I know I’m not the only one that sometimes looks for reminders of the past. I’ve had folks come in looking for books they owned as children. Some memories are long-ago enough that the details are a little fuzzy…
It had a red cover, a lady told me once, trying to find a book from her childhood library. I didn’t have the heart to tell her a lot of books had red covers. Knowing the title is a lot more helpful finding old favorites.
A fellow brought some books by the shop today and I went outside to carry in the box. It was in the trunk of a beautiful Ford Mustang.
Shelby.
(Muscle car lovers will know about Shelby.)
After we got the book boxes inside and the Mustang-owning-customer was ready to go, I followed him out the door. Just wanted to hear the car start up, I told him. He smiled and said the sound of the engine was what had convinced him to buy it. He had a Mustang back in his high school days, he said, and he got to a point in his life where he wanted to own one again.
That’s a familiar feeling.
There is a search feature on eBay that will send a notification when an item of interest has been listed. My item of interest?
The 1964 MG that I drove in high school.
My father co-signed the bank loan, and let me do the talking with the loan officer. The asking price was more than the book value, the banker said. I know, I told him. But it’s worth it.
The man who wanted to sell it told me he changed the oil regularly, and that had to count for something.
You’re wanting that car pretty bad, aren’t you? the banker was grinning by now, and I admitted as much and signed the papers, promising to pay back the money. Dad mentioned how it didn’t seem like a very practical kind of car, but it seemed to be the kind that young people wanted.
Still loved the car when I traded it off for a Chevy van. We needed something to haul our music equipment around in, and the MG just wasn’t very practical. The trade was straight-up even, and I figure it must have been a wee bit traumatic, since I still remember the names of the young couple who drove off in my car.
They later painted it bright yellow – even though I thought the original black still looked good.
The van outlasted the band, and I eventually sold it, taking up a ten-speed bicycle while I saved up for another British sports car. But that ’64 MG was always in the back of my mind, and when I hit that first mid-life crisis I tried to track it down. My detective work turned up that the car had been sold to a collector and put in a warehouse, but when I called the fellow’s office, his secretary (who must have managed his inventory) told me her boss had parted with it years earlier.
The MG popped up on eBay yesterday and my heart jumped – just looking at the picture and remembering.
Then, I remembered it had been painted yellow and the car in the image was black. And had mirrors on the fenders. Mine didn’t. And – what about those hubcaps? I remember having a little hammer in the toolkit that was used to pound the knock-off cap loose that held on the wire wheels. Those weren’t wire wheels…
So, it wasn’t my car at all.
Just as well. I don’t have a place to store it, or work on it. (And they always require work, those British cars…)
For fun, I Googled the ’64 and after scrolling a page or two of various colored MG’s I found the car of my high school days – at least the memories, if not the actual automobile. The second picture is the spittin’ image of the one I tooled around in, down to the wire-wheel spinners.
You know, I enjoyed most of my time going to high school back then, partly because it gave me a reason to drive that little car. Meanwhile, the search is half the fun and the hunt continues…
We’ve got car books (and can find most of those red-cover books!) so,
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!