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Bud hung on to his 1969 Mercury Monterey convertible longer than any other car he’d ever owned.

He tried to justify it by talking about the low miles it had on it. Then, it was the rumors of all the American manufacturers phasing out convertibles.  “Won’t even be able to buy a new one anymore,” he told folks who asked.  “May as well keep this.  It’ll be a collector’s item one day.”

As they worked their way into their fifties, Bud and Joan were more honest with each other.  Well, more unfiltered than honest would probably be the best way to put it.  “It’s not that car you’re clinging on to,” Joan told him in front of a group of friends after dinner at the Silver Slipper Supper Club one night, “it’s your youth.  Face it.  It’s gone.”

Bud bristled.

But deep down, he knew she was right.  He was embarrassed she’d said it out loud, especially in front of their friends.  But she was right.

He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, or even when it had happened.  But he woke up one day and the world was a completely different place.  The music made no sense to him.  The movies all seemed to be showing more flesh than they ever had when he was young.  If they’d have shown all those bosoms back then he probably wouldn’t have minded.  But at this age, all the women flashing them to the paying theater audiences were young enough to be his daughter, if he’d had one.

Driving by Jim Bowie High School just depressed him.  The girls all seemed to be wearing skirts way shorter than they should be.  “One of those girls bends over and there’s more meat showing than the butcher counter at the Piggly Wiggly,” he noted to Rex Hall at the pharmacy when he went in to pick up his cholesterol and blood pressure medicine.  Rex concurred, as he did with all of his other customers that were about the same age.

“And what’s the deal with the hair these young men wear now?” he asked Mrs. Drury at the Piggly Wiggly when he was checking out.  “Down to damn near their ass-crack, excuse my French.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Honey,” she replied.  It was really almost everybody he encountered he was preaching to, not just the choir.  

He was particularly poor tempered when Doc Brown retired and his replacement was only a few years out of medical school.  “What the hell could that kid know?  Hell, he looks like he just graduated grade school, not medical school,” he complained to Rusty Hammer over at the hardware store when he was picking up some new line for his Weedeater.  “You want to have a little more confidence than that in someone who’s about to stick his finger up your ass.”  He hadn’t noticed Sister Thelma behind him in line, but it probably wouldn’t have made much difference.  Perhaps Joan wasn’t the only one who had suffered from his lack of filter.

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One of the few things Bud couldn’t complain about was business.  His firm had prospered and grown during the 70s.  He’d actually had to hire a full time secretary and two part time accountants to help out.  One had gone full time during the last tax season.  “Don’t worry, I check everything they do,” he told his established clients, though none of them seemed concerned about it.

After getting into some financial trouble early on, Mason McCullough had become one of Bud’s biggest clients.  Mason and his partner Kenny Dillon had come to Bud for some help straightening out their finances in the early 70s.  In the years since, Mason had gone out on his own, and seemed to have his finger in damn near anything that made money in Fort Stockton.  Bud helped him legally keep as much of it as he could.

Bud wondered why Mason had never settled down and gotten married.  When he asked him about it one day, Mason said, “It just never worked out that way.  The stars never aligned.  Came close a time or two.  First time, I ruined it by stupidity.  Second time, she nearly killed me.  Maybe someday, but I doubt it.”

By the summer of 1978 Bud was resolved that the world was going to hell in a handbag, but there was nothing he could do about it.  He was having that thought, probably for the one thousandth time, when the light changed in front of the Eggs & Ammo and he hit the gas on the Mercury.  Luckily he was wearing his seat belt, a hit and miss proposition before it became Texas state law in the 80s.  

Shannon Hudspeth, firmly behind the wheel of her two-tone green and white 1955 Buick Century never even took her foot off the accelerator before plowing into the passenger side of Bud’s ruby red Mercury Monterey convertible.  The dagmars on the front of the Buick punched half way into the cabin of the car.  The radiator of the Buick and the glove box of the Mercury were more than intimate.  Shannon wasn’t hurt, but couldn’t stop giggling.

The frame of the Mercury was bent in more places than the laws that should have sent Shannon Hudspeth to jail.  As such, Bud’s insurance company totaled his beloved convertible.  Arn and Audrey Hudspeth were thankful that God had spared their only daughter from one more catastrophe.  “Maybe this is just what she needed to turn things around,” Audrey said.  Arn knew she was probably as high as a kite at the time of the accident.  

Mason McCullough couldn’t believe it when Bud relayed the story over breakfast at the Grounds for Divorce a week later.  By then, Bud was driving a new Mercury.  “Didn’t have a choice,” he told Mason.  “Had to get a new one.  Damndest thing, though.  I went in and asked for Roger.   He’s always who I’ve dealt with.  They said he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.  Seems like he’s way too young for that, but I guess he’s my age.”

Mason nodded along, more out of respect and courtesy than anything resembling an actual interest.

“It’s a nice enough car, don’t get me wrong.  But doesn’t hold a candle to the one that got totaled.  I mean the interior of the damn thing looks like a bordello.  Oh well, nothing ever stays the same.”  Bud sounded like a man who was resigned to his fate, but had no idea what that fate might actually be, other than uncomfortable.

About that time, Trixie walked in and sat down in a booth just down the way a bit.  Bud thought she may have winked at him when she walked by, but couldn’t be completely sure.  He still thought about her proposition at the Lucky Lady a decade earlier when he was feeling particularly low.  He thought about it more often in recent years.  He bent his head down and lowered his voice.  “You see Trixie over there from the Klip-N-Dye?”  Mason nodded in the affirmative.  “That woman scares me.  You ever have a woman scare you?”

Mason sat back in his chair and smiled.  “Yes,” he told Bud.  “Yes I have.”  It didn’t seem to have the same effect on Mason as Trixie had on Bud.

“Anyway, it’s a Grand Marquis hardtop.  It’s got the big 460 V8 under the hood.  It’ll pass anything but a gas station.”  Bud was quiet for a minute while he thought about his new car.  “That kid that they have filling in for Roger while he’s in treatment said that they’re downsizing all the big Fords and Mercurys next year.  This one will be the last of the ‘Big Ones’ I can get.  Maybe it’s a good thing that little philly ran into me when she did.  You probably know her, I think she’s about your age.  Might have even gone to school with her.”

Mason smiled again.  Shannon Hudspeth.  Still disrupting lives and forcing decisions on people who aren’t ready to make them.  Ford products and trouble-making women.  Despite the difference in their ages, Mason and Bud had a lot in common, he chuckled to himself.

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