If you follow my column, you know that my husband and I attend car shows all summer, namely rod runs. Street rods are modified vintage cars, so if you’re following one on the highway in your everyday vehicle, more than likely you won’t get stuck behind it because they are road worthy and many of them go faster than the average car.

During one of the shows, another wife and I were observing our husbands’ ESP-type conversations. We were astounded by how it seemed all the car guys understood this cryptic language.

For instance, one of the street rodders poked his head in our 1930 Model A and said, “Is this what I think it is?” My husband responded with a special softness in his eyes, “Yeah.” Then the guy went on his merry way. I actually knew what went down with that particular exchange because we’ve had the car for a few years and I’d encountered many such episodes.

It was owned by one of my husband’s car club members. He became ill and sold it to another club member. They had it for several years and when he and his wife divorced, his wife kept the car and drove it for awhile before she sold it to an “unrelated” (as in not another club member) person. It dropped off the radar for a number of years.

It popped back up when my husband spotted it on Craigslist. He contacted the seller who had been collecting parts to get it back on the road, because it had been stolen and stripped under the care of a different owner. He decided it was too big of a project, but my husband missed out on the sale because there were three other interested parties. The next sighting was at a car show in Yakima, when my husband encountered the car and its new owner who wasn’t interested in selling it at the time.

We got home late one evening after a kid’s high school concert. It was probably a year or so after the last sighting. My husband had a sudden compulsion to check Craigslist for that car. I have no idea why because he had to get up at 3:30 the next morning. He called the seller immediately and found out the car had only been on there for a few hours. The man had a couple calls ahead of my husband, but when he discovered my husband’s history with the car, he told him he’d sell it to him.

I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday, and we planned to retrieve it from Ellensburg the upcoming weekend. But my husband was so anxious he decided to take the following day off work to pick the car up. In the world of street rods, you just never know what will entice a seller when someone really wants a car. The question I had was, “What weird intuition did my husband have that sent him to the computer late that night in search of that car on Craigslist?”

“A feeling,” he said. Apparently, it was time to bring car back into the family.

The phenomenon is not limited to my husband’s car and not just to the body of a car. All street rodders know the history of all the street rods and where the parts came from. He knew the engine that was in our car was won at a raffle and the car show where it was won. He also knew where the tranny came from. It didn’t stop him from changing out all the parts and rebuilding the engine, it just added to its lineage.

Ancestry DNA’s got nothing on Ancestry CAR.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.