Tails from the crypt

Again another tear has materialized in the black Pearl's sails.

The radiator than has been ever so slowly releasing it's contents onto my garage floor has held it's last drop of water.

I removed it and ran it down to the local one man show radiator repair shop. With hopes of cost efficient repairs in my eyes, my heart sank in realization that I wouldn't be making the neighborhood car show at the end of the month. The cancerous infection of sixty years of use have finally taken hold. The radiator can't be saved.

So, as I sit and wonder what direction to go, I find myself reminiscing on some of the ones that have came and gone before. The fifteen or more failed and floundering attempts at chrome and glory.

Sunday, nine a.m., June the twelfth, nineteen hundred and ninty three, with my head pounding from the excesses of graduation celebrations, I received a phone call.

Voice, "Hey! , you still want that truck?"
Self, ......"huh?.....oh yeah! What do you want for it?
Voice, "$600.00"
Self, "er....any room on that? Can you cut me a deal?"
Voice, "sure! $550.00 and those black Ayaya rims you've been sitting on"
Self, thinking.....I've had those rims since I was nine, ran them on ever BMX bike I had...thinking...."Done!"

An hour later I was standing in a buddies backyard glowing with pride as I stared down a nineteen seventy three Ford courier.

And not just any courier, the "Grinch" as it would be known as hence forth.

Slammed down super low with big wide fifteen by eight Outlaw wheels with narrow two zero five tires, just an inch narrower than the wheels, so it had the perfect look for the era. And lime sherbet green.

After all the official activities were taken care of and I received a crash course in hot wiring an ignition. We bounced down the gravel drive and out into the street, feeling like this was transaction was going to change my world!

Throwing the shifter into first and pinning the little twenty four hundred C.C. motor I sawed at the wheel to keep it in the lane I was In.

I had only gone just over a mile, finally coming to my first corner,  the one I've been thinking of, waiting for my first lowered vehicle to try my luck at.

As it came close, I spotted my turn in, picked my braking point, just past the irrigation canal. I let it drift out, pulling right and leaning in, touch the brakes before the tires give then all into that skinny little pedal.

Then silence......coasting over to edge, dead....twenty minutes of ownership, was it a record?

Nope, turns out I had a lot to learn about hot wiring a car. For instance....the connections must remain intact.

That was a long lesson to learn in that heat while that little drummer continually pounder away on my eye drums.