(first posted 7/27/2016) As a teenager in the summer of 1993, I had purchased a five-year-old Ford Mustang LX 2.3L hatchback. The restyled, “aero” Fox-body Mustangs appeared around the same time I entered middle school in the fall of ’86, and the memory of the (temporary) chic of these cars was still somewhat fresh in my mind when I made my purchase. My car, pictured above, was Oxford White with a Regatta Blue interior. I babied that car like it was a 5.0L – or more accurately, as if it was a classic. You see, my affinity for the Ford Mustang went back to my adolescence – around the time my ’88 was new.
Before starting fall semester at University of Florida in Gainesville in ’93, I drove my new-to-me Mustang back to my hometown of Flint, Michigan, with my family having moved away from there just one year prior. I made a stop in Nashville to visit my sister, and then another to see my grandparents at the family farm in northwestern Ohio. Making a pit-stop in the small hamlet of Malinta to show off my new toy to Grandma and Grandpa felt a little juvenile, like “show & tell” or Christmas, but the cool thing about them was that they always seemed to share my enthusiasm. Plus, I had really missed them, and the farm.
Rewinding to late spring of 1987, my second-cousin Andy, Grandpa’s brother’s grandson, had graduated from high school in the nearby hamlet of Deshler. Andy was a car guy, and had three first-generation Mustangs in his possession: a blue ’69 fastback, a ’73 Sportsroof, and a ’71 Mach I parts car. I remember the thrill of being pinned to the seatback of the rear seat of the ’73 as he floored it with my older brother in the front seat, and the roar of what had to be a 351. That thing was like a rocket, a feeling only enhanced by the slot-like rear window on that large fastback roofline. Cousin Andy unknowingly provided the catalyst for my ensuing Mustang mania.
Additionally, our great-grandfather had purchased a brand-new, tomato-red, ’74 Mustang II notchback (when he must have been in his 80s), which was sitting in Andy’s parents’ garage in mint condition. It was the nicest Mustang II I had ever seen up to that point, and at the time, it singlehandedly changed my perception of what seemed to be everyone’s least-favorite Mustang by just looking so darned good. I regretted to learn that my great-grandpa had passed away that same year, and that I had never had the chance to meet him. To this day, I wonder what ever happened to that car.
Fast-forwarding back to August of ’93, I rolled into Henry County, Ohio in my newest, favorite prized possession. My grandpa and great-uncle had farms that were adjacent to each other and as it turned out, behind the shed at my great-uncle’s old farmstead was Cousin Andy’s blue, ’69 fastback. Oooo…and it looked that much worse for wear. Parking my ’88 next to Andy’s ’69, with nothing but the sounds of crickets and rustling weeds behind me, I took a few pictures to reflect on how different these cars were, and what it must have been like for my mom to grow up here.
Here were two cars that shared the same model name, separated by just under two decades – much like Andy and I were separated by three generations of family. Andy’s and my experiences growing up, our appearances, and our lives in general, couldn’t have been more different. I was thoroughly urban and he was completely country – with those two environments being equally comfortable to each, respective dweller. Our Mustangs were also just as different from each other, bearing the same “family name” and basic architecture, but none of the same styling cues.
Even if his blue ’69 had been a 6-cylinder “secretary’s special” like my 4-cylinder LX, a driver’s experience of each car when five years old would still probably have been as different as night and day in their respective times. Let’s face it… though I will always love my ’88 Mustang, the hyper-aggressive styling of his ’69 fastback, even in its state of neglect, made my car look like a tin can. It’s okay to say it. Let’s also take time to appreciate, though, that the Fox-body Mustang represented a daring break from Mustang tradition, at least visually, when it was introduced for model year ’79. In the past ten years or so, my appreciation of the 80s Mustangs of my youth has only increased.
I did also spot Andy’s old parts-car ’71 behind my great-uncle’s barn, and it made me wonder if and when his life’s priorities had shifted and the Mach I had become the project he just never got around to. The buildings on my great-uncle’s property have long since been razed, but I am thankful for the chance to have been able to go back that summer. Malinta, Ohio is a place I never really considered “home”, but it is a place that is still very much a part of my roots and identity.
I wonder sometimes if by purchasing a Mustang – any Mustang, I might have been seeking solidarity and to identify with family members I barely knew (or never had the chance to meet). All the same, these are and were relatives with whom I shared a passion for cars – specifically, for Ford Mustangs. The Mustang provided a common ground that otherwise might not have existed – even among blood relatives.
