I learned to drive only at the age of 18. My father was a stern man who had little patience with modern attitudes, so I didn’t even approach him about getting a license. Many of my friends had cars, so it wasn’t a very pressing problem. One car I especially remember was a 1948 Plymouth coupe, belonging to my best friend, Dick Cattrysse. "The gray limousine looms through the night," I’d intone, as he picked me up to go out cruising. My girlfriend, Ernie’s daughter, had a fabulous 1956 Mercury hardtop convertible. It also had an automatic transmission. That was very important. Learning to drive was a snap in that boat. I really liked that car, and not just for its ease of driver education. There are elements of auto-eroticism here. This picture is very much like it.

          But my lack of driving skills had already caused me genuine grief. In high school, Dick and I worked at a Wrigley’s supermarket. The manager of the store, a huge fat man named Warren, was extremely irascible. He liked me, but he generally found it difficult to be kind. On Saturdays he bought his own week’s groceries for his large family. One of the packers would have to take a list around the store before closing and fill the four or five carts with items, then check them out. Often, I did this. When I had bagged them -- at least ten bags! -- Warren tossed me the keys of his car, a hopelessly beat-up, broken seated slum of a 1950 Ford. "Bring it over to the lot," he said. (Being a good manager, he didn’t take up valuable parking space in the store lot, but parked a block away.) Usually, it was Dick who brought the miserable jalopy around, but he wasn’t there that day. I was fearful of Warren and his temper, but also a hotdog. I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t know how to drive; besides, I thought I did know how to drive. It was winter, icy. I ran to get the car. I got it going all right, but when I turned into the lot I wasn’t in the right gear and the car stalled. It slid back onto Mack avenue on the ice. A passing car struck Warren’s car broadside and wrecked it. I wasn’t hurt. I remember fearfully telling Warren what happened. To my surprise, he merely shook his head and said, "At least you weren’t hurt." The other managers for the Wrigley’s chain thanked me; they hated riding to managers meetings in that old heap when it was Warren’s turn to drive. Now he had a new car.

          After the romantic loss of my `55 Ford, I made a really stupid purchase: a Renault "Dauphine". France’s silly response to the Volkswagen challenge. What a wretched piece of junk! I replaced the transmission and many other parts. It wasn’t stable on the road, especially ice. Ernie didn’t approve of it, but by then I had split with his daughter, so I wasn’t taking my trade to Ernie anyway. But why would a Detroit boy buy a Renault? It was some kind of rebelliousness. But I learned one thing: the French can cook circles around the Germans, but a sauce don’t have wheels.

          I got out of the service in November, 1960, and I bought a 1959 Chevy Impala (thanks to a loan co-signed by Dick Cattrysse, who took a loss for several years, until I paid it back). It was a beautiful, silver-gray car with elegant fins that resembled Batman’s cape when he leaped through space. In 1962, with my friend Dan Cotler, I drove this car from Detroit to San Francisco, down to Tijuana, back up to Seattle, and home via Montana and the upper peninsula of Michigan. We felt like Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It was a great trip and it convinced me that I should live in Montana. But first I had to prepare myself for life, some way to make a living out west. I had been working for the AFL-CIO, but I didn’t think that would get me far in cowboy country. I went to Wayne State University, thinking I’d get a teaching permit, but that didn’t really appeal. I studied English lit, instead. I stored my car in a garage -- it needed a valve job -- and forgot about it, literally: I never reclaimed it.

          After four years of night school, I gave up and moved to my boyhood home in Kingsley, Michigan (about 250 miles north of Detroit, near Traverse City), my father very kindly bought me a new Volkswagen beetle. It cost about $1800, in 1965. I was planning to be a writer. I’d met Jim Harrison up there and he was making a living as a writer, sort of. After one starving winter, I decided to be a carpenter, instead. This VW was pretty tough: one night I rolled it, but except for a lot of dents and the need for a new windshield, it kept running. But I had to spend five days in jail for failing to report an accident. (The judge was convinced I’d been drunk.) Jim Harrison brought me some books to read, including Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave, and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Inspiring reading in my depressed state, but I read both of them in a day.

