By Kyle Krug
Ugly Horse
Growing up as a young kid I was all about playing with my toy cars, being around friends, and watching cartoons. My hobbies didn’t stretch far. I remember being at my grandfather's house playing with my toy cars in the garage. Those car toys were my favorite thing to mess with. Little did I know that my favorite hobby I would be taking part of as an adult was just feet away from me. Laying under a silk layer of 20 year old dust was my dad's 1966 mustang convertible he drove when he was in high school. Fast forward some time to when I was growing into my early teenage years. I started watching all sorts of tv shows about old muscle cars. The more I watched of these muscle machines the more I wanted one. I wanted to build one. I just wanted to cruise down the street like my dad did when he was in his teens. It took me some years to obtain a level of respect for these cars. After a while I caught the itching bug though. I remember begging my dad to bring the mustang back to our house. He would always say it will cost a lot of money to fix and we don’t have the know how on how to fix it. Flash forward to when I was about 14, my dad came to me and broke the bad news of how he decided to sell his mustang and give it a new home to someone who could fix it and enjoy it. I was not happy to say the least. My hopes and dreams of driving my dad's high school car around were now non-existent, for the time being. Starting that summer, I cut all the lawns I could and saved every penny I had. It all went into a jar I had hidden in my closet. By the time I was 16 and a sophomore in high school I had saved nearly $3000. I knew that I had plenty of money to finally buy myself the muscle car I had always dreamed of. Now I knew I wasn’t going to be buying a pristine car. With my budget the car I'd be looking for would need some work done to it.
Starting around may of my sophomore year I would search craigslist for the perfect car every night before bed. Month after month all I found was cars that were way to overpriced or just too far gone. I was about ready to give up on my $3000 budget. I figured I could save a couple more grand over the next couple years and buy a solid car. Near the end of summer, I was looking around craigslist with no hope of finding what I was looking for. Come the first week of August all my hopes and dreams that I had been looking forward too, appeared before me on my computer screen. A 1968 mustang coupe that was only a town over from me, and the best part the guy selling it was only asking for 1500 dollars. I immediately sent the gentleman an email asking to see it as soon as possible.