Malinta, Ohio
c. August 1993.
What a great article! Thanks for giving us the trip down memory lane!
It seems most of us have a “Mustang story” or two. Thanks for sharing!
Today is the day I get to register tbe 1968 coupe my son and I have been restoring in our garage for the past three years. It’s nearly finished, and is hitting the road today! My son will soon be adding lots of new “Mustsng stories” to the canon.
We’ll be hoping for a COAL on this.
+1 – That’s so awesome! I agree with Don. Many happy miles. 🙂
Imagery of a CC ‘Days of Heaven’. And winsome words to match. You just keep getting better Joseph.
Those were my thoughts exactly Don (in regards to the film)….wonderful article too sir. The reason we do things that may seem fairly random often is not, such was likely the case for you with this purchase. Thanks for this write up today.
Don and Dartmouth D, thank you both for the kind words. I was surprised with just how much I remembered when I edited these photos and started writing this piece.
Very nice, and I was initially wondering what kind of filter you’d used on the first picture. Then I realized it was the best one, the filter of time. Good stuff.
Great piece, Joe. You bring back memories of me at that age with a 68 Mustang hardtop – yes a secretary special 6 but with at least a 3 speed. I set out across Ohio to visit a cousin in Tiffin to help him work on his own 68 Mustang. He had worked out a deal for an inexpensive paint job, but he had to get the whole car sanded down first.
I am very familiar with northwest Ohio, with relatives in Paulding and Van Wert counties. Although I grew up as a suburban kid, I had enough exposure to country and small town life that it was a part of me too.
There is nothing like those road trips that many of us set out on at around that age. Thanks for sharing this one.
Thanks, JP! Yes – Van Wert and Paulding. I have actually been to Van Wert, several times and also had a college buddy who was from there. I think the last time I was there must have been around 2007.
I’m such a city kid, but it was never lost on me that I was one generation removed from both this farm, where Mom was from, and the West African nation of Liberia, where my dad was from.
I was just in Van Wert Co. last month — had never been there before. I often expect to see older domestic cars in the rural Midwest, but had quite a surprise in Van Wert, as I saw a Nissan Pulsar with the wagonback attachment. It was for sale (and immobile) in someone’s front yard.
But that’s a digression — I loved the pictures and the story here. It’s like these pictures were waiting around for the last 20+ years just for this article. Thanks for sharing
Oh, those photos. Just last night I was sitting outside chatting with a neighbor about growing up in a rural area that was gradually transitioning to outer suburbia. The central focus of the conversation was about farmland being taken for residential development, and I felt like a crusty old-timer talking about the barns and old homesteads that I remembered at this intersection or just over that bluff, etc. Your photos here are stunning in their portrayal of that benign neglect that just seems to epitomize an area like that. I can almost smell the honeysuckle in the air and hear the far off birds and buzzing bees. Beautiful shots.
MTN, thank you for stating that so poetically. It’s crazy how much of the landscape (in general) is unrecognizable in formerly rural areas with suburban development. I doubt this area will ever see that kind of development, but it speaks to the passage of time how certain areas that were formerly pastures and wheat fields now have houses on them – and this within my lifetime. Thanks RE: the photos, also.
It’s happening in my formerly-little town. It’s tripled in size in the past fifteen years, and slowly but surely past landmarks I remember are disappearing. Just yesterday I noticed that an old post and rail fence and timber cattle ramp on the edge of town had gone, and a grader had been through. It must be truly heart-wrenching for the old-timers.
Very evocative words and pictures.
Always loved big barns and old farm buildings. Walking into a big barn as a kid they reminded me of walking into the big tall churches in Austria; same kind of feeling. I liked the barns even better, because the actual structure was fully revealed, and the had a haymow to climb into and jump around in. I was never allowed to climb into the balcony in our church in Innsbruck.
And inevitably, there was old machinery around too, if not exactly any Mustangs at the Mennonite farms I visited. 🙂
Paul, I never would have ever thought of a comparison between large barns and cathedrals, but it completely makes sense – the high ceilings, large scale, and just the vastness of both kinds of structures. “Vast” is a word that frequently comes to mind when thinking about this part of the country – with wide-open fields, large trees lining rivers, and big barns.
My grandpa also had a lot of old, rusty farm equipment around the grounds. We were sternly warned by both Grandma and Grandpa to stay away from that stuff.
