During our senior year at Cal Poly University, in California, I shared an apartment with my friend Reed, who built a ‘54 Mercury, bored and stroked. Fastest car in Pomona back in 1962. Reed was and is an automotive genius.

I gave up hot cars as a primary interest and hobby for awhile, pretty much missing the muscle car era while raising a family, make a living and all that during the 60s.

Nevertheless, photography and photojournalism brought me plenty of excitement from 1963 through the 80s, particularly as a photojournalist and publisher during the Vietnam war.

But that’s a whole other story.

After getting discharged from the U.S. Army in 1958, I took the couple hundred bucks I had saved up and bought a slightly used 1957 Chev Del Ray two door hardtop.

First thing to go was the turbomatic transmission, which I replaced with a 4-speed from an almost-new wrecked ‘59 Chevy Impala.

That wrecked Impala was a beauty, with a 348 ci  that had powered my new 4 speed. I’ll never forget how beautiful she was, all bright red with fender skirts. I heard that the driver barely escaped with his life, after drag racing on Tustin Blvd., in Orange County California.

I’m sure I was much more careful … (drag racing, who me???)

What about cars? I admire all kinds of cars, but particularly love hot rods. It may be another link to my youth, but my goal in the next couple of years is to buy or build the perfect rod to enjoy during my retirement years.

My first was a 1940 Ford Coupe with a Chrysler C300 and 39 Packard transmission. Had her diego’d. When I shifted into 2nd at 90mph I could smoke her tires.

In 1955 Chrysler dropped a dual-carbed 331ci Hemi –the most powerful production V-8 engine of its day — into a two door Chrysler Windsor. This was arguably the first American musclecar.

It was on the sands of Daytona Beach in 1955 that a C300 posted a 127.580 mph two way average in the flying mile, more than 7 mph faster than its nearest competitor.

I was about four years old when I took my first photograph, back when the Las Vegas strip consisted of a few casinos with hitching posts in front.

Every Saturday my parents would drive from Henderson to Las Vegas. My mother would go grocery shopping and my father would head for the Silver Dollar Casino to play poker. (He was a brilliant mathematician and man of few but important words. He usually won the grocery money.)

One afternoon, we were standing outside the window of the Silver Dollar Casino watching my dad and three other men inside at a poker table. My mother handed me one of those Kodak Brownie box cameras and told me to take a picture.

In the 1980s, I was going through my father’s personal things and found that photograph. My dad was sitting around the poker table with his buddies — cowboy hats, cigarettes and six guns lying on the table.

Even though I was very young, I clearly remember the day, and I’ve treasured the photograph ever since I found it. In this digital age, many of us capture more images than we can store and manage, but film was precious then.

This is a perfect example of how capturing a priceless moment in time can preserve its emotion forever.