I feel bad for this guy!

Kevins89notch5.0

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If you know of any classic forums, spread the word. Maybe there is someone out there who can help him.

His Baby is gone in a flash

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Robert Kemerer was smitten from the moment he first laid eyes on the shiny red beauty in 1990. Now, after 17 wonderful years, he's lost the love of his life.

By Lane DeGregory, Times Staff Writer
Published September 9, 2007

Baby died Sunday, April 29, at home. She was 42.
Purchased March 29, 1965, at Walker Ford on Treasure Island, the Mustang Fastback was well loved, but not well traveled. She was resold and restored in the late 1980s and bought for a third time in 1990. In her later years, she won a dozen trophies at Tampa Bay car shows. She is preceded in death by most of the 77,000 Fastbacks produced that year. She is survived by her loving owner of 17 years: Robert "Bear" Kemerer. Cremation has already taken place.

ST. PETERSBURG - He finished work early that Sunday and hurried home to be with his baby.

He parked his pickup in the street and walked to the garage. Inside, he folded back three blankets.

There she was, glistening: His 1965 Mustang Fastback, candy apple red, with leather bucket seats, original hubcaps and that pony on the gas cap.

Robert Kemerer called her Baby.

"I hugged that car," he says. "I did. I told her I'd be right back."

He walked into his home, past a table filled with Baby's trophies, and dropped his keys beside her framed photo. He had just kicked off his sneakers when he heard the screams.

Behind his house, the neighbors sounded frantic. He ran to the kitchen, where flames were lapping through the ceiling. His back porch was ablaze. Pressing his face against the window, squinting into a curtain of smoke, he strained to see his garage.

- - -

He lives alone in a square bungalow near downtown St. Petersburg. An affable guy, he has raven hair, a wide nose and black eyes. His home is filled with paintings of eagles and Indian squaws. "I'm Cherokee," he says. "Everyone calls me Bear."

Bear is 58. He was 23 when he left his family in Pittsburgh and hopped a Greyhound to Florida. He scored a job at Webb's City, met a girl at a roller rink. "I got married for a minute," he says. "Got burned real bad." He has never had any kids, pets or house plants.

He's not home enough to keep anything alive.

For 35 years, he has worked seven days a week as a cleaning man: a dozen houses, 40 city offices, a credit union.

"I'm a person who knows what he wants and works hard to get it. I had three dreams and I made them all come true," he says. "I make $12 an hour and I was able to buy a house. I went to China."

His third dream had six speeds and auto-shift on the floor.

- - -

He fell in love in 1990, on a warm April weekend, in the garage of a guy whose name he can't remember. He met the guy at the credit union, told him he'd always wanted an old Mustang. The guy invited Bear to his house, where six vintage Fords were parked in shade around the yard.

Then the guy opened his garage - and Bear caught his breath.

That turned-down nose, that chiseled body and gently sloping back. . . . Sure, she needed a new paint job. But what she really needs, Bear thought, is someone to take care of her.

Mustang introduced its Fastback in 1965, the year Bear turned 16. Here was a pristine example of the hot rod's debut. A 2+2 model, it featured oversized wheels, louvered rear windows and a backseat bench that opened into the trunk to store surfboards.

"She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," he says.

The guy who had restored the car wanted $5,000. Bear gave him all he'd saved: $1,000. He started cleaning extra houses, working extra shifts for the city. For four months, on the first day of the month, he gave the guy $1,000 cash. He always paid in person so he could visit the car.

That summer, he kicked his pickup to the curb. The day he drove his Baby home, he says, was the proudest day of his life.

- - -

Part of you is thinking: Get a hold of yourself, man. We're talking about metal and rubber and motor oil here.

But we all have our attachments, our crazy loves. We've all seen how a dog can attain the status of a child in somebody's life - how the owner can pamper and coddle that dog. Well, to Bear, that car was his child and his dog.

What else did he have? Scrubbing other people's showers, dumping office trash cans, Bear worked behind the scenes. He was invisible. Even in his green truck, no one noticed him.

Behind the wheel of that souped-up Fastback with the glossy fresh paint, he turned heads. He was Hollywood. Steve McQueen. Strangers asked to take his picture. Men called, "She's gorgeous!" Women waved.

"Women never really liked me much," Bear says. "But they sure did check out my Baby."

That car made him who he wished he was.

He took snapshots to work. Put a picture in his wallet.

