My father had a friend growing up named Don. He was loud and obnoxious, and his views on race fit in very well with the dominant views on race in northern Indiana. He also owned a Shelby Cobra. I don't know how he afforded it but he had one. If he wasn't an alcoholic by high school, he was within a few years afterwards. One time my father rode with him down to the Indy 500. Back in those days, spectators could park inside the oval. They watched the race and when they walked back to the car, there was a gold Shelby Cobra parked near where they parked. Don was admiring it. Don never stopped talking. As he was admiring it and going on about it, a black man walked past, said hi, got in the car, fired it up, and drove away. Don fell silent. They walked back to his car. Finally inside, Don broke the silence: "Yeah, that was a pretty good colored guy."
Years later, my father, Don, and Don's son, Clint, were in a boat, doing some crappie fishing on the Wisconsin-UP border. Don was as loud and obnoxious as ever, and his alcoholism was clearer. We were out in the boat and he was bragging about his boy and talking up his knowledge of everything. I was just sitting there fishing, trying to ignore him. He said something about Clint as a bald eagle flew in from the west and, maybe 20 yards from the boat, snatched a fish and flew right over us and off into the horizon. That was the second time in his life that Don fell silent. My father and I joked that by the time he got back to Indiana, the story had changed to, "That damn eagle swooped down and picked up Clint, and I hit him with the paddle to get Clint back."
Many years later, my father went to a high school reunion, and Don was there. After all those years, he finally sobered up, had a new wife who was nice, and all the loudness and obnoxiousness had vanished. There had been a normal, decent guy underneath the surface all those years.
I don't know what happened to his Cobra.