You Never Forget a First Love

Soon after we were married, Craig was casually approached by a perfect stranger who offered to buy his Ford Mustang. It shocked me that someone would want the car enough to ask for it when it wasn’t for sale. Craig answered the offer with a casual negative and a prideful gleam in his eye, and I wasn’t surprised. Craig loved every aspect of the car, from the way the small back seat folded down to extend the hatchback cargo area to the written record of service visits that he meticulously updated and kept in the glove compartment.

It gradually became clear that the Mustang was a young man’s car in the eyes of many, who assumed that we should sell it. I was often asked when we “were planning on selling the two-seater,” often with the spoken or implied add-on in order to buy a family car. I would ignore the wistful glance at my abdomen that always accompanied these conversations and give my prepared answer: “Craig and his Mustang go further back than Craig and I do. What if I told him he needed to sell the Mustang, only to find out that its hold on him was greater than mine?”

The 1993 dark blue Mustang LX definitely caught my attention when we were seeing each other. I could spot the Mustang easily in a parking lot full of gold sedans and white minivans. Craig would be waiting for me by the bookstore coffee counter, ready to start contemplating our order. Ours was a long distance relationship, and in that year of long separations I would eagerly anticipate seeing the dark-blue Mustang that brought Craig for weekend visits. My full load of upper-division literature classes often filled my schedule so completely that monthly outings in the Mustang were my only social activities. Sitting in the passenger seat felt like a warm embrace; I would look inquisitively at the galloping horse dashboard emblem trying to memorize it, saving the memory for a long Sunday night of studying.

I didn’t marvel at the hatchback or the 5.0 engine, but I was impressed that the car ran dependably. I was driving a muddy brown-colored four cylinder Mazda that racked up thousands of dollars in repair bills while stranding me nine times by the side of the road in the three years I owned it. Once, I was on Highway 99 South, driving seventy in the slow lane with a car that wanted to go eighty on my tail. Suddenly, my electrical system went haywire like a scene in a 1980’s alien abduction movie. My air conditioner spat short bursts of air, my radio crackled and was silent, and my engine revved and ran low. The car bucked so ominously that I took the exit that conveniently appeared to my right. As soon as I came to a stop at a gas station, my power system went so dead that turning the key got no response at all. Twenty-four hours and six hundred dollars later, I headed south again with a new alternator. This one lasted a scant six weeks, only to die in the same fashion two miles from my Southern California apartment. To take advantage of the warranty, I had to carry the defective alternator around in my trunk for three weeks until a trip home for Thanksgiving allowed me to drive it back to Chowchilla where I had so frighteningly broken down before. Turning fast corners to get to class would send the heavy part thumping from one side of my trunk to the other, causing my classmates to inquire about the health of my car. “It’s fine, it’s just the alternator!” I would smile glibly.

The last page of our wedding album shows Craig helping me into the passenger seat of the Mustang. We were still dressed in ceremony attire, and the volume of my skirt billowed up like an extra passenger sitting on my lap. We were able to remove the window paint, but the black leather car bra never recovered from the liberal use of silly string.

Soon after, as Craig’s on-call hours increased and his employer gave him control of a company pickup, I became the primary driver of the Mustang. Immediately, while idling the car at the Exxon station, I noticed a sonorous, brassy sound coming from the hood of the car. The Ford dealership charged us two hundred dollars to tell us what I told them when I gave them the keys: the alternator was going out! Instead of paying seven hundred more to replace it, we picked up the car and took it to a garage belonging to a friend of a friend. We got the same Ford alternator for five hundred less than the dealership, and there was no charge for labor when it quit six weeks later and was replaced under warranty. Despite the single bout of electrical trouble, the Mustang ran great and rarely needed work. For the first time, I was the primary driver of a reliable vehicle.

I had never imagined driving a sporty car, and sometimes felt that I didn’t quite deserve it. Parked at stoplights, I would attract longing gazes from pimply adolescents and balding, middle aged men alike. At least I was sure they were salivating over the car and not me. As a middle school English teacher, my geek factor was greatly diminished in the eyes of my students when they discovered that I drove such a cool car. One afternoon I walked out to my car after holding after school detention and found four boys on skateboards begging for “a tow.” I sat in my car for ten minutes until they were finally convinced I had no intention of pulling away from the curb with them hanging on to the spoiler.

Picking the car up from the mechanic was a different experience. He would lecture me on the proper way to shift without damaging the clutch, all the while running his hand back and forth across the hood in a gesture that seemed a little possessive. “You know, these 5.0 engines are the best around. They put them in stock cars!” he would muse, and then suddenly shake his head out of a daydream and take my credit card. Yes, I know, because you told me that last time I was in here. As I activated my left turn signal and pulled out of the parking lot, I wondered if he ever watched me leave at the responsible posted speed limit of 25 mph, wishing he could take the car away from me and give it to someone who could truly appreciate its performance. “Sorry, ma’am, but a car like this deserves someone who can truly handle it. I know you love the car, but you just don’t accelerate like it was made to. I’ll show you some four-cylinder sedans of comparable value that would be more fitting for your style of driving.” Admittedly, I was an unlikely driver for such a powerful, responsive engine.

