Days before, I had determined that my ever-loyal 82 Civic was in need of a carburetor rebuild as well as that as a student living on loans and nothing more than weekend job, I was out of money. It was 1997, and I was a student at Penn State’s Harrisburg Campus. My then-girlfriend (now wife) Janet, and I were looking through the ads, trying to find my new car. If you wanted to find a used car there was really two methods: You drove to a dealership and walked the lots, or you bought yourself a copy of the Auto Trader. The internet was still in it’s infancy at that point one didn’t shop for cars online in 1997. The first time I saw my ’95 Thunderbird was in a little black and white picture in the local Auto Trader magazine. I was in school, and on my own for the first time. It wasn’t my first car, but it was the first car that really begged me to drive long distances, just for the sake of seeing new places. For me, it describes a carefree time, when I’d look for that long road heading off into the horizon, and drive it just to see where it goes.

The first verse in Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly” David Gilmour sings: “Into the distance a ribbon of black, stretched to the point of no turning back.” This is the music that comes to mind when I think of my Thunderbird.

92 thunderbird 5.0