The "Fast Red" Story
It was an ordinary day. I was sitting at my desk at school in room 308 and a few of my students were leaning over to see what I was doing. Then, something caught their eye under the glass panel I kept o
n the top of my desk. "I can't believe that's his car!" "Maybe that's not really him in the picture or he photoshopped himself into the picture." "It can't be his." A few of the comments I heard when they saw the copy of "Vette Magazine" under the glass. My bright red-on-red car was featured in the September 1998 issue of the magazine. No teacher would own a red sports car. That's not allowed. My wife Carol and I always loved red sports cars, especially Corvettes. We had the faux-type cars - she a red '65 Austin Healey Sprite and me a '68 Impala convertible, but never THE REAL THING! Well the story goes like this......We were shopping for flowers for our house and outside the nursery sat this bright red Corvette with a "For Sale" sign in the window. We parked and I told her, "you check out the flowers, I'm going to take a look at the car out by the highway." I copied the phone number down and put it in my pocket. A few days later when I put those pants on again I found the piece of paper and called the number. The guy that owned the car, Mike, worked at the airstrip next to the nursery. He gave me the price and it seemed reasonable, but with 2 kids in college and one more to go to school, it was not an option at the moment. The following fall I was having some health issues that turned out not to be life threatening and Carol suggested we might want to find out if we could finance the purchase that we had always talked about. Boy, I hopped on that idea real quick. I dialed the number again. Seems Mike had a change of heart and decided to keep it. Had low mileage
and was i
n great shape so why not keep it. I pleaded my case and he had a soft heart. Carol and I went to the hangar where he had the car for a look. There it was! I looked at her and she quietly said, "I think this is the one". Everyone who owns a Vette feels that their car is the ultimate, and we felt the same about the car sitting in front of us. "Want to take a test drive?" Mike said. He works at an airstrip remember. Before long we "taxied" to the end of the runway. "Remember, this is a Corvette" Mike said. I tramped on the pedal and started shifting. We were halfway down the runway and I looked at the speedometer. Wow,
almost 100! And I only had the pedal halfway down. Agreed on a price and made arrangements for delivery. That night it was raining. Can you drive a car like this in the rain? I made it home and it barely fit into our 1929 home's semi-detached
garage. Our youngest son was now in college and he found out about the car. He was home immediately. A few years passed and I wrote the article for the magazine and was lucky to have it published. Now I had new admirers viewing my bright red Vette that was on my desktop. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
n the top of my desk. "I can't believe that's his car!" "Maybe that's not really him in the picture or he photoshopped himself into the picture." "It can't be his." A few of the comments I heard when they saw the copy of "Vette Magazine" under the glass. My bright red-on-red car was featured in the September 1998 issue of the magazine. No teacher would own a red sports car. That's not allowed. My wife Carol and I always loved red sports cars, especially Corvettes. We had the faux-type cars - she a red '65 Austin Healey Sprite and me a '68 Impala convertible, but never THE REAL THING! Well the story goes like this......We were shopping for flowers for our house and outside the nursery sat this bright red Corvette with a "For Sale" sign in the window. We parked and I told her, "you check out the flowers, I'm going to take a look at the car out by the highway." I copied the phone number down and put it in my pocket. A few days later when I put those pants on again I found the piece of paper and called the number. The guy that owned the car, Mike, worked at the airstrip next to the nursery. He gave me the price and it seemed reasonable, but with 2 kids in college and one more to go to school, it was not an option at the moment. The following fall I was having some health issues that turned out not to be life threatening and Carol suggested we might want to find out if we could finance the purchase that we had always talked about. Boy, I hopped on that idea real quick. I dialed the number again. Seems Mike had a change of heart and decided to keep it. Had low mileage and was i
n great shape so why not keep it. I pleaded my case and he had a soft heart. Carol and I went to the hangar where he had the car for a look. There it was! I looked at her and she quietly said, "I think this is the one". Everyone who owns a Vette feels that their car is the ultimate, and we felt the same about the car sitting in front of us. "Want to take a test drive?" Mike said. He works at an airstrip remember. Before long we "taxied" to the end of the runway. "Remember, this is a Corvette" Mike said. I tramped on the pedal and started shifting. We were halfway down the runway and I looked at the speedometer. Wow,
almost 100! And I only had the pedal halfway down. Agreed on a price and made arrangements for delivery. That night it was raining. Can you drive a car like this in the rain? I made it home and it barely fit into our 1929 home's semi-detached garage. Our youngest son was now in college and he found out about the car. He was home immediately. A few years passed and I wrote the article for the magazine and was lucky to have it published. Now I had new admirers viewing my bright red Vette that was on my desktop. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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