It wasn’t just the idea of owning a sporty car, something that said “I’m a man” to every right-minded American boy. It was the idea of making it, of being successful, of living a life a boy would be proud of. But it was also, all those years later on a country road outside Sioux City, the idea of home. There was something about a 1953 Studebaker Commander that was tied up with memories of apple strudel and fishing holes and Spook the dog in his little wagon being pulled behind a young boy’s bike.
“I want that car,” Glenn told the driver of the flatbed truck.
“I don’t think so, friend,” the driver said. “That car is rusted through. Hasn’t run in years.”
“I still want it,” Glenn said. A few hours later, the Commander was sitting in a garage just down the street from Glenn’s mother’s house. That afternoon, Glenn must have circled it twenty times, just following the lines with his eyes. It was as bad as the flatbed driver had said. Maybe worse. Glenn knew he’d found the project of a lifetime.
The first thing he did was sand off the rust. There’s nothing like an outer layer of neglect, that old dead skin, to make a car seem beyond repair. Chip away the rust, and you know what you have left. Holes can be fixed easier than people imagine. You just have to take the time to figure out where they are and how deep they go. Glenn took the time. He ground every spot of rust, until he was staring at the metal below. Then he repaired the holes. The 1953 Studebaker Commander is a mid-century sportster, reminiscent of the cars Sean Connery drove in the old James Bond movies, and Glenn bonded and sanded the car until the body was smoothly curved and secret-agent sleek.
He removed the engine. Then he dismantled the block so that the bent, broken, and rusted pieces could be inspected and thrown out if need be. He worked slowly, attending his divorced-fathers meetings in the evenings, fingering his guitar at night, saving his money for parts. He bought intake valves from an old Ford; exhaust valves from an Oldsmobile; pistons from a vintage Chevrolet. He’d walk out of the garage, light a cigarette, and stare into the night sky, thinking of his grandmother’s kitchen and his father’s beloved Buick. After a while, he’d snuff his butt and head back to work, grinding down fenders or scrubbing out cylinders. He worked every crevice, checked every flap and valve. It took more than a year, but when the engine block went back into the Studebaker, it was completely rebuilt and spotless.
His next task was to hook it all up. The drive shaft, crank shaft, wheel axles, steering column, everything had to work together. Glenn scrubbed out and rebuilt the connections bolt by bolt and joint by joint. Two years into the project, the key turned in the ignition, the engine revved, and the wheels rolled. He took the car to the corner store. He drove it to a divorced-fathers meeting, his guitar shoved in the backseat, and showed it off to his daughter Jenny, although he wouldn’t take her for a drive. Not yet—the car was still too dangerous. There were brake lights but only a partial electrical system, no paint on the sanded body. It may not have been pretty—not yet—but the Studebaker could breathe again.
A few weeks later, Glenn was under the dashboard, humming to himself and working on the wiring, when he felt something drop onto his chest. He looked up—nearly banging his head on the underside of the dash—straight into the eyes of an orange and white cat. The kitten was small, probably six or seven weeks old, and he was staring at Glenn with his head cocked to the side. Glenn had no idea where the kitten came from, but there was something about the color of his fur that reminded him of the Studebaker when they pulled it out of the weeds.
“Well, hey, Rusty, how are you?” he said, petting the kitten softly on the head.
The cat nuzzled Glenn’s palm. Then it went back to staring. Finally, it lay down on Glenn’s chest and began to purr. After a minute, Glenn shrugged and went back to work, the banging of tools and Rusty’s rolling purr the only sounds in the empty garage.
The next night, the kitten was waiting when Glenn arrived. When he held out his hand, the cat walked over and rubbed against it. “Good to see you again, Rusty,” Glenn said. Rusty looked at him with his head cocked, then meowed. “All right, all right,” Glenn said. “I hear you.” When Glenn slid under the dash, Rusty once again jumped on his chest and curled up for a nap. The next night, he was there again. After a week, Glenn realized the kitten was sleeping in the Commander, waiting for him to arrive. He started offering him sandwich meat or bites of his snacks. Rusty sniffed everything avidly; he ate most things aggressively.
“Want to come to my house, Rusty?” Glenn asked one night. He had taken to talking to Rusty like an old friend while he was tinkering. Rusty had gone from staring with that curious head tilt to talking back. The cat always seemed to have something to say.
“Not interested?” Glenn asked when Rusty didn’t follow him out the door at the end of the night. “That’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Glenn had a way with animals. As a child, he tried to bring home every stray that crossed his path. Jumper, an energetic Labrador, lasted only a few days before Glenn’s father took her to a friend’s farm. Glenn found a terrier bleeding on the side of the road and carried it to his basement. He gave it water and bandages, and when it survived the night, he named the dog Rocky. A year later, his old owners spotted Rocky playing with Glenn and reclaimed their dog. Soon after, Spook followed Glenn home. When Glenn’s parents moved twice without telling him—once to an apartment in the same building, once to a house down the block—it was Spook’s barking that told Glenn where to go. In Texas, he even befriended the lion owned by his friend (the lion later went to a zoo, but it was the 1970s; I guess lions lived in suburban Dallas houses back then), and the two of them would ride around together in Glenn’s Pontiac Grand Prix, the lion’s head hanging out the window on one side, his tail hanging out the other side.
So Glenn wasn’t surprised when, a few nights after his first invitation, Rusty followed him home. Unfortunately, Glenn’s mother already owned a cat. A mean, ornery, standoffish cat. The year before, Glenn had found and rescued it after five weeks trapped in an abandoned cistern—it must have licked moisture from the walls and eaten bugs to survive, which is a great story for another time—but still, that cat wouldn’t do him any favors. There was no way, just from pure territorial cussedness, it was letting Rusty into the house. Rusty was a good-size kitten, and he was the only one of the two cats with claws, but he wasn’t a fighter. Not from fear or submission, he just . . . he didn’t have an aggressive personality. He was a “live and let live” kind of cat.
Glenn apologized to Rusty, told him he could go back to the garage with the Commander, but Rusty decided to settle on the porch. He was always there when Glenn went to work, and he was always there when he came home in the evening. After dinner, they would walk together to the garage to work on the Studebaker; Glenn even considered, once or twice, bringing him to a divorced-dads meeting. That summer, the city started major repairs on Court Street, the large road beside Glenn’s mother’s house, so Rusty and Glenn got in the habit of walking nine blocks through the construction zone to Bill’s beer bar. Rusty waited outside while Glenn grabbed a drink. Half the time, when Glenn came out, Rusty had made a friend.
“This your cat?” the woman would ask—and it was almost always a woman.
“Sure is.”
“He is so cute. And friendly.”
“Yep,” Glenn said. “That’s Rusty. He’s a cool cat.”
Eventually, autumn arrived, and the days got shorter. Court Street reopened to traffic, making it too dangerous for Rusty’s walks. Glenn joined a band, just a few old friends jamming out the blues, and started spending a few nights away every week. Rusty took to jumping on the porch railing of the house, then onto the kitchen window frame to stare at the warm rooms inside. Every night, as he prepared for bed, Glenn saw Rusty watching him. When they made eye contact, the big orange cat always started meowing and scraping his paw on the glass.