Counting Blue Cars

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Ever since childhood, I have been fascinated by cars. My father had a 1965 red Volkswagen Beetle, and he used to let me sit on his lap and control the steering wheel. I still remember the license plate number: 35 KA 344. I have vivid memories of my dad driving from Diyarbakir to Izmir with me, at seven years old, sitting in the back seat and his wife, Layla, up front. Every time my dad passed another car, I yelled in excitement “onu da gectik, onu da gectik” (we passed that one too, we passed that one too). Something about passing other cars in our old Volkswagen made me feel like the king of the road in those days. I love the original song “King of the Road” by Roger Miller, and Randy Travis’s version always reminds me of my Sonora days.

My uncle Osman loved cars, too, and gave me a lot of tips on driving as a kid. He had a navy blue Renault. He was a talented driver with great coordination and precision. He liked to drive fast but always would make sure to slow down where kids played in residential areas. He always parked that Renault with its side mirror only about an inch away from the wall of the building across from their Atilla apartment. I remember his license plate number, too: 35 FS 342.

My aunt Gulay’s husband, Ozturan, had a dark navy blue Murat 124 (Fiat), license plate number 35 HS 285. I still remember waiting impatiently for the moment that their car would come around the corner at my grandparents’ place in Bornova; they drove in from Selcuk, a town one mile away from the ancient city Ephesus and about four miles from the house of the Virgin Mary. The joy and excitement I and my cousin Kaya felt as a pair of teenagers when my uncle Ozturan handed us his car keys to go get a pack of cigarettes from a local bakkal is something I will never forget. And for some reason there was always heavy traffic.

The few people on our street who owned cars took enormous pride in them, washing them regularly and getting them ready for a drive on our popular boulevard by the Aegean Sea, turning up the music on warm spring evenings. You could hear pop songs of the era pouring from various cars: USA for Africa’s “We Are the World,” Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus,” or Turkish songs such as Sezen Aksu’s “Firuze,” Baris Manco’s “Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi,” or Kibariye’s “Kimbilir.”

Right next door to our Elver apartment lived two brothers, Ahmet and Mert abi, with their beautiful, ever-smiling mom, Saime teyze, who had the class of Ingrid Bergman. I looked up to both of them. They were adventurers who enjoyed riding motorcycles and sailing. Ahmet abi had an Anadol station wagon in the ’80s with the license plate 35 KF 690. To this day they still sail through the Mediterranean, having never lost the small child in themselves. A couple of years ago I talked to Ahmet abi just as he was about to sail from Croatia back to Turkey on a new boat he bought there, and Mert abi was spending most of his days fishing, diving, and sailing on the Aegean Sea.

I can still see the neatly parked green Renault three doors down from our Elver apartment on the other side of the street. For some reason the owner always reminded me of the Captain, played by Gavin MacLeod on the TV series The Love Boat. I still remember the Renault’s license plate, too: 35 DR 494. I remember some of the license plates because my best friend, also named Ozan, and I would go around the neighborhood and write down all the numbers on a piece of paper when we were eight or nine years old. Years later I would fall in love with the song “Counting Blue Cars” by Dishwalla, as it reminded me of my childhood memories involving cars.

The apartment next to where the “Captain” lived was where Serdar abi lived; his father knew my grandmother, since they were both from the same small town of Tire. I remember Serdar abi giving us neighborhood kids many driving and soccer tips on 1699 sokak while he washed his father’s red Renault. Many years later we caught up. We talked about our old neighborhood in Karsiyaka. He told me he had made one of his dreams a reality, becoming a professional soccer referee. He had even been assigned to some European competitions, meeting players from teams such as Tottenham Hotspur FC. I always remember him as a fair-minded guy, so I have no doubt he made a good ref.

Steve McQueen was one of our idols in the ’80s. We found movies such as Papillon and The Getaway fascinating. I remember seeing Bullitt when I was a kid, thrilling to its classic car chase for over ten minutes up and down the steep hills of San Francisco, with McQueen driving a 1968 Mustang fastback while the talented stunt driver Bill Hickman drove the 1968 Dodge Charger 440 Magnum. Just like in Cuba, we had many older American cars back home which were used as dolmus, pronounced dollmoosh — more affordable versions of taxicabs where people could ride-share long before Uber or Lyft. I used to wonder what these cars might have witnessed in their long lives: teenage couples kissing for the first time during the ’60s, moms and dads taking their kids for rides, all dressed up, in the ’70s. These cars had seen it all.

I was fascinated by the whole mechanism: how it operated, the parts under the hood, the carburetor, the transmission, the way the wheels turned, the seats inside, the lights, the windshield wipers, the radio, the ashtray, the smell, everything... I had a few Matchbox toy cars, which I spent many hours parking on the living room floor as a kid, and when I was given my first remote-controlled car I was in heaven. It had a cord attached to the back from the remote, and I spent hours playing with it every day. 

