And that was when I realized the morning was going to become much more complicated than a damaged Mustang.
My father bought that Mustang in 1994.
I was six years old, and the car was already twenty-five years old when he brought it home on a flatbed trailer. Its paint was faded, its interior smelled of old vinyl, and the engine hadn't run properly in months. One headlight was missing, the passenger-side door stuck whenever it rained, and the driver's seat had a tear large enough for me to hide small toys inside.
My mother thought he had lost his mind.
He thought he had found the most beautiful car in the world.
We lived in a modest house on the edge of town, surrounded by empty lots, old oak trees, and families who had known one another for decades. My father worked as a mechanic at a municipal maintenance garage, repairing buses, service trucks, and whatever else the county needed to keep running. His hands were permanently stained by oil, and he came home exhausted most evenings. But every Saturday morning, he opened the garage and worked on the Mustang until my mother called us inside for dinner.
I learned to recognize tools before I learned the names of every state.
By the time I was nine, I could identify a socket wrench, explain why an engine needed oil, and understand that tightening a bolt too hard could create as many problems as leaving it loose. My father never let me perform dangerous work, but he gave me small tasks and treated every question as worth answering.
He believed patience was a kind of respect.
"Son," he used to tell me, "if somebody doesn't know something, that doesn't make them stupid. It just means nobody's shown them yet."
That lesson stayed with me long after I stopped working beside him every weekend.
So did another.
One afternoon, when I was eleven, a neighbor complained that the Mustang was ruining the appearance of our street.
The car was still halfway through restoration.
My father had removed the hood for repairs, and several parts were arranged neatly inside the garage. The neighbor stood at the end of our driveway, complaining about the old vehicle and threatening to call someone from the county.