Lime Green in the Spring

When the weather starts to warm up, Jim brings out his favorite toy. For you Boomers, it is a muscle car from the 70's. When I met Jim in 1971, he had just purchased his Buick Gran Sport, 4 on the floor convertible. It has an extra powerful engine in it and will scoot down the road with little effort. Not the kind of car we would encourage our sons to purchase!! We dated in this car for four years before getting married. It served us well but at the time we lived in Cleveland and as you know, there is lots of snow on the east side of that town! The rear end just goes every which way on slippery surfaces so we bought something more practical and this one sat, not being used much at all and it started rusting out. My brother's company car was eliminated and he needed something temporary. So, the green car went to Indiana. Then the engine needed work, we had kids and no time to mess with the car, we had moved to Chicago with no place to store it, brother didn't need it any more so Jim said "get rid of it". They hauled it away on a flatbed. Once it was gone, we bemoaned the fact that we had not made the effort to keep it. For years we read the newspapers looking for something that would come close. We half heartedly tried to find out who had taken the car, but never really put a lot into it. One day several years later, my brother called and said "I think I found Jim's car". He knew we were missing it (do I sound like it has life? :>) He said he was driving thru Fort Wayne and saw it sitting on a car lot near there and was I still interested in getting it back. Knowing that Jim would be ecstatic, I didn't tell him until after I had called the dealership to figure out if it was the same car or not. When the guy said it had a trailer hitch on the back with a wire for pulling a trailer, I knew it was the right one! Jim has always been involved in Boy Scouts and pulling a scout trailer on camp outs was one of his things to do. The original paper work was still with it with Jim's name as well. We drove to Fort Wayne the following day and purchased the car - for nearly twice what he paid for it.

Now the car sits in our extra garage bay and gets driven just for fun. Our youngest, Michael, taught himself how to drive the stick shift and now takes it out for joy rides with his friends. So far this year, it has been out a couple of times because as soon as the temp starts to climb in the spring, the car comes out and we "cruise" to DQ, A&W, to the Cruise In at Mickey D's or just around town. Fun! If only we were so young again!