Model Cars

I first met Greg Cooper when I was eight years old, but I don't remember that much about the experience because my dad, Alex Wilton, carried the conversation while I, Trent Wilton, watched, enthralled by the display of model cars on Mr. Cooper's shelf. Greg Cooper was the sole proprietor of Cooper's Automotive Supply, and dad was there to get some parts for his 1968 Buick Riviera. That car was his pride and joy even if it was eighteen years old at the time. (Yes, I was born in 1978)

The next time I remember meeting Mr. Cooper was some five years later, in the summer between grade seven and eight. Most of my friends were busy playing baseball that summer but it held no appeal to me, and my dad, an accountant through and through, told me if I wanted more model cars I would have to earn the money for them myself. Working for mom doing chores did not ring my bell, so on that late June afternoon I found myself at the counter in Greg Cooper's store. At first Mr. Cooper didn't think much of my application for a summer job, but when I explained that I would do anything and would take some car models in trade he smilingly handed me a broom.

That was the beginning of what would be an ongoing relationship and eventually a friendship that stood the test of time. By the time I was fifteen I was spending almost all my after school hours and Saturdays at the store. I had graduated from sweeping floors to unloading boxes, stocking shelves, and even occasionally serving customers. Sharing my father's love of automobiles the work was actually a joy more than a job, and Greg was a great motivator. I had graduated from building model cars to working with my dad on restoring a 1942 Chevy he found in an abandoned garage. As an employee I got all my parts at a big discount, which I only realized much later was because Greg wanted to encourage my love of cars, especially old ones, which was the second passion of his life. The first was his wife, Anita.

Finishing the '42 Chevy that summer, my dad sold it for a pretty nice profit and when he split the profit with me I had my first real grub stake. I had been saving every cent I made for the two years I worked for Greg, but with the money from the Chevy I had enough banked to start on my own, and I was a very focused person. Mom and dad had both drilled into my head from a very early age that I was a smart kid, but smart wouldn't get it done without hard work and focus. While my contemporaries were chasing girls or experimenting with drugs I was reading success stories and looking for ways to start building a nest egg for collage. Dad and Greg both helped me get started by finding a rough '56 Bel Air two door post that I would have passed over. It became my first big solo project and netted me almost fifteen thousand dollars. I thought I was rich! I was sixteen years old, it was 1993 and I had nearly twenty thousand dollars in the bank.

By the time I graduated from high school in 1995 I had used that money, together with Greg and Dad's connections, buying and building late '60's muscle cars that were becoming rare finds. I had left Chevys behind because they were too plentiful and specialized in MOPAR, building two hemi Chargers in two years, mostly because my grandpa was a huge Dodge fan and let me use his shop for free. It was during my senior year in high school that two events coincided to decide a big part of my future. The first was the death of my grandfather Willis, my mom's father. At his death he left me and my Mom his car collection and his shop. Mom insisted on selling the three cars, grandma's '66 Dodge Coronet, Grandpa's '69 Chrysler Imperial four door hard top, and the car of his dreams, a 1968 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda that had never been driven on the street. That 'Cuda began another relationship that lasted for years, because my parents took some rare vacation time and we loaded the Plymouth on a trailer and drove from our home town of St. Louis, Missouri, to Scottsdale, Arizona, to the famous Barrett-Jackson auction. There was, even then, a lot of excitement about an original, numbers matching, '68 Hemi Barracuda, because Chrysler only made 50 of them, strictly for racing, in a partnership with Hurst. When Russ Jackson found out that a 17 year old kid brought the car in he made a big deal about it on stage and we got to spend some time together. It also bumped up the price we got for the car by about $40,000! Over the years I became a regular at those auctions, and my friendship with both families has been a treasured relationship.

The shop mom transferred over to me, free and clear, along with 1/3 of the money from the cars, which was considerable. Combined with my own banked earnings, I now had more than enough money to get me through university without any help form my parents, and leave enough for a good start on life afterwards. That was the plan, but...

