Silver Bullet
Three months after graduating from college and a month before starting flight training to become a US Naval Aviator, I bought a slightly used Datsun. 280Z sports car. My dad thought I’d lost my mind when I told him I’d traded in a three-year-old Dodge Dart sporting the famous “lean-six” engine for a coupe without a trunk. I didn’t tell him that the loss of the cheated stereo system (centered around an 8-track tape player) in the Dodge had bothered me the most. I gave the car dealer my entire collection of fifty 8-track tapes with the exchange because the 280Z introduced a new (at the time) cassette deck with the stereo system.
I named my 280Z (in sterling silver) “The Silver Bullet”. I became “The Lone Ranger”, not so much because of the name of my car, but because my college girlfriend “almost engaged to me” began to question her life as a future Navy wife. She had two years of college ahead of her and I was no longer with her in Charleston, SC. The suitors told her that if she married me she would become “a widow of the sea” when I deployed with my ship for many months in a row. Guess what? Apparently the car does it make man. The Silver Bullet became a head turn and I soon dropped the irrelevant title of Lone Ranger for me.
The Silver Bullet moved like the wind itself! I especially loved running on I-10 (East-West Interstate Highway 10) on weekend nights when I was traveling between Naval Air Station Whiting Field and Pensacola, to “Trader’s Johns” (the famous dance club and Naval Aviator dinner). On several occasions, the police stopped me for speeding. Luckily for me, each time, the officer wanted to see The Silver Bullet. I showed the officers how I could raise and lower the radio antenna by flipping a switch in the cockpit. Who would write a traffic ticket after seeing that?
One year after I bought the 280Z I got engaged to marry a girl from Pensacola. So, I was faced with the grim prospect of supporting both a wife and a sports car. I negotiated with my credit union to extend the car loan. The loan officer told me that the credit union would only do that in an emergency situation. “I’m getting married,” I revealed, which he called an emergency. I got the girl Y I kept the car! Six months after getting married, I received the Golden Wings and a Naval Aviator designation. My new wife, a caged guinea pig, and I left at the Silver Bullet on a bright summer morning, to begin the adventure the Navy promised and delivered.