A tale of two Mustangs

 Episode 1:  "My First Parking Ticket"  It was the summer of 1966.  My roommate for my first two years of teaching and I decided to take a driving trip out west.  We borrowed my future first spouse's little green puptent, packed everything in her new bright red Mustang and headed west.  We camped in Yellowstone, saw the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Cavern, and so much more, then stayed for a week at a dude ranch in Colorado where I rode 'Old Matt,' the slowest horse in the west. Finally we headed back to Indiana. It was my turn to drive. We were cruising along an Interstate in Illinois keeping up with traffic when my copilot said to me "I hope you're not speeding.  I think that was a police car back there."  Sure enough, as we came over a rise we saw the trap.  There was a police car with flashing lights parked along the side of the road and a busy policeman flagging down everyone who came over the rise.  As I recall, he had 27 cars lined up, including ours and was writing tickets as fast as he could.  We and all of the others who were not Illinois residents were immediately led off to court.  Our fine was $86, quite a bit of money in 1966.  We did manages to find the money between the two of us, luckily had put gas in the car a few miles back, and made it home with $2 to our names.  And that's the story of my first speeding ticket.

Episode 2 "The Only One Available"  Many years later, single again after my first husband's death a girlfriend and I decided to go to Hawaii for a week.  She had a 'time share' where we would stay so I agreed to take care of the car rental.  We met in the Honolulu airport, having flown from different cities, and proceeded to the car rental place.  It was late evening when we got there and we were told that the only car available was a blue Mustang convertible.  Aw, so sad.  We decided that it was acceptable and had a wonderful time driving around Oahu, seeing different sights every day.  Since my name was on the rental contract I did all the driving.  So much fun and no traffic tickets this time.