My favorite color has always been green. Not chartreuse or pea or celery but dark metallic as in British racing green. My second car was a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible.
It was 1964 and I was a senior in high school and anxious to make a good impression on my classmates. Mine was light yellow with a black-and-white vinyl interior. The car had been in a wreck and had been lovingly restored to “like new” condition.
I hadn’t had the car a year when another driver ran a stop sign and swiped the front end. Since the car would have to be repainted anyway, I could choose my color. Naturally, I chose British racing green—a color that seemed outside the experience of the fellow at the body shop. He showed me the color chart and I found one that looked pretty close to BRG. When the car was ready for pickup, to my horror, I saw that the color was way too dark—almost metallic black. Well, there wasn’t much I could do about it and--with a new white convertible top--didn’t look at all bad. Of course, I would never have allowed Graham Hill or Jimmy Clark see me in anything but true British Racing Green.
Graham Hill
Jimmy Clark
© 28 Feb 2016
About the Author
I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband's hometown. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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