Mustangs and Myths (Part 2)

"Belchfire."

This was a name of the most striking reverence, spoken of in the same manner in which one might reminisce about a past lover, one that was too beautiful, too perfect to hold onto for any significant length of time. No, Belchfire wasn't a Mustang, but it was a vehicle so legendary that it became the car against which all other cars were measured.

Perhaps adding to its mysterious past, is the fact that the above picture isn't even a proper representation of the car. It's a '67, and Belchfire was made—forged perhaps would be the better word—in 1970. The mystical numbers and names discussed over beer and barbecue in the backyard held little meaning to me at the tender age of eight, yet they gave this sinister machination of horsepower the sort of infamy that I could never forget:

"She was a 1970 Ford Custom debadged police interceptor with a PI 428 motor."

It was our close family friend, Jim, who came into possession of this monster courtesy of a police auction. Jim and his brothers Ed and John had grown up with my dad, worked with him in Saudi Arabia during the 1970s and 80s, and as far as any of us were concerned, they were just as much family as anyone else. And they all had a knack for storytelling.

"First thing we wanted to do was adjust the timing when we got her. Turned the distributor, turned the key, and boom!" Explosions were of great interest to my eight-year-old self, and I listened intently, stunned with wonder, "...shot a fucking flame from the top of the carb three feet high." Even without knowing what a "carb" was, I knew that this must have been a special feat indeed, for after that moment, the car was referred to only as "Belchfire."

Then came the recitation of the otherworldly features that separated the car gods from the car mortals.

"360 horse right out of the gate, but we all know that Ford just made up those numbers for insurance purposes. Any higher than that and it would have had to be classified as a race car." The mystery, the intrigue ballooned in my imagination, as I saw Henry Ford and his conspirators hovering over Belchfire's shadowy engine bay, rambling off horsepower numbers to dubious insurance inspectors, hiding the car's true and terrible nature.

"The suspension was dialed up so that when you went faster, the car would lower itself. After you got past 100 miles and hour, it was like you were sitting on the ground. That's the police package that they left in there. On accident or on purpose? Who knows..."

There were the stories of street racing far more expensive sports cars, beating the Porches, the Corvettes with ease. There was the story of drag racing a "Smokey and the Bandit" car, a 1976 Pontiac Trans-Am with "the 7.5 liter V8." Jim would tell how, with seven other passengers along for the ride, Belchfire beat the Trans-Am by two car lengths, leaving the would-be Burt Reynolds to beat on his steering wheel in a fury.

Then there was story of the motor mounts, of how the engine was so strong and powerful that it would snap motor mounts like dry twigs with every hard push of accelerator. Belchfire broke so many motor mounts, in fact, that Jim had to take a length of logging chain and weld one end to the block and the other to the car's frame. I was later liken this modification to the adamantine chains from Paradise Lost, the ones that held Satan to the confines of his hellish prison.

Like so many other car legends, Belchfire was one day untimely defeated, its body wrecked, mutilated, sold off for scrap. But at its heart, that 428 PI police interceptor motor, there remained the hints of mystery that persist even still.

"The motor?" Jim would take a swig off a Budweiser as he continued his wistful reflection,
"Yeah, it didn't seem right having it just sit around in my garage. Gave it away, actually. Gave it to a buddy of mine that was building a '67 Mustang for the racetrack."

Mustangs and Myths (Part 1)

Growing up, we never went to the mechanic. We never put our cars in the shop. We never got them "serviced." Fifty bucks for an oil change would have been inconvenient enough, but a $1,300 head gasket repair? It would have been a death sentence for my family. So of course, we learned to fix them ourselves. This meant getting out there with Dad in the gravel driveway, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a trouble light in the other, learning a few new swear words when the drum brake keeper springs slipped from his needle-nose pliers, bouncing away into the night.

Between the tool holding, the beer fetching, and bouts of vehement swearing, there were the tales of the old Mustangs.

"None of this fucking computer bullshit!" Dad would say as he tried in vain to figure out which sensor went where and did what and what this wire went to and why it was there and fuck it, just get him another beer because this was about be the biggest clusterfuck the world has ever known and if Ford just made these like they used to...

"Used to be all you had to do to adjust the timing was turn the distributor. And if it wasn't running right, you could just adjust a screw on the carburetor, and it was done! DONE! Adjusting a screw! So easy! Not like this piece of shit. Won't run without a temperature sensor. Air and fuel adjusted by a $500 computer. You've got to be shitting me. I had this Mustang once..."

And here it would begin. I'd nod, hand him a tool, a beer, or stand out of the way so that he could "coax" a part on with the blunt end of a socket wrench.

"...I'm telling you it caught on fire once, and you know what we did? Threw dirt on it. Your mom and me. Threw dirt on the thing, and by the time the fire department came, there wasn't even any need for them to do anything. I drove it back home, changed the rubber gas line doing to the carburetor, set the timing, gave it a tune up, and kept on driving the thing."

Like most stories you hear in childhood, I never truly appreciated them until I was older, until I started working on my own cars. Until a 1993 Volkswagen Jetta developed a very costly "mass airflow sensor" problem that caused the engine to die at every stoplight. Which was then shortly followed by an "outside temperature sending unit" problem that caused the engine to die at every stoplight. Which was followed by an "EGR valve malfunction" that caused the car to die at every stoplight. Which was followed, again, by another "mass airflow sensor" problem that caused the car to die at every stoplight and never start back up again. Those frigid, long nights of wrenching, drinking, swearing, and "coaxing" always brought my dad's stories back.

