From 
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUponCompletely Captivated
When I was a child growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, in the late 1950s, I lived in constant fear of horses, cats, dust, shellfish and tomatoes. My allergies to seemingly benign things were so severe that I spent much of one year in the hospital, running a high fever. Doctors never really knew what caused it, but finally put it down to an overloaded immune system. By the time I was seven, I'd had enough needles to last a lifetime, and I didn't relish thrice-weekly allergy shots.Our family physician was a kind but gruff old bird, and I didn't know what to think about him. He breathed noisily through his mouth, and asked me all kinds of questions about school and my dreaded violin lessons while he passed the cold end of a stethoscope across my chest. I didn't care much for his bedside manner, nor for his run-down office in what was then an old people's part of town. Yet I readily went, not to improve my health, but because I knew I'd get to see, parked along the curb, his automobile: a 1952 MG-TD, a British ragtop with plastic windows, spoked wheels and preposterous running boards.
My heart leapt. It was romantic. It spoke of overseas adventure. It was class and sports-car status. I was completely captivated. And I swore that one day I, too, would own one.
Years later, the worst of my allergies over, I was a journalism major at Stephens College, in Columbia, Missouri. And in 1971, for one semester of my junior year, I was lucky enough to study in England, which jump-started my running-board dreams. Not a day went by that I didn't see an elegant little MG-TD tooling about the countryside. But such a car was impractical in Kentucky, where I would surely return after college. Where would I find parts for such an exotic, 20-year-old runabout? And who would work on it? I filed my MG imaginings away as a silly obsession.
Then in the late '80s, I sold my book Golden Girl, a biography of Jessica Savitch, to Hollywood. The rise in my income, accompanied by a story about the movie-rights sale in a local business paper, triggered an IRS audit. It came in 1992, just as I was moving away from my parents and buying my first house, a jewel box of a home designed by a famed regional architect in a timeless neighborhood. Even though I had paid my taxes, I was terrified of what would happen. I decided not to buy the house, but since I was already packed, I moved in with my best friend, Judy May, then a Louisville investment banker, until the matter was resolved.
Advertisement 
Your Comments
See all
...