Steve's Next Car

A while back I told the story of a car chase (in the fall of 1971) involving Steve's "hotrod" VW beetle and a kid on a dirt bike. You know - the one that ended with an a pissed off state trooper in his pajamas? Well, over the next few months Steve pretty much beat that VW to death. The repairs would have cost way more than it was worth :-)
So - Steve's dad replaced it with a '67 Mustang. (I think the color was "Clearwater Aqua" - kind of a teal blue). Dewitt was well aware of Steve's driving habits so the Mustang had the smallest engine available (the 200ci straight six) with a 3-speed manual. And despite the "gutless" engine it would still get up to around 115 MPH carrying 4 occupants - but how would I know that, right? ... Yeah - good times :-)

And here are some related stories:

Late one afternoon down at the grade school (I no longer recall why we were there) Steve asked Sam, Royce and me to pick up the back end of the Mustang. (Did I mention how strong Royce was?) Then Steve put it in top gear and floored it (with the back tires in the air) and when the speedo got up over 100 we dropped it... The back end bounced a couple of times and there was lots of tire smoke and stuff... It was cool :-)

Aside: Steve did a similar "tire smoke" thing with his dad's Chevy pickup too. Yeah - I'm not sure what possessed Dewitt to loan Steve his truck... Anyway - there was a bridge with a wooden deck somewhere north of Argyle and it was really easy to spin your tires on it. Steve stopped the truck with the back tires about a foot from the end of the bridge and got them spinning really fast. There wasn't much smoke until the tires got to the pavement. Then it got impressive :-)

A couple of months after Steve got the Mustang the clutch went out. (I wonder why?)  So he gathered the usual suspects (Sam, Royce and I) to work on it... Now - replacing a clutch is another one of those jobs that seems like it should be relatively easy but it's not. And having multiple people working on it the same time seems to make it even harder... We were constantly misplacing parts (nobody was keeping track) and there were occasional "miscommunications". The worst was when we were putting it back together. Royce was underneath the transmission trying to get it lined up while Sam and I were on either side supporting it... Royce asked for somebody to hand him a bolt, so Sam and I both let go of the transmission at the same... Anyone else probably would have been injured but (luckily) all Royce got was a bruise on his chest...
Yet despite all the chaos and confusion we got the Mustang back together. (Yes, it actually ran)... And that's why I prefer working on cars alone :-)

The final story is only tangentially related to the Mustang but I figure this is as good a place as any to tell it:
One day Steve decided to skip school, and since I didn't have any classes at North Texas that day I decided to tag along.

Aside: Steve skipped school a lot. His mom wasn't really OK with it, but his dad figured Steve was going to be a steamfitter anyway and a high school education wasn't necessary so he didn't really push it... (I think that was Steve's last year of school.)
Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the kids from Argyle skipped classes pretty regularly... I recall a number of occasions when a few of us would be riding around Denton on a school day and someone would yell "Hey Steve! There's your mom!!!" and he'd dive for the floor. It was pretty amusing... But I digress :-)

Even though it was a "skip day" Steve had agreed to give a few girls a ride to school. And since he was almost out of gas we had to stop at the local station before picking them up. That's where Steve caught the tarantula... He decided it would look cool dangling from his mirror (like fuzzy dice) so he tied a string around it and hung it up. It struggled for a minute before realizing that "resistance was futile" and decided to just play dead...

When we picked up the girls Steve insisted that one of them ride up front with him so I ended up wedged between the other two in the back seat. Yeah - I had mixed feelings about that.... Ordinarily I would have enjoyed a "girl sandwich," but I have claustrophobic tendencies and the back seat of a "first gen" Mustang is one of my worst triggers. (It probably has something to do with all the time I spent in the back of mom's '65 vert fearing for my life...) But that's not the point of the story :-)
We headed up to Denton on the back roads (Bonnie Brae Street?) and it wasn't until much later that one of the girls finally noticed Steve's new "ornament" at which point she said "Eww! Is that a dead tarantula hanging from your mirror?"... Steve's replied with a cheerful: "It's not dead!" ... And to prove his point he gave it a little tap which caused it to flail wildly.

Now - (according to my research) a human female's scream is roughly equivalent (in decibels) to a jet engine at 100 yards. And 3 of them screaming simultaneously (at slightly different frequencies) in a small enclosed space seems much louder... I covered my ears as quickly as I could, but it was too late. I cannot recall any other sound ever causing me that much pain.

When I regained my hearing all three girls were yelling "Let me out!" at which point Steve stopped the car and they bailed. (Actually, I think they bailed before he stopped...) When the girls refused to get back in Steve drove off by himself. (They were like "Is he coming back?" and I was like "I have no idea"). He returned a coupe of minutes later and after a bit of "back and forth" he reluctantly took the tarantula into the weeds to set it free. That was when I jumped into the driver seat and took off for a few minutes. (Yeah - I thought it was funny, but Steve wasn't quite so amused.)

So those are the Mustang stories...

And even though hanging out with Steve got a little "weird around the edges" at times, it was the closest thing to "normal" I had experienced in a very long time :-)