          After a couple more years, writing in the winter, building houses in the summer, I decided to be a wildlife biologist. I used the G.I. Bill to go to the University of Montana, in Missoula, to get a degree in wildlife biology. I drove the battered VW out there, in 1968.

          I married Ruth Baum, a nice Jewish girl from Detroit, in Missoula. By 1970, we had a daughter, Sarah (Buzzy), and I had bought a newer VW bug. I went to Iowa, to the Writer’s Workshop, in 1971. The marriage broke up and I bought an old Chevy pickup truck and drove it back to Montana, now with an MFA degree, but still no novel, although I’d written a mystery novel, with the help of David Morrell. This novel was never published, although parts of it became The Blind Pig.

          While I was in Iowa I had bought Ray Carver’s old 1964 Falcon convertible for $50, but he could never provide a title. I drove that back to Montana and got away with an out-of-date California license for awhile, but one day I was stopped by the Missoula County Sheriff. Thank heaven, it was my brother! He said there was an indication that the car was stolen and advised me to park it behind the barn up at Annick Smith’s ranch, on the Blackfoot River, where I was living and writing my second mystery novel, The Diehard (the first to be published.) The Smiths used it for a hay feeder, for awhile, and then had the county tow it away.

          I went down to southern California, in 1975, to build houses, and when I learned belatedly that Random House had bought THE DIEHARD, I bought a great old Ford pickup, a 1964 V-8, and drove it back to Montana.

          In 1978, I married again, to Cinda Purdy, and we had a son, Devin. We were living in Butte, my second novel -- THE BLIND PIG -- was out, Jack Webb was planning to make a film of it, when my wife was killed in a plane crash. Devin and I moved to the Bitterroot Valley.

          I still had the `64 Ford pickup, but now I sold Cinda’s `76 Toyota station wagon and bought a brand-new 1981 Toyota Corona. It was my first new car. Tracy Kidder was visiting me for some trout fishing when a guy ran into the new car, while it was parked on the street. The insurance company didn’t want to total the car, but it would take $3500 to fix. I sold it and bought a new, 1984 Toyota, a bright red, low-slung Celica. It was great!

          Being a little flush at the time, I was happy to pay back my father for the Volkswagen he’d bought me. Here was a guy who had worked in the auto factories all of his adult working life, first at Dodge Main, then for Plymouth for many years, and finally for some twenty years at Pontiac. He was a machine repairman, a skilled position which meant he was rarely if ever laid off. He always bought cars like the `52 Buick, or later, an Oldsmobile 98. When I offered to buy him a new car, he chose a Volkswagen Jetta! Go figure.

          Eventually, my literary prospects having dried up (Jack Webb had died without making the movie and no one seemed to want GROOTKA, or any of the subsequent novels I started), I was living with a nice woman named Janet MacMillan. When that relationship folded, I gave her my Toyota and took her old Datsun pickup. I still had the old Ford pickup, but I reluctantly sold it. I still see it running around the valley -- it has a great decal for Arabian horses on the driver’s door. An indomitable vehicle.

          Eventually, GROOTKA was published by Countryman Press’ imprint, Foul Play Press. Dell bought my paperback rights and I was back in business. My house burned down in 1990, on Christmas Eve, and I was able to buy a 1989 Toyota pickup, black, with the extended cab. The Atlantic Monthly Press published HIT ON THE HOUSE, I wrecked the truck, quit drinking, and bought a crappy white `73 Datsun pickup, which my son now drives. A few years ago, thanks to the publication by Grove/Atlantic of DEADMAN, DEAD FOLKS, and most recently, MAN WITH AN AXE, I’m happy with my 1994 Toyota pickup, blue with an extended cab. This is a great car. After my recent peregrinations to New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, etc., it wears its 109,000 miles effortlessly.

          One day, perhaps when GROOTKA, or maybe, my new novel, LA DONNA DETROIT, is sold to the movies, I’ll buy a new Jeep Cherokee. More likely, I’ll keep the pickup and buy the Cherokee for my darling, Jean, with whom I now live in Missoula.