A few days later, Saturday arrived, and I managed to dote on Mom with enough praise and house chores to convince her to let me ride my bike to the shop and catch up with what Dad was doing.
As I rode my bike excitedly through the streets of Huntington Park, I wondered how Dad and Mr. Vinton would manage to carry the car into the garage. I remembered Dad talking about renting a large truck, but I wondered if they would drag the car or hop it on top of something.
I rode up to Pacific Boulevard, excited to see Dad, the men at the shop, and, most importantly, Zack. His cute smile made my heart flutter, and I wanted to get to know him better. I even missed his presence as I went on with my day.
At that moment, as I daydreamed on top of my bike, I heard the loud horn of a car and stopped dead in my tracks as a car crossed my way. Shaken, I looked around, hoping nobody had seen that, as it was my fault. The car was in his right to go on; I had just pushed through without looking.
Trying to catch my breath, I looked to see if there was a less crowded road to pick. I then pushed through the many back alleys of the city until I reached the street where the shop was.
Finally, I arrived at the shop a few minutes later, still upset by the event. My mood didn't improve as I walked into the garage and noticed my father wasn't there.
A bit bummed out that I had no one to talk to, I began looking around for Zack or the same young Hispanic man who had called my father the last time I was there.
Thankfully, Pedro was inside the old Corvette, cleaning the car's dashboard with some kind of cleaning liquid. I raised my hand in greeting, and he waved at me. He rolled down the car window when he noticed I wanted to say something.
"Are you looking for your dad?" He asked.
I nodded.
"Your dad is not here," he said with his charming accent. "Mr. Vinton and him already left to pick up Mr. Lewis's Ford in Laurel Canyon."
"Do you know when they will return?" I asked him, and he shrugged.
"Couldn't really tell. They left about twenty minutes ago, so I think it might take an hour or so for them to return."
"Oh, bummer," I said, pouting. "Well, anyway, is Zack around?"
"He was here a few minutes ago, but I think he went to pick up his phone back at his house."
I let my shoulders fall, disappointed about the news.
Neither Dad nor Zack was there, and I had no idea what else to do, so with an upset expression, I told Pedro I was just going to wait for their return inside the little building. But before I could turn, the young man grabbed my arm softly and chuckled.
"Mr. Vinton and Zack live less than a block away, close to Violet Alley. You can just go get him if you want."
"Oh!" I said, smiling, surprised, "Okay."
That immediately raised my spirits. I laughed at my stupidity and smacked my head with my hand, making him smile. I thanked the man and left the garage, leaving my bike leaning against the open garage door.
I then remembered that I had emerged into the street through Violet Alley, so I just slowly made my way back. As I walked, looking around, I wondered how many of the buildings on the street had been there since the city's process of industrialization began.
I could see that the closest lot to the car shop was very old, as some of its structures were made of wood, painted in a pale green color, resembling old fishing docks I once saw in a book about California coastal towns.
But the other buildings looked rather new and clearly didn't match the tiny, wooden, Depression-era houses close to Violet Alley. Those constructions looked almost out of place amongst all the concrete and brick, like the abandoned memory of an era gone by.
As I arrived at where the green, almost shack-like homes stood, I smacked myself again, remembering that I had forgotten to ask Pedro the address number for the Vintons' residence.
"Crap!" I exclaimed under my breath, beginning to peek over the windows of the house closest to the street, all while trying not to get perceived as a creep.
I could see a small kitchen with a tiny refrigerator and a small dining table. I then moved to the other window and noticed an old couch with some type of shawl on top. Next to it, there was a small side table with a plant.
"This can't be the Vintons' house", I thought. "It looks like the living room of an old lady's house."
As I stared into the window, all of a sudden, I felt the cool touch of a hand on my shoulder.
I jumped and turned, almost getting dizzy from how fast I did it, all while shouting like a mad woman.
I then heard a tiny yelp from the person who touched me. It was Zack, a little nervous laugh coming out of his mouth, his hand pulled back in shock. He must have gotten scared of me getting scared.
I placed my hand on my chest and sighed loudly.
"Jesus Christ, you scared me!" I shouted.
"I'm so sorry," he laughed, shaking his hands in apology, "I thought you saw me!"
"No, I didn't!" I exclaimed, a smile beginning to form.
"I didn't mean to scare you. I really didn't," Zack said, placing his hands inside the pockets of his oversized shorts.
"It's okay, I know," I said, still breathing heavily. "Just let me calm down."
