It was 1967 and I was having the time of my life.  I had just discovered "girls" and I was obsessed with cars, girls, music and girls… you get the picture. The perfect evening combined all three elements with a fourth: food!  43 years later and not much has changed.

That summer, I made myself a lot of money, more in fact than any of my friends.  And it was legal.  I washed and waxed small aircraft down at Republic Airport in Farmingdale.  The aircraft owners had no problem paying me and my buddies $300- $600 for a small plane.  We could do two single engine planes in a day or one larger one.  All cash … and, of course I paid my taxes!

One day, while we were hard at work waxing away in the sweltering Long Island summer sun, a small topless car came screaming across the tarmac and stopped in front of a twin engine Cessna.  The driver/ pilot/ aircraft owner walked around his plane pointing out items of interest to his mechanic. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I found myself magnetically drawn to the little black car- a Porsche Targa.  I fell in love that day.

The car was like nothing I had heard or seen.  Its body was sensuous yet powerful, like a female runner.  That night, and for many to come, I would dream of slicing through the wind in my own little black Porsche, driving through the mountains of my mind.  One way or the other, the image of that car stayed with me.  In fact a few years later, I bought a framed poster of a black Porsche coupe with a whale's tail that I would hang on the wall of every office I worked in.