month we’d worked togeth­er Gilly told me things he was ashamed to admit to most peo­ple. I knew why he couldn’t crawl under the house. I could tell the plumber and save Gilly’s job, but I’d car­ried him on my back like a dead body all day every day since he’d been hired. Stay out of it, I told myself.

I don’t think it was the tears slid­ing down Gilly’s freck­led cheeks that got to me. More like­ly, it was the cumu­la­tive effect of a string of tell-tale signs: a pur­plish healed-over scar above his eye I’d noticed his first day of work, a dis­col­ored knot on his fore­head that came and went a week lat­er, red marks that encir­cled his throat short­ly after that, and my grow­ing doubts about his plas­ter-cast story.

“He’s afraid of the dark,” I said to the plumber.

“Who asked you to butt in?” the plumber shout­ed, turn­ing on me.

“Gilly’s afraid of dark enclosed spaces,” I said even­ly. “He has vivid night­mares about being locked in a clos­et all night long.”

A look of con­cern came across the plumber’s tense face.

“He dreams about that dark clos­et every night,” I said, giv­ing the plumber a long, know­ing look, hop­ing he’d pick up on my sus­pi­cion that Gilly’s night­mare wasn’t just a dream.

We both looked at Gilly. He kept his head down and said noth­ing. The plumber stared at him for a long time, then knelt down, and flashed his light under the house.

“The duct’s on the ground right below the vent,” he said. “The line’s joints held togeth­er.” He looked up at me. “You think we can recon­nect it from the bedroom?”

I thought about it. “We should be able to reach it from above. If I can lift the line and nail the duct to the joists with­out the joints pulling apart, it’ll work.”

“Give it a try.”

It worked.

The next day, the plumber assigned Gilly to the senior man on the AC sub­con­tract. A few days lat­er, he told the plumber Gilly was untrainable.

I thought the plumber would fire him then, but instead he put him on a job run­ning water lines and lay­ing sew­er pipe. Tra­di­tion­al plumb­ing is more straight­for­ward than heat­ing and air. Most of what you need to know springs off the trade’s three pri­ma­ry rules: “Hot on the left; cold on the right; and s*** don’t run uphill.” I hoped Gilly could catch on to it. When I left to return to UVA, he was hang­ing on to the job by his fingernails.

Three years lat­er, I ran into him at Wyant’s Store in White Hall. He still worked for the plumber and was liv­ing on his own in Brown’s Cove. I didn’t see any fresh tell-tale signs.

As I watched Gilly’s beat-up pick­up rat­tle off down the road to Crozet, I thought about the plumber pay­ing him good mon­ey he couldn’t spare week after week, refus­ing to give up on him, stub­born­ly deter­mined to unearth what­ev­er tal­ent lay buried deep down inside that sad kid.

It made no sense from a busi­ness stand­point, but like I said, the plumber was a good guy. Real­ly good.

Post Script: The fear of snakes is among the most com­mon of the 120 rec­og­nized pho­bias, afflict­ing 56 per­cent of adults, while Gilly’s fear of the dark, Nyc­to­pho­bia, and its first cousin, Claus­tro­pho­bia, each plague about 12 per­cent. Some extreme­ly rare pho­bias must be dif­fi­cult to cope with, like Bara­pho­bia, the fear of grav­i­ty; Omphalo­pho­bia, bel­ly but­tons; Opto­pho­bia, open­ing your eyes; and my per­son­al favorite, Hip­popo­tomon­strose­quipedalio­pho­bia, the fear of long words.

I was tool­ing down Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve in my two-toned beige and brown 1954 Hud­son Hor­net when smoke bil­lowed from the hood. I hit the brakes; the Hud­son lurched vio­lent­ly to the right; the front tire rammed into the curb; and the engine stalled out.

I hopped out and slammed the door. The air was thick with the scent of burn­ing rub­ber as steam­ing yel­low-green coolant gushed from the Hudson’s front end and streamed along the curb to the gut­ter. I let out a long dis­gust­ed sigh.

By then the tow truck com­pa­ny occu­pied the top spot on my cell phone’s speed-dial direc­to­ry. Con­nie, my fre­quent com­mis­er­a­tor, picked up on the first ring. “That old crate’s cost­ing you a for­tune,” she said. “You ough­ta sell it.”

