God bless my neighbor Wes. I may not have the disposable income to own a collector car, but by golly, Wes does.
Three of them.
A Vietnam
Since then, Wes has added a 1972 Pontiac Luxury Le Mans to his stable. It’s red with a white vinyl roof, and it has those half-covers over the rear wheels. Not really my style, but who cares? It’s an old car and it’s in great condition.
Here’s how this relationship works: I go out on Saturday morning to mow, and somewhere along the line Wes’s garage door goes up, signaling the start of a car-fiddling session. Wes saunters over, I shut off the mower, and he fills me in on the latest headlight bezel he’s polished, cruise control he’s added or firewall he’s painted. It’s an excuse for me to go over and have my own personal mini car show, and I always welcome it.
Thanks to Wes, I’ve enjoyed access to award-winning vintage cars on a level I’d never have had otherwise. The Buick was even “Miss January” in a Hemming’s Motor News calendar a few years ago. He’s let me touch them, sit in them and crawl under them. Sometimes—be still my heart—he’s even let me help him work on them. (Okay, “help” really needs to be in quotes there.) But then came the day when Wes officially became The Coolest Neighbor Ever. It was the day he let me drive—yes, drive—the Firebird.
The Firebird had always been my favorite. I gravitate toward it, inquire about it more, and generally just can’t stop looking at it. And Wes knows that. A few weeks ago, he asked whether Jake, my 14-year-old, might like to earn a few bucks waxing the ’Bird. I was only partially joking when I suggested that I should be the one waxing it, and that I’d do it for free.
Turns out there was something for me in the deal after all. When Jake finished and we were looking the car over (it’s white, so missed wax can be hard to spot), Wes suggested Jake and I take the Firebird for a drive and handed me the keys.
The keys.
What an incredible time machine. Jake and I quickly got over the lousy vinyl seats, the thin-rimmed plastic steering wheel, the vague brakes and the squishy suspension (and, for that matter, the lack of shoulder belts): All we cared about was the rumble from that large V8, the view over that sexy hood, and the looks we got tooling around East Mesa with the windows down. My son and I were both powerless to stop grinning like idiots. “I’ve never driven in a car like this!” Jake shouted.
Truth is, neither had I. A co-worker once let me drive his clapped-out ’65 Corvette, but it was in need of so much work that it was hardly representative of its class. Wes’s 1969 Firebird 400 looks like it just rolled out of the showroom. After the drive, I half expected to turn on the TV and hear Neil Armstrong giving the “One small step for man” speech on a grainy black-and-white TV, or to find True Grit still in theaters. Although a modern-day Honda Civic is a superior machine in nearly every respect, that old Firebird provided something a Civic never could: An experience. Jake and me in a fine old machine on a sunny afternoon. Hard to beat.
I keep hoping that fate will conspire to allow me the finances to afford my own hobby car someday—say, a 1969 Corvette convertible. My plea with God is that a fun car like that would make a good bonding experience for my boys and me. But maybe God knows what he’s doing: as it stands, I’m having loads of fun while Wes pays the bills and does all the work.
Indeed, God bless my neighbor Wes.
