The summer was a colorless boring blur dragging itself out in the heat of Florida.  I was entering Villanova University as a NROTC Marine option.  Did they suspect I was a Dove?  I thought, when they find out they will kick me out of the Marines and there will go my scholarship.  I picked Villanova and the Marines so my Mom and Dad  would not have to pay for my school.  I felt so bad for them to spend the money, it was so expensive.  They could easily afford it and I am sure would have been more than happy to pay for my school.  But the NROTC scholarship was a Red Herring.  A force my practical could not resist.  Besides I did not really want to go to college.  I would much rather become a mechanic.  I was so good at it.  Now that's Funny!

But now I had to get my Red Fury ready for college.  I ordered the biggest tires in the JC Penny catalog L 70 X 15 blackwalls and a pair of black rims.  I was upgrading my 14 inch rear tires.  I thought I was achieving some sort of cool drag racer look.  But I think the end result was just a waste of money and making sure my 14 inch spare would now look sill on the rear of the car. 

Of course just fat rear tires were not enough to make my Fury college ready.  I also needed the latest Pioneer 8 track with 25 watts per channel and base boost.  Four Jensen speakers made this a sort of 1970s window rattler, way ahead of its time.  Then to finish off the full Fury effect I added a Cherry Bomb muffler.  Now my little 318 cubic inch motor purred like big kitten.  The crowning effect was one of those pine tree air fresheners.  Finally Fury was ready to take me to college!

But then tragedy struck.  While I was on my way on a cruise past Clearwater Beach I was daydreaming on the cause way and bang! bumped into the car in front of me.  The car I hit suffered no damage.  But poor Fury lost most of his toothy grill and suffered a bent bumper.  None of this impaired the drivability of Fury, so why bother to fix it? 

Now with the noisy muffler and the smashed front end Fury had more of a presence.  Especially in round-about circles where cars now scrambled to get out my way.  This was my first car I was happy to drive around in a damaged state and it would not be the last.

Fury and I drove back north to Villanova that fall and I entered my first year of college.  I was finally on my own.  Freedom!  Power!  What to do with it?  Mostly I skipped classes and did as little as possible to get by.  In some cases I underestimated the minimum amount of work to get by.  In high school you could get As and Bs with no effort at all.  Here it took 3 - 4 hours per week on each class just to get by. 

At this time in our countries history the Vietnam war was coming to a close.  In these days college campuses were a place for free thinkers to protest and let their dissatisfaction know to the "Man".  This was even true to a certain extent at the conservative Catholic Villanova.  So a freshman student with a Marine buzz cut was about as popular as Michael Moore at a George Bush Swift Boats for Truth  rally.

Once my girlfriend finally dumped me (Surprise!) I hit a new low.  What I needed was a new car to cheer me up!  Fury was getting a little long in tooth.  After several calls to my parents they agreed to buy me a new car if I would get a part time job to make the payments.  Deal!

My first new car.  Life suddenly was on the upswing.  School was going poorly but I could still keep my head above water in most of my classes.  But it was so boring.  All I could think about was a new car.  I had a self imposed limit of $3,000.  There were several choices in this range.  Of course it had to be a V-8 and hopefully a stick shift.  I feverishly narrowed it down to four choices in my price range:

 < AMC Gremlin X with a 304 and three speed stick.  This was a campy choice.  The Gremlin was so ugly that it was kind of cool.  But I think it was only cool in my imagination, not in the real world.  Pass on the Gremlin.

 < Maverick Grabber with a 302 and a three speed stick.  Was there a three speed stick option?  It might have been automatic only.  This car was a more attractive than the Gremlin.  But the name was awful.  I kept thinking I would feel like some sort of pervert.  You only grabbed people who did not want to be grabbed.  What was Ford thinking?  And not only was the name scary, but this was the slowest car on my short list.  Pass on the Grabber.

 < Nova SS 350 with a 350 V-8 and a four speed.  Now we were talking.  A bigger mid size engine and a real four speed.  The problem was it was hard to option out a Nova the way I wanted it and stay under my 3K limit.  Plus the Nova was a little ugly with that cow catcher front bumper.  And the 350 was a little anemic.  This was the beginning of the smog years and GM engineering was having a hard time keeping the power while lowering emissions.  The Nova was only a little faster than the previous two short list cars I mentioned.  Pass reluctantly on the Nova.  SS Super Sport was the coolest of the car names.

 < Plymouth Duster 340 with a 340 V-8 and a four speed.  I guess all along I knew this was the car for me.  I just had to go through the car shopping motions,  It was fun!  This was the animal of the cars on my list.  It had the low compression 340, but it still had the free flowing heads and racy cam shaft.  The four barrel flowed very well and the Duster 340 was a bona fide mid to low 14 second car.  Somehow the miracle workers at Chrysler had fooled the gendarmes into thinking this was a responsible low smog car chugging around on family errands.  But in truth it was a bit of a bad boy able to out accelerate a large number of emasculated "super" cars that were now relegated to being shadows of their former selves.  They wore their legendary badges as Bling but had to run and hide at stop lights.  GTOs, 442s, SSes all were daddy stockers at my mercy.  Duster was kind a lame name by itself but combined with the number 340 it gave the name some sort of magic.  Car and Driver said the 340 engine was still in a high output time warp.  This was my car.

My Duster 340 had to be red with the white 340 stripe.  Four speed, front disc brakes, positraction rear, and a black vinyl bench seat.  And don't forget the radio delete.  I had that kick butt Pioneer 8 Track ready to go into the car it finally deserved.  And no vinyl top.  I have always hated vinyl tops.

I think my grand total with some haggling was around $2,700.  Well under my budget.  Of course no dealer had a stripped Duster 340 like the one I wanted so I had to order one and wait.  It was one of the longest 6 weeks of my life.

Then I put Fury up for sale and I think I got around $300 for him.  Less than a year prior my parents had paid $800 for Fury and I guess you could say I drove it into the ground.  And I probably sold it below market value.  I am so good with money and cars.  That too is funny.

I found a job washing dishes in another dorm feeding area.  I hated every second of it but the Duster dream made it all worth while.

After three weeks I started calling the dealer every day.  At first they were amused but then they lost patience with me and asked me to stop calling.  And I waited......