“No one in his right mind would buy it.”

“You did.”

“Proves my point. How long a wait this time?”

“Lester’ll be there in twenty.”

I pock­et­ed my phone and leaned against the front fend­er, brood­ing yet again about the rash deci­sion that got me into this mess. Years ear­li­er, my broth­ers and I bought a bro­ken-down 1954 Hud­son Hor­net for our dad. A Hud­son deal­er as a young man, Dad con­sid­ered the Hor­net the best car ever made. Restor­ing his Hud­son became a labor of love for him and us. See The 1954 Hud­son Hor­net.

If the sto­ry had end­ed there, I would have lived hap­pi­ly ever after, but noooo. After we bought Dad’s car, my broth­er sent me the link to an ad on E‑Bay for the sale of a 1954 Hud­son Hor­net in Los Ange­les. In the pho­to­graph it looked in near-mint con­di­tion. I made an offer con­di­tioned on an inspec­tion. My bid stood alone at the dead­line, so the sell­er and I arranged to meet in a park­ing lot in Cul­ver City.

Replac­ing a burned-out tail­light tax­es the lim­it of my auto­mo­tive exper­tise, so I hired a young mechan­ic, Brad, to go with me. When we pulled into the lot, a hulk­ing giant with a shaved head, sausage neck, and ugly scar slash­ing across his fore­head stood beside the Hudson.

Brad looked under the hood while I tried to make con­ver­sa­tion with the heavy. “You restore it your­self?” I asked.

“Man who fixed it up owes me mon­ey,” he said in a grav­el­ly voice. “You buy it, he’s off the hook.” From his angry scowl I gath­ered he planned to break the man’s legs if I didn’t fork over the dough.

“Looks okay,” Brad said, “but we should test-dri­ve her.”

“You can test-dri­ve her all you want after you pay me,” Mr. Con­ge­nial­i­ty snarled, “and there won’t be no refund.”

Stu­pid­ly, I paid him.

The radi­a­tor boiled over twice on the way home. Brad found some pin-holes and sol­dered them. It over­heat­ed again, so he slathered sealant over the whole thing.

Then the brakes start­ed pulling hard to the right. Brad fixed them. They did it again. He fixed them again. They did it again, and he fixed them a third time.

On the short dri­ves to and from Brad’s shop, acces­sories spon­ta­neous­ly fell off. A door han­dle, the radio aer­i­al, the Hud­son emblem on the grill, the winged hood-orna­ment, the dec­o­ra­tive chrome space­ship affixed to the trunk. These babies cost from 50 to 500 smack­ers each on the Hud­son Club web­site, which was the only place you could buy them.

My repair costs exceed­ed the Hudson’s pur­chase price by the time the Hud­son stalled out on Hunt­ing­ton Dri­ve that morn­ing when the fresh­ly sealed radi­a­tor boiled over yet again and the thrice-fixed brakes jerked to the right.

While I was wait­ing for Lester and the tow truck, a shriv­eled-up ancient woman limped out of the Wells Far­go Bank and squint­ed at my car. “Is that a Hudson?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shuf­fled clos­er to it and peered in its rear win­dow. “When I was a young girl, me and Bob­by Dugan had us some fun in his daddy’s Hud­son,” she said, gig­gling like a teenager.

This sort of thing is a com­mon occur­rence when you own a Hud­son. Hud­sons are chick mag­nets. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the chicks they attract don’t still have their own teeth. Judg­ing by the wist­ful smiles of the sweet old ladies who admired my car, myr­i­ad roman­tic trysts involv­ing cou­ples born between World Wars I and II took place in a Hudson’s roomy back seat.

“I’d give you a ride in her, ma’am,” I said, “but she’s broke down.”

“Under­stand­able. She’s near­ly as old as I am.” She touched the front fend­er gen­tly. “Thank you for the mem­o­ries,” she said in a soft voice. Still smil­ing, Bob­by Dugan’s long ago para­mour turned and hob­bled slow­ly down the side­walk to Starbucks.

