And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
LOTR movies
History became legend. Legend became myth.
For years, this is how I felt about my father’s first car. It was an entertaining story that had been told and retold so many times that it became legend. It was sure to come up at every family gathering, because everyone finds it hilarious that he never felt the need to mention it until after I bought my own mustang some 50 years later. Like father, like son. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that my dad had no photos of car, courtesy of hurricane Katrina.
Here’s the way my dad tells it. He purchased a 1967 mustang with the entirety of his earnings, all of $3000, one summer back in the 60s. A car purchase was prioritized, because relatives back in Taiwan said the Shih family “will have made it” once one of them owned a car. Fresh off obtaining his PhD in chemistry, he worked that summer for a pharmaceutical company, where his sole job was to rubber stamp batches of chemicals. The blue collar workers at the factory didn’t trust him to actually do any work – “rightfully so, since they knew everything, and I knew nothing. I was only good for my degree.” By the time he was regaling us for the first time in ~2019 after first seeing my mustang, he couldn’t remember the color or anything else about the configuration of the car. So historical accuracy is in question, but he tells the story well.
Fast forward to 2023. My Uncle Richard and Aunt Joanna, whom I hadn’t seen in about a decade, were visiting us in Washington. Like clockwork, the story of the OG Shih Mustang comes up over dinner, and Richard says: “I have photos of it.” Mind. Blown.
Even with the pics, it’s hard to tell the color. Black? Dark green? Whether it was a 1967 is also in question, but the engine was most likely the 170 straight six since my dad is sure he could barely afford the cheapest model.
According to Richard whose memory is still sharp as anything, these photos were taken in 1970 in Wichita, Kansas. Richard, the youngest brother, had just arrived in America, and he was staying with Philip, the middle brother, who was working as a librarian in Wichita. My father Fred, the oldest, was teaching at a women’s college in St. Louis and came to visit. Coincidentally, Philip had also just managed to acquire a car, and the brothers had a good laugh imagining the reaction of the folks at home when the saw a photo with two cars. Fred took Richard along back to St. Louis for a visit, and then dropped him back in Wichita. They rode the mustang the entire way.
