A few weeks ago, I had returned from a thirty-six hour trek back to Flint for the annual celebration of a combination of Friendsgiving and Halloween with friends. It’s absolutely one of my favorite things to be able to hop on an Amtrak in the middle of a Friday afternoon, grab a forward-facing window seat for the five-hour trip duration, eat snacks, read, listen to music, sip hot coffee purchased from the café car, and simply be in my own company as I travel back to my home state. By the time I get to Flint, and with the station located about a mile from my childhood home, I’m ready to be social for a few hours before we all crash after catching up and laughing ourselves hoarse. The seventy dollar round-trip fare is less than I’ve spent during some Target runs.
These yearly “Scaresgiving” gatherings are with some of my oldest friends, going back to high school, middle school, and even elementary school. All these years later and through myriad life changes, we are friends today and genuinely care about what’s going on in each other’s lives. What’s especially fun for me is when others in the group start reminiscing about their high school memories and activities of which I wasn’t necessarily a participant. You know… “cool kid” stuff. I was never part of the in-crowd, though I had friends and a small, solid social network. My connections with many present at this party actually began at a time when we all still lacked the self-consciousness that sometimes comes at an age of caring about being seen with only “cool” people. Friends can fall away for a time with new social hierarchies that high school can bring.
By the time I got to high school, many others were going to private parties, skate parks, and music concerts in the Detroit suburbs. Not me. I was playing the piano at home, delivering newspapers, sketching cars, taking photographs, and riding my bike before I would later go on my own long drives around the Flint area by myself. What’s interesting is that many of my high school friends today weren’t people with whom I was then actively hanging out. Often, we were acquainted and would say “hello” in class or in the halls, but it wasn’t until years after graduation that, thanks to the advent of social media, we began to interact again, develop connections, and foster actual friendships. Time seemed to be the equalizer, and suddenly all of the things associated with status in adolescence no longer mattered.
After initially becoming reacquainted, I had really wanted to dislike some of the people I had seen as popular or cool back in high school. It was unfair of me to assume that I wouldn’t like who they were today, or that they wouldn’t like me now… or even that they hadn’t liked me back then. Fear is the root of so much unnecessary pain. It feels like some of our own handicaps are of our own devising and products of our misperceptions or imaginations. I saw my teenage self as dorky, intense, and uninvitable to gatherings and events.
I have come to find out decades after the fact that others had seen me as funny, outgoing, a smiler, and a genuine and caring person back then. It’s all water under the bridge, and I love who each of us has become in 2023. It’s still a riot to hear about the teenage shenanigans of others to where I have had to ask myself if I had been living on a completely different planet. Seriously, in my head and half the time, I could be thirteen. It may have been just what I needed to be so socially sheltered at the time.
With the benefit of hindsight, I am thankful for how elements of my teenage years played out into adulthood. I wonder sometimes just how different things might have been for me if I had been that popular, life-of-the-party guy in high school that was voted best something-or-other in the yearbook. I might have turned out like the Ford Taurus, which started life in ’86 as the darling of the automotive press and sold almost one million copies within its first three model years alone, with almost two million units sold by the final curtain on the first-generation cars by ’91.
The Taurus landed on Car And Driver’s “Ten Best Cars” list for seven consecutive years from the start, extending into the first year of the redesigned ’92 models. It was also a consistent best-selling passenger car almost out of the gate, top-three in sales starting and ’87 and staying there all the way through 2000. The first Taurus was the popular kid: good looking, daring, good at things, made of the right stuff.
A funny thing happened to the Taurus over time, though. Sticking with much the same formula for the second generation cars, they seemed to cling to what had been, by contrast to its earlier iterations that seemed to point the way into the future. By the time the gen-three models arrived for ’96, with their radical, ovoid styling themes, I suspect that many consumers tolerated the styling even if they didn’t love it. After all, memories of the Taurus as a car with groundbreaking style were probably still fresh in the minds of many, and its exterior design had really pushed the envelope in ’86. Maybe after a little time, this new, ultra-rounded looking Taurus will become the new norm, and everyone will love it! That never happened.
