1966

"Are you going to drive?" I asked my cousin, Ryan, as we approached the car.

"Heck yes!" He eagerly responded as we approached the newly refurbished 1966 Ford Mustang.
It had a V8, 235 horsepower 289 engine. It also had a fresh white paint job and a thin red pin stripe that seemed as perfect as the rest of the car. The interior was flawless as well. Crushed red velvet tuck-n-roll covered seats with all of the dash restored to the original look, except for the stereo. It was a jaw dropping, heart thumping Alpine CD player connected to the two twelve inch woofers in the trunk. On the ground was a set of Michelin Street Pro tires that were wrapped around the shiniest sixteen-inch rims I had ever seen. My uncle had spent close to $10,000 dollars on the car and the restoration. It was, well, perfect. There was only one slight issue. Ryan was sixteen.

He had just turned sixteen a week before. He did not know how to drive a stick shift, especially one with this much power. So as we traveled from Odessa to Comanche I drove most of the way teaching my younger counter part in the fine art of shifting. We were to spend a week working with my granddad on his ranch. He had a lot of stuff for us to do, and we both needed the extra cash.

As we entered the car I could feel the electricity fill the air. Ryan had been driving all week and he had gotten pretty good at shifting. He only ground the gears every so often. We were headed to Gilmer to a small family owned restaurant where they served the best chicken fried steak in the country, at least that's what it seemed like after ten hours of work in the hot Texas sun.

As we pulled out of the ranch onto the dirt road I warned Ryan of the sandy parts coming up. He abandoned warnings and began to put his foot in it. He was revving close to 5000 RPM when we entered the apex of the hill that also turned toward the left at a graceful pace. It almost reminded me of a turn in a NASCAR competition. However, I'm sure that NASCAR tracks are not made of pure sand.

As we began our slight decent from the hill Ryan had the car in a beautiful power slide, much like that of the Dukes of Hazard in the opening credits. The tail of the car was about 45 degrees out while the front wheels where headed in the direction of the road. When we hit the bottom of the hill we hit a sea of sand that can only be described as like that of the Sahara Desert. And that's where we hit trouble as well.

The car was doing about 65 miles per hour and when the sea caught us it straightened the wheels into alignment with the car and catapulted us forward. Unfortunately in this part of the country they have machines come out every so often and grate the roads. That makes a neat feature on the sides of the roads we call banks. Banks also make nice ramps for out of control cars! We were launched into the air immediately. I bet we cleared all four tires by at least two feet. Then Ryan and I managed to look at each other as somehow we hit the time-space continuum and were in a state of slow motion.

While weightless we both yelled "Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhh dddddddaaaaaaarrrrrrrrnnnnn!!!!" as we flew into our ultimate foe.

In front of us was the biggest tree I had ever seen in my life. The giant tree must have been over a hundred years old and would take ten of us to wrap our arms around it. Now let me say that the car weighs about 2000 pounds. The tree has a death grip on the earth. The tree won.

When all of the dust cleared, and space and time returned to normal, we were sitting in the car with the nose of the vehicle apparently trying to climb the tree. As I looked at Ryan I noticed the stream of dark red that had began to flow from his hairline. He noticed mine as well and we both scrambled out of the car, because of course it was about to explode right. They all do at some point, don't they? I stumbled over to the other side of the road while Ryan made his way back to the trunk where he had a role of paper he had used for cleaning the windows of the car just a day earlier. He made his way to my newfound sofa of sand and slumped down next to me. He handed me a wad of paper that I used to remove the blood from my forehead. He looked so defeated.

As we both sat there in dismay we viewed the beauty turned beast. It was the most awful site you can imagine. What was once a vintage ride, a splendor to the eye, was now married to the aging oak as if they were meant for each other.

At that moment I started to feel a twinge in my stomach. I turned to Ryan and asked, "so, I guess we're not going to get that chicken fried steak after all, huh?"