“Dad, what’s that?” our two boys piped in chorus as we drove home from school one day in 2004.
“An old MGB,” I said, slowing to pass the sad relic, with a hand-lettered sign wired to its windscreen: ‘For sale, $500.’
“Can we buy it?”
It was 20 years since I last owned a sports car, but the dormant worm had stirred. I called the number.
On my daily jog I had often glanced at the car, unmoving under a dusty tarp in a south LA backyard just blocks from our house; now I stood puzzling at the B-less street.
When the MG’s owner emerged, his jaw dropped.
He soon determined the city had towed the non-functioning vehicle for being parked on the wrong side on the wrong day, so we reconvened at the impound lot.