The Jetta (Part One)

I would like to consider myself a hard worker. This is a particular point of pride for me, because so many of the people I see and know are beyond lazy, and strangely, seem to take as much pride in their sloth. They celebrate being capable of going weeks without taking the trash out, of their ability to subsist off of pizza and fast food, their genius of using paper plates and plastic flatware for everything so they will never have to wash anything. More vexing to me, however (and I have seen this to be particularly true to my Millennial generation), is their seeming inability to do, or learn to do, anything that can simply be "hired out" to someone else. Why learn how to unclog a drain when you can just pay a plumber $100 an hour to do it for you? Why learn the best way to paint a room when you can just hire painters to do it for you? Why learn to change your own oil when you can just take your car to the mechanic and write them a blank check to just "fix whatever." The excuse is the same: "Oh, I don't know how to do that stuff." And that's it. That answer is okay for people. And perhaps it's a particular quirk of mine, but I cannot just look at something I would like to do, or something that needs to be done, and live with the conclusion that "Oh, I don't know how to do that." Or worse still, "I can't do that." Call it the way I was raised, but in my family, any iteration of "can't" was answered with "learn."

It's the people that are okay with not knowing how to do something that I envy.

I have encountered only two vehicles in my lifetime that, in spite of the vast banks of knowledge the Information Age has to offer and my own wealth of experience, utterly disgraced me as a mechanic. One was a 1991 Mazda Miata that, after replacing a head gasket and doing what little repair I could with what little money I had (which meant no valve job, no head resurfacing, no new gaskets or hardware), simply refused to ever start back up again. The other would turn out to be the most maddening piece of machinery I have ever had the displeasure of trying to fix: a 1994 Volkswagen Jetta.

I was fresh out of college, bitterly single, living at my mother's house, and stuck working a dead end job in the middle of a recession, scraping by on less than $100 a month after the bills were paid. My home crumbled around me, and while my mother struggled to keep the mortgage paid with her part-time job at a local retailer, I struggled to keep our home maintained. Old appliances broke on a regular basis, the sink in the bathroom barely worked, the central air conditioning/heating unit was over ten years old and did previous little actual air conditioning or heating, and pieces of the lawnmower popped off with every use. My mother's Miata sat lonely and dejected in the yard, its engine turning over on a nearly dead battery, no fuel, no spark. I had long run out of shop manuals, forum post suggestions, "real" mechanics paid in beer, YouTube videos, and ideas in general. With no money to buy the astronomically-priced parts that may or may not get the car running again, I was defeated. Together, my mother and I shared the last running vehicle we had: the Jetta.

We had reached the time of year in late February/early March when all of the cars started to break down. The "catastrophic car breakdown season" came early this year, as in addition to the broken Miata, the purple 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier I bought for $600 had blown a freeze plug during one of the worst winters Alabama had seen in a hundred years. Fortunately, the Jetta ran beautifully, and it took us from point A to point B. In fact, the only part I had had to replace up to this point was a squealing water pump. The air conditioner worked (a true luxury given the last several vehicles I'd owned), the interior was in good shape, the paint wasn't terrible, and it was the first "normal" working car any of us had driven in many years.

Nice as it was, though, the Jetta had just one blemish: it leaked oil. A lot of oil. Up to half a quart of oil per day, in fact. The cause was easy enough to find. The valve cover gasket had done as most valve cover gaskets do and deteriorated over time, which had caused oil to start oozing from the small cracks in the rubber. So with the catastrophic car breakdown season nearly upon us, I set out one evening to to get ahead of it, to do some preventative maintenance and replace that darn valve cover gasket and make this the best car we had ever owned. It was a simple repair I had performed on several cars already, and after some research, I knew exactly what to do and how to do it on a Jetta.

And oh, how I would come to wish that I didn't know how to do any of that stuff after all.

Mustang Aflame

I remember a story my dad once told me about his old Mustang. He told me of how, once, riding down a lonesome stretch of highway with my mother, smoke suddenly started pouring out from under the hood. Little did he know, but he had become victim of a flaw that is well-known to us today: early Mustangs had a short piece of rubber hose between the hard fuel line to the fuel filter on the carburetor. And as rubber is prone to do, it had rotted with time, ruptured, spilled gasoline onto a hot intake manifold, and promptly caught fire.

