I always wanted a “play” car, but never knew exactly what . . . you see; I like cars of all kinds. I could have just as easily been happy with a genuine “hot rod”, or a 50’s era car, like the 54 Chevy convertible I owned in my youth, but when the time came that I had a few bucks and could buy something, I started looking, and when asked what I was looking for, I said, “I don’t know, when I see it, I’ll know it.”
While walking around a car show at South Lake Tahoe one Saturday, I saw a 67 Mustang Convertible for sale, at a price that I could afford. I kept going back to look at it . . . I took Linda to look at it . . . and finally I made the decision to make an offer. So over I went to the car to make a deal with the owner, and the for sale sign was off the car – he had decided to not sell the car. So, I gave m him my business card and told him if he had a change of mind, to give me a call.
About a month later the phone rang and it was the guy with the Mustang . . . was I still interested? Well, that Saturday, Linda and I went up to Placerville, took the car for a spin, and drove it home. The rest is history. We drove that 67 Mustang convertible all over the United States, taking several cross country trips with friends we had made from other Mustang trips, entering the car in car shows wherever we ended up. Actually that was the reason we took the trips, to attend some car show somewhere like Park City Utah, or Steamboat Springs Colorado. We drove it to the 40th Anniversary of the Mustang show in Nashville, TN, and the 45th anniversary show in Birmingham Alabama, as well as a couple of shows in Mustang Oklahoma. We even drove it to an international car show in Edmonton, Alberta Canada.
At most of the shows we entered we won awards, which always made it more fun. Most of these trips were with groups of other Mustangs, some as many as 500 other Mustangs. Over the years, we’ve met, and become friends with many people from different parts of our great country as well as some from other countries, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.
Almost immediately after buying the car, we joined the Diablo Valley Mustang Association, a local Mustang club in the central Contra Costa County area. We’ve made many friends among the membership of the club, and participated in its activities such as car shows, parades, cruises, and help support local charities like The Bay Area Crisis Center, Walk For The Cure, and the Wounded Warriors Project. We also belong to the Mustang Club of America and Mustangs Across America.
However, time takes its toll . . . both on the car and on us, as we aged together, the car and me. The car began to look tired and needed to be refreshed, and I began to not enjoy the maintenance responsibility involved with show car ownership, so we sold the car to an exporter who crated up the car and shipped it to Germany.
We still wanted to do the trips, to enter a certain few “special” shows, but we wanted to do it in comfort, in a new car, not a 40+ year old car, so we ordered a Special Edition 2011 Mustang Convertible, and we are still, albeit on a limited basis, doing our thing with our Mustang.
