Stories about hope

I’m currently at the Ford Dealership. 

I’m a Ford girl. 

I learned to drive in a baby blue Ford LTD station wagon. My sister Dori and I were driving to Walnut Creek to get our grandmother and bring her to stay in our Valley Home during her last few months of life. She was quite ill and needed constant care that her husband could not provide. It was not a fun trip in retrospect but I do often think about that trip as cementing me as a “Ford Girl”. In addition to that station wagon, I have personally owned a T-Bird, a Windstar mini van and my second favorite car of all time, an F150. The perfect truck for a mom with 3 sons that played baseball.

Back to the LTD.

Dori and I got up long before dawn to beat LA traffic and headed up the 5. 

We were just past the grapevine when my sister said she was falling asleep at the wheel, I needed to take over.

I was almost 15, and although I didn’t have a drivers license, much less a permit. I had been using the car to drive down the street to our local market for about a year. 

I knew how to drive; I just wasn’t old enough for a license. 

So, she slept, and I took over. 

I loved driving. 

Driving the LTD always felt like I was driving on a cloud. 

Eventually Dori woke up, she looked at the surroundings in a fog.

 “Wow you are making good time”. 

It was then that she saw the speedometer. I was doing well over 90 MPH. I remember her panic 

“Edie!!!????” “Slow DOWN RIGHT NOW”. 

My love of Fords began.

My particular love was the Ford Mustang. My dream car.

I may have even “borrowed” my dream car once. 

It was owned by a friend of my mom’s, and I was asked to house sit for them.

In their garage it sat. 

It was the summer before I turned 16. 

1965, V-8, 289, Classic Green and White Pony Interior

Its original Olive-Green Paint was primed in grey. It was ready for color. 

My friend Stacee came to join me while I was watching the house. 

I showed her the car, I showed her the keys. I showed her the interior. I should her how it sounded when you turned over the ignition. 

“Let’s take it for a drive around the block” she said. 

My heart quickened. I was a rule follower. And the thought of driving a car I didn’t have permission to drive was terrifying. 

I also didn’t have my license. 

However, Stacee was quite convincing and looking at this car it was clear the rules were meant to be broken.

It was a glorious feeling to be behind the wheel.  

I was shaking and smiling as I backed the car out of the driveway.

Around the block once and my obedient heart became very anxious. 

“We need to take it back”

“But I need a turn”

So, we swapped places. Stacee taking over the driving and my heart calmed down.  Afterall, if she was behind the wheel and we were discovered, she would be the one driving and she actually HAD a drivers license.  

What could possibly go wrong? 

We made it safely around the block and were entering the driveway when all of the sudden the car just stopped. 

It was completely dead. 

I looked at Stacee, I was terrified. 

Knowing a thing or two about how cars are powered, I knew it was either and engine problem or an out of fuel problem. 

Turns out it was out of fuel. 

“Let’s just push it into the garage.”

Stacee was barely 5 feet tall, and I don’t think she weighed 90 lbs. soaking wet. So naturally it was up to me to get behind the car and push. 

I instructed her to get behind the wheel. I was certain that I could push it up the driveway and into the safety of the garage. 

Boy was I ever wrong. 

It didn’t budge. 

I was trying with everything I had in me when I heard a voice across the street. 

“Do you need help?”

It was Mitch. 

It was summer and Mitch was going to be a Senior at my high school. Star of the Football team, taller than me, stronger than me, and so good looking. 

I was mortified. 

My freshman year Mitch had a locker right next to mine. He was a Junior and had already had his growth spurt. 

He said hello to me on several occasions, but I could never open my shy awkward mouth to return the greeting. I just turned red, closed my locker, and walked away. 

Now here he was, walking across the street. Toward me. 

His suntanned skin glowing, brown hair with streaks of blond, blowing in the wind, I was mortified at the thought that I actually had to speak to him. 

Without hesitation he stood next to me, hands on the trunk almost touching mine and said “Push”. 

The car rolled effortlessly up the driveway and into safety of the garage. 

Stacee jumped out of the car and began to engage Mitch in conversation, I just stood there feeling awkward staring at the ground. I was worried that he would see my face in the darkness that had turned 14 shades of red. 

Was Mitch going to tell the owners about our little joy ride? 

I was doomed. 

However, as the summer months gave way to fall, Mitch, to my knowledge, said nothing. 

