It was the autumn of 1969, rustling leaves fell lazily from the trees, signaling the end of summer—and what a summer it was in the small town of Everett, Massachusetts; a tiny suburb of Boston. Back then, jobs were plentiful for a teenager. Pumping gas was an easy score, especially when your dad was the one on the books. I just helped out for 50 cents an hour. Little did I know that pumping gas and smelling like it would change my life forever!

Larry Shinoda, designer of the second generation Corvette, is mostly to blame for what happened next. My first long stare at his iconic “stingray” design burned images onto my internal hard drive decades before such terms came into vogue. That’s the day lightning struck and a slow IV drip of Sunoco 103 changed the chemistry and PH in my platelets forever!