Mustangs Stampede into Sulphur

I went to the Cajun Mustangers Car Show over in Sulphur yesterday. I enjoy looking at cool cars. On one hand, I don’t get terribly excited about cars. I don’t drive a fancy car. I subscribe to a utilitarian outlook regarding vehicles – they’re merely tools to get from point A to point B. As long as they are reliable and serve my purposes.

On the other hand, cars are in my blood. Some of my first childhood memories are of playing slot cars with my dad on a track that took up a good deal of space in our small apartment in Cleveland, OH. I squeezed that button on the hand controller as tightly as my little thumb could press. Sometimes he'd take me to some kind of place that had larger slots on bigger tracks. While other fathers took their kids to the playground, Dad and I watched NASCAR all Sunday afternoon. Chevy and Ford were likely two of my first words. As a toddler, I had a sweatshirt with car logos all over it and I could name every one. I’m certain it was a boy’s shirt, but Dad didn’t care. He flipped cars like IHOP flips pancakes. I’d no sooner get attached to one, he’d sell it. They have an old home movie of me crying when daddy sold the turquoise blue VW beetle. I can’t begin to guess how many different cars we had during my childhood. I doubt Dad knows.

Dad was always a Chevy guy, so I don’t recall any Mustangs in the garage. We were partial to ‘vettes. But my very first car was a 1976 cherry red Mustang (below). When I was in college and needed a car, Mom bought it for me from my grandmother for $1000.00 and a waterbed (hey, it was the early ‘80s). I loved that car, but that generation of cars wasn’t designed to last. Eventually, the constant maintenance forced me to buy something more reliable.

 

So anyway, back to Saturday’s car show . . .  our friend and sailing buddy Ralph Unglaube has been president of the Cajun Mustangers for 12 years (wow, huh!). He has two very cool Mustangs that he restored. “We are all about keeping these old vehicles alive and we love showing them to the younger generations,” he says. The club puts on this car show every year. Used be only Mustangs, but they’ve opened it up to other makes and models. The club donated part of the proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Program.

I liked this 1964 Mustang.

 

How about this 1928 truck? Looks like the mud on the wheels is from 1928, too.

 

My favorite car in the show was this 1971 Jaguar.

 

What’s your dream car?