The heat had finally broken, making the sun less of an enemy. As a result, I decided to take the long way to town and enjoy a little more of the morning than I’d been able to in the several months since the Heat Dome planted itself over Fort Stockton.

Despite water bills that bordered on the absurd, everybody’s yard in RoadRunner Estates had burnt to a crisp weeks ago.  No amount of water can keep vegetation alive that was never meant to sustain 105 degree weather for three months straight.  The leaves that hadn’t burned up due to the heat were actually starting to change due to the cool.  The autumn everyone had been looking for months looked as though it might finally be making an appearance.

I actually rolled the windows down. All of them. I don’t think that had happened in six months. The smells that blew in were almost as welcomed as the sounds. I could smell piles of leaves burning and hear the peels of laughter coming from the playground over at Alamo Elementary. There’s something about the unbridled uproar of laughter from little children that gives one hope. Wanting to make the experience last a little longer, I took the long way around and into town for the morning coffee at The Grounds for Divorce, turning down roads I hadn’t been on in years, just to see if anything had changed.

That was when I saw something out of the corner of my eye that made me hit the brakes and do a double-take.  I was pretty sure of what I’d seen, but I did a U-turn in the middle of the street and went back to be sure.  Sure enough.  Just what I thought it was.  Certain shapes and images are so burned in your memory that a split second is all it takes to identify them.  It was a fin.

So rare is such a sighting any more that I went ahead and pulled in and drove to the back of the lot where the fin had been spotted for closer inspection.  Even if it meant being late to the Grounds for Divorce, I was not going to pass up the opportunity to reacquaint myself with a 1960 Ford Sunliner.

They say you remember your ‘first’ with more fondness than any of those that follow. Car. Girlfriend. Job. Whatever it may be. They hit the nail on the head with the ‘car’ part for sure. The Sunliner was inherited from my sister who’d abused it and passed it on. Where others saw a fifteen-year-old heap of dented body panels and mechanical mishaps, I saw endless possibilities and long forgotten mid-century modern style. The Ford became my Holy Grail and I would love that car like no other in the years that followed.

A loan was required to rebuild the engine.  All the other work was done on the pay-as-you-go plan.  A radio with cassette player that slid under the dash, but could be removed as needed was a fairly quick and easy purchase.  The bodywork and respray of Corinthian White took a summer of working to pay for.  The interior didn’t get done till the first semester of college.

To see one again was like going back to my youth. I stopped the car, turned off the ignition, and walked around the Sunliner. Good gracious, she was gorgeous. Of course I was prejudiced, but it seemed like Ford got every single line right on the car. Known for being conservative while GM and Chrysler were all over the map in the same time period, this was the one that Ford chose to show a little more flare and daring. The fins were tasteful, not like the Chevrolet of the same year, nor heaven forbid, the Plymouth. The taillights were half moons rather than the flower pots that had been the norm for most of the decade previous.

I walked around the thing and remembered waxing every body panel, using steel wool on the white walls and chrome. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. I knew I shouldn’t, but I just wanted to sit inside the thing one more time; have my hand on the ten and two positions on that big ol’ massive steering wheel again. Looking over the turquoise dash and out the massive expanse of windshield, I could see Jim Bowie High School again, just ahead. I glanced over and winked at Buttercup. She was never as in love with the Sunliner as I was, but she was in love with me and that was even better. We were heading to the Dairy Twin after football games, movies at the Prairie View Drive-In out on the edge of town. The top was down for the submarine races over beside Lake Leon.

I looked out to my right and there was the campus from college.  Drove the Sunliner all the way through, cramming four years into five, Buttercup flying copilot the entire time.  By the second year of college we were taking her car most of the time, the comfort of air conditioning far outperforming the allure of the convertible.  The Ford was no less loved, but Buttercup preferred not to glisten (southern girls don’t sweat).

When it was just me, I continued to drive the Sunliner for all it was worth.  Just looking at the dash on this one was a trip back in time.  Such a treat.  I was  reminded of driving it to the job interview where I accepted my first position of real employment, late in my senior year of higher education.  It was bittersweet when I drove from there to Cactus Olds-CHEV and picked out a brand new Monte Carlo.  

The Sunliner had been so good to me. But it was time to be welcomed into gainful full-time employment and the comfort and convenience of all that General Motors had to offer, air conditioning and power everything. I would have loved to keep the Sunliner forever, but of course that wasn’t a possibility. I had no place to put it; my parents had no desire to become a storage facility for the toys of my youth. Heck, my mother made me remove the Hot Wheels collection from under the bed. There was no way she was going to give up her bay of the garage for my first car. No, the Ford convertible was destined to be traded for a measly $400 towards the new car.

As I was turning towards my left, and back into the backseat to rekindle other old memories, I heard a voice from just outside the passenger door.  “What the hell you doin’ son?”  First time anyone had called me ‘Son’ in forty years.  It was Earl.  Of Earl’s Salvage Yard and Formal Wear.  Before I could turn all the way around, I noticed a family of possums in the back seat.  That took the bloom off the rose, just a bit.

“Just admiring this old Sunliner,” I told him.  “Got caught up in the moment.  Probably shouldn’t have just let myself in, but I couldn’t help it.”  Earl looked at me with disdain.  “Just like my first car,” I told him.  That softened him.  Even ol’ Earl has a heart somewhere under all that hair on his burly barrel chest.

“Folks got most all the good parts off this one,” he said with a warmer tone in his voice.  “Not a whole lot left.  Be careful when you get out.  There’s more sharp edges than Lucinda’s got, and these are almost as dangerous.”

It didn’t surprise me that Earl saw it as a used up, stripped out, rusting hulk.  He didn’t know it for what it had been.  Didn’t realize how one just like it had been a Chariot of the Gods to a seventeen-year-old kid.  He couldn’t have understood  that it had both stirred and hosted passions seared into the core of my being.  To him, it was just a parted out old Ford.

I vowed to go by every now and again, just for the experience, until it is unceremoniously fed to the crusher, and recycled into future products devoid of any kind of soul.  In the meantime, it possesses all the qualities of going to a high school reunion, without having to actually see anybody from back then.  It was damn well worth being late to the Grounds for Divorce.  And who doesn’t enjoy being in a convertible on a beautiful autumn morning?

Just sayin’.