After devolving into a rental and fleet car (the 2007 models were sold exclusively to fleets), the Taurus came back for ’08 as a refreshed and renamed Five Hundred before being redesigned for 2010 into a chiseled and purposeful looking machine. It lasted in this form through its end for 2019 which, coincidentally, was the year I spotted this early example. Nothing lasts forever, and the final Taurus still inspires respect in me when I see nice examples on the street. It’s just that no other sedan Ford has put into production since that first ’86 Taurus has come close to blowing my mind that way that car did. Even if the ’96 Taurus hadn’t been unattractive to many, there was no way the style of any car wearing the Taurus nameplate wasn’t going to pale in comparison to that of the first cars that appeared in ’86.
Unlike the instant-success Taurus, I liken myself more to a third-generation Mustang, a car that had a great start at the beginning, lost the playbook (the weak 4.2-liter V8; alphabet-soup model lineup), and then steadily gained more stance, confidence, and power as its platform aged. I harbor no jealousy today for any of my former schoolmates who seemed to have had easy lives back then, and there’s only so much of someone else’s story that any of us actually knows.
I feel for some for whom their high school careers and status ended up being pretty much it for them. We all have a journey and bills to pay as grownups. All the same, it was easy to look at this Taurus almost exactly four years ago with the same kind of admiration as I would have for a member of my high school graduating class who was voted most likely to succeed and had been content to simply rest on that.
Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, November 17, 2019.
Click the following links for detailed reading on the first and third generation cars.
It feels like some of our own handicaps are of our own devising and products of our misperceptions
Wise words. One of the most beneficial things I’ve picked up and learned along the way is that rarely, if ever, do people see us the way we see ourselves. Not only that, but at least in my case, we tend to be our harshest critic. I too was relatively surprised to discover, beyond my core group of friends (many of which remain so, decades later), people I went to school with saw me in a light ceremony completely at odds with how I saw myself. Apparently I was considered outgoing and extremely funny. If you asked me then I would have said I was NOT outgoing, quiet, and when not quiet direct (I suspect that blunt approach in peer-to-peer teenage interaction was the funny people saw, because I sure as hell wasn’t trying to draw attention to myself). Now, many years later, I’ve come to embrace me, do me, and let what others think about it be theirs to think.
I have a mantra of sorts I tell myself every so often to remain focused on the bigger picture at my job, and it’s this: We don’t get to decide what makes a difference in other people’s lives. Be authentic. Whatever it is you are doing, do it well. What may be small for you could be the biggest gesture that you care for someone else. Works pretty good for everyday life too, I suppose (wink).
Thank you for this, and mutually, I find much to take from your great insights. There really isn’t any kind of objective way for us to really get a read on how others see us.
We don’t get to decide what makes a difference in other people’s lives. Just, wow. Totally agree.
As usual, another gem by Mr Dennis full of wisdom on a larger scale beyond his correct perspective on the generations of Taurus.
Thank you for your kind words.
Great insights into both the Taurus and life in general.
I like your stories of getting reacquainted with former classmates and finding out that, under the veneer of adolescence, you all actually had a lot in common. We need more stories like this – positive stories of folks overcoming differences rather than magnifying them as time rolls on.
Regarding the Taurus, I’ve often found it frustrating how after the first few years, Ford just rested on its laurels concerning what was a huge marketplace hit of the mid 1980s. To some extent the SUV boom ended up pigeonholing mid-size sedans into stagnancy, but if Honda and Toyota could continue making competitive sedans throughout the 1990s and 2000s, then surely Ford could have figured that out too.
Thanks, Eric. That’s great perspective on the Taurus, Camry, and Accord in your last paragraph. And I just smile every time I have some meaningful conversation or interaction these days with someone who is now a good friend who I might have passed in the halls of our high school a hundred times back then without exchanging twenty words the whole time.