I don’t like to recall the only time I accelerated fast enough to leave rubber marks, especially because I was just learning to drive the car. It took me weeks to get used to “a stick,” and the tricky double movement of accelerating gradually while releasing the clutch had me stalling jerkily four or five times in a row. I gathered my courage in preparation for another attempt, and shocked Craig and myself by pealing out of Craig’s parents’ garage, going in reverse! The tire marks persisted for months, and my embarrassment lasted even longer when I recalled the squeal I made.

As we gratefully said goodbye to Craig’s job, the pickup left, too. I had a strange relationship with that white truck. On one hand, hearing it maneuver into our driveway meant that Craig was finally home. Something inside me unclenched knowing he had made it through another day (or night, or day and night) of work and could be home and rest. Unfortunately, the truck was also a symbol of Craig’s job; he was always available ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Even now, I view white trucks on the road with a twinge of dismay. We will most likely buy a truck at some time in the future, but it will be any color but white.

I think Craig enjoyed driving the Mustang again in the weeks after his farm job. It was our only car for a few months, and the cooperation it took to make that work was good for us. It was good for the Mustang, too. The inside and outside took on a cleanliness it never had when it was solely my car. I’ve heard that women keep clean houses but messy cars, while men keep their cars spotless and let their houses get messy. The back of the Mustang had definitely accumulated a layer of female clutter it was unaccustomed to. The outside, too, got a new coat of wax, which I had never figured out how to apply.

Nine months before we moved, we bought a practically new silver Malibu that took us back to two-car status. It wasn’t exactly the “family car” that so many were longing for us to buy, but it had a bigger cabin and front-wheel drive for snowy weather. I drove the Malibu, and finally the single man’s Mustang had a man driving it, but we were looking ahead to our move and wondering what to do about transportation. Always the practical (heartless) one, I admit that I thought it best to sell it right before we moved. It didn’t help that it was starting to have a few problems. The battery light brought us back to the mechanic, and the news should not have surprised me: the Mustang needed an alternator again! I think Craig changed his mind weekly from September to May, but June saw us putting a sign in the window and advertising the car in the newspaper. Yes, we loved the car, but it seemed the right time to part with it.

A week after we started parking it on Main Street to be noticed, a now recognizable low drum roll noise announced the failure of our fifth alternator. “Six alternators in seven years!” I mused to the mechanic, who looked up the warranty and called in for the part. “I think you need to give me a punch card for these. I think if I buy nine, I should get the tenth one free!” As he took the keys and filled out the paperwork, he noticed the sign in the window and (I swear) his eyes misted over.

“Wow, you’re finally selling the Mustang! I remember the car I bought when I got my first job, a 19— Camaro that I loved with an intensity I’ve never given to any woman. We had fifteen good years together, and when I sold it my wife had to hand over the keys, I was crying so hard!” He was standing on the garage floor with his hands covered in a layer of black grease, but sniffling like a kid. I wondered if I should hand him a tissue so he wouldn’t have to dry his eyes on the rolled up sleeve of his shirt, one of those garage regulars with “Mike” stitched on to a monogrammed patch.

My first Mazda was sold with a sense of relief, although it may just be that signing the back of the title meant that I would never have to write another twelve hundred dollar check for transmission work. Still, I think that there must be an emotional connection to one’s first vehicle that is attached to the Y chromosome. Mike the mechanic wasn’t the only man I know who turned on the waterworks when a first car was involved. My brother was sitting at a stoplight in his red Ford Ranger when an SUV hit him and pushed the truck into the car in front of him. Insurance totaled the car and paid enough for him to get something with better gas mileage, but I couldn’t mistake the emotion in his voice when he described his last few moments with the truck before he gave the keys to the adjustor and watch it wheel away.

Calls started coming in about our Mustang for sale, but there was always some reason that the interested party wasn’t the right one for the car. This one lived too far to come see it, this one was too young and probably couldn’t afford the insurance, this one didn’t know anything about Mustangs. I wondered if we would cave and keep the car and each drive the 2,500 miles to Lexington in a separate vehicle.

Finally, on the afternoon after the movers loaded our furniture, we accepted an offer. It was lower than we originally wanted, but isn’t it always? The owner always perceives more value because they see the car in terms of what they’ve put into it, and it always seems like a lot. The man knew what it was worth, and was going to drive it as it was for a year and then totally redo it with a kit that would make it look like a classic Cobra. He knew a good engine when he heard one.

“If you have any trouble with the alternator, it’s on warranty,” I said bravely as we made arrangements for him to collect the car from my Dad when he had the cash. Was there something in my eye, or was this starting to get to me as well? We parked the car in front of my parents’ house, and I thought again of the past that this car represented. I was sitting in this passenger seat when Craig first told me that he loved me. We took this car to the park where we shared our first kiss.

Before we locked the car for the last time, Craig took out his pocketknife and removed a frayed piece or curling ribbon from around the exhaust pipe. It was left there from when our wedding party attached cans to our getaway car. All at once, I felt guilty. Craig owned the car for twelve years. He was making monthly payments on it when I was taking high school driver’s education. I had strongly encouraged him to sell it: it was older, it wouldn’t be practical, it had to happen sometime. Had I done the right thing? He had used the car to impress me, to court me, to transport me to our first home as his wife, and now he was giving it up for me.

I hope I’m worth it.