Pat mentioned he had a fastback Mustang as his first vehicle.. .. I asked how he got it, by looking for one, or had he been given it... and here is his cool story (thanks Pat!)

and this happens to be the only photo he has... (ain't that a shame!)

Hi Jesse,

Mine was a classic case of "every once in a while the blind squirrel finds a nut".
I had fallen in lust with mustangs from my first Hot Rod magazine. My journey to get my hands on one started in '75, I was 15 and had an English teacher who had a '68 GT500 for sale.

 Her dad had been a Ford dealer and bought it new for her and her new husband. It was really well cared for and she was selling it for $2000 - might as well been a million dollars at the time because I could not find a way to make it happen.

Fast forward a year, I happened to be in our local court house and looked out the window while waiting in line and low and behold there was a '69 butternut yellow fastback in a used car lot across the street - may have even been lit up by a ray of sunshine. By this point in time I was working as a box boy at our local grocery store and was stinking rich, so $1300 later I had my Mustang and a license to fly.

A new set of headers, a Hurst t-handle shifter, and a flip of the air cleaner lid and suddenly I was an unstoppable force. At the time my Dad knew that I had really wanted a Mustang and a short while after I bought this one he confessed to me that he had found one earlier at a Chevy dealer in a nearby town but did not tell me - a '69 Boss 302. Someone had traded it in, and the salesman he talked to about it refused to sell it to kid. I have been wanting to find that guy and throw a banana peel if front of him ever since.

I thoroughly enjoyed that car for three years but youthful exuberance had taken it's toll on it and I knew it was time to sell to the next newly minted Don Prudhomme.

 At that time my Uncle worked with a man who was selling his son's '72 Mach 1. I was pretty stoked so went to take a peek at it. It was in a garage under a dust cover and was pristine - only had 20 some thousand miles on. In talking with him I discovered that it was his son's first new car and that he had passed away from cancer some years earlier and that he and his wife had just decided to sell it. I was the first one to look at it. By the time he was done telling me about it he and I were both crying. It just did not feel right buying it so my Mustang story came to an end.

 Maybe one of these days my wife will say "Sweetheart, why don't you go buy yourself a Super Snake Wide Body please" and then the circle will be complete. Thanks for letting me drone on, and thanks again for all the good work you are doing.

Pat