Chapter 1

It was without a doubt the best Christmas present of my entire life. My older brother Jeffery had shipped out with the Marines to a new duty station, this time overseas to Japan and he had gifted me, a few weeks before Christmas, his pride and joy – a 1967 Chevy Camaro convertible! She was pure vintage Detroit steel and muscle, with the biggest rocket engine the factory could put in her in those days, a whopper of a 396 cu in (6.5 L) V8 engine. He'd tinkered with her all year long wanting to turn her into a mega-street racer, but with very mixed results. Yeah, almost just like the Springsteen song Racing in the Streets, except the one in the song was a sixty-nine Chevy and this didn't have Fuelie heads or a Hurst on the floor. Probably only because my brother hadn't finished screwing up this gem of a car to quite that degree just yet.

He'd bought the car in nearly pristine condition with his saved up pay from his last tour in Iraq and then he decided to 'upgrade' it, piece by piece ... screwing it up at every step along the way. In fact when the car was delivered to me she wasn't even drivable!

To make a long story short, he'd decided to replace the original 2-barrel carburetor with a 4-barrel Holley so he'd taken off the old intake manifold and replaced it with a 4-barrel one from a later model Camaro ... and then realized he'd reached his automotive level of incompetence while installing the new carb. Rebuilt rather incompetently, it leaked gas like crazy and his engine caught on fire twice after that. Now the car was a mess inside and out (it also leaked engine oil under the dashboard due to an indifferently installed aftermarket oil gauge my brother had left dangling) and he'd totally lost patience and interest in the street racer project. Now it was my problem to deal with!

Actually, my older brother and I weren't all that tight so he probably thought he was having a laugh at me, dumping me with his completely screwed up restoration project that he'd run out of time, pocket money and ambition to deal with. He was five years older than me and was only just now getting his life and shit together, deciding to re-up with the Marines and go career. He wasn't the college type (barely getting through high school) and he was genuinely proud of me for my recent graduation from college with a double degree in both business and petroleum engineering. Tops in my class, Valedictorian even.

It wasn't fair really; I had gotten all of the brains in the family (and the more pleasant personality) and even in a soft economy I was apparently going to be doing pretty well in life, considering all of the calls from corporate recruiters I'd been getting lately. Jeff had been an ass for most of his teenaged and early adult life but the Corps had straightened his shit out, mostly. Big brother was going to become a pretty decent NCO and likely have a respectable and full career far away from home and his troubled past. I think by gifting me his beloved car this was a last step to turning a page in his life and career, putting the dodgier parts of his past behind him and maybe there was even a token of 'I'm sorry for being a shit to you, kid brother', but I wouldn't take any bets on that.

If nothing else, I'd soon be earning the kind of big bucks that could put this one last mess of his back to rightness once more. It would have to wait though, until I completed my internship and hopefully had accepted a permanent job offer ... or better yet the highest of several competing offers!

Right now, being a semi-starving and mostly unpaid intern, I didn't have much for money, but at the moment I really needed this car ... and absolutely had to get it minimally running. My old Nissan Stanza was on the verge of another major breakdown and the sixty mile trip back and forth to work (well ... internship) each way was a killer.

The Stanza immediately sensed that she had competition for my affections and promptly snapped her timing belt the very next day, bending two of her camshafts and several of her rocker arms in the process of her final violent death spasms. I promptly sold her 'as-is' for cash, enough to get maybe the minimal necessities required to get the Camaro rolling again.

While I wasn't much of a do-it-yourselfer, I did have an old high school friend who was sort of a shade tree grease-monkey, or at least competent enough to help me bolt the old two-barrel intake manifold back on, with the old plain factory (working) carburetor still mounted and injecting gas without starting engine fires, at least in theory.

It was worth the case of beer I'd promised him for his labor and nine hours and four trips to the local auto parts store later I had the Camaro running. Not well, mind you ... but she was at least now firing on most of her eight cylinders. Enough to hold together for perhaps another week and with luck, perhaps two.

She did, barely ... but I could tell that under new and more enlightened ownership she was now determined to cling to life.

Being a semi-starving unpaid intern learning the process hands-on at a local petrochemical plant of a big corporation, and even getting my hands rather dirty at times with actual work, I was rather surprised the Friday before Christmas to get summoned to our regional district corporate office in Clear Lake City for a day long series of rather high-pressure interviews with groups of directors and even VP's from both the upstream and downstream divisions of the company. I was clearly being considered for permanent hire now that I had my degree, but I couldn't quite figure out by exactly whom, or for what sort of job it would be.

Finally, late in the afternoon I was hustled into one last final meeting, but not with the HR department. Instead, one of the local division presidents wanted to eyeball me and provide a few more probing questions.

"Mike, your Process Manager, Bill, has spoken well of you and told me rather bluntly that we'd be foolish to let you get away from us after your internship ... or even allow you the opportunity to solicit any competing offers. Most of the folks who've spoken with you today share that opinion." He paused for dramatic effect, but I didn't think there was much of a question there being asked of me, so I just kept smiling and tried not to look too horribly shocked or surprised and waited a few moments for him to continue.

