---

It all began with an inauspicious statement.

“Ford Division confirmed today that it will introduce a new line of cars this spring,” said the press release issued February 6, 1964, by Lee Iacocca, vice president of Ford Motor Company. “The new line of cars will be called the Mustang. No further details on the new car line will be revealed until the time of its public introduction.”

That was all.

A name.

A promise.

And just enough secrecy to make every automobile writer in America behave like a coonhound smelling something beneath the porch.

By the time the Ford Mustang was introduced to the press on April 14 and to the public three days later, Ford Motor Company had arranged one of the grandest entrances since Cleopatra arrived in Tarsus on a golden barge, although Cleopatra had not been advertised simultaneously in 2,600 newspapers or offered with a heater for seventy dollars. The Mustang appeared on television, magazine covers, billboards, dealership turntables, and most dramatically at Ford’s Wonder Rotunda at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, where Walt Disney and his Imagineers had built the Magic Skyway to carry visitors through the history of life on Earth in actual Ford convertibles.

It was the right automobile.

At the right time.

For a generation that had not yet decided where it was going but was becoming increasingly certain it did not want to get there in its parents’ four-door sedan.

Jody Sue Jasper knew none of this when she stepped off the chartered bus from Texas wearing a yellow traveling dress, white gloves, sensible shoes, and the slightly stunned expression of a person who had recently discovered that the rest of the world had neglected to ask Fort Stockton’s permission before becoming so large. She was eighteen years old, a senior at Jim Bowie High School, and farther from home than she had ever imagined going without either her parents or the United States Army.

New York frightened her immediately.

She loved it just as quickly.

Everything was tall, loud, crowded, fast, or illuminated, and several things managed all five at once. The buildings appeared to be engaged in a private competition to see which could make a West Texas girl feel smallest. People walked as if pursued by unpaid bills. Taxi drivers communicated through their horns. A man on the sidewalk called Jody Sue “honey” without having been introduced, which in Fort Stockton would have required either a family connection or a fistfight.

Her best friend, Glenda Gillespie, was equally overwhelmed but considerably less willing to admit it. Glenda had spent most of the trip north explaining to anybody who would listen that she had an aunt in Dallas and was therefore accustomed to metropolitan life. Upon reaching Manhattan, she discovered Dallas had merely been Fort Stockton with elevators.

The World’s Fair was another matter entirely. Spread across Flushing Meadows beneath the enormous stainless-steel Unisphere, it seemed less like an exposition than a freshly constructed civilization designed by people who believed the future would be clean, air-conditioned, and sponsored by a major corporation. There were fountains, monorails, rocket displays, international pavilions, moving sidewalks, automated kitchens, picture telephones, and enough optimistic narration to persuade a person that poverty, war, and burned toast would all be eliminated by 1975.

---

---

The Jim Bowie seniors were given maps, instructions, meal vouchers, identification cards, and a lecture from Principal Hollingsworth regarding moral conduct. He warned them that they represented not only their school but Fort Stockton, Pecos County, and the entire State of Texas. He then released forty-three eighteen-year-olds into the largest fair in the history of the country with four adult chaperones and no reliable method of communication.

It was the sort of administrative decision upon which American public education had been built.

Jody Sue and Glenda stayed together through General Motors’ Futurama, where they saw a city on the moon, undersea hotels, and automated highways upon which nobody ever encountered road construction. They visited the Illinois Pavilion and watched an audio-animatronic Abraham Lincoln deliver a speech. They sampled Belgian waffles, examined Michelangelo’s Pietà, and stood beneath the Unisphere while Glenda tried to determine whether Fort Stockton was large enough to appear on it.

It was not.

They reached General Electric’s Progressland pavilion shortly before noon and entered the Carousel of Progress, where a cheerful American family demonstrated how electricity had improved domestic life from the turn of the century into a future filled with push-button conveniences. Glenda declared that the automated kitchen would never catch on because no respectable woman would trust a wall to cook supper. Jody Sue pointed out that Glenda’s mother had once burned boiled eggs.

The friendship survived.

Barely.

Outside Progressland, the crowd thickened. A marching band passed in one direction while a delegation of foreign dignitaries moved in another. Children pulled their parents toward the fountains. Vendors shouted. Loudspeakers announced performances. A group of teenagers in matching jackets cut between the girls, followed by two women pushing baby carriages and a man carrying six balloons shaped like the Unisphere.

Glenda turned toward the Ford Pavilion.

Jody Sue turned toward the balloons.

When she looked back, Glenda was gone.