It had been years since I had seen Bullitt, so I sat down and watched it again one day in the early 2000s, making up my mind that at some point in my life I wanted to own a Mustang just like the one McQueen drove. But it would take another fifteen years before I could attempt to make my dream a reality, due to various financial reasons.

When the time came, I went online, searching for older Mustangs for sale. I didn’t know how to fix cars, but my friend Ron spent most of his life fixing and building cars in his garage, and Erik, my firefighter buddy from Sonora, was an older car and motorcycle enthusiast, too. Erik had owned many muscle cars over the years and he told me to make sure I got a fastback. A few years ago when I visited Erik, he took me for a ride on the windy roads of Twain Harte in his own red ’65 fastback. I will never forget that ride and the focused look on Erik’s face as I hung on the best I could. As somebody who would never ride the roller coaster at Magic Mountain, I don’t know how I got in that Mustang.

I finally found a guy with a reputation for building solid cars. For about a year I researched his work and asked around to find out what kind of guy he was the best I could. I didn’t have a lot of connections, so I was mainly reliant on people’s integrity and good hearts. I had considered buying a Mustang from a reputable dealer and having them ship the car to me, but those cars were not cheap, and it just felt too risky to take that route.

After a year, I decided to sit down and discuss a project with this guy, and we met for breakfast. He told me it would take between a year and a year and a half to build a ’68 fastback like the one in Bullitt. He had to find a donor car, which he said would cost between $15,000 and $20,000, adding that it would be easier if we had the funds to get the parts he needed during the building process and pay for labor along the way. This guy had a shop and I had seen the cars he had built, so we agreed to start the project soon and I told him I would apply for a loan. 

I took out a home equity loan against my house and handed him a check for a good amount of money for the car he promised he would build for me: a highland green 1968 Ford Mustang fastback, just like the one Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt, with a 390-cubic-inch engine, four-speed manual transmission with an addition of power steering, and power brakes.

He said he had found a donor car, a ’67 fastback, and it would cost $18K, so the rest of the money would go toward rebuilding the car, parts, paint, and labor. I couldn’t have been more excited, dreaming of the day when I would sit behind the wheel and listen to “Blue Sky” by the Allman Brothers Band on a peachy sunny Sunday afternoon. 

Months went by, and I texted him periodically to see how the project was going. Things seemed to be moving slowly, but it appeared we were making progress. I admired his talent, and to show my appreciation I took him to Teppanyaki for dinner with Melissa and my son. I took him to lunch occasionally, too, or brought food to his shop for him and his crew. Finally, the car had received a paint job, although he said it would need a few more layers and would look a lot better when it was finished. He apologized for the slow progress, explaining that his main mechanic had fallen sick.  

After about a year, he apologized again, saying that he had estimated the total cost of building this car too low and it was now costing him a lot more than he anticipated. 

“I have no more money to give you,” I said. 

“Would it be okay if we sold the car once it’s finished?” he asked. “We could make some profit off of it.” 

That was not what I had in mind at the beginning of the project, but in the end I agreed, figuring I could pay off the loan to the bank and that perhaps being more sensible with my money would be better for my son’s future. Looking back, I will always wonder, since I had shown myself to be so naïve, if this was just an attempt to get more money out of me. The car still looked the same as it had a few months earlier, but he assured me he was just weeks away from finishing the whole project. He also mentioned in passing that there was a homeless man who had been starting fires around the area, and an auto shop not far from his had burned down. I asked him if he had cameras around his shop and felt a little skeptical about everything he was saying, but I let it pass.

During that time, my father, who had been battling esophageal cancer for some time, was not doing so well back home in Izmir. He was in the hospital, and his wife said he had pneumonia. I didn’t know if I would ever see him alive again, so I set off to Turkey to spend a few days with him in the hospital. 

My father had married twice more after his marriage to my mother ended. His second marriage, to a businesswoman named Layla, lasted around fifteen years, and as I stated in earlier chapters, I have many childhood memories of spending time around her and her family, who were all good, fun, intelligent people. His third wife, who nursed him to the end in my grandparents’ old house in Bornova, was a singer and musician, and she was the first woman to play a traditional stringed instrument called a saz in Turkey. She can play the saz like Duane Allman could play the slide guitar.

I still remember the very moment when I had just walked into San Francisco International Airport to catch my flight; I received a call from the car guy, who told me that two days earlier, after I had last visited him, his shop had been burned down by an arsonist. He said he had lost $80,000 worth of stuff and that my car, which was inside the shop at the time, was barely recognizable. I was devastated. I was already emotional about my dad, and now, after waiting for over a year, my Mustang dream was over.  

