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Here’s the thing about having a trunk that has been refurbished to the point that it actually looks better than it did when it left the Ford factory.

Eventually, it makes the rest of the car look bad.

I mean, imagine parking at the next Folgers and Fenders that Lucinda hosts, lifting the rear deck lid of the Fairlane 500 and having people gather around to ooh and aah over the freshly painted surfaces, the new mat, the restored jack, the properly stowed spare tire and all those other little details that say a man has spent far too much time thinking about an area of an automobile most people see only when bringing groceries home.

Then somebody says, “Well, pop the hood and let’s see what the engine bay looks like.”

And you freeze.

Because you know in your heart of hearts that if you actually do it, the likely result will be that same once-enthusiastic stranger leaning over the fender, staring silently into the engine compartment, then looking woefully in your direction before slowly walking away while avoiding eye contact so as not to embarrass either one of you.

That’s where I was.

The Fairlane 500 had become the automotive equivalent of a mullet.

Party in the back.

Embarrassment in the front.

All the hard work, expense and brain-cell-damaging effort I had put into refurbishing the south end of the car had merely drawn attention to the federal disaster area occurring at the north end.

I stood in the driveway one morning staring beneath the hood and slowly came to understand the situation I had created through my own making.

There was only one solution.

Unfortunately, it involved more work in 106-degree weather.

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There would be cans of GUNK. There would be degreasers. There would be sandpaper, masking paper, rust converter, primer and spray paint. There would be chemicals whose warning labels suggested that California believed merely looking at them could cause reproductive harm.

This was no longer just a project.

It was a calling from the automotive gods that could not be denied.

I was determined to make the carpet match the drapes, or something along those lines.

The engine bay of the Fairlane 500 would simply no longer do.

Before we go any further, however, we need to talk about the hood.

Because this isn’t just any hood.

Back in 1959, the Ford Motor Company was coming to grips with the fact that the designers across town at Chevrolet had apparently been given unrestricted access to peyote while creating the 1959 Impala. Ford responded by taking much of the styling direction of its futuristic Quicksilver show car and turning it into the radically different 1960 Ford.

The result was longer, lower, wider and considerably wilder than the Ford it replaced. Gone were the relatively conservative lines of 1959 and the car Ford advertising had proudly promoted as beautifully proportioned. Gone were the familiar round taillights.

Gone, some might argue, was any remaining adult supervision.

The new Ford was extraordinarily wide.

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In fact, at 81½ inches, it was wider than the 80-inch maximum then permitted for passenger automobiles in a number of states. Ford suddenly found itself in the awkward position of having designed, tooled up and begun producing a brand-new automobile that couldn’t legally be sold everywhere it intended to sell it.

Oops.

Dearborn therefore had two immediate problems.

First, Ford had to secure temporary exemptions in the affected states so dealers could actually sell the cars already rolling off assembly lines.

Second, somebody needed to make damn sure the 1961 Ford was narrower.

There was probably a third activity involving several draftsmen, engineers and tool-and-die people being summoned into windowless offices and asked how in the hell something as basic as the legal maximum width of an automobile had escaped everyone’s attention.

Unfortunately, minutes from those meetings have apparently not survived.

Which is a shame.

I would pay good money for them.

All of that is necessary to understand that the hood on a 1960 Ford Fairlane or Galaxie is not so much a body panel as a geological feature. Standing beneath it with the hood raised feels vaguely like entering a two-car garage.

And in my case, the amount of ugly represented by that enormous expanse was unprecedented in the annals of automotive neglect.

The Fairlane has fewer than 43,000 original miles, but apparently none of those miles had ever included a visit to a facility concerned with underhood appearances. The car was purchased new by a young unmarried woman and remained with her for the rest of her life. She took care of the automobile remarkably well, but apparently regarded whatever was happening beneath the hood as Ford’s business.

I couldn’t really blame her.

If the car started when she turned the key, there wasn’t much reason to go looking for trouble.

As a result, however, the engine compartment was dirtier than Trixie’s bedroom once the shade has been pulled down.

And the legendary Ford Mileage Maker Six sitting in the middle of it deserved better.

Especially considering what was now going on in the trunk.

The first order of business was buying several cans of GUNK engine degreaser and heading for the nearest self-service car wash. My intention was to permanently remove sixty-six years of grease and crud, not merely relocate it from the Fairlane to my driveway.

I covered everything under the hood that shouldn’t receive the full attention of a pressure washer, watched enough YouTube videos to become temporarily convinced I knew what I was doing, and went to work.

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The foaming degreaser did exactly what it advertised, slowly dissolving decades of accumulated oil, dirt and miscellaneous geological formations.

