MustangMadam.com is holding a contest for Mustang Writers! Our readers are going to decide who will write for us. Please read this entry and send comments to:

mustang madam

It’s a ’71 and No! It’s Not for Sale!

by
Joyce Megginson Kircher

Whenever a stranger approaches me in my Mustang, I always know what

he wants, so I save his time by answering his questions before he asks

them: (1) “a ’71,” and (2) “No.”

Yep, he wants to know the year of my Mustang and if I want to sell it. It’s

amazing how everybody wants to buy my car, yet apparently does nothing

otherwise to acquire one. Wouldn’t you think if you were that enamored

of a car, you’d seek one out, read the ads, haunt the lots? I would.

But, no! They want mine. They pull me over in heavy traffic (when I think

their beckoning means I have a flat tire), they follow me into service stations when I

pull in to tank up, they block traffic by stopping , getting out, approaching me

behind them, and asking the usual.

It’s a ’71, and, no!

The parents of a friend of mine sold their Mustang, they were so sick of

automotive admiration. It gets annoying, particularly when a total stranger

demands the right of first refusal, should I ever want to part with Baby.

“Remember, I asked you first,” they say menacingly. No, you didn’t;

you asked about 500th!

I acquired my Mustang at the tender age of five when my previous vehicle, a

Chev convertible, caught fire for the second time. I left it on the side of the road,

walked home, called my favorite service station to get it and sell it, then called Gene,

a neighbor who bought and sold cars.

He wasn’t home; he was out buying cars. “I want a convertible, I want it to-

day, and I want to spend $1,200,” I told his wife. Ten minutes later, impatient nut

that I am, I called and demanded to know where my car was.

Luckily for me, Gene bought the first convertible he had ever bought

that day. It was a Mustang (which I never heard of) and it was $1,400. I didn’t

even like it; it sat too low and the trunk was not commodious enough. (Years later,

he tried to buy it back. No soap.)

Baby and I will go down together. Don’t ask.