"Even now, when I get out of my Saturn in the parking lot at work and walk by maybe 25 foreign cars, I notice."
As a young single guy, my husband decided to splurge on a gold-toned Subaru. But when it came time to pick the car up at the lot the next day, he told the salesman he'd changed his mind.
"I couldn't sleep that night," he remembers. "I apologized to the salesman and gave him a bottle of Scotch."
Over the years, the Mihoceses have owned just about every GM model and brand the company produced: from the Vega to the Yukon, from a Corvair to a Corvette, from a minivan to a Cadillac.
When he married me, I was driving a Datsun 200SX and my husband wouldn't so much as turn the key in the ignition. And when my son got his first car, he went to his Uncle Dan and asked permission because it was a Jeep.
"I told Joe, 'That's OK. Just buy American,' " said Dan.
Before he was forced to retire in the 1980s during the last automotive downturn, Rudy Mihoces would bring two of his four sons on board at the Fisher Body Plant in West Mifflin.
Ken, four years younger than my husband, went to work in production, became one of the plant's skilled tradesmen and then became a United Autoworkers benefits representative. He was forced to take early retirement last May after 31 years at the plant.
When Dan graduated from college in 1988, Fisher Body hired him as a temporary employee. "The lady in personnel liked my dad and she liked me, and she said, 'Tell Danny to come see me,' " said Ken. "She hired him on the spot."
Dan rose through the ranks to become a member of the management team at the plant. Knowing that the plant would close in a matter of weeks - and with three young children to educate - Dan resigned from Fisher Body in August after 20 years.
All four of Rudy Mihoces' sons graduated from college, and none of them had loans or debt. They believe it is because their father worked for GM.
"All of this, it would kill my dad," says Ken. Stock that kept his parents comfortable at as much as $90 a share until they died is now selling for less than three bucks a share and is probably worth nothing. "I think it would destroy him."
When Dan left in August, he was the last Mihoces to leave the plant that had fed the Mihoces family - steak and fries and the occasional half-gallon of real ice cream - for 58 years.