This is a very thoughtful and well worded description of high school life that so many readers will find familiar, especially if they tend to think about one’s life in an objective manner tempered by time, honesty, and the occasional revelation of unknown facts.
“I saw my teenage self as dorky, intense, and uninvitable to gatherings and events.”
Me too. Especially when my more popular and parent-funded high school cohort showed up on weekends for triple-nickle burgers in their parent’s Bonnevilles and Super 88 convertibles with attractive dates while I toiled on the grill wearing my white apron and paper hat.
“I have come to find out decades after the fact that others had seen me as funny, outgoing, a smiler, and a genuine and caring person back then… ” .
That must have been an eye opening experience. For me, well, I’ll never know.
Upon high school graduation I deliberately cut off contact with my high school cohort, no longer wanted to be called Bob; I was now Robert, intensely focused on financing my commuting college education through work, bank loans, and v-e-r-y careful budgeting. Any free time went to additional work hours or studying. There were some college friends, but as was my way of doing things, then and now, they faded away after college graduation.
TBH – your continuation of old friendships seems to be a much more fulfilling way to navigate life.
One does not have to be old to be a curmudgeon; some of us were born this way.
But, and this is important, I’ve never been happier than I am now. Go figure.
I did the same thing – I didn’t enjoy high school or the popular high school culture, so I just wanted a clean break and to start a new period in my life. I have no regrets about it now; I’ve never been tempted to look back. Not a solution for everyone, but it worked for me. I also gave serious consideration at that time to using my middle name, which coincidentally is Robert. Ultimately, I decided not to, but I remember go over that in my head a lot back then.
In general happiness does increase in later decades of life. The many big stresses of career and family and such are over or well resolved.
I can absolutely relate. People say the kindest things about high-school me. (They don’t say the same things about adult me, however :P)
Thank you for this, Robert. This has me wondering how I had treated others in my misperception of myself as being “less than”. In fact, I know some of my behavior was wack. As the saying goes, “Hurt people hurt people” (learned that phrase from my sister in adulthood). At times, I have wanted to issue a blanket apology to everyone who knew me during times I felt insecure and acted out or teased others in inappropriate ways.
Just like I felt inadequate and ignored by some, I also realize that adolescence is a very tough time to navigate for everyone. I have tried to grow in grace, both for others and myself. I have often thanked others in my heart for giving me another chance and for us getting to know each other and be friends as adults.
What’s tricky for me is learning to balance my tendencies for wanting to be (contentedly) by myself in my free time and realizing I would sometimes like to be around others. There’s some curmudgeonly skepticism in me that will probably never go away. I don’t think that’s unhealthy.
My father, a renowned neurologist, used to say that being a late bloomer was a good thing, as it reflected having a larger or more capable brain that takes longer to fully develop. I think there’s something to that, and explains a lot about our high school years. Those that were already at the peak of their powers were the ones that were popular but often didn’t really keep growing as much as the nerdy outsiders who were just barely getting going.
Those that peaked early typically reflect on their high school years as the best ones of their lives. That’s certainly not the case for me and probably all or most outsiders. We didn’t blossom until later and we’re likely to be the kind of persons that continue to develop over a much longer time frame.
Like Robert I too left almost all of my high school friends behind when I hitchhiked away after turning 18. I too think it’s great that you still have these connections. I have very few if any really life long friends. Newer friendships are great but they never know aspects about you like friends that knew you back then.
There’s blooming late, and then there’s failing to launch outright. Or being thrust into adulthood when your ninety-year-old, long-ago-widowed mother finally loses her sanity and independence to dementia, and you (at 60-something years old, yourself) have to finally crawl out of the basement and take out a reverse mortgage on the house and actually take care of her for a change…instead of the other way around.
This scenario describes a disproportionate number of my great aunts and uncles, sadly, on both sides of the family. And with “Mooch Off Of One’s Octogenarian Parents Until You Can’t Anymore” being a common family career, my parents made sure my sister and I hurried up and bloomed quickly. Or were uncomfortable enough to leave the nest.
