A Mustang Named Methuselah Finally Runs Out of Miracles

It’s like a death in the family, my brother agreed when I called him in Indiana to report the bleak news.

Yes, he said sadly, he would inform his sons.

That was my third call--after the police and the insurance company--announcing that Methuselah the Mustang, the car I had owned and loved for 33 years, seven months, three weeks and three days, had been stolen.

From a restaurant parking lot.

In that tony community a few miles west of downtown called Larchmont Village.

In broad daylight.

Yes, locked.

In the half-hour I stopped for lunch on my way home from volunteering as a Los Angeles Public Library docent, handing out bookmarks and pencils at the Times Festival of Books at UCLA.

Is there a moral here?

Don’t do good works.

Stay out of nice areas of town.

Don’t leave rural Indiana to make your life in the big city. Don’t get emotionally attached to a little old pile of tin.

Even thieves appreciate the classics.

*

We had been together since Aug. 31, 1965, when Tom O’Daniel Ford in Bloomington, Ind., was clearing out the original Mustangs for the new and better 1966 models.

It was far too new and shiny then to dream of ever calling it Methuselah, after the biblical soul who lived 969 years.

I simply liked the car: poppy red with black interior, sporty styling, a V-8 289-cubic-inch engine. It seemed symbolic--an innovative new car for my new post-collegiate adult life. It was mine for $2,400, plus $300 to finance it over the standard three years.

The name evolved as the car aged gracefully, along with my pride at being able to introduce Methuselah to those naysayers who preached that Detroit couldn’t build anything durable.

When the insurance agent went down her checklist of extras on the car, we both wound up laughing. Methuselah was zingy for its day but pretty basic. No power steering, brakes, windows, locks, antenna or seats, no belts, air bags, alarms, cruise control, no stereo or even FM radio. But plenty of power under the hood.

And economical. I once realized that I had saved enough on the unspent price of new cars and maintenance to finance my many trips on five major continents and Australia. From 1975 to 1985, I calculated, Methuselah’s repairs and maintenance averaged only $368 a year. My biggest annual car cost was liability insurance. Last year, I finally stretched the checkbook and entrusted Methuselah to Chuck Francis of Dream Machines to install air conditioning. We laughed at that, too: The project totaled $200 more than the original price of the car.

Was it in good condition? everyone asks. You bet. Original engine under the hood. Original specs book in the glove compartment. Not a rip or puncture inside. Original paint outside. With nicks to be sure, but still that poppy red that sort of glowed. A car that begged to be driven. Obviously.

Together, we drove happily for 133,224 miles. We parked for jobs in Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and for the past 31 years in Los Angeles. We drove as far east as New York City, south to Key West, Fla., north to Montreal and west to San Francisco. We were on the Harbor Freeway, headed to an interview in Compton, on May 9, 1989, when the odometer rolled to all those zeros--100,000 miles.

We ran out of gas three times and were in three surface street bumper benders. Each time we were quickly rescued; each time the other driver conceded fault and paid for repairs. No harm done.

Methuselah was even stolen once before--in the wee hours of election night, November 1968, while I reported Richard Nixon’s victory for the Herald Examiner. The Los Angeles Police Department had Methuze back without a scratch in 24 hours.

So when I walked out of that Koo Koo Roo restaurant last Saturday and saw no little red car in the parked line of prim, dark-colored, late-model vehicles, I figured Methuselah and I had run out of miracles.

*

I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I never once thought that I was confused about where I had parked. My realization of what had happened was an instinctive dull thud: Stolen. Gone forever. I always thought it could end this way.

I walked quietly inside the restaurant, asked politely for the manager, informed him of the theft--the first ever from that lot, he said, stricken. I called the police, the insurance company, accepted a free soft drink, let the manager call a taxi to take me home.

With all the problems of Kosovo and Colorado, I told myself, this couldn’t be considered important. I was lucky nobody had stuck a gun in my ribs to take the car and that I had cash in my pocket to pay for the cab.

“This is a crime with special circumstances,” said one of Methuselah’s staunchest admirers. “When the perps are caught they must be hanged on the spot!” Most people just said that’s life in the big city.

On Aug. 31, 1990, Methuselah’s 25th birthday, I wrote a first-person piece that ran with a picture in The Times’ old View section. I’ve written for newspapers for more than 40 years and no story I’ve ever done before or since has generated a fraction of the letters, electronic messages, phone calls and verbal comments that article wrought. My uncle, the Illinois car dealer, hung a framed copy in his office. We got 25th birthday cards. Even a letter from the Father of the Mustang, Lee Iacocca.

I had planned to write a new chapter next year for the car’s 35th anniversary. Guess I won’t be doing that now.

Methuselah the Mustang is with me no more.

And I’m in mourning.

*

‘When the perps are caught they must be hanged on the spot!’