1957 Ford Failrlane Skyliner Hard Top Convertible
I’ve often been known to say that when we
think of days gone by, we always think of the good things, and have a tendency
to conveniently forget the negatives.
Most people call that tendency human nature. I have a type of personality that focuses on
the positive, not that I have a non-eventful life or perfect life, I just feel
that life is way too short to constantly highlight the negative.
Today, I was having an untypical day and
catching up with national and world news, and I caught myself thinking about
how those types of crimes (kidnappings, rapes, stabbings, etc.) were almost
non-existent when I was growing up. So I
decided to think about my life back then to see if I could identify, an occurrence
where that type of crime might have entered into my life.
When my step brother turned 21 his beautiful
wife of two years wasn’t old enough to go with him to a party that his friends
were throwing for him to celebrate the legal age of drinking. At first she was very upset that he would go
and party with his friends, without her by his side. He eventually convinced her over the course
of a week that all they would be doing is shooting pool at the local tavern in
town (the town population then was 3,250).
By quoting the population numbers, I am making the point that the town
is very small, and everybody knows everyone, and he would definitely be in his
best behavior.
Somehow I got dragged into it, and unlike in today’s
times where a young wife might say, well if you are going out with the guys, I
am going out with the girls. My sister-in-law’s
solution was to take me out to dinner, and a movie. I was all of 14 years old, and I really felt
it was more of an imposition on me than anything else. I really felt that I was basically babysitting,
although I was the young one. My sister-in-law
wanted a nice dinner, so I was treated to a very nice new dress shirt, tie and dress
slacks. We traveled 45 minutes to the
big city (in their pride and joy, a 1957 Ford Fairlane Hard Top
Convertible. The trunk opened up and the
whole hard top would mechanically drop into the trunk, and the trunk would
automatically close), we ate dinner at a fancy restaurant, and went to see
Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii (I will never forget the movie because as it
happened my sister-in-law and I were equally lifelong fans of everything Elvis
Presley did).
After the movie, we got in the Ford Fairlane,
and decided to take a slow drive through the main drag of the big city. My sister-in-law being young, and proud of
her Ford responded as expected when challenged at a traffic light and totally embarrassed
the driver and the two passengers of a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air. We tried to lose them as we made our way to
the open road that would take us back home, but they kept tailing us. I don’t know if they were trying to get even
for being embarrassed or if they took a liking to my beautiful driver, but they
wouldn’t give up.
Even though, once out of town we noticed their
headlights kept getting smaller as we put distance between us, they were still
following us. With hardly any traffic in
either direction, my sister-in-law decided that it wasn’t safe to have this
morons follow us all the way to our town, so she came up with a plan. Since we had close to a half mile distance
between us, she planned to pull to the side of the road and get the 30/30
Winchester out of the trunk and aim it at them as they approached. I argued my case and stood my ground (call it
Machismo if you want), I insisted that she should pull over as planned get out
of the car and into the field bordering the road, while I stood next to and to the
rear of the car, while holding the 30/30 as they drove (hopefully) by. As it turned out they put on their high beam
lights, as they neared and when they made out the figure of someone holding up a
rifle, they floored it and passed right on by.
Please understand that I wasn’t playing John
Wayne or Robert Mitchum, but was in fact scared to death (scared enough,
however, to open fire if I had to). On
the rest of the way home, we took some side roads that eventually got us home
without running into the morons that would either be returning to their city
(assuming that they were from the big city), or waiting for us in ambush up the
road a ways. We discussed how we had
some excitement to top the night off, but pinky swore not tell anyone about the
close encounter with the morons, that may have had evil plans for us. My step brother and his wife are still
happily married in their golden years and as far as I know we still have a
secret in common. As I think about it I
can’t help but understand that evil and other crimes have always been around
us, we have simply lived blessed lives. The best is yet to come…
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