A Short Story---And it's all true!
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My first new car was a '64 Ford Custom with a 427-T engine, the required four speed, et cetera.
And, unfortunately, when it was only a few weeks old, I wrecked it while street-racing a 409 Chevrolet. (Yeah, the Beach Boys and so on!) He was out with his girlfriend and challenged me. The first time we ran, I was beating him so badly that I let off in third gear. He said he missed a shift and wanted to go again. So we went up around the curve we could see ahead and went at it one more time. The result was about the same except that I stayed in it.
Those of you who've driven a '64 Ford will remember that the sweep of the speedo needle was such that above 120 MPH the needle disappeared into the housing---but slightly beyond that you'd be able to see it again in the little red idiot light to the right.
I'd got to that point---and a bus-length or so ahead of the 409---when I realized that there was another curve ahead. I took my foot out of it and tried to ride it out, but I was drifting pretty good and ran out of pavement. When I hit the dirt along the edge, the rear end came around. I struck a sign saying 'curve' with my left rear tire and the sign post pushed the rear quarter panel in. And the head of the sign came through the back window. I ended up setting with the passenger rear tire down in a swale---facing back the way I'd come.
The 409 had not made it nearly as far around the curve and was 25 or thirty yards out in the field. And to make it worse, he'd hit the far side of the ditch in such a way that he'd warped the frame enough to blow all the glass out of his car.
I ran over there and made sure that they were unhurt and then went back to my car. I was trying to figure out where to put the jack in order to change the tire when a guy I worked with at Ford’s Livonia Transmission Plant came along in his ‘40s Ford pick-up. He first pulled me back across the swale to flat ground and then drove out in the field and fastened on to the Impala. We were almost to the corner at Levan Rd. so he hooked on and pulled the Chevrolet out of the field and down through the intersection. And then further enough along so it wasn't visible from my location.
I was there all by myself when the Wayne County Sheriff patrol car showed up. I claimed to not have been watching the speedometer and said I must have hit a patch of frost. They stayed, with their headlights on, until I changed the tire.
It cost me $400 to get the rear quarter-panel and back glass replaced and the top straightened. That was close to a month's take-home. (The car cost $2700) A couple of weeks later I got a bill from the county for $12.50 for the cost to replace the sign.
The Impala was totaled.
