My first view of my Montego

My Montego in the driveway

She hasn't been properly christened yet, but I think she's the Eagle. I'm choosing the name Eagle for several reasons, one being that I'm with Eagle Company, another being that the Eagle is a Free bird, if you get the Skynyrd reference. I've found that that song is particularly bad for the Eagle - during the guitar solo, on several occasions, I'd look down and find that she was flying along at anywhere from 95 to 110 miles an hour.

Replacing the radiator

That would be me under the car, replacing hoses and whatnot.

That's the dash. Ain't she gorgeous?

Go ahead. Sit on your new car like that. See if you don't dent the hell out of your hood. Or slide off it.

Ain't she pretty?

This is what 80 looks like. Interior's good, though, and she handles great.

This is me and my other baby - the "Johnny Bravo". Its a Fabrique Nationale Herstal M240B - pronounced as "two forty bravo." While I would much rather be home working on the Eagle, Johnny Bravo is helping me get there in one piece.

I'd like to tell you a story about why I went after the 1968 Mercury Montego specifically instead of another, more well known and true muscle car, if you have the time to sit down and listen to me tell my tale.

When I was a kid, probably around '91 or '92, my family wasn't doing too well, financially. In order to get from place to place, Dad had accepted his sister's mid-'60's Chevy Biscayne. At the time, I was enamored by the Ghostbusters, and promptly named the Biscayne "Ecto," after the Ghostbusters' 1959 Cadillac Meteor-Miller Ambulance. Looking back at it, I think the common features between the ambulance and the Biscayne were the quad headlights and nothing else.

Shortly after Dad got the Biscayne, it died while my mother was having surgery and I was staying at my mother's sister's house. Dad came to pick me up, bearing the bad news that our Ecto was dead. But then he picked me up, held me over the kitchen sink to see what he had replaced the Biscayne with.

I distinctly remember that first sight of the Montego from the tail, and it was love at first sight. Looking at it in hindsight, I liken it a lot to Admiral Kirk's inspection of the refit Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, if any Trekkies are reading this. I saw her from the tail, first, from the second floor, then again on the ground. I remember that giant chromed bumper, the distinctive tail lights... I remember the whitewall tires, the chrome door handles, the chromed front bumper and grille and the quad headlights.

The Biscayne was forgotten.

Ecto was a four-door, yellow beige with a black vinyl top, with a 302 Windsor, I believe the variant is called.

Her shock towers finally wore out in 1997 and I would never ride in her again. But for the years we had Ecto, she came to define safety for me. Dad and I once hit a patch of black ice while traveling home on I-95, probably doing a good 80 miles an hour. We spun out, hit the concrete divide with the rear left quarter panel. After making sure I was all right, Dad got out, checked Ecto out, then got back in, checked me again, and we drove her home.

Growing up, I didn't know a ratchet from a hammer, so when Dad would work on Ecto, I was basically useless. After Dad got rid of Ecto in '97, though, Dad and I began to grow apart. It had nothing to do with the car, mind you, I was being a hormone-stricken idiot. Puberty is a bitch, ain't it?

Here in Iraq, I don't have that feeling of safety and comfort I had riding shotgun in Ecto. I've been shot at, blown up, I don't hear so well out of my right ear anymore... so I finally found a '68 Mercury Montego. While mine is no replacement for the memory of Ecto, I keep Ecto's memory alive in the form of her license plate, sitting on the floorboards of my Montego's passenger side.

But she does have that certain feeling of safety and familiarity that I was looking for.

And now that I'm a little bit older, and I'm a little more help, and Dad and I finally get along very well. Truth be told, Dad has been the quartermaster everyone wishes they had over here. Food, toilet paper, gun oil, Dad's sent it all. And when I came home on leave, Dad had gone ahead and picked up the Montego for me. I bought it, but Dad moved it, assessed it, and we worked on her together.

Once again, father and son are bonding over a 1968 Mercury Montego.

And I am one lucky son of a bitch.

Furthermore, I hate new cars.  HATE.  All caps, HATE.  Plastic-bodied, computer-controlled, fuel-injected hunks of shit.  I have no respect for any car made after 1972.  Can't stand the damn things. 

Okay, so I'm not a millionare.  Roger.  I copy that.  But I fight to win a better day.  But my Montego is my life.  I love this car.  And if there's anyone who wants to talk shit about it, go for it.  I'll play chicken with your plastic piece of shit any day - and I'll drive away.  Will you?