Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed By Clive Cussler with Craig ...

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old cars from the new-car dealers, fix them up and sell them to the troops arriving for service in the
islands. Not relishing Air Force life, I bought an airplane with three other fellows, a 1939 Luscombe, and
rented an apartment at Waikiki Beach.
A 1940 Packard limousine was my transportation to and from the base until I bought and restored a
1939 Fiat Topolino with a little 500cc engine. I sold that car when I returned home and always regretted
it.
On a return vacation to Hawaii several years later, I found that the car had been converted to a
dragster that won several trophies on the local drag strip.
CRAIG DIRGO:It was about this time you met your wife, correct?
CLIVE CUSSLER:I met my wife-to-be, Barbara Knight, shortly before I left overseas in October of
1951.
She and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Carolyn Johnston, on a blind date when we attended a
football game." They arrived to pick me up at my parents' house, and I sauntered out wearing a leather
flight jacket, a white scarf flowing over my shoulders, Levi's, and smoking a cigar. I thought I looked
rather dashing, but Barbara took me for some kind of barbarian member of a motorcycle club. She sat as
far away from me as she could and spoke only about ten words the whole evening.
To me, she looked rather dowdy, and I thought she was the most introverted girl I had ever met. Later
that evening, when I walked her to the front door of her grandmother's house where she was living, for
some indescribable reason I became carried away and asked for a date the following night. I admit I was
desperate. To this day, she can't imagine why her brain refused to function and she accepted.
Saturday night, resplendent in my uniform, I showed up at her doorstep at the appointed time.
Barbara opened the door and stood like a radiant vision dressed for an elegant night on the town. We
stared at each other for a full minute, unable to believe we were the same two people who had met the
night before. What a difference clothes make.