RIVER CITY JOURNAL: TOP SECRET: MY CAR HOLDS THE KEY TO STEALTH TECHNOLOGY

That's right. My old car. Right here in River City. If the military folks want the inside dope, all they have to do is ask.

I have a little car.

It shows no signs of wealth.

But everywhere I go in town,

It cruises like a stealth.

My car is brown and rusty.

It's plain for all to see.

So why do I have to yell:

"Hey! Look out for me!"

It's hard not to fidget when you own a secret that the Pentagon is willing to spend millions -- no, make that billions -- nope, make that trillions -- of dollars on.

Just imagine that woman in Blue Springs, Mo., who learned she had purchased a lottery ticket worth $55 million. Remember her? She was in the news a lot a couple of weeks ago. I don't know about her, but if I owned a scrap of flimsy paper that entitled me to $55 million, I'd treat that piece of paper with a great deal of respect. What if you lost it before you claimed your prize? What if someone came in a took it? What if you absentmindedly put the lottery ticket in the trash with all those old magazines that have been piling up around your favorite chair? I've done something like that. More than once. Which is one reason I don't buy lottery tickets: I can't take the pressure of winning $55 million.

Yeah, right.

But, it turns out, I own something the military brass has convinced Congress to spend trillions of dollars on. Potentially, a trillion or two (which is a heck of a lot more than $55 million, if I'm doing my math right) should be coming my way just as soon as I let the Air Force and Army and Navy and Marines and Coast Guard and Merchant Marines (did I leave anyone out?) know what I've got.

Here's my big secret. Ready? I have an old car.

There it is, out in the open, plain as day.

Well, not exactly as plain as day, it turns out.

I've been driving this old car since it was a new car, which was about 10 years ago. It is a very average car which I bought for a very average price and which has given me very average service over the last decade.

My car isn't pretty, unless you think mud brown has character or something like that. The back bumper continues to follow the rest of the car around only because of an entire roll of mud brown duct tape and a wire hanger. The driver's seat in my old car is a replacement that came from a similar-but-not-quite-exactly-same model, so it is almost the same color as the other seats, and if I didn't tell you it was a replacement you probably wouldn't notice it right away.

I rarely drive my car at night for two reasons: my eyes and its headlights. My eyes also are old, and they don't like the glare that comes from other cars. My car's headlights -- one is held in place with standard gray duct tape -- tend to wander like the eyeballs of that cross-eyed kid we all went to school with. Remember him?

The paint on the top of my car is beginning to show its age. I've heard it described in various ways by critics who buy new cars every year. However, I tend to sympathize with what looks like paint carcinoma.

I'm telling you all of this so you'll understand the value of things that seem to be past their prime. In spite of the fact that my car is, in a word, ugly, no one seems to notice.

And I mean no one.

As I drive around the streets of this fair city, I am constantly amazed at the number of other motorists who pull out in front of me when I, in the replacement driver's seat of my old car, am only a few yards away.

There I am, traveling up Broadway, and a sparkling new pickup with twinkling lights along the running board pulls out abruptly from Frederick Street. Thank goodness my car's brakes still work. Sort of. Should I be concerned that the brake light stays on for days after I use the emergency brake?

I have decided that there is only one logical explanation for the life-risking driving habits of other motorists: They can't see my car. It is a roadway ghost which -- through a combination of age, duct tape, scaling paint and roaming headlights -- is invisible to everyone else behind a windshield.

In a word, I am driving a stealth car.

Think of the military potential once the Pentagon finds out how easy it is to hide a machine that weighs several thousand pounds. The Air Force could take any old bomber and, with a few rolls of duct tape, paint remover and a screwdriver, turn it into an invisible airborne chariot of destruction. Cost? I figure under a hundred bucks per plane, unless the brass wants to go whole hog and replace the pilot's seat too.

Stealth tanks? No problem. Same formula.

I think a regular guy like me, a taxpayer and loyal American, consumer of Detroit's automotive production lines, owes it to his nation, and to the military might that lets me sleep peacefully every night, to share this stealth technology, which I am more than happy to do.

But if it's not too much trouble, I think I'm entitled to a little something in the way of patriotic reward. How many zeroes in a trillion?

And if the big shots from the Pentagon want to come here for a demonstration, they are more than welcome. I'll let them drive my old car anywhere they want in Cape Girardeau.

They should bring their own crash helmets.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.