Kyree, we’re talking about different things. What you’re describing has become more common in recent decades; back in my time it was rare. Families were generally big, and when you turned 18 you either went to college and got a part time and summer job to pay for all or part of it, or you got a job (or got drafted to Vietnam). I didn’t know anyone who was sitting at their parents’ or aunts’ houses.
I was referring to something rather different, more to do with basic intelligence and intellectual curiosity. That tends to keep unfolding, sometimes for many decades. It’s different than “maturity” or being independent (or not) as you’re describing.
I like these ideas very much, Paul. I also realize that not everyone who was great in high school flamed out, but I feel there’s a lot to be said for late bloomers having the right templates down for continual improvement.
At fifty I find I don’t have anything much to say to old friends, they are just acquaintances now, really. Maybe it is just my not enjoying rehashing the past and being content with the present, or that I don’t identity at all with the stranger I used to be.
…I don’t identify at all with the stranger I used to be.
I certainly identify with this on some levels. I think the beautiful part comes with not rehashing the past with old friends or acquaintances, but in having new conversations where that’s possible. With that said, I also believe that one’s inner friendship circle should be like culling a bush and removing dead blooms. People change, and sometimes friends with whom you used to have a lot in common aren’t necessarily people who are good for you now.
Wonderful thoughts and reflections. I too was very unsure of myself in high school and didn’t run with the popular crowd at all. And as one gets older, we are wiser, more experienced in life, and happier with ourselves.
Like Paul’s comments about being a late bloomer!
Thank you so much. I also like and agree with Paul’s weigh-in.
What a poignant article. It echoes not only some people’s life experiences, but those of other cars. There was many a Detroit car that had magic in the beginning that it utterly failed to replicate in subsequent generations. You either had a suboptimal (ugly or too-plain) design for which customers made excuses on the basis of the name…or you had a design that was more polarizing and interesting than outright beautiful. And dimensional bloat besides, as the cars just grew and grew and grew to ridiculous footprints by the late-70s. I’m thinking most vividly of the Buick Riviera, and I say that as someone who loved most of them, especially the curvy gen. 8.
The Taurus’ demise from a car that took the industry by storm to forgettable rental fodder in less than fifteen years was as impressive as it was sad. There are people who have fervent enthusiasm for the 2000-2007 models–I’ve met them–but it’s more in a contrarian or sentimental way than on the merits of the car itself (there were none). When my mom worked for Hertz, it was owned in part or wholly by FoMoCo, and so employees could get discounts on Fords. I remember them trying to shill these Tauruses (Tauri?) onto customers at can’t-beat-’em lease rates and purchase prices. But my dad refused outright because he was a GM man…not that my mom, ghetto-snob that she was, would have ever driven a Taurus (a loaded-up Mercury Mariner, on the other hand? Absolutely).
At least, as you said, the Taurus finished on a relatively high note with the 2010-2019 model, especially the muscular SHO. I had the final Taurus’ Lincoln stablemate, a 2014 MKS, and found it a likable example of a used luxury car for Civic money, but can’t say I would have paid $60K for it as-new, three years prior.
Thank you so much, Kyree. What you expressed in your first paragraph makes me also think about a recording artist’s first full-length… the time and gestation period for it, versus with subsequent releases and the often inevitable “sophomore slump”. (I am also a fan of the final Riviera.)
The time frame you outlined over which which the Taurus went from cutting edge to forgettable (great choice of word) seems especially short when you look at the actual number.
