The '65 Is 45.

Forty-five years ago, today, my dad and I picked up the 1965 Mustang he'd had on order from the Towne Ford in Redwood City.  I was ten  years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

My first sight of what was to be the seminal car in my automotive history was not a pretty one.  The hood was up, the dashboard was a maze of wiring, and a mechanic in overalls was upside down on the floor, cursing.

"Who the hell would order a car without a radio, and then decide to have one put in!" he groaned.

My dad, that's who.  He'd had nothing but trouble with the radio in the old Chevy, so he'd decided to do without... only to decide later that the radio, being literally the centerpiece of the dash in the Mustang, would have looked awkward had it been missing... so he asked that it be put in when it arrived.

This was only the latest in a series of problems that had plagued the purchase.  Dad had ordered it in plenty of time for it to arrive before our planned trip to celebrate Christmas with relatives.  Unfortunately, the United Auto Workers had other plans that year, and went out on strike.  Fortunately, Ford and the UAW came to terms in short order, but demand for new Mustangs being huge, the already long waiting time grew by several weeks. Dad grew increasingly anxious, but finally the call came only two days before Christmas.

The Mustang was to have had a saddle tan interior to complement the dark metallic green exterior, but arrived with light green seats instead.  Somewhere in the middle of the model changeover and the strike, tan was discontinued and nobody bothered to tell either the dealer or my dad.  My mother had made a tan pillow (alpaca fur!) which no longer matched, but it stayed in the car for many years.

Sitting in the back seat for the first time, I remember thinking that as cool as the new Mustang was, nobody was ever going to be able to restore these things, like people restored Model A's and other old cars.  All that plastic!  What I didn't know was that all that plastic was easier to reproduce than the stuff Model A's were built out of.  Here we are, 45 years on, and that car will probably outlive me.

No time for a gentle break-in -- we left almost immediately for SoCal, at night, in a steady rain.  The fresh plastic and vinyl dashboard offgassed enough goo onto the inside of the windshield to nesessitate repeated cleanings on the way.  I didn't care; we had the coolest car on the highway.

A few years later, the car was mine.  I drove it in high school and college, street raced it, drove it on my first job far away from home, took it on dates with many a girl, rebuilt the engine myself, and drove it with my first daughter in the back seat.

 I also drove it to my dad's funeral.  I sold it not long after.

Today, the car rests not far from here in the good care of an old friend.  I see it occasionally and know without hesitation how every switch and knob and doorlatch should feel, how the windows sound as they are wound up; the ka-lunk of the hood and thump of the trunk as they are shut.

I know it's VIN, (5R07C166312) it's old license plate, (MKW454) that it takes a Fram PH8A oil filter, and that you set the point gap at 30 thousanths.  It took Autolite BF 45 plugs. (BF 35's when racing.) I could not tell you any of those things for any car I've owned since.  (Especially since "points" are a thing of the past. Electronic ignitions, you know.)

To tell you the truth, I never want to be that emotionally invested in a car again.  But like an old friend you don't see any more, history is history.  They don't make Mustangs the way they used to, and life has grown more complicated, too.  I'll celebrate this little bit of nostalgia at a respectful distance.