"Why are you here? I mean, like at my house," he asked.
"I came looking for you but forgot to ask Pedro where you lived."
Zack lifted his long, slim arm and pointed to the house closest to the back alley. It was similar to the one I'd been looking into, with yellowish-painted wood and small windows.
"That's my house," he then said.
"I got that," I said. It was clear that the other house looked different from where two single men lived.
"Sorry, I forgot my phone at my house, so I went to pick it up," said Zack. "So, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine," I said at first, but then I remembered the minor impasse with the car and shrugged.
"Well, actually, not that fine. I almost got run over by a car on my way here," I said, an awkward grin on my face.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Zack told me, placing his hand on my arm in evident concern, "You have to be careful around here. There are a lot of trucks going around."
"It's fine, it was only a car. And it was around Huntington Park, not here."
"I'm glad you are fine, though," He told me, and I thanked him, blushing a little. "So, wanna go back to the shop? Or wanna stay at my place while we wait?"
I smiled but then shook my head and refused his offer to wait at his house, saying I wanted to wait at the shop for Dad.
"I also want to take some pictures of the shop while we wait," I told him, taking my cell phone from my hoodie pocket. "To show my friends."
"Sure!" He exclaimed.
So, as we came back to Vinton's Vintage Repair, I began taking pictures of all the curious things Mr. Vinton had collected over the years. I took photos of the museum, of Zack pretending to talk on the old phone, and of the mechanics fixing the cars, who posed like models while we encouraged them, laughing joyfully.
Finally, after an hour, we heard loud vehicular noises coming from outside.
Zack and I walked out to see the arrival of a semi-truck, which held a large platform, where the old car stood. As the truck parked on the street past the shop, I saw my father's pickup truck parked nearby. We then walked towards the pickup truck and noticed that besides both our fathers, there was a third man.
He was a jolly-looking man, chubby and pink. As he came out, we saw he wore jeans and a pink shirt, holding a jacket in one hand and a pair of keys in the other. He looked at us and nodded in greeting, saying hello under his breath.
I waved, and Zack bowed a little, trying to be respectful, as we both knew this was the man who would pay our parents for the job.
"He doesn't look like a big producer," I thought initially. "He kinda looks like Santa".
But then I told myself, "What do you know about the behind-the-scenes of the television industry anyway?"
I didn't even watch TV anymore; I mostly watched videos online, maybe peeking at some of the reality TV my mother watched from time to time.
Dad got out the driver's side, and Mr. Vinton's tinier self opened the side door, coming out, holding a large folder filled with papers, probably related to the man's vehicle.
Zack walked close to his father as I did mine, and while I went for a hug, he waved to his dad and asked him to let him see the folder. Mr. Vinton gave him the folder, then patted him on the back and kissed him on the top of his head.
"Dad!" Zack exclaimed, embarrassed, blushing hard as he noticed I was looking at this interaction.
His father smirked, shook his head, and then led the chubby man to the building next to the garage while my father walked to the platform in the back of the large truck.
I could see the lower part of the car on top of the platform. It was an old fifties car; its color faded by the sun, it looked like it had been pitch black. Its condition indeed looked pretty rough, as the grill was utterly wrecked.
"What do you think?" My dad asked me, looking at me with an inquisitive gaze.
"I think it looks rough," I said, shrugging. "It's pretty, though."
"Indeed. It's not that bad, actually; most of the damage is in the front. The rest of the car is alright, but we will still need to redo a lot just because of its age. It was pretty much left to the elements."
"Wow, really?" I asked, and Dad nodded. "Then why did he buy it then? If it's going to take so much time and money to fix?"
Then Dad smirked like he was hiding something. He looked at me and caressed my hair. "Oh, it's actually a pretty cool story. He was telling me all about it back at his house. You should ask him."
"Cool," I said, interested. "I wanna hear a good story."
It finally took the men a whole thirty minutes to bring the old car down the ramp of the truck to the garage over one of the pits. Zack and I watched as the vehicle was dragged and pushed by the small group of men, all while Mr. Vinton and the man talked inside the office.
As the car was finally in position, I walked around it, slowly taking in the image of what had happened to it.
A crash. That was clear.
The car had clearly hit something, as the grill was pushed inwards, and the windshield was completely broken.
A tree, perhaps, or maybe a pole? I wondered as I caressed the side of the vehicle. It was a big, pretty thing, though, with its faded white hood and its seductive curves from back when cars were made to look like women.