"So, would you have an interest in remaining with us? You'd remain, at least for now, here working in production at the Texas City plant but when Bill says you're ready you'll be in line for a promotion, probably project management related at another plant or production unit. Would this be of interest to you?"

It was!

Frankly, the rest of the interview, which was really only a few minutes longer, was mostly a blur. The salary offer was absurdly good, generous even for any starting position straight out of college. There was even a signing bonus, a check for $10,000, probably more than enough to fix up my car and even make her purr!

The final surprise was an invitation card to the executive Christmas party to be held the next evening, Saturday night at a very fancy restaurant/club right on the bay near Kemah.

"Dress sharp!" He extorted, while handing me the party invitation and shaking my hand to welcome me to the company. "You're with our team now and this will be your first chance to meet the rest of the management group from the division office here and show them why we've got high future expectations for you. And you should certainly bring something pretty with you to dangle off your arm as well!"

That part was going to be a bit harder, especially on short notice. Currently, I was without a girlfriend, and I wasn't on good enough terms with my last ex to call her for an emergency favor. I'd have to go to the party solo, but at least I could claim that I'd received too short of an advance notice to arrange for a date.

The corporate bonus check was from a local big bank and surprisingly I had no difficulties cashing it first thing that Saturday morning immediately when the bank opened. With ten grand cash in hand, and a vintage Camaro right on the verge of dropping her entire exhaust system onto the freeway, I headed to my final destination, Hamilton Motor Restorations in Stafford, way out on the southwest side of Houston, over an hour away.

Almost immediately after being gifted with this car, I had been in somewhat of a loss to figure out exactly what to do with her next. Fixing her up myself was entirely out of the question. Sure I'd graduated tops from a prestigious engineering school (Rice University, the 'Harvard of Texas') but I was definitely not an auto mechanic. So I'd asked my semi-mechanically inclined friend for advice and he'd talked to his friends in the business and nearly everyone had come to a consensus.

"They're fairly new to the business, younger fellows I hear, but they're earning a great reputation for primo work on old cars. If money is no object and you want the job of fixing up a vintage car done right (i.e., not fast or on the cheap) and with the right vintage parts, then take it to Hamilton."

The 'but' caveat of the equation was that the Hamilton brothers were both considered to be certifiably crazy, nearly impossible to deal with, and didn't perceive the universal concept of time quite in the same way that most other sane and rational people did. Getting something done by next week was laughable, and even finishing a project by the next month was only slight less dubious.

I thought I could deal with this. With the bonus money in my hot eager hands, I could leave up to a $5k deposit, take a taxi to the nearest mega used car lot on the nearby freeway and buy an older Honda or something to use for cheap reliable transportation for the next three to six months. If it took them longer ... fine. I'd be working and earning a pretty good paycheck and could buy or lease something better and nicer then if necessary. I could even save the Camaro for weekend fun. This would give me options.

Sure enough, the Hamilton brothers were both absolutely, certifiable, complete, and total fruitcakes. The only thing missing was the festive holiday box from my grandmother! As for their customer service skills, on a scale of one to ten I'd rank them as a minus seven! In fact, I never even quite made it out of my car before the pair of them came outside to look me and my ride over ... and didn't think very much of either of us!

"Hey, asshole!" The taller, darker haired brother bellowed at me as he looked over the Camaro, "just what the fuck did you do to this glorious set of wheels?" He was a tall weedy looking guy that looked to be in his mid-thirties and perhaps just about as sharp as a sack of wet rice.

"Yeah," the other added, "you raped this bitch good! Someone let you borrow daddy's tool set?" This brother was a bit shorter and stouter and probably three odd years younger. He might be able to count to 21 without unzipping his pants but he'd definitely fallen off of an ugly tree (one of the taller ones) and had hit every branch on the way down.

"Nah," I commented, keeping my tone low and impersonal, "my shit of an older brother did all this, probably while my dad was otherwise busy boning your mom."

These should have been fighting words but I'd been warned about these two idiots. They would invariably insult you ... so you then should respond by insulting them right back. Supposedly this would gain their respect, minimally ... in theory anyway.

"Bodacious ride! I hope you worked him over with a tire iron for the way he worked over the body and the interior. Is the engine as bad or worse?"

"Worse, probably laughably so. She's a classic Greek tragedy exported from Detroit. There are more parts in the truck too, probably some original and some not but who the fuck knows at this stage. I want her fixed to cherry – perfect, not just 99.99%."

"Righteous! That we can do, if you've got the green ... and I'd definitely want to keep her that factory forest green paint job! Chevy only did this tone of forest racing green for some of the early test and production models in 1967 and switched to a slightly lighter shade of paint for the rest of the year and the two later first gen models. The factory name for this paint is Mistletoe Green, so I'd bet that you have a really early model, one of the first few hundred or so that rolled off the assembly line!" It took some research later, but he ended up being exactly right! My leafy green Camaro was in fact the 97^th car produced.

"It's not easy being green, but it'll do fine. It's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be." When in profound doubt, you can't go too badly by quoting Kermit the Frog. "Can you make her something of a priority? I'd hate to see her age out in the back with all of the junkers."