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.
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