I’ve been searching for 5 years now for a 1986 Ford Taurus LX wagon in medium canyon. Been so hard… I nearly snagged a clean white LX wagon in Portland in 2019 but my dad got in the way. No luck since then. Now it looks like the value of these are finally going up. Last month there was a canyon red 1986 Taurus LX sedan they wanted $10,000 for. An 87 LX wagon went for just under $8,000 at an auction site. And a 91 GL wagon on Facebook Marketplace they demanded $9,000 for! Before last month nobody would have asked above 3,000 for a non SHO Gen 1 Taurus or Sable. Now I won’t be able to get one now most likely. I just can’t find another 86 wagon. Wanted ads don’t work, they just don’t show up for sale hardly, and nobody in any of the groups is willing to let go of one even if they do have one… And I constantly find the Gen 1 SHOs. I hope I can get lucky again.
Shaun, I really hope you find your ’86 Taurus wagon. I remember the wagons seeming so futuristic at the time they were new (I was in elementary school) that I had chosen to photograph one as part of an assignment. (Of course, I had ignored that cars were off-limits for subjects.)
I haven’t seen a nice example of an early Taurus wagon for a while, but I’m sure because we’re discussing it here, it’ll soon happen…
I hope and pray I can find one soon. it’s been a dream since high school in 2012 to find and restore one of these. There is a guy in several of the Taurus groups I’m a part of who has my dream 86 LX Taurus wagon so it gives me a bit of hope there is another medium canyon red 1986 LX wagon like that one out there somewhere but more optioned out than his.
I have done a poor job of keeping in touch with old friends from prior eras of life, so I am kind of envious of you on this. Also, I have lost count of the number of people I have formed snap judgments about, then discovered that I was completely wrong once I got to know them.
The Taurus is like one of those old friends I have lost touch with. They were all over the place when new, and I really liked them. In the world of late model cars, the Taurus was a friend. But eventually the Taurus changed (and I probably did too) and we lost touch with each other.
It’s stunning to think of the Taurus’s one-time ubiquity, and then for them to be so rare (even in 2019) that the sight of this one caused me to pause, snap a few phone pics of it, and write about it here.
I have lost count of the number of people I have formed snap judgments about, then discovered that I was completely wrong once I got to know them.
Same. I’m still trying to be better.
The Taurus was jaw dropping when it came out. I remember thinking here’s a Ford that looks like an Audi. A just introduced Audi. It hasn’t aged as well, but aging doesn’t affect new car sales. But what I noticed, was people really liked driving those things. It and the Volvo 140/240/DL/etc come to mind. Numbers weren’t that impressive, but people who owned one would say, yeah, I really like it. Not many cars can say that, and from here it would appear the manufacturers never looked at that. Especially Ford.
I had a few minutes of seat time in both of the aforementioned cars, too few to really make an impression on me. But damn, those who had them really liked them, stats be damned.
But if people say they really liked driving it, you might want to pay attention…
My Dad instead had an ’89 Sable he bought after my sister totalled his ’86 Dodge 600. It was the first of 3 Sables in a row (he liked the Mercury dealership and it was close by). I liked the ’92 best and ’96 the least. He later followed up with 2 Chevrolet Impalas (’01 and ’06 which my sister (same one who totalled the 600) now owns now that Dad is gone and Mom stopped driving.
Interesting comment about high school; we moved around so much in my parents’ younger days that only my youngest sister started and finished the same high school. I lost track though the moves of just about all, and some I hardly knew (for instance only spent senior year at the school I graduated from) such that I don’t attend my own reunions (instead have been to two of my Mother’s). Also moved from that area after College and then another 1900 miles to where I live now so it’s far from my current location. I never lived even near the town my Grandparents lived in, but of course visited probably close to 100 times over the years, so that’s been the constant location during my life (they only moved within their town), such that’s where I’m going to be buried.
Contrary to my own life, I had a completely different experience going to a bar with my Father and Grandfather in the town where my Grandfather lived. I wasn’t too surprised of course that people there knew my Grandfather, but it surprised me that many also knew my Father, who hadn’t lived there since 30 years prior. We moved a lot, but many people had not, it was briefly like my Dad hadn’t either, but I’ll never have that same experience, there’s really no people I’ve known that long. Don’t know if that’s become more common these days, but it seems like fewer people have lifelong relationships than in my parents’ day.