The second life altering event of that year happened just before school ended, Greg Cooper had a heart attack. His doctor warned him to slow down or the next one would make his wife Anita a widow. In response Greg decided to sell the Auto Supply store and semi-retire. I had a long and at first hopeless discussion with Dad, and over a couple of weeks of tireless number crunching convinced him to help me make Greg an offer. I would buy a 50% interest in his store, work thirty hours a week minimum, while going to Washington University in St. Louis, where I had already been accepted to earn a business management degree, rather than science, which had been the plan. The schooling issue was my concession from dad, the thirty hours would give Greg some time off, and the money would allow him to feel better about his financial stress.

If I thought convincing dad and Greg was a hurdle, you can imagine what my first trip to our bank did to my self-confidence. They had never heard of a seventeen year old kid coming in to arrange a business loan for seventy-five thousand dollars! At that time in our small mid-western city you could buy a nice house for that price. I calmly sat down and showed the loans officer my business plan, and the fact that I was personally coming up with the other hundred and fifty thousand in cash that my $225,000 investment required. Because of my age the bank insisted that my parents had to come in and co-sign the loan. My father, to prove a point, would only sign for twenty-five thousand, telling the bank they needed to take some risk for the interest they were charging. They balked, but after Mr. Cooper offered to co-sign for another twenty-five thousand as well, the bank came through.

While I went to school I averaged well over the thirty hours a week, often doing my homework at the service counter or in the office of the store. By my second year in collage I was busy using my course materials to modernize things in the store and looking at ways to cut costs and increasing productivity. Greg liked the people part of the operation much more than the financial part and it showed in our bottom line. I was able to find several new suppliers, get better payment terms, and shorten ship times along with getting better prices and increased efficiency by automating our inventory. I my junior year Greg and I bought out our biggest competitor, a muscle car and hot rod shop that had gotten in financial trouble by holding way too much specialty inventory. They were great guys, loved cars, and were horrible businessmen! I LOVED THE DEAL, GREG HATED IT. Greg at one point threatened to pull out of the deal, worried that we were getting in over our heads and would have the same problem the current owners had. I made him a proposal. I would personally guarantee to move all their inventory at no worse than a break even on cash flow, and do it within one calendar year. Greg agreed and the deal went ahead, with his insistence that while our store front business would remain an equal partnership, my new idea of selling remotely, which he didn't understand nor want to, would be an 80/20 split. It would be my risk, but also my reward.

I went on line to start moving inventory that we didn't even officially own yet. We instantly became Cooper Classic Parts.com and it was perfect timing. The idea of on-line sales was just beginning to catch on. Over the next couple of years we were shipping specialty auto parts all over the country and even to Europe and Australia. My grandfather's shop became our shipping office and when I graduated with my diploma in 1998 we had forty employees and were netting well over half a million a year. My bank loan was long paid off and I had started investing some of my spare income into buying stock in other companies that were catching on to internet marketing, which I believed was the future of consumer commerce. I also started buying more of Greg's shares each year. I had bought the first half of the company for $225,000, although Greg owned the building separately. When I bought the last shares Greg still owned, after I had finished collage, the value of half the company was about ten times what it had been. Needless to say, we were both very happy!

I had been using our company as a sample project in many of my term papers, showing how modern approaches to just in time shipping, fanatical quality control, and the advent of on-line shopping were revolutionizing our business. My next big venture was to turn a portion of Cooper's into a high-end hot rod flea market of sorts. Sellers could list the parts they had on offer, complete with photos, and buyers could browse for hard to find items for free. I had everything set up by make, model, and year to simplify the shopping experience. We also included a separate area on our site for questions and comments. The back yard builders loved it and it became a huge drawing card, helping us to sell our auto parts, and making us a considerable commission on the swap and shop portion of the site. The sellers paid us a commission and small listing fee, the buyers only paid us a $1 handling fee that was integrated into their shipping cost. It was an overnight success. There were so many baby boomers now in their late 40's and 50's with lots of disposable income, and many of them were looking back to their youth and the great cars they'd always dreamed of. So many of those cars needed restoration and we became the go-to people for anything from the late 1950's to early 70's. I got so busy I almost missed my graduation.