Lester towed the Hud­son to Brad’s shop. He “fixed” the brakes again. Since he couldn’t find any­thing wrong with the radi­a­tor, we tried a dif­fer­ent engine coolant. On the way home, the inte­ri­or rear-view mir­ror fell from its mount and shat­tered on the floor­board. I drove to O’Reilly Auto Parts in San Gabriel to see if I could pick up a replace­ment on the cheap. The elder­ly clerk who wait­ed on me was famil­iar with Hud­sons. When I men­tioned my recur­ring boil­ing-over adven­tures, he asked if he could take a look.

Out in the park­ing lot, he unscrewed the Hudson’s radi­a­tor cap and turned it over in his hand. “This is your prob­lem,” he said. “Belongs on a Hon­da.” He rum­maged around in the dis­con­tin­ued parts room and found a 1956 Oldsmo­bile cap. “It’s sim­i­lar to a Hud­son cap,” he said. “It ough­ta work.”

It worked. Cost me $2.56. Brad’s face turned fire-engine red when I told him.

After that, the Hud­son ran great and noth­ing fell off. For about a week. We were chug­ging up Sier­ra Madre Boule­vard when the engine sput­tered. I head­ed for home in a pan­ic. Miss­ing bad­ly when I pulled in the dri­ve­way, she conked out twen­ty feet from my garage.

Mad as hell, I stomped into the kitchen and unleashed a pro­fan­i­ty-laced rant about my piece-of-crap Hudson.

“Maybe it’s out of gas,” Cindy said.

“It’s got plen­ty of gas!”

“How do you know? Thought you said the gas gauge was broken.”

“I put ten gal­lons in the damned thing two weeks ago!”

“It’s a big car. Maybe it guz­zled it up.”

“Look, I know what I’m talk­ing about! It’s not out of gas!”

“Okay, okay. I was just try­ing to help.”

Cindy’s sug­ges­tion was ridicu­lous! The Hud­son had been sit­ting in the shop almost full time since I pumped in that ten gal­lons, for pity’s sake. Just to prove I was right, I filled a five-gal­lon can at the sta­tion, poured the fuel in the Hudson’s tank, got behind the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition.

It start­ed right up.

I sat per­fect­ly still for a good five min­utes, star­ing blankly through the wind­shield, pon­der­ing betray­al, humil­i­a­tion, and the futil­i­ty of life in general.

“How’d you fix the Hud­son?” Cindy asked when I slouched back into the kitchen.

“The sol­id lifters were stuck,” I said. “I greased up the cams and lugs.”

“That’s great! I didn’t real­ize you knew so much about cars.”

“Yeah, well …”

Tak­ing care not to make eye con­tact, I retreat­ed to my home office, cranked up the com­put­er, and put the Hud­son up for sale on E‑bay.

No bid­ders. I cut the price in half. Still no action. Two more cuts brought me down to rock-bot­tom, but even bot­tom-feed­ers wouldn’t take the bait.

I began to think the Hud­son had become my Red Chief. In O. Henry’s short sto­ry, The Ran­som of Red Chief, a cou­ple of mis­cre­ants kid­nap a boy to extort a ran­som from his rich dad, but the kid is such a holy ter­ror the dad is glad to be rid of him and won’t pay. When the kid pre­tends he’s the fierce Red Chief, ties one of the kid­nap­pers to a stake, and sets his pants on fire, the bad guys end up pay­ing the dad a healthy sum to take him back.

I was on the verge of offer­ing a cash reward to any­one will­ing to take the Hud­son off my hands when a young cou­ple fell in love with her. They were friends of ours so I almost warned them off.

Almost.

I mean, come on, that car was dri­ving me nuts. Besides, the hus­band was a heavy equip­ment mechan­ic and had the skill to keep her run­ning, and just in case he couldn’t keep her run­ning, I gave them the Hud­son for free.

So in the end this sad tale turned out well for every­one. The loan shark got his cash. The mark didn’t get his legs broke. Brad made a lot of mon­ey. The Hud­son found a hap­py home. The young cou­ple is still over­joyed with her.

And, most impor­tant­ly, I’m over­joyed with­out her.

Post Script: Even smart suc­cess­ful peo­ple make trag­ic mis­takes. Jay Leno’s col­lec­tion of 169 cars includes a whole bunch of Hud­sons. His net worth is esti­mat­ed at $450,000,000. For now.