Back in my last year of high school my dad was working on location in Minnesota. He gave me a call one night and said to go get his Ford book out of the garage and find a 1966 Galaxie. When I finally managed to find the picture he asked me what I thought. “It’s beautiful,” I told him. “Any reason I’m looking at this?” He explained that he had found one in front of a house while driving to work and if I liked it he would go offer the guy cash for it and see if he’d bite. It wasn’t even for sale.
A week or so later I woke up to tapping at my window to find my dad outside grinning. He had the Galaxie idling in the moonlit driveway with the top down. It was definitely love at first sight, even though the car was pretty rough around the edges. The original owner hadn’t wanted to sell it at first but when my dad offered him a grand in cash he changed his tune pretty quickly. After a little meatball surgery my dad got the car running and when his job in Minnesota was done he canceled his plane ticket and drove the Galaxie back to California himself.
Pictured is the car shortly after I got her, parked outside of the Aerojet ordnance facility (the local submarine race stands), in her original springtime yellow paint. Later on we would paint the car vintage burgundy in our own garage, but that spring/summer she was in her original paint.