My senior marketing prof cornered me one day near end of final term and asked if I had given thought to applying for my master's degree. I told him that while I recognized it would be nice to have, I was gearing up for full time work in the stores, as we were in the process of leasing our third location. Dr. Penny, who had become one of my biggest cheerleaders, made me an offer I literally couldn't refuse. If I'd share what we were doing with his sophomore class, as an occasional guest lecturer, he would credit the hours at double time toward my master's degree, and if I promised to write a detailed synopsis of all our changes from day one and my take on which were adding value vs those ideas that proved a net minus, he'd submit it as my thesis. Effectively, I would have my masters in one year of working a bit better than 10 hours a week. It thrilled my father, who still thought I should get serious about my education and at some point would get over my fascination with cars. I couldn't understand his concern, because he never had!

This bit of good fortune brought another big change to my life, Marguerite Elaine Townsend. Gorgeous, bright, funny Rita. Rita was no playboy model, although I knew, once I got to know her, that she was a beautiful woman. She had chestnut brown hair, which she normally wore in a bun, was about five foot six, with grey-green eyes framed by wire rimmed glasses, and was maybe slightly overweight, and that disguised a very curvy and lush body. But she had a smile, when she allowed it to show, that was electric. The problem was, that smile was very difficult to tease out of her. Rita took herself, and her studies very seriously. Being a female economist put her at an instant disadvantage in a post graduate environment and she had been burned badly romantically by a colleague before we ever met. Dr. Penny assigned Rita as my liaison during my master's program. She was half way through her doctoral thesis on the misuse of Keynesian Economics at the time and was hoping to stay on as an associate professor, working her way up the ladder of academia one rung at a time. As we spent more time together in the early months of autumn, things just sort of fell into place without us ever really even acknowledging the changes. It went from my submission sessions to occasional lunches, from there to working dinners.

One afternoon after she had seemed to enjoy tearing my submission to shreds I screwed up my courage and asked her if she'd consider a date. Nothing fancy, but we had discussed movies we'd each like to see and agreed on "The Matrix". To my great surprise Rita said "Yes" and my life lurched into a new gear I never knew existed.

A night at the movies led to an evening of dinner and dancing, and with Mom's quick lessons in our living room, I survived it! I guess Rita figured I wasn't hopeless because we kind of got into a habit of going out most weekends. It was another movie night that changed everything. Rita's night to pick the flick, and she chose Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut". When we got out of the theatre Rita was wired and we spent a long while steaming up the windows of my Charger. I was approaching my 23rd birthday, still living at home with my parents, and still a virgin. Rita danced around my naiveté for a few days after the movie night, then announced we were spending the following Friday night together, and directing me to get a hotel reservation and some condoms! I was as nervous and inept as a dog on roller skates, but Rita was everything I ever dreamt of and oh so much more! As she revealed herself to me, in all her womanly glory, unwrapping that luscious body, those amazing full breasts with their delightful pale pink nipples standing proudly on her chest, her slightly rounded and soft belly leading downward to that lightly thatched garden of delights between pale milky thighs, a soft and well-rounded ass that was heaven to hold and massage, she helped me overcome my lack of experience in a night of wonder and delight. I fell in love with her, not just because she had an amazing and wonderful body, which she certainly did, but because she was this wonderful, warm, caring, patient, funny woman who also happened to be gorgeous and a firecracker in the bedroom. If that wasn't more than enough, Rita loved cars, especially fast cars. Growing up, her Dad wanted her to watch golf and tennis, but in her usual independent spirit she had preferred watching NASCAR. This brainy, beautiful, driven woman not only accepted my love of old cars, she really got into it, and we had heated discussions about the relative merits of supercharging vs turbos, big block engines throwing out massive torque vs the newer style of smaller high revving dual overhead cam power plants. What a woman!

From a mentor to a friend, from a sounding board to a girlfriend, from a fun date to finally spending a glorious night together, this woman changed my life forever. By Christmas we were becoming inseparable, talking nearly every day, sleeping together at least twice a week as we learned together how to listen to the signals our bodies were giving one another, and spending more and more time talking about the future. In early November I rented an apartment and moved out of my parent's house to give us a better place to be than a hotel room. Rita also started joining me for my early morning jogging sessions, which did marvels for both her slight weight problem, and much more importantly for her mental toughness.

