The story is set during January in the late 1960s. Sam Norton has been transferred from his job on the East coast to a West coast job in Los Angeles. His firm has given him four tourist class airplane tickets, and he has used three of them to send his wife and children ahead. He has cashed in the fourth ticket to purchase an automobile and to rent a trailer in which he packs the family's belongings. A sign of the times is the cost of the automobile—the dealer asks for $250 and after some dickering accepts $200. In the late 1960s, one could still purchase a brand new Volkswagen beetle for about $1,000, hence purchasing an automobile only a few years old for a couple hundred dollars would not be unusual—especially if it had a significant flaw, such as a welded shut trunk that the dealer...