[ponyakr]

well my new runnin buddy, whom i'll refer to as jay, took his ss to a neighbor, who was a good welder, & had a set of straight thu mufflers installed. it wasn't near as fast as some of the other cars in town, but now looked & sounded just as good as any of 'em. so we'd "ride with pride" as we paraded thru town. now this was the new "thrill of my life". & it was extremely exciting to me. well, 1 day jay came over & picked me up 1 day to go make a few loops on a sunday afternoon. now by this time i finally had a girlfriend. she was actually jays neighbor. so, on the way to town i told jay to stop by her house so i could tell her where i was going & that i'd come over to see her after we made a few loops. but when she heard the news she decided that she should go with us. but, hey, this was a guy thang. i told her i'd only be gone a couple of hours, then i'd be back to see her. well, she thru a fit & used some words i didn't think she even knew. lookin back, i don't blame her i'da been mad too. but this new found musclecar thang had a grip on me. it was just about the strongest emotional attachment to something i had ever experienced. so, i made a choice. i chose the musclecar scene over the girlfriend. i remember thinking, "am i crazy, what am i doing?" now this girl was beautiful & smart--much smarter than me & she had never treated me bad. so at that time i'm sure a lot of people thought i was crazy. but, we made the brake, & the rest, as they say, is history. now i didn't take this lightly, cause this was the only person outside my family that i'd ever gotten close to. after this we finally did get back on speakin terms. she even later went on a water ski trip with me & T.J. & my friend from hi school with the '64 389 cat. she went on to finish college & became very sucessful in her field, eventually teaching others in the medical field in some large cities. she now gets to travel the world. to me she's sorta like a celebrity or a big sports star that you used to know before they were famous. i'm proud of her acomplishments & glad to say that i knew her back before she was famous. i just remembered this, the last time i talked to her was on the phone. she'd found out that i had a clean '66 gto, and was interested in it. her & her husband bought it & took it back to the big city.