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."