The moment I walked into my new office’s Christmas party at the Studebaker Museum on Chapin, I wanted to leave immediately. My coworkers had so often mentioned “Studebaker” that I couldn’t help to be aware that it had once existed, and that its vanishing had left scars on the skin of the city and on the psyches of its inhabitants.

In the summer of 1969, I was ten years old, and I spent it doing two things: playing marbles and waiting for Sunday. I liked Sundays because of Crimson and Clover and drives to the lake.