Just a little quickie spurred by recent events in the household.  First of all, because of the current economic situation, my number- three son and family moved in with us last year.  Our house is a  two-story house with the bottom floor half buried so when you walk in the front door you are on a landing with a short flight up to the top floor and a short flight down to the bottom floor.  The windows on the bottom floor are at ground level.  Whoever originally owned the house set it up as a two-family dwelling (code?  We don't need no stinking codes!)  with a whole kitchen and even its own entrance.  So we don't have to get in each others' way any more than we have to. 

Number Three's (Toothache's Revenge on JU) oldest is the grandaughter whose husband was in Afghanistan and just got home last week.  So...until they get their own place, they live here, too.  It is very cool for me and MC.

So the boy got home last week and right away they went shopping for a car.  They came home in a gently-used Firebird.  I was greatly pleased on two levels...first because the boy had the good sense to buy Pontiac, and secondly because I remember that return to the real world from the surreal existence in a combat zone and I, too, bought a Pontiac upon my return from Vietnam...a 1965 GTO.

After tripping over all kinds of lemony complications with a used Jimmy, Toothache and his wife decided to go new and bought a sweet little Ford Focus.  This, too, pleased me (not that my opinion matters at all to anyone else's activities) because it is a sign that things are looking up for them.

Then, I guess bitten by the new car bug, Toothache decided that it would be better to replace rather than spend money on his aging Firebird.  He found a beautiful little Mustang, not too new but in really good shape and sporty and quick and he is very happy with it, so...so am I.  With the new cars and new used cars and old cars, and our own three cars, we have eight cars parked around the house.  Not a record...when the boys were still living here we once had nine cars around the house.  But eight is pretty close to the limit. 

However,  it is the Mustang that spurred this article, because not only are they "all that" (sexy, sporty, fast, and flashy) but there is a gazillion of them running around.  In fact that is one of the factors why they settled on the Mustang...availability of parts and such.  Musing and discussing all that brought up the memory of this incident:

Every Saturday evening through the summer, there was an impromptu car show at a local grocery store parking lot.  Impromptu car show...that sounds too organized.  No, it was more like just a bunch of car guys getting together and showing off their street rods, muscle cars, fat-fenders;  new and old.  How big a bunch?  There had been as many as three hundred cars in that lot on occasion. 

There is a Carl's Junior on the perimeter of the lot with an outdoor patio.  It doesn't get much better for a car guy than to buy a chocolate milk shake and take it to the outdoor tables and sip and watch as the go-fasters cruise around the lot or sit in their parking place and rap them big motors up. 

Every now and then a newbie would show up and in his exuberance he would burn out or "punch it" in the lot.   He would be immediately surrounded by the old hands and it would be explained that the police tolerate our little gatherings only so long as there is nothing unsafe going on and that there is absolutely no racing in the lot or on any of the roads approaching the lot.  

It was a gathering of gear-heads dedicated to all things car.  Even a "Tuner" contingent would show up now and then.  Of course, when a crowd like that gets together, there is a little friendly competition and some good-natured trash-talk.  And they tend to park in groups...a line of Chevies here, MOPAR there, Fords over there.  And of course, the taunts and jabs are all performance-based...whose ride will blow the doors off  your ride. 

One Saturday evening MC and I were walking up and down the lines of cars just soaking up the sights and sounds and smells, stopping to admire here and there.  There is something exciting about the sound of a well-tuned exhaust...that tailpipe roar...and several makes and models have a distinctive note to them.  We were walking down a long line of Mustangs;  some were old ones in various phases of restoration, some were rare editions like the two GT 500s that were regulars, and some were the new breed of fire-breathers with strange names like Rausch and Saleen.  We heard a very loud engine coming up behind us.  It was a '67 Camaro.  And baby was it tricked.  Barely legal, it sported the look of an all-out drag-racer.  The front tires were narrow little things barely larger than bicycle tires, but the rear tires were huge, the trunk and fenders had to be "tubbed" to accomodate them ("tubbing" is cutting out sections of the trunk of the car so the wider tires can fit under the car;  sometimes the fenders have to be modified,too).  Rising out of the hood was a GMC 671 Blower with fuel-injection tubes topped with a "live scoop".  The car moved in that jerking, bouncing way.  Every time the driver revved the motor, the ground literally shook with it.  This was a true beef-eater.  Camaro boy crawled down the line of Mustangs at less than walking speed, revving that monster every few yards.  It brought all conversation to a halt. 

The Camaro stopped about half-way down the line and the driver looked over all those Mustangs.  He backed the beast into an open slot between two of the Mustangs and with a final blip on the gas, he shut it off...Instant silence.  It was a statement that had no possible response.  A few of the older guys in the Mustang crowd laughed, a couple actually clapped in applause, and some of the younger ones were incensed that he parked that Chevy in Mustang territory...but he just smiled and saluted them all, got out and walked over to Carl's Junior to get a milk shake or whatever minor heroes drink at Carl's.

I took the Goat up there a few times, just to park and walk around;  it was convenient to drop MC at Jo Ann's (to look at every single piece of fabric in the store), about a mile-and-a-half north of the grocery store lot, and go look at the cars.  MC's enthusiasm for cars has its limits but for fabric?  No bounds.  It left me free to look at cars for awhile.  The car show moved last year;  most of the growth in the Springs has been to the North and I suspect they have found a bigger parking lot up there somewhere.  I have yet to have enough free time on a Saturday to go in search of it.

The image of that minor little incident still tickles me.  It is a small thing but a great image in me brain.  Camaro Boy made an eloquent statement without uttering a word.

This is not the car but could be its double, in case you didn't know what "tubbed" really looked like.