Rebuilding the '67

My father bought a 1967 Ford Mustang when he was nineteen. It was cherry red, and he took my mother on their first date in it. Then life happened. The car sat in my uncle's barn for thirty years under a tarp, collecting dust and mice.

Last year, for his seventieth birthday, my brother and I towed it to my garage and told him we were going to rebuild it together. He said we were crazy. Then he showed up the next morning at seven with his old toolbox.

It took eleven months of weekends. We pulled the engine. We hunted for parts online and in junkyards across three states. We replaced the floor pans, rebuilt the carburetor and spent two whole Saturdays arguing about the exact shade of red. My father taught us things he'd learned as a teenager. We taught him how to look up parts on his phone.

On Labor Day weekend, we turned the key. The engine coughed, then roared. My father sat in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel and didn't say anything for a long minute.

Then he drove to my mother's house, honked the horn twice, just like he did in 1966, and took her for a ride. She laughed like a teenager the whole way around the block.