If only GUNK came in municipal-sized cans that could be sprayed on Mayor Goodman and several members of the city council, Fort Stockton might be able to address more than one kind of buildup.

But I digress.

The enormous underside of the hood was pressure-washed and cleaned until I had removed everything that could be removed without beginning to alter the molecular structure of the steel.

Then I went home.

Next came sanding, scraping and chemical cleaning to prepare the surface.

Then came perhaps the most rewarding stage of the project, both for me and for the neighbor’s dog.

Spray cans.

So many spray cans.

The entire underside of the hood first received black rust-killing paint so the remaining areas of surface corrosion wouldn’t someday come back through the finished surface and mock me.

Then came the white.

Dupli-Color.

Can after can after can.

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After the first five cans, I stopped to have a cold Lone Star longneck and a Marlboro with the neighbor’s dog. We talked about the good times we’d had over the years, mostly involving him going completely bat-shit crazy on his side of the fence whenever I ran the Weed-Eater on mine.

We laughed about that.

Time heals.

Beer helps. Aerosol cans work magic.

It made me realize that if we could just get a couple of cases of Dupli-Color and a carton of Marlboros shipped to the Middle East, we could probably wrap up several thousand years of unpleasantness before lunch.

At some point the neighbor wandered over and asked me to stop encouraging his dog to smoke.

Shortly afterward, Buttercup came outside and asked why I was drinking beer at 8:30 in the morning.

Obviously neither my neighbor nor my wife understood engine-bay restoration.

The remaining cans of Dupli-Color were applied.

Two large cans of clear coat followed.

Before eventually falling over onto his side, the neighbor’s dog gave me what I swear was a thumbs-up, or as close to one as an animal without thumbs can reasonably facilitate.

I haven’t found any record of what Leonardo da Vinci thought when he stepped back and looked at the completed Mona Lisa.

But I have a pretty good idea.

What happened next can only be described as a modern-day miracle.

Word got out.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect the neighbor told either Chad or Mrs. Drury at the Piggly Wiggly what was taking place in my driveway. Once information reaches either of those two people, it ceases being information and becomes a public utility.

The result was a community outpouring.

At Bluebonnet Loan & Trust, Bonnie Mae slid my deposit receipt across the counter. Paper-clipped to it was a reproduction silver decal for the Fairlane’s side-mounted air cleaner reminding the owner to use GENUINE FORD PARTS.

She said nothing.

I said nothing.

That’s how you know something is serious in Fort Stockton.

The next morning at the Grounds for Divorce, I lifted my coffee cup and found beneath it the circular reproduction label for the oil-filler cap.

I looked at Lucinda.

She was pouring coffee for Angus.

“Don’t know anything about it,” she said without looking up.

I hadn’t asked.

A day later, I went through the drive-through at the Glazed and Confused Donut Shop and discovered a reproduction Crankcase Ventilation System decal tucked between a blueberry cake donut and the apple fritter I’d bought for Buttercup.

It was becoming clear that the entire town had taken an interest in the Fairlane.

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the neighbor’s dog.

He was still passed out.

The most monumental act of automotive selflessness came when I arrived at CMC World Headquarters above the Ben Franklin and discovered that Angus Hopper had somehow slid an actual Mileage Maker Six valve cover underneath the office door.

At least I assume it was Angus.

Stuffed inside were several individually wrapped Rice Krispies Treats, which pretty much constituted a signature.

How he got a Ford valve cover underneath that door remains one of those Fort Stockton mysteries best left alone.

I took it home and shared one of the Rice Krispies Treats with the neighbor’s dog while telling him the story.

We both got a little misty-eyed.

That was all the motivation I needed.

The original air cleaner and valve cover came off the Fairlane. Both were stripped of decades of old paint, grease and crud. I treated them with aircraft paint remover until I was down to bare metal, then primed them and repainted them in bright Ford engine red.

The surrounding engine compartment received attention as well. Inner fenders, brackets and other black-painted surfaces were cleaned, treated and refinished until the old Mileage Maker Six was gradually becoming the centerpiece of something that looked less like an abandoned pump station and more like an engine compartment.

The town continued to participate.

One afternoon Buttercup came outside holding an envelope.

“I have no idea what this is,” she said, “but Trixie told me to give it to you.”

The envelope may or may not have been lightly spritzed with Chanel No. 5.

Inside was a reproduction CAUTION FAN decal for the radiator shroud.

Even more impressive was the stealthiest contribution of the entire project.

After going through the Salad Wagon at K-Bob’s one evening, I returned to the table and discovered a brand-new vented radiator cap sitting in the middle of my salad.

