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In June of 1976 I’d graduated from high school and decided it was time to improve my station in life.

This seemed entirely reasonable at eighteen.

I had plans. Big plans. I was headed off to college in the fall where I intended to get a degree, become a writer, make a pile of money, and generally prove everyone wrong who thought I didn’t know what I was doing. The fact that I actually didn’t know what I was doing never entered into the equation. That’s one of the great advantages of youth. Experience teaches caution. Ignorance teaches confidence.

The only thing standing between me and this glorious future was a 1960 Ford Fairlane 500 that was already old enough to vote by the time I got behind the wheel.

The Fairlane and I had a complicated relationship. On one hand, it had faithfully carried me everywhere I’d ever needed to go. On the other hand, it looked like something Dean Martin might have driven to a Rat Pack rehearsal. Ford’s designers had apparently been paid by the pound in 1960 because there was enough sheet metal in that car to build a respectable irrigation project. The thing was enormous. The tailfins alone occupied enough real estate to qualify for agricultural exemptions in Pecos County.

It had a three-on-the-tree manual transmission that shifted with all the precision of a tractor gearbox. Power steering was apparently considered communist propaganda. Power brakes were reserved for royalty. Air conditioning existed only as a rumor. Every time I parked downtown I got a workout. Looking back, I probably owe the Fairlane for the development of muscles I didn’t deserve.

The real problem wasn’t the car.

The real problem was Buttercup.

Not that Buttercup herself was a problem. Far from it.

The problem was that I’d started caring whether somebody else enjoyed riding in my car.

That changes a man.

Before Buttercup, I viewed transportation strictly as a matter of getting from Point A to Point B. After Buttercup entered the picture, comfort suddenly became important. Appearance became important. The ability to carry on a conversation without both occupants suffering heat exhaustion became important.

Buttercup never actually perspired. She merely glistened. Looking back, I considered this one of her more attractive qualities. She disagreed. West Texas summers have a way of settling arguments quickly, and the Fairlane’s lack of air conditioning meant every date between May and September involved a certain amount of meteorological suffering.

I had learned to live with being slightly moist for six months out of every year. Buttercup had not.

Fifty years later her comfort remains one of my top priorities. At eighteen, however, I mostly viewed air conditioning as a way to improve the dating experience.

Young men are rarely as complicated as they imagine themselves to be.

With college approaching and my future apparently moments away from beginning, Buttercup and I made our way to Frontier Ford, Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal. The new 1977 models had just arrived and the lot was overflowing with fresh inventory. The afternoon sun reflected off acres of polished paint and chrome. To a kid who had spent four years driving a car older than himself, the place looked like Oz.

I wandered through the rows studying the merchandise. Thunderbirds. LTDs. Granadas. F-Series pickups. Mavericks. Every one of them looked newer, shinier, and vastly more sophisticated than what I’d driven there.

My budget, unfortunately, was not aligned with my ambitions.

That’s when I saw it.

A white Pinto.

White paint.

Red lower-body stripes.

Red vinyl top.

Red cloth-and-vinyl interior.

It looked sporty in exactly the same way a polyester leisure suit looked sporty in 1976. Which is to say not particularly sporty at all, but I was eighteen and therefore incapable of recognizing such distinctions.

More importantly, it had air conditioning.

Actual air conditioning.

Cold air.

Refrigerated air.

Air that had not been collected at seventy miles an hour through a vent window and delivered directly into your left ear.

I was smitten.

Today people laugh about Pintos. They forget that in the mid-1970s they made perfect sense. Gasoline prices had everyone thinking differently. Detroit was scrambling to build smaller cars. The Pinto rode on a compact ninety-four-inch wheelbase and was exactly the sort of practical, economical transportation that a young college student could convince himself was both financially responsible and wildly desirable.

At the time I didn’t know much about specifications. Years later I learned that my dream machine was powered by Ford’s 2.3-liter Lima four-cylinder engine producing a breathtaking eighty-nine horsepower and one hundred twenty pound-feet of torque. Buyers could upgrade to a 2.8-liter Cologne V6 if they desired nearly irresponsible levels of performance. Mine had the standard four-cylinder, which meant it would probably lose drag races against enthusiastic lawn equipment.

None of that mattered.

Ford advertised fuel economy figures approaching thirty miles per gallon on the highway. The car featured rack-and-pinion steering, electronic DuraSpark ignition, and a four-speed floor-mounted manual transmission. To my eighteen-year-old brain, this represented the future.

Mostly, though, it represented air conditioning.

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I stood beside the Pinto admiring it while Buttercup wisely located a patch of shade near the showroom entrance. I hadn’t even sat inside the car yet. The doors were locked. Still, I was already imagining road trips, college parking lots, summer evenings, and all the glamorous adventures that inevitably accompany ownership of an economy car named after a small horse.