"NO COMPUTERS! Just pure car. I bought that little '66 first thing when I got back from Saudi.  $3000 cash that I had strapped to my leg. Drove right off the lot, free and clear. Had a 289 built to the hilt." Dad would scrape his knuckle across an A/C hose. "Okay, like this air conditioning bullshit? You think we needed air conditioning back then? Hell, it didn't even have power steering! Because back then the only way you got anywhere was by paying attention. You're supposed to be driving, not taking a fucking cruise!"

(Maybe I'm a bit spoiled after all, because I've come to enjoy the modern pleasures of power steering and power brakes and even the occasional blast of air conditioning.)

"...drove that thing all the way from Missouri to Savannah for an Ozzie concert. Stopped to sleep for an hour, jumped right back in and drove back. I was on a long stretch of interstate in Georgia when the fog crept in. Next thing I know, the whole car had just spun out from under me, did a doughnut in the middle of the interstate. Couldn't see shit. If anyone'd been coming, that would have been it for me. Decided to stop and actually sleep after that.

"But you spin out in this piece of shit? Hell, the airbags'd probably deploy, the brakes'd lock up, and it'd blow the switch to the fuel pump, I guarantee it. Probably have another computer call you a cab and wipe your ass while you're waiting it. Hope the computer'll lube you up, too, because the mechanic is going to fuck you and the car company is going to watch!"

There were plenty of other Mustang stories, of course. After all, my dad, my mom, my grandfather, our close family friends Jim and Ed...all of them drove first generation, V8 Mustangs. And if they didn't, they at least drove some kind of Ford. "No, not that Ford," Dad would say as he jabbed an accusatory finger at the busted Taurus he never could get to run right. "That's six-cylinder pile of bullshit and emissions and computers! That ain't a Ford."

And with breathless, bitter nostalgia he'd recount some more stories of the good ol' days.

A controversial introduction

I'd like to start this blog with a slight disclaimer: I am a what is commonly referred to as a Millennial.

Yes, that's right, a Millennial. Generation Y, GenMe, the ever more influential demographic and young men and women born roughly between the years of 1980 and 2000. Or, as we are far better known, "the kids who spend all of their time texting and think the world should just give them whatever they want."

So sure, I will submit myself to being placed in that group. I was born in 1986, several months after the Challenger disaster and several years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I grew up on X-Men cartoons, Nintendo, and Nickelodeon, and I endured the Great Recession in 2008 along with everyone else, watching as my job prospects eroded away bit by bit. I text, as actual phone calls seem to have become all but taboo in any event other than the most dire of emergencies or in the event that one must speak with elderly family members. I learned how to use a computer early in life, and I utilize the technology that I am expected to know how to use, including various forms social media. I am ambitious, and I have many lofty goals that I hope to achieve in my lifetime. I want to travel someday. I have little trust in the economy. I tend to vote more liberally on some issues. I have student loans and thus I have student debt. But this is where most of the similarities between myself and my fellow Millennials ends.

I say all of this now because as a "victim" of this generation (which some have grimly dubbed a "lost generation"), I tend to be lumped into a certain stereotype reserved for some of the most loathsome individuals within the 18–35 age range. You know, those kids that can't look away from their smartphones. The ones with a sense of entitlement. The ones raised with the belief that they were "special" in some way, that the world somehow "owes" them this or that. The delusional young men and women who believe that they will become famous with little or no effort on their part, who believe that they are destined to meet and marry their "Prince Charming" or "soul mate," having no basis for this belief other than their extensive knowledge of the Disney films. These are the people who see the world through rose-colored lenses, taking every criticism as an affront to their very humanity, every setback a major life event that they will never bounce back from. These are not the people I associate myself with.

I would like to think of myself as a hard-working individual, or at the very least, someone who worked for everything he has. I have always viewed laziness as a weakness, and it is one I will never identify myself with. I grew up poor, and I feel no shame in that. I went to a public university on a scholarship that I fought to obtain. I struggled through college hungry and penniless, and only when all other options had been exhausted did I return home after graduation, defeated and weighing just 115 lbs. Thus after a brief period of disillusionment on my part, I began a job search that I can only describe as obsessively relentless, and I would toil away the next several years paying debts and clawing my way to my goals at a snail's pace, one at a time, first landing a job where I could sit down, then an apartment closer to work, then a usable vehicle that would not break down on every trip, and I continued to work and push myself until three years later, I at last found myself in the career I sought and doing the job I had been trained to do.

Do I still believe the American Dream can be achieved? Yes, but I am more prone to believe in the idea that the American Dream started with: the idea that those who separate themselves from the rest, who bust their asses for little or nothing just to have a the slight shot at achieving something big, might have some chance of realizing prosperity; this is how my parents raised me. And prosperity is not living in a 40,000 square foot mansion with two Ferrari super cars parked outside. It's not walking the streets of Hollywood while adoring fans throw themselves at you, worshiping you as their new idol. Prosperity is that feeling you have one morning when you wake up and realize that you owe nothing to anyone and that you have the means to pay all of your bills by going to the job that you don't hate. Make no mistake, in the post-recession era, that is prosperity, and it is more than most will ever achieve.

But this blog isn't about me, it's not about my generation, and it's not about inspiring people to work hard for their dreams. So now I'll tell you about Mustangs.