They had anticipated exactly this possibility. Before leaving the bus, they had chosen a meeting place beneath the enormous Ford arch where a new red Mustang stood on a slowly rotating platform. They selected it because it was impossible to miss and because Glenda had declared that no girl could remain frightened while standing near something that pretty.

Jody Sue made her way toward the display alone.

The Mustang was turning beneath the tall oval Ford sign when she arrived, its Rangoon Red paint catching the afternoon light one curved surface at a time. It was technically a 1965 model, although 1964 had barely reached spring, and it looked unlike anything Ford had ever built. The hood stretched long and low ahead of the passenger compartment. The rear deck was short. The flanks were clean except for sculpted coves and small running-horse emblems. Chrome bumpers curved tightly around the body instead of announcing themselves like plumbing fixtures on a courthouse.

It looked young.

It looked fast.

It looked as if it might leave without waiting for permission.

The white convertible top was raised, although Jody Sue imagined it lowered beneath a West Texas sky. She pictured herself behind the wheel on the highway south of town, one hand resting on the red steering wheel, her hair blowing loose, Fort Stockton growing smaller in the mirror.

The thought caused a little flutter beneath her ribs.

That was when Kip Cosgrove saw her.

---

---

Kip was twenty years old, six feet tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and dressed in the Navy summer white uniform that had performed more successful recruiting work than any poster ever printed by the United States government. He was attending the fair with three sailors from the USS Growler, a Grayback-class guided-missile submarine then approaching the end of its service. The Growler was scheduled to be decommissioned the following month, and Kip’s future afterward remained an unsettled matter involving reassignment papers, reenlistment offers, and several officers who believed he possessed more sense than he was presently demonstrating.

His companions saw the Mustang.

Kip saw Jody Sue.

This was not unusual. Men had noticed Jody Sue before. Boys at Jim Bowie had carried her books, offered her rides, invited her to dances, and developed a sudden interest in whatever subject she happened to mention. She had dated Bobby Wilkerson for six months and Wayne Culpepper for almost three weeks, although the Culpepper relationship ended when Wayne attempted to put his hand somewhere Jody Sue’s mother had specifically warned her boys would eventually try to put it.

Kip did not know any of this.

He knew only that the prettiest girl at the New York World’s Fair was standing ten feet away from him, staring at a red convertible as if it had just explained something important.

One of his companions slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Cosgrove, are you going to look at the car?”

“I’m looking.”

“That ain’t the car.”

“I know.”

Kip walked toward her before courage had time to reconsider.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” he said.

Jody Sue glanced at him, then back at the Mustang. “I believe automobiles are usually referred to as ‘she.’”

“I wasn’t talking about the automobile.”

It was a line.

A shameless one.

Under ordinary circumstances, Jody Sue would have recognized it, dismissed it, and told Glenda about the sailor who thought a white uniform allowed him to speak like Rock Hudson. But ordinary circumstances were two thousand miles away. The red Mustang kept turning. The crowd kept moving. Kip smiled, and something in the way he looked at her suggested that he was every bit as surprised by the moment as she was.

“My name is Kip Cosgrove.”

“Jody Sue Jasper.”

“Where are you from, Jody Sue Jasper?”

“Fort Stockton, Texas.”

“Is that near here?”

“No.”

He laughed. She tried not to.

Failed.

Glenda arrived several minutes later and immediately understood what had happened, because eighteen-year-old girls did not need radar to detect romantic danger. Kip’s three friends had also drifted closer, and within moments introductions were made, explanations offered, and informal alliances formed. Glenda found one of the sailors, Tommy Decker, interesting enough to delay sounding an alarm. Tommy found Glenda interesting enough to forget the Mustang’s optional four-speed transmission.

The six of them boarded the Magic Skyway together. Ford convertibles carried them upward through the glass pavilion and into Disney’s elaborate history of the world. They passed dinosaurs roaring among prehistoric plants, cavemen hunting mammoths, and futuristic cities where sleek automobiles traveled along elevated highways.

Jody Sue sat beside Kip.

Their shoulders touched.

Neither moved away.

---

---

Somewhere between the stegosaurus and the invention of the wheel, Kip placed his hand on the seat between them. Jody Sue looked down at it. He left it there, neither touching nor retreating, allowing her to decide what the next half-inch would mean.

She moved her hand until their little fingers met.

Half an inch.

That was all.

It felt like falling off the edge of Texas.

After the ride, Glenda and the three sailors gradually performed one of the more tactful disappearances in recorded history. They remained nearby, appearing when necessary and vanishing whenever Kip and Jody Sue stopped to look at one another too long. The young couple walked through the Swiss Sky Ride, watched fountains dance beneath colored lights, and stood inside the New York State Pavilion while the fair spread beneath them in every direction.

