Chapter 18

It wasn't until I got back close to Bradford that I started to wonder just what Arlene was going to say about my showing up in the new car. Let's face it; even with the good deal I got, I knew the Mustang wasn't quite what she had in mind for a new set of wheels. It could be worse, I thought. I figured she'd probably exhaust herself on that before I'd tell her about buying all those old MMSA parts, and then I'd be home free.

I should have known better.

She just plain fell in love with the Mustang from the first time she laid eyes on it. "Oh, wow, honey," she gushed. "Did you buy that for me?"

"Hey, remember, you were the one who wanted the station wagon," I grinned, realizing that my plan had gone to hell and decided I'd better be taking a different track right on the spot. "I bought it to replace the F-85, if you'll remember correctly, but if you're real, real good maybe I can take you out on a date with it some night. After all, I need a sexy car to impress my best girl."

"Oh, sure," she grinned. "I suppose your idea of a date is taking me out to some dark spot and trying to get into my panties."

"You can think of a better kind of date with a car like this?" I laughed.

"Well, maybe I'll have to take you up on it," she smiled.

Things could have gotten real interesting in the next few minutes if it weren't for our three romance wreckers, who had somehow looked up from the TV set long enough to discover that daddy had shown up with a new car. I'd learned years before that kids were real good at wrecking situations that could be turned into spontaneous sex, and this one was no different.

So, I compromised by celebrating the new car like a family man should, by having all the kids crawl into the back seat. I took the whole family down to the Dairy Queen to wreck their dinner, which was getting pretty close since I'd shot most of the day in Livonia. Of course, between the ice cream, the sugar, and the new car, the kids were wound up pretty tight and just about bouncing off the walls, so Arlene and I didn't get any time to talk for a while. I did manage to tell her that it was the right Frank Blixter after all, I'd met some of the other old MMSA people, and a lot had changed with everyone.

It wasn't until after we got home and Arlene decided to delay supper on the strength of all that ice cream and the kids were either watching TV or out playing that I managed to tell her most of what happened over the course of the day. Of course, I told her about the old MMSA cars being sold for scrap metal, the visit to the barn, and the fact that the only surviving MMSA car was her battered and broken old 2 car.

"Maybe you ought to talk to Frank about that," she suggested. "He might be willing to let your Auto Shop II kids restore it for old times' sake."

I didn't expect her to play into my hands that way, either. "Funny you should mention that," I grinned. "I had the same idea, and Frank bought off on it."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" she shook her head.

"Well, I thought it was a good idea," I shrugged. "I might have let it go by if it was any other car than the 2, but it just about broke my heart to see it sitting there messed up like that. I prefer to think of it the way you used to drive it. That's how I like to remember you and it in the old days."

"You're just looking to get laid, aren't you?" she giggled. "Well, buster, you're getting your wish just about as soon as the kids are asleep."

All in all, when it was over with, what I thought might be a real confrontation sure came out a lot different than I had expected. In fact, a few days later we got a sitter for the evening, drove over to Hawthorne to the drive-in and spent the whole of the movie in the back row, necking and touching just like we were kids on a date. It was the kind of dates kids are supposed to have but Arlene and I had never had. When the movie ended, we took off toward home, but rather than heading into the house I drove the Mustang down the lane to the back of the farm where we wouldn't be bothered and tried out sex in the back seat. Maybe it would be OK if you were a kid and didn't have any better place to do it. While it was fun in a way, we decided that once was enough of that, but it was nice to have finally had the experience.

That was the only time we ever tried it, but there were several times over the course of the next three years that Arlene and I would get sitters and head off for an evening date, sometimes to a drive-in, but more often to races here and there. After my experience with Bradford and finding the MMSA guys again, it didn't seem like it was as big a deal to just get out and enjoy some racing. We visited a number of different tracks within a hundred miles or more, both dirt and paved, just for something different to do and someplace different to go.

I'd have to say that the Mustang injected some romance back into our lives. After you've been married for a while things sometimes get a little automatic, and kids and bills and work and stuff take a lot of fun out of life. Having that car somehow gave us a way to put a little fun back into it, and eventually I came to realize that it was worth every cent that I'd paid for it, for no more reason than that.

The day after my run to Livonia I had to head back to doing the driving with the kids. I had to pay for taking a day off by extending the sessions longer the rest of the week so the kids would get their hours, but it all worked out to my advantage in a different way. As luck would have it, I had several kids who had signed up to take Auto Shop II the next fall, and it wasn't too difficult to find some volunteers to go up to Livonia and get all the car parts. One of the kids' dads had a large farm stake truck, and he volunteered to go along and haul stuff.

