White Mustang

As I'm rounding the corner into the parking lot from Orion's Belt, the local public alternative is doing its segue from the news into morning programming with an ethereal techno number that immediately becomes the soundtrack of this rainy scene of people with umbrellas walking from their cars to the entrance of the building, somehow reminding me of last night's dream involving an elusive white Mustang.

I learned to drive in a light blue '66 Mustang, 3-on-the-floor, straight-6, AM radio, very basic, very cool. When I was a senior, it became essentially "my car" which it eventually was halfway through college, when the whole adventure started really taking off - often in road-trips in the light blue Mustang.

Ford introduced the Mustang halfway through the 1964 model year, a clever marketing decision that Hank the Deuce, Lee Iacocca, and their people in Dearborn no doubt planned carefully. We lived in Garden City at the time, a working-class suburb on the Westside of Detroit. Bob Solano, scion of a prominent Garden City family with a big house on Ford Road and a pool, was the first person I knew to own a '64 1/2 Mustang. He could be seen driving his own royal blue convertible to and from GC High School with a select group of friends. Classy.

We were GM people mostly - Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick - although Chas Golly went in for the exotic and bought a cute little gray Renault once, and a light blue Falcon. I guess it was like big GM family car and the small EuroFord for economy. My older sisters got to share the Falcon while they were in high school. After the girls had graduated, we moved to a more uptown suburb, and I got the Mustang to myself. No sexist double-standard here, just the luck of the birth-order, sure, uh-huh.

Mac, my best friend in high school, drove a yellow Mustang. Marco, my best friend in college after I transferred to Michigan, drove a red Mustang. This was Detroit, of course, where cars define people, though it's probably not much different anywhere in America - you are what you drive. Think of "American Grafitti," the pop culture testament to existential lust, youthful longing, and hot cars. Most of us were part Richard Dreyfus, on a quest for the white Thunderbird, and part Ron Howard, torn between big city, bright lights, State U., and hometown Peggy Sue.

So what the heck is this white Mustang doing in my rainy morning dreamspace, now that I drive a gray Ranger to my office job? Maybe I don't want to know.