As my sophomore year of school started, his locker was next to mine again. I managed to smile at the tall senior instead of completely shying away when Mitch would say “hello”. 

Little did I know, during that fateful joy ride that on my 16^th birthday the car I was in love with would be mine… in fact, it was mine at the time I stole it. 

My mom had already paid for it. The grey primer was waiting to be painted light yellow (my favorite color at the time). When the car rolled up to my house and my mom sent me outside, I couldn’t believe it. Here it was, my favorite car of all time. And it was mine! 

The first day I rolled up to high school, I parked in the lot and who should walk up?  

Mitch!

“Need a push start?” He said with a grin. 

I laughed awkwardly, and turned 15 shades of red. 

My mustang odyssey had officially begun years earlier. My Dad had owned a mustang as well. I loved the idea that I was driving a car like my Daddy had owned. 

The memories of this car. 

It replaced my baby blue Schwinn 10 speed as my mode of transportation across the Valley. I could drive and listen to Vin Scully call the Dodger games instead of strapping my transistor radio to my book rack and trying to hear the game over the sound of my own breathing as I peddled up the hills to my house.

It was my ticket to freedom.

            It was my safe place. 

It’s where I would have my talks with God. 

It was where I would hide when I needed to away from the chaos inside my house. 

It’s the car I got my first ticket in, a rolling stop ticket when my brakes gave out at the bottom of Faralone hill. 

It’s also the car I got my one and only speeding ticket in. I was driving to spend a week with my sister and her friends as they camped and water skied at Porcupine Bay near Spokane. 

My little nephew Wayne was often with me during my adventures and he just happened to be present for both. 

I taught my best friend Kim how to drive in that Mustang. 

Oh, the memories we made. A couple of goodie two shoes, cruising the streets of the San Fernando Valley. Making the treks to Westwood, driving all over Spokane on glorious summer nights. 

It’s the car Julie & I would take to the beach (when showing up to class in high school didn’t seem appealing).  I would show up to school, heartbroken with life at home. Julie and her baby blue 1970’s Mustang would roll up take one look at me and say, “I think we need to beach day today.”

Sometimes we took my Mustang, sometimes we took hers. But Five dollars would give us just enough gas to get to and from Zuma beach before school got out. 

 It wasn’t a good car to drive when it rained. Being that it had rear wheel drive & rear brakes, it tended to fishtail. I never quite figured out how to avoid a spin out. One would think I would learn to drive a little slower. 

My only accident ever occurred when I was driving it too fast in the rain while in college. 

A car was parked in my lane, a no stopping zone. It had run out of gas, and I was quickly approaching a collision. I pushed down on the brakes and somehow although spinning, missed the parked car and hit a tree. It wasn’t totaled but it never drove the same.  

It made many drives up PCH, Topanga Canyon Blvd or Kanan Dume Road.  

Summers in college were spent driving the 101 to Interstate 5 to the 395 ending in Spokane. 

Cruising Spokane with the windows down & The Beach Boys playing on the tape deck. 

Kim & I made the trip home to the Valley together in it one summer. I was visiting my family during summer break from College and she would often come to stay with me. 

I had just had my wisdom teeth out and she was going to help me with the driving a few days later. As we were driving across the Columbia gorge we lost the brakes. As we made our way down PCH, the axel broke. We spent a day getting it repaired in a little Victorian town called Ferndale in Northern California.   

I posed a question on Facebook asking my friends what their favorite car of all time is. This is my friend Kim’s response:

‘It wouldn’t necessarily be a car, but another ride. A ride up the 101, toward McGrath, in your yellow Mustang, (pony interior!), windows down, hair blowing, Beach Boys blaring on the radio, with us singing along. Oh, the memories!!!! Sometimes, America’s song “Ventura Highway” comes on and it brings it all back…Kim”

My three boys have all become Mustang fans. When my youngest turned 16, we were able to help him buy his Mustang. Oh, how I longed to have been able to give all my boys a Mustang. Hunter lets me drive his when I need a Mustang fix.  And when I do, I am immediately taken back to that car and the memories. 

As I sit here, in the Ford dealership waiting for work on my Fusion to be completed. I am seated across from a Black Convertible Mustang. Looking up from my computer every few minutes, I smile. Remembering the memories of a sweeter time in the sweetest car of all time.