One of the neat things about us living on the farm was that I had plenty of extra space in various outbuildings that wasn't being used. We had a garage for the regular cars, and an equipment building that I'd started turning into a shop little by little. However, I didn't really want all the old midget parts in the way in the shop. Until I could get time to sort it all out I decided to just stack it on the concrete floor of an old chicken coop that hadn't been used since we'd lived on the place.

The following Saturday, a bunch of us, both kids and parents, took off for Livonia, with a stake truck and a couple pickup trucks, which I figured would be enough to haul everything. It almost turned into a fight over who was going to get to ride in the Mustang until I decided to just ride in one of the trucks to keep it from getting out of hand. Arlene decided to stay behind, since this was a work trip and there was no point in reminiscing with Frank when it might stand in the way of getting something done; we'd already planned another trip up there to do some reacquainting.

I'd called ahead the day before, of course, and Frank met us at his uncle's farm, dressed in work clothes. "Boy, you didn't waste time, did you?" he said.

"Got to get them while they're hot," I laughed.

"Speaking of hot," he grinned. "That's a good description of how Perry feels after you pulled that double shuffle on him over that Mustang. The closer raked him over the coals pretty good on that one."

"Well, I'm sorry about that," I told him. "You taught me pretty good, though."

"I never taught you that little trick."

"No, but you taught me the thinking behind it," I laughed again. "Tell you what. Tell Perry I'm sorry, and promise him that when I get ready to trade the Mustang in that I'll come see him first."

"Good deal," Frank smiled. "He'd like another shot at you."

Once again, I might as well tell the rest of the story now. I saw Perry every now and then, maybe once every other year on the average for years and years to come. The first thing he always asked me was, "Are you ready to trade in that Mustang yet?"

"No," I'd always tell him. "I think I'm going to hang onto it for a bit yet."

The '64 Mustang, especially the convertible, was an instant classic from the moment it rolled onto the showroom floor, and for once even I was smart enough to realize it. I only drove it on a regular basis for a couple years, but I kept it around for driving occasionally on nice summer days, usually with Arlene as my regular seat cover, and kept it parked the rest of the time. I wound up putting "historic vehicle" plates on it in 1990, and I still drive it regularly in parades here in town, and once in a while to a classic car show. It's never actually been restored; I just kept it in good shape. I saw Perry once at a classic car show after he retired, and he still wanted to trade me. No such luck, Perry; that car is now worth a good deal more than I paid for it, even counting inflation.

To get back to the story, I basically just pointed the kids at the pile of stuff and told them to load up anything that looked vaguely like it might be automotive, and if there was any question, load it anyway. Most of the pieces were fairly small, some of them already in boxes and peach baskets and the like, but the big hassle was loading the remains of the 2 car. The wheels were all off it and the engine was out of it, but it was still pretty heavy, and it was an all-hands job to get it up into the stake truck.

"Boy, that's a worse mess than I remember," Frank shook his head once we got it out into the light of day and could get a good look at it. "I think you've got your work cut out for you and the kids, Mel."

"Looks like it," I said. "But it ought to be worth the effort if it keeps the kids interested and they learn something."

I'd noticed a fairly complete engine sitting off in the corner when I'd been there earlier in the week, and like any V8, it wasn't light, even if it wasn't very big. Once I could get it out where I could take a look at it, I thought I remembered why it was sitting there – it had a cracked block, and we'd more or less dumped it where it sat back in about '52. There weren't a lot of spare engine parts sitting around, but there were a few and we took them with us. Other than that, there weren't any complete engines to be found.

It took us longer than I expected to load all the stuff up – there was a lot more there than I had figured, although much of it was clearly junk. Still, you never quite know what junk piece might be valuable in that kind of a situation, so it was worth taking with us. The trucks were all stacked up pretty high when we started back for Bradford, and frankly, it looked like we were on our way to a scrap metal yard.

The day was getting late by the time we got everything unloaded into the old chicken coop at home – everything except for the 2 car itself, which was too big to go in the door of the chicken coop, so it went into the barn. I made a mental note that I'd have to take a chainsaw to the side of the chicken coop and put in a garage door the first chance I got. Arlene and the kids were there, of course, and Arlene was almost broken up to see the mess that her old car had become. "That's worse than I thought it was going to be, from what you said," she told me.

"Don't worry," I grinned. "Daddy is going to fix it."

Over the course of the summer, I had some of the auto shop kids out to the house from time to time to help me sort through the stuff, just to see what all I had and what could be done with all of it. It was a longer project than I thought it might be, partly because I was trying to keep notes of what all we had and what I was going to have to find.