[Editor's Note: This week Kris Palmer answers his own question as an entree to write about his recent cross-country journey in his 40-year-old MGB GT.]

Q:Halloween is the last grand party before winter. What if, instead of trekking around the neighborhood for candy, or heading off to a friend's apartment for an evening bash, you took to the highways in the guise of a traveler going cross-country in an obsolete sports car?

A:Make the car old, the speeds high and the miles long, and spooky sights and sounds arise. Clutching the wheel, belted to your seat, you're a captive viewer to a live-action movie playing on the windscreens. This was our feeling when my wife and I took a recent roundtrip drive in my 1969 MGB GT from Minneapolis to North Carolina, through St. Louis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, then Charlotte, Knoxville, Lexington, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago . . .

From this low-slung vantage point, the first thing you notice is speed. People truly motor on 21st-century freeways. Late model cars and trucks can eat up the roads at 70-plus miles per hour. Big vehicles don't mind pulling multi-axle trailers loaded with horses, boats, racing cars, motorcycles or campers. We saw a dually pickup hauling two boats - a small one suspended over the truck and a beefy cabin cruiser on a three-axle trailer behind. He blew by us like we were in a Model T.

These displays of power and mechanical competence are impressive to watch. Yet at night, on a big city freeway where each driver seeks a different destination, and you have to hopscotch lanes to stay on route, you find your senses heightened. You're the insect on the square-dance hall floor.

Small had its advantages, though, on the two-lane highway wending through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There, narrow width and flat cornering felt secure as we followed a tall pickup with a bed-mounted camper braking and leaning through the hairpin turns.

On the down side, when your vehicle is small and old, some drivers have no hesitation about turning in front of you. Three times in daylight oncoming vehicles did this, going left across our path with so little margin I had to brake and change lanes to avoid broadsiding them.

Highway driving in an antique car is also a time for listening. Every squeak, rattle, whistle and thunk puts you on alert like a parent by a baby monitor. In Iowa, the new fan belt I fitted broke into a high-pitched song as it started to slip. So you pull over, loosen the alternator, then torque it a little with a long lever arm to put tension on the belt as you snug up the bolts. The spring-loaded hatchback hinges can make a spine-tingling chatter too if a good bump pops the latch. A shot of WD-40 made them quiet but also caused them to drop the raised hatch more easily - a headache to watch out for when loading and unloading.

It's good to keep an eye on the gauges, including the gas gauge, which I lost track of in steep hills outside Charlotte, N. C. It's only a small relief when you realize the reason you're losing power is because you're running out of fuel. We got lucky though, cresting the hill and then coasting to a station which, while out of regular gas, did have premium.

There is joy, too, when traveling in a classic car. Drivers slow for a look and kids wave. Hotel clerks and strangers at gas stations ask questions and share their own memories of long-sold vehicles. As with dressing up in an unusual costume, new experiences are part of the fun in venturing out in an old machine. Happy Halloween.