by Dennis Bloom

Created on: January 29, 2009

Grieving for your first car

It wasn't the most forceful collision. It could be called a "slightly angled head-on," because our fronts collided, but she was stopped to make a right turn and my 1966 Ford Mustang swerved left to hit her Lincoln Continental off-center.

I might have been going only 30 to 35 miles per hour, but the small-block engine my father had build into it left plenty of space under the hood for an engine shift. That is, empty space allowed the engine to shoot forward upon impact.

The next day my best friend laughed when, while inspecting the damage, I said, "You can fix it. Right?"

"Well, look at this," he said, swaying his flattened hand between the engine and exterior of the passenger compartment. "There's nothing connecting the engine and drive train. The engine shot forward about 6 inches; I think she's toast."

It was at that moment I realized, my fantastic yet all-to-brief love affair with my old green classic was over.

In fact, it was over for my whole family. My grandfather bought it new in '66, the year I was born. As I approached the legal age to drive, around 1981, even though most '66 Mustangs in good shape sold for around $1,400, he promised to sell it to my parents for $200.

When I turned 16 I just happened to have that much in a savings account. My first car was a classic Mustang, in pretty good shape, though my father put in a tiny engine to ensure I couldn't drive too fast. (Smart choice on his part considering how it ended).

Sixteen-year-olds with classic Mustangs are not a great mix. I have a wide range of memories in that car, from getting it stuck in a rut while off-roading in the hills, to physically rolling on top of the hood while in a brawl after a little league game, to hiding friends in the trunk for free drive-in movie access.

I drove three friends to my first funeral in that car, for a classmate who was killed as a passenger in a 1965 Mustang driven by a 15-year-old with a license thanks to a mother who lied about his birthday.

Once, I noticed a head of steam seeping from under the hood. My dad took it to a shop, and he came back not looking happy. He said a rock punctured the radiator, which in turn poured water all over the engine.

Noticing dirt behind all the wheels, he asked where I had been driving. I never told him that one night I took three friends on a long dirt road to a party well into the hills north of our town. Our weight caused some low riding, and some damages underneath.

In the early years it was pretty much

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