Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback

I used to think I would look back and feel that I wasted my time with these old cars. I sold off most of what I originally had.

When my youngest son joined the Army right out of high school I became acutely aware that the day could come when he'd be gone forever. Cars were the last thing on my mind.

After he graduated basic training down in Georgia he had a sudden urge to buy a muscle car. So when he returned to Nebraska, he and I searched for a Chevelle. It was his first preference. I didn't mind that it wasn't a Chrysler product. It was just a lot of fun helping him with the search.

After scouring the paper and the internet we were able to find about a half dozen close enough to check out. When we test drove a '68 SS clone my son was hooked. Silver with black stripes. It had a built big block in it that idled rough - sounded great. It came from a car lot in Ashland, Nebraska. The dealership didn't know much about the car's history. The only things that we were fairly certain of were the 750 Holley had no choke, the camshaft profile seemed fairly radical, and it sounded sweet.

My son's plan was to drive the car back to Fort Stewart, Georgia.

It was the middle of winter and it wasn't until we were bringing the car home that we realized it didn't have a heater. Maybe it was because my son was anxious to get it. Maybe it was because it'd been so many years since I'd been behind the wheel of a muscle car that I was too anxious. The Chevelle had been in a heated garage when we took it out for a test drive so it was warm inside it and we hadn't bothered to check the accessories.

I was never the type of guy that cared for the term 'father'. I was Dad. Fathers were too formal. Too 'by the book'. Too perfect. But I always tried to be the best 'Dad' I could be. The only suit and tie I owned were 20 years old. - And hadn't been worn outside of weddings and funerals. I worked in fields and factories. Sometimes working two jobs at a time. I was accustomed to t-shirts and Levis. With all my flaws I'd remained a kid at heart. - Every bit as apt to screw stuff up as my kids.

So when the opportunity came to trek across half of the U.S. in the middle of January in some souped up muscle car that we had just bought, had no heater, and knew little about - I was in. Any sensible father would have probably told his son that it was a bad idea to drive it and made plans to have it shipped. So what if it was January and the car had no heater. There wasn't enough time to install one before my son had to be back to his base. I'm not sure if I was a part of Spencer's original plan for the journey. But somewhere along the line he figured he wanted a co-pilot.

The maiden voyage for the Chevelle was also our first real road trip together. It would be close to 1200 miles if we didn't get sidetracked.

Destination: Fort Stewart, Georgia.
Our plan was to drive straight through and we figured that we could make it in less than a day. Or so we hoped.

It was really frickin' cold. We took along a few blankets to wrap ourselves up in during the trip. Because the car lacked all of the heater components it didn't have a defroster either. It seemed as though every time we exhaled frost would form on the windows. We picked up a small 12 volt ceramic heater to set on the dash and tried to breathe through the covers that we held up over our noses. When our hands got too cold on the steering wheel we'd try to warm them a bit with that dash heater.

Keep in mind that this is the middle of winter and we're driving a 40 year old car that we'd just bought a few days earlier.