Silver Thunderbird | The Value of Experience and the Journey Over End Result

Day 1686. 233 lbs. lost.

Dave wiped his brows that were full of sweat, and patted down his torn jeans to get the dirt off. He pinched his lips and spit out chew that had been soaking on his right cheek for an hour. He’d been rummaging around in the junkyard for quite a while. He stood and stared at it. He’d finally found it. A rare Thunderbird.  It wasn’t much to look at; rusted-out lights, torn upholstery, and dented tailfin. You could tell at one time it was silver, but the paint was so faded it was absent its original luster. But when he looked at it, he knew what it COULD be, and at that moment, it’s all that mattered. He’d never restored a car before, but he was up for the challenge.  He loaded it onto a flatbed pickup and dragged the heaping mess home.

He reached out to Ford and said, “Hey, I have this rare car I am going to restore, and once it’s done, I want to share it with the community.” Ford never responded.

He was a farmer, always up at the butt crack of dawn, and always knew his responsibilities on the farm came first. But once he finished his daily chores, he took off like a shot out to the shed where he stored that car.  He spent the first few weeks just sanding it down and removing all of the parts that could not be fixed. Every now and then, a friend would roll up and say, “C’mon, dude, let’s go,” but he wasn’t budging.  After several months even the neighbors would stand outside and whisper to one another, “there he goes, working on that car again,” shaking their heads in disbelief. In their minds, it was junk. But this farmer saw a pearl.

His granddaughter convinced him to start an online group to share his encounters and document the challenges and triumphs.  Why not? Some of the incidents were not so pleasant, but it brought immense smiles when he managed to see some progress. One time there was a spark and electrical failure, another day, there was a snap on the engine hoist chain. Another time the oil exploded and finally a fire. On the day of the fire, neighbors across the street were shaking their heads as usual. But there were also days when he got to document something actually worked. A light came on, a part came in and got installed, the radio finally worked!

It took a lot longer for Dave to complete the project than initially estimated. He constantly had to set it aside. He’d run out of money for parts or energy to keep working. Some days he was just frustrated and gave that car a good kick plenty of times. During his frustration, he kicked the door so hard he had to spend hours repairing the dent.

He spent so much time working and talking about his project, people started asking about it. “When is it going to be done? When can we see it?”. Finally, one day he opened up the garage door and out rolls slow motion-like, …..this shiny silver Thunderbird. It wasn’t done yet. The inside wasn’t complete but he wanted to take it out for a spin.  Those neighbors out on the street followed that shiny car with their eyeballs and looked at one another and said, “Well I’ll be”…..

About that time, a Ford executive showed up on the farm with a sales rep named Jake.  He talked through the side of his mouth absent a cigar and spoke with a southern accent. “Dave, we’d love to have this car. We’ll stick it up on showroom for the world to see, the community is going to love it. See here, our sales rep Jake is going to talk to everyone about it and he loves Thunderbirds so he’ll be great”.

Dave stood there confused….

*Athena pauses*…..

Now between me you … blog reader…. There’s a lot of Jakes out there. The fact that he loves Thunderbirds makes sense that he could talk about it. He could talk about that Thunderbird with care and passion no disagreeing.  But Jake wasn’t there the day the engine fell out, the day of the fire, the day everything was sparking.  Jake wouldn’t really be able to appreciate all the times it had to get put on hold because the money ran out or when the frustration ran so high the car door got dented and all that worked had to be done all over.  

*She groans and leans back in her chair with head slap*

Dave looks up at the Ford Exec spits his chew and says, “Jake is going to go around and talk about the car? You see it was never about the car. The car is just the end result.  The car itself doesn’t matter it never did – it was about refurbishing the car and the joy of the journey and being able to talk about that experience”

He turns around and starts walking away from the Ford execs and he yells behind his shoulder, “Jake, you can go talk about the car if you want. But I think before you do anything you might want to take a drive? Then at least you can talk about the way it feels with the windows rolled down. That way when someone asks, you might be able to answer one of their questions”.

Today’s lesson: There’s no good substitution for experience. 

What the Ford Execs fail to understand is that most people aren’t going to care about a simple demonstration of how to start this renovated car. They are going to want to know 1000 questions like……

1. How did you trace down the electrical problem?
2. Where did you find the parts? What did you have to replace? How difficult was it to find them?
3. What made you decide on the tires and upholstery?
4. Did you use a lot of bondo?
5. How hard was it to find the panels for the doors or were they already there?

Oh…. The secrets that old car … and Dave would know……

What is this story about? Well…… You can read about it in the upcoming book “Waitless“. Working with Larger Bodies isn’t for sale.

Me? I wanna go down in a silver Thunderbird.