I saw this on Moparts and had to share. A member on Moparts found this on a blog site a while back. It's pretty sad.
Back in high school I knew this kid named Jason. He was a pretty cool kid, a real gearhead just like me and my other friends. He was'nt part of "my circle" as he was a few years younger than us,(14 actually) but we knew him, and he hung around with us from time to time. He thought we were the coolest guys in school(we really were...LOL!!) cuz we all had cool old musclecars. All Jason wanted was a neat old car to work on with his dad (they were very close) and cruise around, picking up girls on the weekends, like we did. My buddy and I knew of an old Charger that was sitting behind a house out in the country. It was about a 71 or 72, black with black interior, automatic, rusty pitted, and peeling Cragars, rotted side-pipes, pop riveted on hood scoop, shackled to the sky, with a set of traction bars, and a faded Crane Cams license plate on the front. It was a real 70's looking hot rod. Sitting in the weeds next to a dilapidated wooden shed, behind an old ramshackle farmhouse. I first saw it when I was 7, and when I was a senior in high school it was still there. We took Jason out there one afternoon to check it out. I'll never forget his reaction when he saw it for the first time. "OH MY GOD!!!, Dude I HAVE to have that car!" he screamed as he jumped out of the car and went running over to it. "It's perfect!" he said. "This is the same kind of car my dad had when he was in high school. I can just imagine how awesome it would be to work on this with him." We knocked on the door, but no one was home.
A few days later Jason came up to us in the hall at school and told us that the Charger was in fact his dad's old car! We were a little surprised, cuz we knew Jason's dad, our dads knew him and we never heard stories of him owning a Charger back in school. Turns out, Jason's dad bought the car used in 71 with only a few hundred miles on it. It was a 71 R/T with a 383 and a 4 speed. He made a hot rod out of it, drove it for a few years, and after he met his wife (in the Charger by the way) other priorities became more important, and he sold to a young kid in 1975. The kid he sold it to was afraid of it, so he sold it to someone from out of town, and Jason's dad never saw it again. After school that day, my buddy and I took Jason and his dad out to see the car and his dad was just as pumped as Jason was when he saw it. "I'll be damned", he said "that's my car!". Aside from the missing 4 speed, it was just as it was when he sold it. The "Kelly Supercharger" tires were still on it! He said he bought those tires June 10th 1975. He remembered that because it was the same day he met his wife.
We knocked on the door and a big ugly fat chick, wreaking of beer and pot answered the door. "Is your husband home?", Jason asked her. "Ummm...... yeah" she said, as she picked something from her disgusting yellow teeth. Jason and his dad had looks on thier faces like little kids at christmas waiting for the man to come to the door. Just then a very scruffy looking guy, in stained boxers, and a "wife beater", smelling like he's never heard of deoderant, came to the door and said, "Yeah, what is it?" "Would you be interested in selling that Charger out back?" asked Jason's dad. "NO!!" The man replied very sharply. "I'm gonna fix that up one day", he said as he closed the door. My friend and I looked at each other and just rolled our eyes, thinking YEAH RIGHT! Jason's dad was pretty upset, but Jason was'nt deterred. "I'll get him to sell it", he said.
For two years Jason rode out to the old farmhouse on his motorcycle to look at the car, and to try to convince the owner to sell it. His dad would also go out to talk the guy into selling it, but the fat stinky dopehead would hear none of it. "I've got plans for that car" he would say. Throughout these two years I started to hear more about the owner. He got the car through a trade in 1980 (a drug trade probably) , drove it twice and parked it. He was a real waste of human skin. A drunk, and a drug addict; he would beat up on his wife and throw wild drug parties. I told Jason he'd better just forget about that car, before he ends up pissing the guy off. You don't wanna get into trouble with a deadbeat like that! Jason loved that car, and could not imagine owning anything else. After a while though he started to get frustrated and eventually gave up on the Charger. One night in the local bar I ran into the guy who owned it. I said to the guy "Dude, why don't you just sell that thing to the kid? It was his dad's car when he was in high school, and they are just lookin for a father son project, and what better project than his dad's old ride?" He said "why don't you mind your own business and shut the hell up!" Like I said, this guy was a real jerk. The best part of this guy ran down his mom's leg.
When Jason was a senoir in high school his dad was diagnosed with heart disease, and he became more distant, and did'nt really bother with people that much anymore. Jason's dad died 2 weeks after he graduated. My buddies and I attended the funeral, and while outside smoking a cigarette Jason told us that his dad said he regretted selling that Charger. Jason even mentioned the car in his eulogy. A picture of him and his wife sitting on the hood of it the day they met was placed inside the casket. My friend and I were deepely saddened, and extremely pissed at the same time. Here was a good kid who wanted nothing more than to work on a car with his dad. Not just any car, the car his dad met his mom in, with hopes of having the same kind of memories, and perhaps meeting his own wife in, just like his dad did 27 years ago. But instead a perfectly good car goes to waste on a piece of trash scumbag, who does'nt care about anything but his own selfish desires.
Jason went on to join the military and was shipped out to Iraq. He served two years, before he was killed when his Hummer ran over a landmine in 2004. Just before he was killed, he wrote me a letter saying he still thinks about that Charger and asked if the car was still there. I told him that it was, and probaly will be when he gets home. Unfortunately, he never got the letter, as he was killed just 2 days after I mailed it. What happened to the Charger? Well, the guy was shot by the police during a drug raid at the farmhouse, and his wife was sent up for 15 years on drug charges. The cops condemned the property with the Charger still sitting in the same place it was 10 years ago. I tried to buy it from the county, so I could restore it as a tribute to my old friend. But I could never get in touch with the right people. Last spring I went out to the property to see if I just take the damn thing, but the car was gone along with the house. The whole property had been leveled. Two months later, while at the junkyard looking for a part for my truck, I found that old Charger. It was buried in a stack of crushed cars getting ready to be loaded onto the flat bed bound for the shredder. It was still complete, right down to the old Crane Cams license plate. It just about brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. Remembering how excited Jason was when he first saw it, and how he talked about how cool it would be to work on it with his dad. I do seek a little comfort in thinking that he and his father are in heaven right now wrenching on the old Charger they so desperately wanted to have. So the next time a kid and his dad shows up at your door asking to sell that old car rotting away in the backyard, think about this story before you say "I'm gonna fix that up some day", knowing you most likely never will. If someone is willing to put forth the effort to get it back on the road again, is'nt that a whole lot better than letting go to waste just because you don't want someone else to have it? There's no shame in letting someone else build a lifetime's worth of memories with the same car you built your memories in.