Kip told her about the Growler, about submerged patrols, Regulus guided missiles, cramped bunks, recycled air, and the peculiar intimacy of living underwater with men whose habits became increasingly offensive in direct proportion to the number of weeks since anybody had seen daylight. Jody Sue told him about Jim Bowie High School, her father’s accounting office, her mother’s garden, Friday nights at the Prairie View Twin, and the way Fort Stockton sometimes felt like the safest place on Earth and sometimes like a room whose windows had been painted shut.

Kip had been to Japan, Hawaii, Alaska, and ports whose names sounded invented. He knew how to order drinks Jody Sue had never heard of and had kissed girls whose names he wisely did not mention. Yet there was nothing boastful in him. He had seen enough of the world to understand how little of it he understood.

Jody Sue fascinated him because she had not yet learned to disguise what she felt. Surprise appeared plainly on her face. So did skepticism. So did desire, although that frightened them both.

When evening came, the fair transformed. Buildings glowed blue, gold, and white. Searchlights crossed above the Unisphere. The fountains burned with underwater color. Music drifted from distant pavilions, and the future seemed close enough to enter before it had time to disappoint anybody.

Kip and Jody Sue stood near the Pool of Industry, away from the heaviest crowd. His hand rested at the small of her back. The pressure was light.

Still, she felt every finger.

“I’m supposed to be with my school group,” she said.

“I’m supposed to be with the Navy.”

“Which one of us is in more trouble?”

“You. The Navy expects disappointment.”

---

---

She laughed, then stopped when she realized his face was close to hers. Kip gave her time to step away. Jody Sue understood that she ought to. She could hear her mother explaining reputations, good judgment, and sailors on leave. She could hear Principal Hollingsworth invoking Pecos County.

Then Kip kissed her.

Gently at first.

A question.

Jody Sue answered.

The second kiss lasted longer. It contained three thousand miles of uncertainty, two years of difference in experience, one white uniform, one yellow dress, and every warning Jody Sue had ever received about how quickly a sensible girl could become temporarily unsensible.

She stepped back before either of them forgot where they were.

“That was not supposed to happen,” she whispered.

“No.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

That was the trouble.

They spent the following day together as well, although with Glenda serving intermittently as companion, accomplice, and increasingly exhausted guardian of Jody Sue’s reputation. Kip met the Jim Bowie group near the Vatican Pavilion and was introduced to Principal Hollingsworth as a sailor who had merely assisted two lost students. Hollingsworth regarded him with the same expression a rancher reserves for a coyote standing near the henhouse, but Kip removed his cap, said “sir,” and spoke respectfully about duty, service, and the importance of following established schedules.

The performance was magnificent.

Glenda nearly choked.

At the end of the senior trip, the Jim Bowie students gathered beside their chartered bus. Suitcases were loaded. Names were checked. Souvenirs were counted. Jody Sue stood with Kip behind the bus, partly concealed from the chaperones but not from Glenda, who had been sworn to secrecy under terms that eventually included Jody Sue’s blue cashmere sweater and lifetime immunity from criticism regarding Tommy Decker.

---

---

Kip wrote his address in her fair guide.

Jody Sue wrote hers on the back of a Ford Mustang brochure.

“I’ll write,” he promised.

“Men say that.”

“I’m not men.”

“You’re twenty years old. You’re barely one man.”

He kissed her once, quickly, because the bus driver had started the engine and because certain moments become unbearable if given too much time. Jody Sue climbed aboard without looking back until she reached her seat. When she did, Kip was standing alone beside the curb, his white uniform bright against the crowd.

Glenda sat beside her.

“You are in terrible trouble,” she said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to tell your parents?”

“No.”

“Then you’re in even worse trouble.”

The first letter reached Fort Stockton before Jody Sue did.

Kip wrote every week.

So did she.

The USS Growler was decommissioned on May 25, 1964, but Kip’s naval obligation continued. He was reassigned, trained, transferred, and sent wherever the Navy found a use for a young man who understood electrical systems and could tolerate confined spaces. He decided not to reenlist, although this decision alarmed his chief petty officer, his parents, and eventually Jody Sue’s father, who believed leaving a steady government career was evidence of either courage or brain damage.

For three years, letters traveled between them. They crossed oceans, state lines, seasons, birthdays, Christmases, disappointments, and occasional stretches when waiting seemed less romantic than foolish. Jody Sue attended college in Alpine. Kip completed his service and accepted work with a company installing communications equipment. They exchanged photographs. They argued in ink. They apologized in ink. They planned visits that military schedules canceled and futures that distance made difficult to trust.

