How many times had she rescued it? She'd lost count. It seemed that every year since she'd gotten it, it had dwindled down to nothing and she'd had to give it a serious haircut to get it going again. It would, almost overnight, grow lush and full only to start dwindling and drooping again with no warning. How often she had looked at it, remembering, or drawing comfort from its upright eager vines that never seemed to quit. Poor Charlie, she thought. How many more times can I hack away at you like this and expect you to live? The place was peopled by extras from "Hells Angels on Wheels" and every bad prison movie ever made. This woman kept bumping into me. She was medium height, slender, had long brown hair and three teeth. Her face looked a little like it had caught fire and some caring person had tried to put it out with an ax. Every time we collided I apologized nervously and she walked away. From behind she could have been Miss America. I swear.

Finally, during the long New Year weekend, they'd done it. The man told her to get out and she'd finally found the strength to take him up on it. She woke Teddie up, told him to take his bike and go to the new place, grabbed a few things, including Charlie, and walked out, letting the security door slam behind her. She'd never told the man that she already had a place to go, had had it lined up for weeks now, in anticipation of this moment. Teddie would get there before she did, but she and Charlie and what was left of her life wouldn't be far behind. straight from the source Last month, customers from the business and government sector purchased a total of 1.2 million cars and trucks. 56.9 percent of said figure came from local automakers. That makes sales rise by 55.4 percent from the previous year. In 1970 my husband bought a Dodge R/T for $5000. The price of the car was usually a bit less, but this particular car had all the bells and whistles needed to be a true Muscle Car. If kept in mint condition this car would now be worth approximately $50,000. He was young and foolish though; blew up the engine, and just trashed the car. To this day, the thought of his youthful waste makes him kind of sick. My mother and father enjoyed much of their leisure time with drive in movies, watching TV shows such as MASH, All in the Family, Dukes of Hazard, and Andy Griffith. They enjoyed the music of Merle Haggard, Freddy Hart and Conway Twitty. Lastly, they enjoyed fast cars as well as many people did in the seventies. Drag racing was a fun event for both my mother and my father. In the seventies my father owned a 1972 Ford Galaxy 500, 1970 Road Runner, 1973 Ranchero, and a 1976 buy truck near me. The cost of a new vehicle was around $6000. Over all, the most rememberable event for my mother in the seventies was in 1977 when Elvis Presley died. I'd never been in a fraternity in college and only had one brother, so I never had to prove much in my lifetime. No initiation rights, crazy acts of bravado. Not even tested in war or proven to be a man. Sure, I've had some success in business, but sitting in that truck with a man like Harvey just brought all those male hormones to the front burner. Hot or mild. Just what kind of chile man was I to become? I resumed my mission and approached the Shadow Bar. Shadow Bar is an unusual name that had nothing to do with the building itself. The walls were bright, white stucco with the front of the one-story building evenly divided by a massive black door with a small glass window centered about five feet up from the sidewalk. The few windows in the building were covered with shades and draperies that allowed no glimpse of what was happening inside. Visit the NTX web site to learn of classic auto shows and swap meets that are held periodically in the parking lot. Reservations are now being taken for the first annual New Year's Eve party to happen December 31, 2009.