We agreed to meet each other's families over Christmas. My dad was instantly in love with Rita! Somehow his son had latched onto a young woman who was seriously smart, highly motivated, and very well educated! I don't think he would have batted an eye if Rita had been born with three arms or weighed two hundred pounds! Of course she wasn't either of those, to my great joy! Apart from her towering intellect she was just a very nice, personable, and caring individual, which won my mom's heart over in no time at all. Rita tried very hard to fit into our middle class home, and no one in my family ever guessed that she came from a rich, high society family. It was that family that we visited the next day, and that was almost a wrecking point in our young romance. Her father, Gerald P Townsend, was a senior bank executive in a large mid-western regional bank, fortunately not one that we did business with, while her mother sat on the board of directors for a large insurance company that Rita's grandfather had been a founding partner of. While my family was well off by middle class standards, and I was personally doing very well, her family was really quite wealthy by a whole different yardstick, very well connected in St. Louis society, and they were inordinately proud of their status. It took only a few minutes for me to be acutely aware that an "auto parts salesman" was not what they had hoped for in a suitor for their daughter. After nearly an hour of constant put downs, I was on the verge of walking out. Rita had just returned to the family room from helping her mother in the kitchen, and after about three minutes she picked up on the tension in the room and just blew up. Calling her mother to come from the kitchen, my wonderful girlfriend read her parents the riot act, informing them how she had been received in my parents' home and contrasting it to the boorish behaviour of her father and older brother, who had steadfastly ignored my presence. Then she took my hand and we walked out, leaving her parents stylish mini-mansion behind, and my apprehensions with it. Angrily, Rita indicated that she would make her own decisions, and that she didn't need her parents blessing for her life. She had been the rebel of her family for years, although a very serious one. Her father hated her career choice, and refused to finance one cent of it. Professors don't make the kind of money their family craved. Rita, financed by the trust fund her grandparents established, walked away from her parents' control, allowing her the freedom to make her own choices, and one of them was me.

We continued to see one another nearly daily, and just after she submitted her doctoral thesis in April we moved in together, which caused somewhat of a stir in both our families, although for vastly different reasons. In my case my parents believed in marriage, not cohabitation, and let me know quite forcefully. Of course they knew full well that Rita and I had been "together" for quite some time, but now that we were no longer students, but responsible members of society, we should act accordingly. In Rita's case it was all about "slumming" with a guy who did not meet their social expectations.

With Dr. Penny's endorsement Rita was accepted on staff at Washington as an associate professor of economics, starting in the fall. In anticipation, I had hand built a 1/12th scale model of a 1969 Camaro. It was Rita's favourite muscle car. I painted it candy apple red and put it out on the dining room table for her to see when she got up. Walking into the living room from the bedroom she laughed at my idea of a suitable gift for a newly minted professor, until I took her by the hand and walked her to the front window, where she could see the real thing waiting for her in the parking lot! I presented my wonderful girlfriend with a slightly modified candy apple red Camaro convertible. It sported a 427 cu in corvette engine linked to a six speed manual transmission, an upgraded suspension system, four wheel slotted disc brakes, and a custom white leather pleated interior with matching white roof. What can I say, no one is perfect, and in spite of my preference for Mopar, my lady loved a hot Chevrolet! Her shriek was probably heard three blocks away and it is still the fastest I have ever seen Rita get dressed. She was shedding night clothes all the way to the bedroom and emerged moments later in a pair of painted on jeans and a tee shirt. We went out for a ride in her new car, which had her drooling and chirping the wheels at every green light. She definitely did not look or act like a PHD candidate college professor. While she was distracted with her new toy, I managed to pop the emerald ring down beside the shifter. She didn't notice until the next red light and then she almost dropped the clutch. We had to pull over on the side of the road where she launched herself across the seats. The future Dr. Townsend beamed that smile I adored!