Once, Jody Sue stopped writing for two weeks after seeing a photograph in which Kip stood beside an attractive brunette at a Navy picnic.

Kip responded with four pages explaining that the brunette was his cousin Elaine.

Jody Sue wrote back that cousins in Connecticut apparently stood much closer together than cousins in Texas.

He mailed a photograph of Elaine’s husband.

Peace resumed.

There were temptations on both sides. Local boys invited Jody Sue out. Girls near Kip’s base made their availability clear. Neither of them was sustained by saintliness. They were sustained by the knowledge that somewhere in the world was one person before whom pretense had become unnecessary.

Waiting hurt.

That was the proof.

On a hot afternoon in June 1967, a used blue Chevrolet pulled into the Jasper driveway in Fort Stockton. Kip stepped out wearing a dark suit poorly suited to West Texas, carrying a bouquet of roses the same deep red as the Mustang at the World’s Fair.

A ring rested in his pocket.

Jody Sue opened the front door and stopped.

Three years disappeared.

---

---

Her mother, Earlene Jasper, came from the kitchen drying her hands. Her father, Vernon, rose from his chair. Neither had been informed that the sailor from the letters had completed his service, driven to Texas, or intended to ask for their daughter’s hand before supper.

Kip had planned a speech.

He forgot it.

“Mr. Jasper, Mrs. Jasper, my name is Kip Cosgrove.”

“We know who you are,” Vernon said. “You’ve cost us about forty dollars in postage.”

Jody Sue began laughing. Then crying. Then she crossed the room and threw both arms around Kip before either parent could determine which reaction required discipline.

Vernon Jasper remained skeptical for six weeks. Earlene required four days. Kip found work servicing communications systems for oil companies, attended church without being reminded, addressed his elders properly, and demonstrated that he could repair a water pump without first announcing expertise he did not possess. By the time he asked Vernon’s permission formally, the answer had already become inevitable.

Kip and Jody Sue married that autumn.

The Mustang disappeared into history with the rest of the World’s Fair. The Wonder Rotunda was dismantled. Progressland moved to Disneyland. The optimistic future arrived in pieces, along with war, assassinations, inflation, Watergate, polyester, and several kitchen appliances nobody had requested. Kip and Jody Sue built a life from jobs, mortgages, children, arguments, reconciliations, ordinary Tuesdays, and the continuing discovery that finding “the one” did not eliminate difficulty.

It merely identified who would stand beside you during it.

For their tenth wedding anniversary in 1977, Kip asked Jody Sue to come outside after supper. Parked in the driveway was a Rangoon Red 1965 Ford Mustang convertible with a white soft top and red bucket-seat interior.

It was not perfect.

There were two dents in the hood and wiper marks across the windshield. The five-digit odometer showed thirty thousand miles, although nobody could prove how many times it had begun counting again. Someone had replaced the carpeting and seat covers. The AM radio remained in the dashboard, but its speaker was missing, creating the rare automobile sound system capable of receiving everything and playing nothing.

Under the hood was a rebuilt 289-cubic-inch V8, factory rated at 200 horsepower, connected to a three-speed manual transmission. Kip had replaced the fuel lines and hoses and installed a day/night mirror. The color-coordinated trim shone. The white top folded properly. The little chrome running horse still galloped across the grille.

Jody Sue walked around it slowly.

“Kip.”

“I know it isn’t the same one.”

She touched the front fender.

“It is.”

“No, sweetheart. That car at the fair was probably—”

“I know it isn’t the same automobile.” She looked at him. “It’s the same one.”

He handed her the keys.

She lowered the top before they left the driveway. Kip sat beside her while she pressed the clutch, turned the key, and listened as the little V8 settled into a warm uneven idle. Their children watched from the porch. Earlene and Vernon, older now and long since won over, stood near the screen door.

Jody Sue shifted into first.

The Mustang moved into the street.

They drove beyond Fort Stockton as the evening cooled, the red hood pointing toward open country. The missing radio speaker did not matter. They had spent three years learning how to fill silence with words and another ten learning when silence required none.

At the edge of town, Jody Sue shifted into third and pressed the accelerator. The Mustang surged forward, not like a new automobile but like an old promise discovering it still had plenty of horsepower left.

The wind lifted her hair.

Kip watched her.

Once again, he forgot to look at the car.

And beneath the vast West Texas sky, thirteen years after a rotating display brought together a schoolgirl who had never left home and a sailor who had been nearly everywhere, the grand introduction continued.

---

---