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.
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