Dad pulled the car over, got out, helped my mother get out, opened the car hood, and seeing the flames, did as any man who spent a large portion of his time watching 80's action movies would: he panicked and assumed that the Mustang was now a bomb capable of leveling a city block. A passerby stopped, and at his advice, the two of them began to throw dirt on the engine in an effort to put out the flames, which succeeded in nothing. Several minutes passed, the fire department stopped, put out the fire, and left my parents at the mercy of the tow truck driver.

But it was what happened next that I always found the most fascinating.

"So that was when you had to get a new car, right?"

"Why, hell no. We couldn't afford to just 'go out and get a new car.' That's what idiot yuppie rich people do. No, we got the thing home, I changed that damn hose, put new plugs and plug wires on it, and drove it to the grocery store ten minutes later."

How any car could withstand such catastrophe, I could not fathom. Dumbfounded, I could think only to ask, "But what about the dirt?"

"What about the dirt? God made dirt; dirt don't hurt."

It was the same explanation I got when I skinned my knees playing in the yard, one I didn't understand at all because I had at that point acquired indisputable evidence that, while God had most certainly made the dirt, it did, in fact, hurt very much. Yet it didn't hurt that Mustang's engine. Meanwhile, I would watch my Dad work outside for hours on our Ford Taurus that didn't run because of what would turn out to be a "piece-of-shit dirty 'mass airflow sensor.'" That Mustang engine had caught fire, but Dad was able to drive it that same day after a simple, routine repair. Meanwhile, the newer Ford Thunderbird we had blew a head gasket because it "ran too hot for more than thirty fucking seconds."

Within my own mind, the legend continued to grow. A legend that would later be solidified and prayed for when I encountered the most notorious car I have ever been cursed to work on: a 1995 Volkswagen Jetta.

Ghosts of Mustangs Past (Part 3): Evergreen

It's exciting, isn't it? That first roadtrip you take with your friends. Spring Break! This is what a bunch of nerds and outcasts like us dream about. Wooo! Spring Break! You shout it from an open car window, alarming strangers passing by, exciting the like-minded teenage girls in their white convertible that accelerates around you, their tops fluttering in outstretched palms. Girls. Booze. Sun, sand, parties, sex. Girls! Body shots and wet T-shirt contests. If Girls Gone Wild and American Pie had taught us anything at all, it was that this wasn't any just any trip; it was as much a colossal milestone in our lives as learning to drive or losing our virginity. Yes, this would be a vacation to end all others, and we knew it. We knew it because we knew everything there was to know, and what what we knew was that there was no way that this trip could not be epic.

Just beyond the city limits of Montgomery, AC/DC blaring through my new speakers, my three passengers comfortable in the freshly vacuumed fabric seats of my new Mustang, I took a quick glance at my speed. Cruise control at a steady 75 mph. Oil pressure holding steady, RPMs just above 3,000. The coolant temperature...

...just a bit beyond the halfway mark. Huh. Well no worries, all Mustangs probably did this. This was Spring Break! Our journey continued, the music loud. Good vibes! Unstoppable!

The higher the temperature needle went, the lower the volume of my stereo, the fewer jokes laughed at. The invincible feeling chipping away with every agonizing second of heat buildup.

When it reached the 3/4 mark, I decided to stop. A friend of mine, Jordan, knew a bit about cars, so we lifted the hood to get a better look. Steam, but not much. Steam that carried with it sickly sweet smell of antifreeze. But from where? There were no hoses leaking, the radiator seemed to be fine. The radiator! The radiator, of course. I'd forgotten to check it before I left. Surely, that must be the issue. Wait, of course that was the issue! Cars need coolant, and I was a master mechanic. This was merely a minor setback.

So we waited at the gas station for the engine to cool off, to take a break from our odyssey of girls and beer and beach parties. The radiator cap popped off with a hiss, and sure enough, the radiator was just a bit low. Of course! I filled it again, replenishing the half-gallon or so of fluid that I suspected must be the cause of this near-overheating. The cap back on, hands cleaned, hood down, and we were off again, heading south down a bitterly cold and wet I-65, the pale white dial crawling its way toward the dark red "H" one mile at a time. Spring Break!

