“It was my father’s car," boasted Joe Russo, over the clamor and tumult of the bustling city street. "It was his prized possession. Straight off the assembly line in Auburn, Indiana,” Russo said as he stared at the long-expired license plate and took a drag from the last Marlboro in his pack.

“1935 Auburn Speedster? She’s a real beaut’ I'll tell ya,” Russo’s longtime friend, Gene Clemons, whistled. “Never actually seen one of these in person, you know. Your old man must’ve had them beaucoup bucks,” he quipped, rubbing three fingers of his right hand together.

“Well that was a long time ago. Years ago. I was never part of that life,” Russo frowned as he kicked a few black pebbles strewn about on the pavement below him, with his hands entrenched into his pockets. It was September 1951. Russo and Clemons were both ironworkers. Their faces were worn and weathered beyond recognition; shrouded in powdery soot and grime. They personified the dirty toughness of Manhattan’s lower east side.

Russo lived by himself in a two-room tenement. That is, once he was left all alone after the mysterious disappearance of his wife some years earlier. It was a bleak, blue-collar existence.

Joe Russo never knew his father - Giovanni Russo, or “Capo Gio.” He spent the majority of his childhood far away at upstate military academies, and his father was never home anyhow. Capo Gio died under peculiar circumstances in September 1936, when young Russo was only twelve years old. His questions about his father and how he died were never answered. It was a closed coffin funeral, though. That much he recalled.

Not having a present father caused a pain that he was never able to evade. It followed him all the way to the foxholes of the Hurtgen Forest in 1944. Some of the other soldiers he met in Europe talked about things they did with their fathers, such as birthday parties, Sunday double-headers at Yankee Stadium, and driving lessons. Russo had none of those stories. He had been alone for nearly his entire life.

Russo’s wandering mind drifted to his mother, Maria Russo. She died of heart failure a few months before, living alone on the family’s former Long Island estate. He saw her only a select amount of times after Capo Gio’s death. There was never any connection. She was an emotional wreck and did not want anything to do with her son. It had been more than eight years since he last saw her face. Reflecting on his current situation, Russo could only bring himself to shake his head as he billowed smoke into the air.

He had spent all morning sifting through his father’s office in the cavernous old house that overlooked the sound. He realized that his mother had little financial means left when she died. Russo had to arrange for the sale of the house. He had a surplus of money left over, allowing him to purchase a decent apartment at 55th and Lexington. He also had the Auburn, in its glistening yellow, though he knew it was too impractical for the city and he would have to sell it. Until then, however, Russo figured he would enjoy driving it around the city for a week or so. His first stop was his job site in the Flatiron District. He drove it there to show Clemons and his other buddies.

It was Clemons’ incessant chattering that finally shook Russo away from his own memory.  “This big ol’ thing is in mint condition, Joe, not a single mark or scratch on her,” Clemons hooted as he poked around the car. It looked completely out of place parked on the curb surrounded by all the Bel-Airs, Oldsmobiles, and Fairlanes. Truly a relic of a bygone era. 

Clemons added while chuckling, “You know, something else, I’ll bet this thing’s got enough horsepower to fire off all on its own.”

“Well, anyhow,” Clemons said, changing the subject, “I’d say life gave you a Mulligan, my friend.” 

“What’s that?” Russo asked.

“You know, it’s what golfers call a do-over when they hit one out off the course,” explained Clemons. “You got that new palace uptown and you’re gonna get yourself a pretty penny when you sell this car. All that money’ll let you live large now. That’s a Mulligan. You’re a lucky man, let me tell you.”

“If only that was true, Gene,” Russo objected through his cigarette.

He went to check his watch: nearly 5:30 pm. “Alright, better get outta here before the rat-race rolls through,” he said. With that he exchanged waves with the other ironworkers, and started the ignition on the Auburn.

He was anxious to drive up Lexington Avenue in the most eye-catching car in all of the boroughs of New York City. Before pulling out into northbound traffic, Russo took another look at the leather briefcase on the seat beside him. The briefcase contained several files Russo gathered from his father’s office earlier that morning. One particular handwritten note that he discovered on his father’s desk had been on his mind all day. It was dated September 27, 1936, the day Capo Gio died. The note read: “Supper at the Commodore Hotel tonight. 42nd and Lexington. 6:00 pm. Private Room. We will celebrate all your recent contributions. Best regards, C.L.”

