Sold
Guess I should close out this blog with the fact that I finally sold the old girl. I took a new job in 2005 and moved away from my buddy who helped rebuild the engine. I just couldn't get motivated to do more than go out to the garage occasionally and turn the engine over with a big wrench.
I sold it to a local guy who's really into Fords. His friend had just finished restoring a hardtop and wanted to do a convertible. I made him promise to come give me a ride when the car's finished, and I hope he'll keep that promise.
This car really meant a lot to me. It was made the year I was born, and represented the culture of middle-class America at the time. Owned by a UAW worker at Ford, you can just imagine him coming home at 4 or 5 every workday to a meal cooked by his wife, to the company of his children. You can see him in his suburban home (in the early days of suburban life), living the dream of the 50's, but plagued with news of the escalating Vietnam war, the assassination of President Kennedy and Malcolm X, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, racial unrest in Selma, Alabama, terror of the Soviet Menace, and the Space Race. Indeed, my birth year of 1965 was a landmark year in the tumultuous 60's, and although I don't remember it, I do remember my parent's used 1962 Chevrolet Impala, black-and-white scenes of the Vietnam War, and the inspiration of Apollo. I'll miss the nostalgia I felt every time I saw the old girl in my garage.