Spring Break. The dreams of wet bikini tops and sandy beach parties went up in the cloud of white, smokey reality belched from my tailpipe, burst from beneath the hood, announcing itself with a fatal pop that I felt through the gas pedal, the steering wheel. My Mustang—with all of the time that had been spent to make sure she was cleaned, waxed, maintained—rolled to a stop in a little place called Evergreen, AL; 95 miles from Mobile, 80 miles from Montgomery, and 280 miles away from home. The locals called it "Nevergreen."

Ghosts of Mustangs Past (Part 2): The Senior Trip

Perhaps I've gotten a little ahead of myself. Let's start with the story of my first Mustang, seen here next to Rustang 1.

While I'd heard plenty of stories about the mythical pony car, I wouldn't have a chance to own one until just before my high school graduation, when my mom presented me with her 1996 Mustang as a gift. At the time, I'd been riding around town in an old 1992 Saturn SC2, the same car I'd taken my driver's license exam and, after two years of 16- and 17-year-old driving, was well beyond the ability of most mechanics.

Thus I was given my first chance to own and drive my very own Mustang. It was an automatic, it was clean, it was black, it was quick, and most importantly, it was mine.

And it was there and then that the trouble started.

Sometime in March of 2005, I came up with the notion that one's high school career could not be concluded without a "Senior Trip" with all my closest senior high school friends. And being the 18-year-old would-be worldly traveler that I envisioned myself, my excitement blinded me to the key factors I failed to understand before we departed on our wayward trip to the pristine beaches of Gulf Shores, AL:

• Vacations are not meant for those with less than $50 after gas has been factored in.
• Getting a hotel in Mobile, AL is cheaper than staying in Gulf Shores. It's true. It is also about 1.5 hours away from the beach in heavy traffic.
• Our high school's "Spring Break" occurred during the second week of March, or as I have come to know it better, "the dead of winter." It would later snow during our time in Mobile.
• Speaking of meteorological events, there was a rather large one that occurred just six months prior: Hurricane Ivan. And in my teenage stubbornness to go on this trip whatever the cost, I remember saying to myself, "Six months is surely enough time to repair billions of dollars worth of damage to oceanfront properties and businesses. The beaches will be just fine." Five months later, Hurricane Katrina would lay waste to New Orleans.
• The hotel itself was put on a friend's parent's credit card, my portion of which I had only a half-intention of paying back. This would later become a debt that damaged my reputation as a responsible young man, and one that would plague me with much guilt for years to come.
• My Mustang was not the snarling GT model with the 5.0L V8. No, it was the infamous 3.8L V6 model, which had become well known for its penchant for overheating and blowing head gaskets.
• And lastly, I'd committed the cardinal sin of long-distance road trips: I didn't check the antifreeze, and I didn't check the oil.

Away we went.

(To be continued)

Mustangs and Myths (Part 4)

I loved to race Hot Wheels when I was a kid. My chipped and faded red Ferrari was the fastest. Up until it encountered its unfortunate end at the bottom of a chemically winterized pool, that is. My second fastest? A 1968 Shelby GT500, of course.

"What's a Shelby GT500?"

"What do you mean 'what's a Shelby GT500?' It's a Shelby! The best damn car that ever was aside from the AC Cobra."

Dad had loved the AC Cobra since its inception, and he proudly displayed a die-cast model on our mantel.

"Oh. Why do some of them say 'KR' on the side?" (I always tried read the new Hot Wheels boxes carefully, selecting only the best vehicles for my expertly engineered high-speed race track featuring three loops and a perilous jump over a legion of miniature G.I. Joes. If the KR lettering would be a hindrance to its speed, I would need to choose differently.)

"The KR stands for 'King of the Road.'"

"It's the road king?"

"No, no, boy. It's King of the Road. Not road king. What's wrong with you? Road king..."

"So was it even better than the normal Shelby?"

"Ain't much that was 'normal' about those, but sure. In fact, I think the only one faster than the KR was the 'Super Snake.'"

Snakes were, of course, the coolest creatures of the animal kingdom next to dragons, the T-Rex, and and Mecha-Godzilla. But a super snake? I imagined a giant cobra, twenty stories tall, laying waste to New York City as Carrol Shelby looked on, writing a name in his little black book with a knowing smile.

"Wow!"

"Damn right, 'wow.' Those were the most incredible cars ever built in the 60s."