Some of the most fun I ever had there as a kid was when Grandpa would let me “drive” around the grounds on a Cub Cadet riding mower. My younger brother said he got that bad boy up to “full rabbit” on the throttle once, but I know he’s lying. 😉
Joseph, What a wonderful thing to have grandparents, on a farm no less, that enjoyed your enthusiasm for life. So many people grow up not knowing, or not even having grandparents to know.
And those barns! That aged to perfection wood was probably used in many decorator designed homes and restaurants.
I always liked the look of the fox Mustangs and I will admit a rather common preference for the 5.0 LX notchbacks. I think it was the beautiful way Ford ran those long dual exhausts along the bottom of the rear fenders. It said “all business; no fluff; now get out of my way.”
Nice story.
RLPlaut, thanks, and my grandparents were indeed awesome. I did also like the way the duals lined the bottom of the rear quarter panels of the latter-day 5.0L Mustangs! It somehow provided a “completeness” to that section of the car, along with the spoiler on the LX hatchbacks (without which they would have looked droopy).
And I’d like to think that the wood from the barns and outbuildings was put to some good use. 🙂
Great story. About once every 10 years I drive over to the old neighborhood (about 20 minutes away) where I spent my primary school years. It really has changed very little over the decades. A long walk brings back memories of family and friends, many who are gone now.
Good that you took and kept these photographs. Especially since the buildings and cars (probably) no longer exist.
Wonderful photography–the way the image dissolves into a summer haze in the distance in that first photo is just beautiful. (What was the car behind the Mustang, btw?) The photos and the writing are quite evocative of a time and a place long gone. Even for a suburban kid such as myself, there’s a certain feeling of time passing differently when spent amongst the sleepy remnants of what was once a prosperous agricultural community. My wife’s hometown is much like that, full of tumbledown barns and weathered outbuildings.
Thanks, Chris. And by the way, the car behind the ’69 Mustang was what I believe / remember to be a 1970 Ford Torino fastback (not a Sportsroof). Wishing I had a few pictures of that one today! Andy was clearly a Ford guy. 🙂
I am 12 years and 50 miles from the village where I grew up. when I go back there now my usual response is to think “I spent 40 years here..why?”
thanks Joseph for reminding me why.
Thanks, everyone, for reading this. I realize it was somewhat of a more personal piece, but it’s probably one of my favorite contributions to date. Have a great rest of your week.
Nice article
In looking at your old white Mustang, I could not help but wonder what happened to the 79-93 Fox body Mustang? They sold lots of them over those 14 years and there were times when I was growing up in Maryland during those years, it seemed the roads were thick with them(even more then any other car it seemed) and now it has been 2 years since I last saw one and that was at a car show
Great story and pictures Joseph, and an interesting application of the CC Effect for me. Last night, before I read this post, my wife and I planned a trip to Sauder Village near Archbold, a half hour from Malinta, to visit my 3x great grandfather’s cabin that she discovered while researching genealogy for our families.
I’ve always liked the style of the 87-93 Fox-body ‘Stangs, despite being a GM guy at heart. I think the 4 cylinder would make a fun economy car, but they’re awfully hard to come by anymore.
Oh my gosh, Sauder Village! I haven’t thought of that place probably since I took these pictures. When I was a kid, my grandparents used to take us all there (my family, aunt, uncle and cousins) and I remember loving the train ride.
It is such a cool thing that your 3X great-grandfather’s cabin is actually *there* at Sauder. I hope seeing that cabin is as cool an experience as it sounds!
I was just in Ohio (Sandusky) last week to ride roller coasters at Cedar Point. At some point driving to and from Chicago, I must have been no further than maybe 30 miles from my grandparents’s old farmstead. If I had budgeted extra time and didn’t have to have the rental car back by a certain time, I would have loved to have driven back to and through Malinta.
Thanks! We are looking forward to it. From what she has found, it was pretty much my family’s first stop in the country after emigrating from Germany. After that, they made their way to central Michigan, where my uncle still owns the farm my great-grandfather built, and my grandfather and dad grew up on, near Ithaca.
My first car (a 1987 Buick Somerset) was stored in the barn there for a year before I got my license, but sadly I didn’t have the presence of mind to take any pictures of it while it was there.
Your pictures are triggering old memories of my oldest brother. He owned two Mustangs similar to what you have captured on film about 20 years apart. His first was a 66 notchback, 289, 4 on the floor, holes in the floor, salt country Rustang. His second was an 86 4cyl auto, bought from our cousin who was always rebuilding stuff to flip, but with a discount for family. Many good memories. Sadly, Big Brother is nearing the end of his journey with a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease. Thanks for helping to remember the good years.