Everyone’s got a “Mustang” story. This is mine.I can still feel the humidity in the air, running through my grandparent’s yard

in Osceola, Missouri, as a kid, on the banks of the Osage River. My family traveled to Osceola every summer to visit my maternal grandparents, who lived in the same house that my mother, Brenda Gardner, grew up in.

As far back as my memory serves, I remember the bright reddish-orange 1965 Mustang parked in the garage of that house. And, for a young boy, that car was pure excitement.

To hear the engine come to life and growl as my grandfather, Coy Fleetwood, turned the key and revved the engine was like hearing a tiger growl after being inter-rupted mid meal.

One of my fondest memories sitting in the passenger seat; my eyes barely able to see over the dashboard as I watched the road lead us through the dense tree cover lining the old country roads. The two-lane roads wound their way over hills and through the countryside like a rollercoaster. It felt as if we were going 100-miles-per hour, and for all I know, we were. I was elated.

My grandfather loved driving that car and I loved riding in it with him. Afterword, he’d clean the car, and I’d play as if I was driving over the hills at speed; complete with sound effects.

“Vroom, vroom,” I’d go. “Vroom, vroom.”I rode in that car dozens of times growing up all the way through high school. In 1990, when I was 15, my grandfather took that wild horse for a road trip across

desolate Kansas and all the way to Loveland, to see our family. My grandmother must have followed in another car because the Mustang was here to stay, boarded in our garage; put out to pasture in Colorado after a valiant life in Missouri.

He gave the car to my moth-er for her 40th birthday. A girl who had always wanted a pony for her birthday fi nally got one, sort of. And the gravity of this gift wasn’t lost on my mother. She loved that car too.

When my grandfather purchased this car in 1966, he did so as a car for my grand-mother, Josephine. But this car was also the ride that my mother drove to and from high school.

Yeah, she was that girl. My aunt and uncle, my mother’s younger siblings, also drove this car to and from

high school when they were able to drive. So, it’s gotten used. But, after my uncle graduated from high school and there were no more kids to

use the vehicle for commuting, my grandfather fi nally had his toy all to himself. And he took exceptional care of the car for the next 16 years, or so, until he gave it to my mother. Even the factory windshield washer fl uid baggie remains intact as if the car rolled off the line yesterday. The car still has its original dashboard; no cracks or wear. No joke.

Once in her possession, my mother treated it as her father had; it mostly sat idle in the garage, only to be driven on weekends when my parents went out to dinner or to Estes Park for the day. My father took over caring for the aging beauty; a responsi-bility that he welcomed considering that he’d given up his other beauty: a 1941 Ford, two-door sedan to allow room in the garage for the Mustang.

That car, the Mustang, and the “General Lee”, the famous “Dukes of Hazzard” 1969 Dodge Charger, specifi cally in that order, are the sole reasons that I’m a car guy.

I used to daydream about one day driving the Mustang, which had been forever off limits.

“It’s not a toy,” my mother would say. And I understood as well. Admittedly, I wasn’t the safest driver when I fi rst ob-

tained my license, but that’s another story. In 2003, my father passed away. And, in a way, the Mustang did too. As he was

no longer around to care for the aging beauty and my mother wasn’t much of an oil monkey, I drained the fuel, changed the oil, disconnected the battery and covered it with a tarp. And there that car sat for the next 10 years, wrapped in the sadness of missing my father.

My mother had given the car to me at that point, and as happy as I was to have it, it never fi lled the void of missing my father. I was also in college at the time and

© Berthoud Weekly Surveyor July 31, 2014

EDITOR’S CHOICE

One Mustang: three generationsStory and photos by John Gardner • The Surveyor

Page B2 July 31, 2014 Berthoud Weekly Surveyor

By John GardnerThe Surveyor

The Ford Mustang was introduced in the spring of 1964 and set in motion an automobile lineage that endures today.

According to Ford Motor Company, the Mustang is the only original pony car to remain in uninterrupted production over five decades of development and revisions.

