1974 Mercury Comet - My First Car

The great life lesson I learned from the purchase of my first car was that you shouldn't settle for something you know deep down inside that you're not happy with. Lucky for me that lesson came from the purchase of a junky car rather than find myself in a junky marriage. That car was this 1974 Mercury Comet and the circumstances behind my purchasing it came down to compromises I made with my parents and most importantly, myself. I owned it for only about 16 months between February 1982 and June of 1983. 

Allegedly an upscale version of the Ford Maverick, the 1974 Mercury Comet I had was Mercury's compact sedan slotted below their "mid-size" Montego. I say "allegedly upscale" since aside from some very minor styling details the Comet I had and the Maverick of the same vintage were all but identical. The best that could be said of them was that their underpinnings were direct descendants of the 1960 Ford Falcon which shared it's very modest chassis with the 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang. Therefore, I actually had a Mustang in drag, right? Oh, the lies we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night.  

I don't have many regrets in life and if I can honestly say I "regret" buying this car, I'd say at my ripened age I've done alright. That said, though, I quickly came to look at that sad little car with the disdain and disgust a terrible father looks upon their son or daughter who's not good at sports. To this day I'm so embarrassed to say that this was my first car that most times when the topic of "first car" comes up in conversation, "Car Guy" here skips over it claiming the car he replaced this with was his first car. As if a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba was anything to brag about but it underscores how much I hated my Comet. 

Had my Comet been a coupe would it have made me feel differently towards it? Had it been a Comet GT like this? Well of course it would have but only to a point. I had so many problems with my Comet that even something as good looking as this could not have ultimately deterred my eventual overwhelming loathing for it. 

More than likely had my Comet been a coupe it would have been something like this and not the sporty looking GT. Coupes were hard to come by back then because everyone wanted them. And with my budget being what it was, beggars couldn't be choosers. Pull the cladding and those horrible wheel covers off, throw on some Cragers, white letter tires and a matte finish rattle can paint job and you may have something here. Might. 

Further compounding my problems finding a suitable first car were inherent challenges back then in car shopping in general. Outside of word of mouth the only way to shop for an inexpensive car was to sift through the classified section of the newspaper or luck out and find something posted on the "community bulletin board" in a super market or library. An arduous, time sucking process that 99 times out of a 100 ended in disappointment. It certainly dissolved any joy of shopping for that "first car". Not unlike marrying someone for all-the-wrong reasons, I settled on the Comet to simply end the searching. 

Lawnmower Man

On the list of things that can go wrong in life a lawn mower that won’t start is pretty insignificant. But if you've ever had a troublesome mower you know that when you’re in the midst of battle throwing your shoulders, elbows, knees and spleen out trying to get the #?*! thing to start there are few things that can be as momentarily, thankfully temporarily, maddening.

Behold my lawn de mower,  “Le Red Baron”. A 2006 Sears Craftsman, 22 inch, 6.25 foot pounder, self propelled rear bagger.

 

Lawn mowers are a necessary evil. They are loud, smelly, and messy. They are essential, though, to keep a yard looking good. Or at least acceptable. Or at least to cut the freaking grass. Acceptable is subjective.

My problems began the day I stopped using my lawnmower because I started "commuting" to Nashville from Dallas for work. That dreadful work/living arrangement went on for two years. During that time Janet hired a landscaping company to take care of our yard. Our yard never looked better than during those two mirth filled years of airports, delays, missed flights and Snickers bars for dinner.

Le Red Baron sat idle with just enough gas in the tank to cause a whole lotta of eventual pain and creative use of profantity.

When I finally got around to firing it up I noticed what appeared to be goo in the gas tank. Hrmph. That’s not good.

The gas that was left in the tank evaporated and left "something" behind. Oh well, best put some fresh gas in there and git er all running and burn that off.

Yeah, buddy! Here we go!

She fired right up! I laughed about all those warnings about leaving gas in the tank. Warnings, shamarnings. Please.

Almost immediately, though, problems began.

I couldn’t get her started up right away after it had run for a while.

"It must be flooded", I rationalized.

I let it sit for a five to ten minutes, grabbed some lemonade and it fired right up again.

Take that, old gas! I needed the break anyway, y’know?  

Then I had trouble getting it to stay running when it was cold. I’d prime it, yank the chord and get it turned over but it would take four, five sometimes six times to get it to “catch” and stay “lit”. Hoo kay, “something’s wrong”.

Once I got it running, eventually, all would be right with the world. Until I shut if off to empty the bag and then had trouble getting the "hot" mower to turn back over.

These "challlenges" turned me into a profanity screaming, lawn chair throwing maniac. My neighbors would come out to me with a shot of Jack and a cold Bud to soothe my nerves whenever Le Red Baron would start acting up. Which was, mind you, every single #?*! Saturday afternoon!

They’d bring me Bloody Mary’s if it was early in the morning.  Such nice people.

I found myself accepting that my mower was difficult to start and restart. Kind of like jiggling the handle on a toilet that won't stop filling.

I was managing around the problem and the problem was managning me as opposed to dealing with the issue at hand. On the upside though I had perfected the use of combining curse words.

I decided to take things things into my own hands. No "handyman" was going to fix my mower. And I'll be darned if I'm going to ever, EVER borrow my neighbors lawnmower. Besides, they may cut me off my supply of Jack Daniels and Bud if I did that.

Armed with a $10 carburetor rebuild kit and being, I believe, mechanically inclined, I set forth to tear apart the thing apart and fix it. 

I mean, c'mon. How hard could this be?

Lesh just say that, well, you know that expression about things always getting worse?

I got the carb off the mower and attempting to interpret the instructions, that I swear were written in Antartican, I took the carburetor apart and quickly realized that I was in way over my head.

I put back together whatever parts I took off the carburetor and slapped it back on Le Red Baron hoping at least to get it back to the sorry state it was in before I decided to be so proactive.

But it would not start. Not even a momentary puff of white smoke or slight burble from the crank case to give me false hope that there was life left. 

Not only could I not get the mower to start I now had a lawn that was growing. Growing. GROWING!! It rains like every day here in Cleveland. Estimates I’d find on line to fix it ran between $150 and $200. Lovely. I could get a new one for abouot $325.

Oh, just so you know, forget about finding a lawn mower on Craigslist in the middle of summer.

They just don't exist.

I rummaged through the internet looking for solutions and determined that the best thing to do would be to replace the carburetor.

I knew I should've done that in the first place but the carb rebuild kit was $10, a new carb cost $54 with shipping.

Ya get what you pay for.

I ordered the part from the local Sears parts counter and three days later it appeared in my mailbox.

Twist of socket here and there and voila. She was installed. I filled the tank with fresh gas, hit the priming bulb three times, pulled the chord and she turned over like a brand new mower.

It has yet to give me, I should say "us" because I hardly if ever mow anymore given that we have not one but two teenage boys to cut the grass, a moments trouble since.

Our boys enjoyed the respite from lawn duty and were none too thrilled at the lawnmower’s rejuvenation.
I retired back to the deck and watched them go back and forth complimenting their mowing prowess all the while yelling to them, “runs great! Don’t it?”

They’d nod their heads in mock agreement.

The neighbors came over, this time I supplied the refreshing adult beverages.

So can’t wait to see what happens when I attempt to change the flapper on the upstairs toilet so we don’t have to jiggle the handle anymore.