See, all I remember from 1996-97 about Vito was that he was cool guy, in the Marines, stuck in the same barracks I was, and he had a cool 70 Nova witht eh license plate "Vitos 70". Yes, my memory is good with car related things.
So, recently a lot of history stuff popped up, like my 30th high school graduation anniversary, family tree research on ancestry .com, and I got to wondering what some guys I was in the Navy with were doing, and I remembered Vito, and his 70 Nova.
Notice way down that driveway in front of the 2 door garage, is a 70 Nova.
Pretty cool to find out that someone hung onto, either the same, or a similar, kick ass car that he had back when.
Yeah I tried a message on Facebook, and it didn't work, I think that just like me, he never notices the "message requests" tiny damn notification on Facebook. Serious, months go by without seeing that damn tiny check mark.
Or, like most people, he's like "Who the fuck is that?" when not recalling who the hell someone is after 25 years.
But that's not what this is about. This is about the cool factor of learning that some cool friend you had 25 years ago that you remember like, 4 things about, still has his kick ass Nova.
Seriously, if you were ever in the military, broke because you had a cool car (Car payment plus insurance plus gas = most of the bi-monthly paycheck. I think I was getting 350 every two weeks) and living in the fucking barracks, back when a vcr or tv cost a couple hundred bucks you didn't have plus cable was too damn much every month.
Call it the price you pay to be in the enlisted military, that shitty broke existence that people who understand just say, "yep, been there done that" cause there weren't credit cards, there wasn't shit to do except put your shitty paycheck into one thing. Beer, video games, clubbing to meet women who want to meet douchebags that club to meet women, or a cool old car that not only is fun to race at the local drag strip, it's also your daily commuter.
So you waste evenings watching tv in the barracks tv room, or shooting pool when no one has screwed up the pool table, busted the sticks, or torn the green. You hang out with other similar solid examples of the broke but cool guys with nothing to do. And now and then find some one who talks cars!
You know, there really aren't that many of our tribe. It's good to find a brother of the busted knuckles and cool cars tribe, and even better to see that he's kept his Nova since then, that time before the internet, when keeping in touch meant sending mail to weird invented military FPOs. So, not a lot of letters ever got written. People came and went and got transferred to other bases.