The Ford Mustang is arguably Ford’s most popular vehicle ever produced, and is also arguably one of the most widely popular “muscle cars” in American history.

The Mustang was produced as an in-company competitor to Ford’s popular T-Bird, a two-seater. The Mustang gave people a four-seat option with as much style and muscle as the T-Bird.

According to Ford Motor Company, the Ford Mustang was introduced to the public five months before the normal start of the 1965 production year. Those early versions are referred to as ’64½ models. Production began in March 1964 in Dearborn, Mich., and the car was released to the public on April 17, 1964.

The first model Mustangs were available as a coupe hardtop and convertible with the popular fastback models not being intro-duced until later in the year. The first year models were reportedly sold for approximately $2,368, according to Ford.com, and came with a 101 horsepower six-cylinder engine or a 260 cubic inch V8.

According to Ford Motor Company, the Mustang surpassed its first year sales forecast in the first three month, selling over 100,000 cars. On the first day of sales alone, auto dealers nation-wide took 22,000 orders. During the first production year, Ford sold 417,000 Mustangs and by the end of 1965, more than 1 mil-lion Mustangs had been built.

In comparison, the 2014 Mustang sell for a starting price around $22,500, and is available with a 305 horsepower V6 engine or, for a little more money, consumers can still get a 5.0 liter V8 engine with 420 horsepower.

For an in-depth look at the history of America’s muscle car, visit ford.com/vehicles/ford-mustang-story.

Ford Mustang turns 50

didn’t have a place to house the Mustang, so there it sat in my mother’s garage, cov-ered and left for dead.

My mother fell ill with cancer in 2009. In 2013 she succumbed to the disease; six short months after her father had passed.

Maybe two weeks after her passing, I found myself in the garage standing beside that same car that held several memories of both my grandfather and my mother.

A cloud of dust jumped into the air as I grabbed hold of the faded-blue cloth tarp and pulled. I’d unearthed the sleeping beast. It had seen better days, and it looked as empty as I felt.

The garage was a place that my father and I spent many hours during my youth. I remember helping him work on several vehicles through the years. I even be-came quite the bicycle mechanic translating his teach-ings to my vehicle of choice before I was old enough to legally drive.

When I got my own Mustang, “Ol’ Blue”, my friends and I called it, when I was 16, we worked on that to-gether, too.

I remember helping change the oil in the ’65 Mus-tang during my high school years. But there wasn’t ever really any work that needed to be done, other than maintenance because my grandfather, and father, had taken such exceptional care of this vehicle. Sometimes I think that my father took better care of that car than

he did himself. Human beings can be very funny that way.

When I uncovered the beau-ty, after its decade-long nap, despite its rough, tired exte-rior, I found that it remained in relatively good condition. It even smelled of my grandfa-ther and Missouri summers.

The car sat there like an injured dog, just waiting for someone to put it out of its misery. I’m sure I wasn’t much of a joy to be around, either, considering the circumstances. But, the car had no choice; it needed my help to come back to life. And I needed it just as much.

It took me a day to change the fluids: oil, transmission, differential. I put some gas

in the tank and primed the fuel lines. I replaced the old battery with a new one and filled the radiator with water and filled the flattened tires with air.

The Mustang embraced me as I settled into the driv-er’s seat. I stabbed the key into the ignition, pumped the gas pedal a few times, turned the key and the beast made a churning sound as it coughed and gasped for air.

It took a few tries but finally it roared to life. The smell of burning oil and exhaust overran my senses. It was a moment that demanded presence; the growl of the engine, the white, vinyl interior, and the tin-can music coming from the single-speaker, factory AM radio.

I had somehow entered a time machine and was once again, 5-years old, hanging on to the dash and scream-ing over the hills in that glorious reddish-orange beauty at top speed — and loving every minute.

It was awesome.

Photos by John GardnerCover: Pictured is John Gardner’s 1965 Ford Mustang, which also belonged to his grandfather and mother. Above: The interior is all oringinal including some fuzzy dice that have hung from the car’s rearview mirror fordecades.

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