I’ll never be able to prove it, but I know damn well Rusty Hammer put it there while I wasn’t looking.

It would have been easier if he’d simply handed it to me.

Ranch dressing does not come off a radiator cap easily, even with GUNK.

But after I finally cleaned it, that cap shined like a diamond in a goat’s butt sitting atop the reservoir beside the newly restored shroud.

Piece by piece, it all came together.

The air cleaner was back in place, bright red and wearing its proper reproduction labels. The restored valve cover looked almost too good for the old cast-iron engine beneath it. The oil cap had its proper decal. The radiator cap gleamed. Black inner fenders framed the engine. The underside of that enormous hood was now clean, white and glossy.

There was still enough honest age under there to make clear this wasn’t some trailer-queen restoration. The Fairlane was still a sixty-six-year-old automobile that had lived a life.

It had simply showered and put on a clean shirt.

When I finally stepped back to admire everything, I glanced through the fence.

The neighbor’s dog was getting watery-eyed.

I knew exactly how he felt.

Then I realized he wasn’t tall enough to see into the engine compartment.

Then I noticed the open can of aircraft paint remover sitting a few feet from him.

Nonetheless, we’d done it.

The engine bay finally looked worthy of the refurbished trunk.

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For the first time, I could open either end of the Fairlane in public without having to distract people by pointing toward an airplane.

And that is a dangerous moment in any old-car project.

Because satisfaction lasts about eleven minutes.

Then you notice something else.

I briefly began wondering whether there were enough YouTube videos to teach me upholstery. The seats weren’t terrible, but they weren’t perfect. Maybe I could learn. Maybe the neighbor’s dog could be trained to cut foam rubber or guide fabric through a sewing machine.

Then I remembered I still didn’t trust the little bastard enough to let him onto my side of the fence.

“Know your limitations,” Buttercup once told me.

I don’t even remember what she was talking about at the time, but the concept stuck.

Eventually the Fairlane made its triumphant appearance at the Grounds for Divorce.

I raised the hood.

They gathered around.

Lucinda came outside long enough to inspect it. Rex leaned over the fender and examined the Mileage Maker Six with the clinical interest of a pharmacist studying an unusually healthy liver. Hairless admired the paint. Chad recognized the air-cleaner decal immediately, which told me more than I wanted to know about how that decal had found its way to Bonnie Mae. Trixie pointed proudly at the CAUTION FAN sticker as though she’d personally engineered the cooling system.

Rusty denied knowing anything about the radiator cap.

Nobody believed him.

For a few minutes we all just stood there admiring it.

The widest engine bay Ford ever built.

The freshly painted hood.

The bright red Mileage Maker Six.

The decals.

The radiator cap.

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The culmination of days of work, untold cans of chemicals and paint, contributions from half the town, one apple fritter, several Rice Krispies Treats, an abused salad and an uncertain number of beers shared with a dog.

It was finished.

I should have known better.

Angus stood with his hands in his pockets, studying the engine compartment.

He nodded thoughtfully.

“What this thing really needs,” he finally said, “is some Vintage Air so you can really enjoy it throughout the year.”

Everybody looked at me.

I looked at Angus.

Then I looked back at the Fairlane.

There was room.

Plenty of room.

Hell, with an engine bay that wide, Ford had practically left a vacant lot beside the engine.

And just like that, the Fairlane wasn’t finished anymore.

But that’s the thing about an old car.

It never really is.

You fix the trunk and suddenly the engine compartment looks terrible. You restore the engine compartment and begin thinking about the upholstery. You get the upholstery right and start wondering whether the steering wheel could stand to be refinished. Somewhere along the way, a man who once swore he only wanted a nice old car to drive around town finds himself at midnight watching a forty-seven-minute YouTube video about the correct plating on a hood-latch spring.

The car doesn’t become finished.

It simply moves the frontier.

Maybe that’s part of why we keep them.

A new car asks almost nothing of you except money. An old car asks for your weekends, your patience, several layers of skin from your knuckles and occasional judgment calls involving chemicals that probably shouldn’t be sold to civilians.

But it gives something back.

It gives Angus a reason to slide a valve cover under your office door. It gives Trixie something to perfume before handing it to your wife. It gives Rusty a reason to hide a radiator cap in a salad. It gives Lucinda something to put under your coffee cup.

It gives an entire town permission to become involved in something that really isn’t any of their business.

Which, now that I think about it, may be the most Fort Stockton thing about the entire project.

And somewhere on the other side of the fence, the neighbor’s dog is waiting for the next can of Dupli-Color.

I still don’t trust him with the upholstery.

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