Zack and I bent over the open side window and looked inside, stretching our hands to touch the faded, broken leather of the seats and the sides of the doors. I inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of old, melting fabric. Then Zack pulled back and touched the small, round window on the side.
"This detail is so cool! It's like the window of a ship," he said.
"I know. I love how the windows open to the side instead of up and down. It's so weird."
"They don't build cars like this anymore," Zack said.
"No, indeed they don't," we heard a voice say behind us.
We turned back to see the older man and Mr. Vinton emerging from the building. Zack's father crossed his arms while the man put his jacket on.
"Mr. Lewis, this is my son, Zachary, "Mr. Vinton said, pointing at the boy.
Then he pointed at me and my father, who leaned over the old car.
"And this lovely girl is Tamara, Joe's daughter."
"Well, hello, kids," the chubby man said, smiling.
"Mr. Lewis?" I asked, making the man pay attention, "My dad told me you were telling him about the car. Can you tell us what happened to it?"
The man smiled and nodded, whispering, "Sure, sure," under his breath.
Then he began retelling the story as he walked towards it and touched the broken front.
"Well, it all began back in 1969. I'm from Santa Clara, and back when I was a junior in high school, my then friends told me about the legend of this guy, a racer," he began.
The story went as such.
Twelve years earlier, back in 1957, a young man called Corky Delaney bought the car, back when it was a newly made Ford Thunderbird. Corky was the son of a very wealthy man, so he had no problems buying whatever he wanted.
But one thing he couldn't buy was respect.
He wasn't the smartest kid or the most athletic, so his peers never really looked up to him in admiration. But one thing he had learned about and was becoming very good at was cars.
He loved cars. Old and new.
He loved them even more than girls, some would say. And the first time he saw the Thunderbird, he fell head over heels for it. He took it everywhere he went, and, as with any new car that arrived, it began to attract some attention at school.
This developed a thirst for admiration in Corky, which evolved into his desire to win over others in high school street races. As years passed, he became the number one racer in town, never being beaten by any other student.
Until 1959.
"What happened in 1959?" Zack asked, fixing his wild black hair.
"Well, then James Masterson came around. He was a mean streak kid, a full-on juvenile delinquent. At first, when he saw Corky, he thought he was a daddy's boy, but he had no idea how reckless and dangerous a rich kid with a god complex could get," the man said.
Mr. Lewis told us how the first time Masterson raced Delaney, the guy pushed the greaser's car against the wall of a house, injuring one of his boys, who was in the passenger's seat that night. Masterson then knew that he had to play dirty if he wanted to win over him.
So he did.
"In July 1959, Corky was going to compete in a chicken race against another student. What he didn't know was that one of Masterson's guys had screwed with the brakes of his car earlier that day," the man said, leaning against the car while everybody else listened to him, dreading the ending to the tale.
So when Delaney was at the end of the race and had won over the other kid, he tried to stop his car, but couldn't. Attempting to avoid driving over the cliff, he only thought of crashing the car into a nearby pole. But he had forgotten that he usually didn't wear a seatbelt.
I covered my mouth in horror as the man nodded, confirming the tragic end.
"He was projected forward, hitting his head on the rocks below and drowning in the seashore," the man finished.
After a few seconds, he added, "I looked for decades for this car, thinking it had been sold or destroyed, but I finally found it hidden in the garage of an old woman who had been one of Delaney's admirers back in the day."
"Wow, that was quite a tale!" Said Mister Vinton, rubbing his head. He was clearly excited by the story but also a bit horrified, "Now you want us to fix it for you?"
"I hope you can do your best to turn it just like it was back then," the chubby man said, patting Mr. Vinton on the back amicably.
"Don't you think driving a car like this is bad luck?" Suddenly, my father asked, "I mean... It's kinda scary."
I looked back at him, and he seemed genuinely concerned for the first time in a while.
"I don't think I'll be driving it except to get home, so you don't need to worry. I just plan to add it to my collection. This is basically my Little Bastard, you know?"
"Little bastard?" I asked in a whisper, and Zack patted me on the back.
"I'll tell you later," he whispered back, and I thanked him, smiling.
But that smile faded quickly as my eyes fell on the car again. It was a true beauty of a machine, but the dark history behind it emanated from it like cold waves. I even felt a slight chill down my spine as Zack pulled away from me.
Dark and twisted, the Thunderbird was a seductive reminder of pride and death.
I should have seen the little impasse I suffered that day as a bad omen.