car auction in Upland or someplace nearby. My roommate Larry agreed to go out with me to pick up the gold-painted beauty. The auction lot was closed but my car was in an accessible area, so in we drove. Larry said he wanted to drive the Porsche home ("I know manual shifting better than you," he boasted). So off we went. And we were within a mile of home, going up the I-5 Freeway, when a sudden cloud of smoke enveloped the Porsche. Neither of us thought to check the oil level. OF COURSE the auction would have sold a car with full oil in the crankshaft, right? Ummmm . . . guess not. The Porsche made it home, smelling like a barbecue pit. There were many more misadventures with that car, including the time a mechanic lost a bolt for the aluminum engine block. Porschie found the bolt though, when the engine blew through the hood. And the time we went up to the mountains to look at Comet Hale-Bopp and I was riding in the back seat and came home with a bad case of carbon monoxide poisoning. And when I finally sold that car, and it was on a flatbed tow truck . . . it somehow slipped off and fell into the street with a thud.