I remember finding it odd that there wasn't much more elaboration than this, no story about a friend of a friend that owned a famed "Super Snake," or "Road King," no no news headline that came to mind about someone else driving one. Well, other than Mr. Cosby himself, of course:



"Did you ever drive one?"

"Drive one? Hell, son, I've never even seen one."

Ghosts of Mustangs Past (Part 1)

It should come as no surprise then that I longed to have my own piece of history, my own chance to drive one of these vintage American muscle machines. After a failed experiment with a rotted Mustang I'm fairly sure was underwater at some point, I searched over the years for another shot at performing a restoration, of taking a once-proud machine all others had given up on and restoring it  to its former glory.

It was a college girlfriend of mine that gave me the chance. Seven years older than I, it was a relationship beautifully flawed from the start, volatile and heavy with hurt feelings and naivety, of silent neglect and unforgivable mistakes, of hot tears falling on cold sheets and wrong words whispered on moonless autumn nights. She was kind enough, generous enough to loan me the $1,400 required to purchase an old and forgotten 1965 Mustang I'd found on Craigslist.

I was 22, and she offered me the money with a gentle kiss that meant nothing I could understand then, and I took it, her being too far into the future to know such a short-term state of mind, and me being too young to realize that such generosity is rarely displayed without expectation. All I knew was that she loaned me the money, seemingly excited to jump through all of the hoops necessary to get it for me, and I loved her dearly for doing so. But money, and especially the lack thereof, is the ruination of all things, and love is no different.

Mustangs and Myths (Part 3)

"So what about a...hatchback?"

"You mean a 'fastback.' They look like this."

"Why's it called a fastback?"

"Because the back makes it look faster, I guess."

"It does look faster. Super cool."

"Hell yeah, it does."

"Did you ever have a...fastback?"

"No, not me. Not me or anyone else I ever knew owned a fastback. But now there was this one time, long time ago, I saw a race with one in it."

"You did?!"

"I did. It was the middle of the night, on the corner of Bailey Cove and Weatherly, I think. No other cars on the road. Me and Jim were riding up to the corner store to get beer when this fastback pulled up to the traffic light, slick as owl shit with a 302 Boss built to the limit and you could hear it. Hell, you could feel it."

"It had the Boss engine??" The Boss was another name I'd grown up with. It was known as a mythical motor, rare as hen's teeth and all but unattainable to mere mortals.

"That's right. He sat there idling for a bit, just taking his time, and few seconds later, well, that was when we saw the Corvette pull up."

I'd nod in understanding. Corvettes were for rich people, as I well knew. My dad's boss owned one, and we were warned to never play too close to it, to never touch it, never look too harshly in its general direction, and on the single instance where I was allowed the privilege of stepping into it, I was told to enter it with clean shoes, clean pants, clean shirt, to not scratch the leather or touch the dash. Yes, I knew full well the sort of pomposity that came with driving a 'Vette.

"The Corvette had to have had the 454 in it. Massive fucking motor. They pulled alongside each other, started revving their engines. God, you could hear it for miles." (The revving of one's engine has long been the universal signal to the other driver that a challenge had been issued, the gauntlet thrown.) "By then we'd all gone outside. Looked across the street and you could see people coming out of their houses. Even the store owner and the nighttime beer stocker came outside to watch. The whole time those two sat there revving their engines louder and louder and waiting for that light to turn green."

This was more than a race. It was a battle between the working-man underdog and the rich, racecar-driving man. I would imagine all of the people coming out to witness this event, the hundreds, thousands of residents pouring into the street in the middle of the night, lining the cracked sidewalks of south Huntsville to watch these vehicular warriors fight each other in a battle of speed and raw power. There would be lightning in the background, too, and an 80's montage ballad would play from nowhere in particular, drowned out only occasionally by the dueling snarls of V8 motors.

"What happened next?"

"The light turned green and they both lit up the tires. I say they were evenly matched from the takeoff, but the Corvette had one thing on the Mustang."

"What was that?"

"The Corvette's got something called 'Positraction.' Means that when it takes off, both back wheels spin instead of just one. So when they took off, the Corvette's wheels got traction before the Mustang's did."

"So the Corvette won?"

"The Corvette won. Still the wildest damn thing I've ever seen though."