How often do you see a Ferrari in a small Texas town? I’d have to say hardly ever, but J. Katherine McClure claims that when she lived in the tiny north Texas town of Justin (population around 700), the dozen or so Ferraris in her shop made it the town with the most Ferraris per capita in the U.S. Old-timers would chide her gently, saying “You can’t haul much hay in one of those.”

McClure lives in Blanco now, when she’s not traveling the world, and the dilapidated barns around her (rented) old ranch house have occasionally housed classic cars worth over a million dollars each. This is her remarkable story.

Born a fifth-generation Texan in the small town of Decatur, McClure might well have turned out to be quite parochial in her approach to life. But she had a grandmother who ran the local cattle auction and who never did anything exactly “by the book.” Katherine must have inherited her grandmother’s free spirit, because she was “always restless, always wanting to do something different.”

She attended college in Denton, working as a wrangler in a local stable, and learned rock-climbing during the summer at Yosemite National Park. She met a young man (named Bob) in 1974, whose family was “into stock-car racing;” with his encouragement, she bought a beautiful a 1967 MGB convertible with a blown engine. Bob got her a shop manual and loaned her his tools, telling her “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” to re-build an engine. She did it.

“I was thrilled when it started,” she recalls; Bob then taught her how to properly drive a sports car.

A little while later, the pair discovered a silver, 1950s-era, Ferrari convertible stored in a barn. They bought it, fixed it up, and painted it red. “When I drove it that first time,” McClure remembers, “it was all over. I was hooked; there was nothing like it.” She and Bob joined the Ferrari Club of America together, and took the car to a national ...

Read the entirety of this article in the print edition.

Subscribe online — it's quick and easy