I even began mentally reorganizing our love life around the bucket seats and center console.

Some thoughts are best left unpublished.

Unfortunately, I was too far away from Buttercup for her to witness what I was certain would be one of the finest negotiations in automotive history.

That’s when Roger appeared.

Every dealership has a Roger.

Roger had sold enough Fords to recognize an underfunded dreamer from three counties away.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I nodded confidently.

“I’ll take this one.”

So far, so good.

Then I added, “I’ll pay full sticker.”

I have no explanation for why I thought this sounded impressive.

Roger blinked.

“Okay. Do you have a trade?”

I pointed toward the Fairlane.

“The white one over there.”

Roger looked at the Fairlane.

Then at me.

Then back at the Fairlane.

Then back at me.

His expression suggested he’d just learned somebody intended to barter a mule for a television station.

“Give me the keys.”

I handed them over.

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Roger climbed into the Fairlane and disappeared.

While he was gone, I began calculating monthly payments.

By calculating, I mean imagining numbers.

I had no idea what the monthly payments would actually be. I didn’t know interest rates. I didn’t know financing terms. I didn’t know anything. What I did know was that I could work additional hours if necessary because you simply couldn’t put a price on air conditioning.

As it turns out, you absolutely can.

Roger eventually returned.

The Fairlane lumbered back onto the lot and settled into a parking space with all the grace of a retired battleship entering harbor.

Roger stepped out.

Walked toward me.

Handed me the keys.

And ended my Pinto Fantasy in less time than it takes to order a cheeseburger at Dairy Twin.

“Can’t make it happen, kid.”

I laughed.

“What do you mean you can’t make it happen?”

“You’ve got no credit.”

That seemed unfair but accurate.

“And your trade isn’t worth squat.”

That seemed accurate but unnecessarily hurtful.

I pointed toward the Fairlane.

“I just put four hundred dollars worth of repairs into that car.”

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Roger never missed a beat.

“Financial decisions like that may be why you have no credit.”

Looking back, I hate how much wisdom was packed into that sentence.

At the time, however, I considered it an insult of historic proportions.

“You want the Pinto,” Roger continued, “bring back your old man to co-sign.”

Bring back my old man?

Absolutely not.

I was nearly nineteen years old.

A college student.

An adult.

A man with dreams.

A man who had absolutely no credit, no meaningful down payment, and a trade-in that apparently held less value than the gasoline inside its tank.

But a man nonetheless.

Roger wandered off in search of customers with assets.

Buttercup joined me.

We climbed back into the Fairlane.

I turned the key.

The old Ford fired immediately.

The vent windows were opened.

The Texas heat entered the cabin with enthusiasm.

And just like that we drove away.

No Pinto.

No air conditioning.

No monthly payments.

No clue whatsoever how lucky I actually was.

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The funny thing about youth is that you don’t realize you’re living the stories you’ll someday tell.

At eighteen I saw an outdated car.

Today I see first dates.

At eighteen I saw embarrassment.

Today I remember laughter.

At eighteen I saw tailfins.

Today I see Buttercup sitting beside me.

The Fairlane carried us through college. Not four years, but five. Apparently my educational journey took a scenic route. The old Ford was there for classes, jobs, dates, arguments, celebrations, disappointments, and all the other little events that eventually become a life.

Eventually I graduated.

Eventually I got a real job.

Eventually I traded the Fairlane.

Not for a Pinto.

For a brand-new Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

By then Buttercup and I were married.

The Monte Carlo was beautiful. It was comfortable. It had air conditioning powerful enough to refrigerate livestock. It was also, in typical early-1980s General Motors fashion, assembled with a certain casual relationship to quality control. The Pinto probably wouldn’t have been any worse. It just would have been cheaper.

Then something unexpected happened.

Years passed.

Then decades.

The styling that once embarrassed me became beautiful.

The tailfins became iconic.

The manual steering became charming.

The lack of air conditioning became part of the story rather than the problem.

The memories attached themselves to the Fairlane so completely that it stopped being an old car and became something else entirely.

It became youth.

It became possibility.

It became Buttercup riding shotgun on summer evenings when neither of us knew exactly where life was taking us.

And somewhere along the way I caught myself thinking something I never would have imagined in 1976.

I said that if I could ever find another one just like it…

That’s when I finally understood a piece of West Texas wisdom nobody can explain to a teenager.

The things you’re most anxious to leave behind often become the things you’d give anything to have back.

Not because they were perfect.

Not because they were valuable.

But because you were young when they belonged to you.

And unlike a Pinto or a Fairlane, youth is something nobody ever gets to buy back.

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