Farewell to a Mustang

All first cars are beautiful. It doesn't matter if you're driving Daddy's Mercedes or an AMC Gremlin you scrimped and saved to buy yourself -- the machine that gives you great freedom of movement when you are young and wild is always a cherished thing.

My first car was a 1971 Mustang. It was school bus yellow, with racing stripes down the sides. Sleek. Huge. It looked so much like the women's car in "Deathproof" that when I first saw the movie I had to call Dad and talk about the car.

The 1972 Mustang from "Deathproof." Pretty pretty car.

The hood was a mile long. And the car was all metal. Heavy. Safe. A glorious, shiny, sexy fortress on wheels. And it was mine.

But before it was mine, it was my mother's. She bought it brand new the year before I was born. I have always looked at that car as lasting proof that at some point, Mom was incredibly cool.

When Mom was in labor with me, she and Dad climbed into the Mustang and drove to the hospital. (None of us knows how on earth a woman 9 months pregnant managed to get in and out of a car that low-slung, but she did.) After I was born, all three of us piled into the Mustang and it took us home.

It wasn't just my first car -- it was my first car from birth.

I can't even begin to speak to all the memories I have of driving that car -- it's where I was sitting when I first met many of the people I'm friends with now. It drove us around on our high-school quests for cheap fun. One day we crammed 9 people into it and went to the river for lunch. One night I drag-raced the then-mayor's son and beat him. At least two people I was friends with had sex in the back seat. It has stories to tell.

That Mustang had very nearly surpassed its mechanical limits when I became its driver, and so it seemed like something was always broken on it. The guys in high school who preferred Chevrolets used to tease me with the typical Ford jokes -- "Found On Road Dead," "Fixed Or Repaired Daily" -- and I laughed good-naturedly, but even when it was living down to expectations I never stopped loving that car. And we never sold the car. Mom's initial ownership of it, Dad's love for mechanical puzzles and my passion for that car led us to hang onto it probably longer than we should. It has been sitting in my parents' driveway, immobile (Found On Road Dead one time too many), for nigh on 15 years.

My '71 Stang. Farewell, my friend. 

This evening, I went over to my parents' house to sign the Mustang's title so Dad could sell it to a young man down the street who wants to fix it up. I had to fight to keep from crying as I did it, but I knew that it was for the best. I don't have the money to get it fixed -- pretty much the only functional parts are the radio, the engine and the transmission -- and Dad doesn't have the time to do any work on it. This guy will take care of her and, hopefully, come to love her as much as I do.

It wasn't until after I got home, bawled for half an hour, went over to a friend's house to think and talk about it, and came home and bawled some more that I realized the best thing about that old Mustang: It taught me how to love something that's broken. It never mattered if the carburetor was messed up or one of the pistons stopped firing or the electrical system was acting wonky -- I never stopped loving that car. Even after it broke down the last time and Dad and I weren't sure whether or how to fix it, I still loved it. I still love it now.

And after teaching me how to love broken things, my old Mustang is teaching me how to let go.