How I Recovered a Stolen Car

Not that it has much to do with my actual family history, but it makes a corker of a family story, and it's all true.  I know because I was there and experienced this stunning bit of serendipity.

It was the fall of 1965; I had graduated from high school in the previous June, and was a freshman at Florida State University.  I went home for my high school's homecoming game, and a friend who was a senior at the high school asked if I would give her a ride to the game.  She then asked if I would also take a friend and classmate of hers.  Of course, I was happy to do both.  More = merrier, right?

As I was getting ready to go, our neighbor across the hall in our two-up-and-two-down apartment building knocked on our back door.  When Mom answered the door, our neighbor, a young single woman, declared frantically that her car had been stolen.  We asked her to describe it; it was, she told us, a dark blue Volkswagen beetle. 

So I went and picked up my friend Martha, and we then headed over to her friend's house, which was only a few blocks from her own house.  When we got there, there was a dark blue Volkswagen beetle sitting in the front yard.  We went into the house, and I asked Martha's friend's parents if the beetle was their car, wondering why it was sitting in the yard instead of the driveway.  No, it wasn't their car.  Then the dime dropped:  "I think I know whose car it is."  Receiving the parents' permission to use their phone (we did not have cell phones in those days), I called Mom and asked her to ask our neighbor for the license number of her car.  I got that, and went out to the VW and checked -- the numbers matched.  After explaining the situation to Martha, her friend, and the friend's parents, I called the county sheriff's office, as the house was located outside the city limits at that time.  I explained the situation and told them where to find both the car and its legal owner.  We all, including the sheriff's deputy I talked to, concluded that some teens had swiped the car and used it for a joyride.  Having run out of gas, they sputtered to a stop in the front yard of Martha's friend's house, and took off on foot.

Then my friend Martha, her friend, and I went to the game and had a great time.  By the time I got home, our neighbor had her car back.