Was it a coincidence that this fire occurred and my car was “unrecognizable” only a couple of weeks before it was supposed to be finished, when there was no money left to give back to me because it was all supposedly spent, although the car never looked anywhere near done? My Fresno firefighter buddy Javier, who also has a couple of older car projects in his yard, told me even the rollbar was barely being held on by two nuts and bolts.

When he told me someone was starting fires near his shop, was this his attempt to give me a hint so I could perhaps take out insurance? If so, I missed it. 

I thought I might be able to get a few bucks back for what was left of the car, so I placed an ad in the paper. An older car enthusiast responded, and we drove to my buddy Javier’s property, where I’d had the burned carcass of the Mustang towed. He was a faithful, friendly guy, who even invited me to his house, where he kept a couple of very nice older classic cars.

Once he looked at the VIN number of my car, he told me it was a coupe, not a fastback. Mustang coupes look very similar to fastbacks but are not nearly as valuable. Even though the car itself was burned, if it was a genuine fastback, it would still have had some value because of its VIN. I learned these things from the nice guy who answered my ad.

The man who had responded to my ad found it odd that an experienced Mustang builder would not know that this car was a coupe and not a fastback, but when I confronted the builder, he kept saying it was supposed to be “all original metal,” whatever that might have meant. 

I think I paid a high price for being naïve, genuine, and trusting. Looking back now, I wonder if I was conned by someone who often claimed that everything was God’s plan and that we had no choice but to follow it, or if this was simply a set of unfortunate circumstances.

My buddy Javier gave me a number to call at the fire department’s investigation unit. The person in that department told me they did believe that a homeless person had started the fires. I tried to make sense of it all, but I couldn’t.

Looking back, I definitely should have paid the restorer in installments as the car was being built, and I should have taken a knowledgeable friend with me to his shop at each step in the process. The other big mistake I made was not getting insurance. I actually had made a call to an insurance company that specializes in classic cars as they are being built, but in the end had decided to wait until the project was done before taking out a policy.

I consulted a lawyer, who said the guy was most likely getting ready to file for bankruptcy, so I decided not to pour any more money that I didn’t have, and that I would have needed to borrow, into pursuing a lawsuit. Even if I was burned by him (no pun intended), I wouldn’t wish him any ill.  

Melissa, on the other hand, was furious. She and all my friends with years of experience in building muscle cars, but unfortunately all living out of town, urged me to sue him. I decided instead to just chalk it up to life experience and use it to help me learn and grow.

I now had to make monthly payments to the bank for the next seven years for a car I would never get to drive. At the time I was very discouraged and had lost any excitement for owning a classic car.

But nobody was going to steal my dreams from me. I’d had the urge to own a classic car for many years. This wasn’t just about driving something that would get people’s attention. Owning a classic car represented so much more than that for me. It represented the very things that were important to me and that I valued in life. There was a very deep philosophical feeling about owning a classic car. It represented my outlook on life and how we could never bring back time and the memories.

Old cars were pieces of history. I could get in that car and imagine that I was a teenager in the ’60s, perhaps driving for the first time. I could try to relate to what it must have felt like when a father of a teenager told the kid to go see what he had just parked in the driveway for Christmas. I knew it was a similar feeling when I poured a glass of wine and dimmed the lights and started to watch Casablanca or The Hustler, so I could travel back in time, except a bit more costly.

After a few years of not being able to even look at a photo of a classic car online since my sour experience, I had the courage to search again. I eventually found myself a gorgeous teal 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had repaired my credit since my bankruptcy in the ’90s and had a steady income, so I could take out another loan. I wasn’t about to let anything or anybody steal my dreams away.

At last, as Etta James would say, I was able to sit in the driver’s seat of a gorgeous muscle car, turn the key, and listen to the engine roar. It was a four-speed manual with an aftermarket 427 V8 engine in it. Everything was just as I had imagined. I got myself a special black-and-yellow license plate which read 54SRV90, in honor of one of my favorite musicians, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. If you want to get a taste of heaven, listen to “Riviera Paradise.”

I hadn’t driven a manual transmission since my 1979 Dodge Colt days, but driving a stick shift is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn it, you never forget it. So I put “Blue Sky” on the stereo and took off. The feelings I experienced took away all my worries and fears and put me up on cloud nine. Although I had to take out a new loan, there was no dollar amount that could overshadow the strong emotions I felt while driving my 1967 Chevelle. It was just as good, if not better, as any therapy. It was good for the soul and the mind.

Owning a classic car also allowed me to meet an experienced mechanic in his seventies. Jeff’s constant genuineness and level of knowledge about classic older cars could, I imagine, only be matched by a few in this country. Genuine, honest, knowledgeable mechanics like Jeff are becoming more and more rare. Thank you, Jeff, for sharing your wisdom about classic cars — and all the humorous signs on the walls of your shop — with me.