I’ll pass that place on the way uptown, Russo thought to himself as he turned north. He wondered who “C.L.” might have been and why his father was involved in any sort of meeting that night. One detail he had been told was that Capo Gio was found dead in the afternoon. The note only added to a seemingly impossible mystery.

The Auburn’s supercharged 852 engine barreled up Lexington Avenue. Nearly everyone walking the sidewalks turned to stare. Salesmen, lawyers, mothers, and children alike. As Russo approached the stoplight at 42nd Street, it was as if the car began driving itself. He heard no traffic noise for several seconds. Buildings and pedestrians faded away into a blur of streaming colors. The car seemed to be floating.

Within an instant, the noise, vibration, and color all returned. Right at that moment, a man dressed in an antiquated suit jacket appeared in the middle of the street directly in front of him. The car crashed into the man, sending him tumbling to the curb. The impact sounded awful.

Russo brought the car to a halt before the main entrance to the Commodore Hotel. The only problem was that everything seemed wrong. The streetlights were different. The pavement was different. The people were different. All the cars were of a much simpler time. He could hear Fred Astaire’s song, Cheek to Cheek, playing on the Crosley dashboard radio.

A small crowd of folks began rushing over to the injured man. Before Russo could exit and investigate, the Auburn accelerated and forced Russo back into the driver’s seat. The car was driving itself, speeding away from the scene. Everything became a blur once again.

In a mere matter of seconds, the car slowed down, returning to a scene of normalcy. Except nothing was ‘normal’ at all. Russo found himself rolling along a pine tree-lined driveway toward a large farmhouse. Russo saw corn fields, stables, a few cows, and grain silos. It was as far away from 42nd and Lexington as was imaginable.

“I must be out of my mind,” Russo howled. “What is this fantasy?”

It was no fantasy, though. What he was seeing was indeed real. The Auburn coasted to a stop right before the front porch of the wooded farmhouse. An elderly man appeared in the doorway holding a cane. Russo and the aged man locked glances for a few seconds. Russo nearly passed out. The old man was his father. He was much older, but certainly was Capo Gio. He had a shocking resemblance to some old portraits and photos, one that left Russo at a loss for words.

The old man broke the silence: “It sure took you long enough to get back here. We thought you done got lost! Every time you borrow that car, you go off joyriding. Now get yourself cleaned up for the party.” 

He continued, somewhat agitated, “You’re standing there like I’m some ghost or something. Come on now, get in here, I’ve been starving for hours.”

It was miraculous. Inexplicable rather. Russo's memories had been altered in this place. This was his family home. It was the farm where he was raised. It was the little eastern Kansas town where he went to church and to school. It was the place he came home to as a decorated war hero in 1945. He suddenly became aware that he is the principal and the baseball coach at the local high school where his wife is an English teacher. He also aids his mother and father in working the family farm. He has a young daughter.

It was an entirely different life. A life he had lived as sure as he was standing there. All the memories of his ‘other’ life after age twelve had vanished. The years of loneliness and sadness and isolation and struggle never happened. All he had were memories of this place and a proud life on the farm with his family. He did not remember much about his time in New York when he was a young boy because he was away at school most of the time. But once they moved to Kansas, he remembered all the Little League games he played. He remembered his father teaching him to drive a tractor then a Chevrolet truck. No one called his father Capo Gio. He was simply “Pop.” He also recalled all the summer trips to Wrigley Field in Chicago to watch the Cubs play Sunday double-headers.

Russo went inside and sat at the table with his father, his mother, his wife, and his daughter. There was a calendar on the wall open to September 1951. It was the 27th. Pop’s birthday. As they ate, Pop told the story to his granddaughter about an accident in New York City in 1936 in front of the Commodore Hotel, fifteen years earlier. He spoke about how he was having supper with famed mobster Charles Luciano when he was nearly killed by a man driving an Auburn that looked just like the one he traveled all the way to Indiana to buy one month earlier. Pop talked about the weeks he spent in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Less than an hour after he was taken to the hospital, a heavily-armed man was arrested after entering the hotel and attempting to break into one of the private dining rooms. Pop said that all those days in the hospital and the story of the hotel gunman made him reconsider his life of crime as a Mafia captain. When he recovered, he told his granddaughter how he deserted the Mafia lifestyle and moved his family out of New York to this little town in Kansas to start over again. It was the best decision he ever made. 

At that moment, a familiar sound caused all of them to look outside. The Auburn’s engine roared to life even though there was no one out there. Pop only shook his head and casually remarked, “You know, sometimes that old car just seems to have a mind of its own.”