Every Saturday, he spent an hour and a half giving the car a bath, buffing it dry. Every Sunday, he would warm up the engine, roll down the windows and pop a Carly Simon cassette into a boom box he kept on the passenger seat. Then he'd reach down, ease into gear and head for a back road.

The car was quick, but Bear seldom drove it on the highway. Never pushed it past 60 mph. In all the time he had that car, he never crossed the bridge to Tampa or Bradenton. In 17 years, he drove fewer than 12,000 miles.

"I was scared she'd get hurt," he says.

Friday nights at Biff Burger, while other classic car owners hung out drinking beer, Bear kept vigil in the parking lot, watching over his Baby. When he took her out to Steak 'n Shake, he cruised the drive-through. Couldn't risk leaving the Mustang alone. He'd bring his burger home, put the car away before he ate. He'd never think of dining in the driver's seat.

He didn't let the car get rained on. Never let anyone else drive it. He had a passenger only once. "I took a lady friend to Longhorn Steakhouse and parked way away from the door. But someone got too close and knicked my Baby. I didn't take her out to dinner again," Bear says. The car, not the woman.

He planned his weekends around his Mustang. He made friends through the car. He wanted to retire so they could "spend more time together."

Every trophy Bear ever got came from that car. At the Festival of States car show in April, they won their biggest award: a 3-foot-tall, gold-and-black monument - First Place.

Two weeks later, a power pole caught fire in the alley behind Bear's home. He ran out of his burning house, grabbed a garden hose and rushed to the garage, where everything he cared about was tucked in beneath three blankets.

But the blaze was too big. At 5:15 that night, Baby died.

- - -

"I always thought I'd go first," Bear says, wiping his eyes.

It's the last Wednesday in August and he's at home, grabbing a quick sandwich between jobs. He trudges to where his garage used to be, pats the charred remains of his car.

Four months after the fire, its body is rusting away behind his house. The skeleton is paper thin, the color of dried blood. The sides are pocked with white patches, scabs peeling from scars. The tires and windows have melted. The seats are twisted springs.

He had hoped to have a sort of funeral for the car. He was going to put white roses on the dashboard and tie black ribbons to the tow truck as it hauled the car away.

The car was insured for $12,000; he figured his ride was worth at least $30,000. He doesn't know what to do, so he keeps the remains in his driveway.

When he was lonely, the car connected him with new friends. When he was broke, it was the collateral he used to save his home.

When he felt like no one, that Mustang made him someone.

After it burned, he started to crumble, too.

- - -

"It's just that, well, she was my personality," he says. "She was the best part of me."

Since Bear lost his Fastback, he has become a shell of himself, like his car. He has developed a hernia. His stomach is swollen with a bulge like a football. He limps and wheezes.

He hasn't talked to any of his friends from the car shows. He hasn't driven through Steak 'n Shake. At traffic lights, no one waves.

He retires this month. Without Baby, he's not sure what he'll do with his free time. The city has told him he has to get what's left of the car out of the yard.

He's not sure he's ready, but he thinks he should start going to car shows again, just looking.

On weekends, he sits alone in his living room, surrounded by portraits of Baby, remembering what it felt like to slide into the driver's seat and shift into gear.

Lane DeGregory can be reached at 727 893-8825 or [email protected].
 
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Dang, thats a sad story, I was gettin sick at my stomach, I really hate that for the guy, but I ask why did he not get the freakin car out of the garage and let the damn fire dept worry about the fire!?
 
That really sucks. At the same time, it's even sadder when someone needs a car to define them as a person.

apparently you've never been in that situation.. so i'd suggest keep comments to yourself. Definition of yourself is all about what you do with your life, and how you treat folks.. if I put all my heart and sole into my cars, then they are, in fact, my heart and soul
 
That sucks! $12,000 is all he had it insured for??? DAMN!! That is a fastback too! On of my customers bought one in need of restoration for $10,000 and it was rough. He made it an Eleanor car and sold it for $125,000....but that is besides the point. If it was worth $30,000, he should have had it insured for at least $20,000. I still feel sorry for the guy though, 12K can't buy him nearly the car he once had!!!
 
apparently you've never been in that situation.. so i'd suggest keep comments to yourself. Definition of yourself is all about what you do with your life, and how you treat folks.. if I put all my heart and sole into my cars, then they are, in fact, my heart and soul


My car could burn to the ground, and I wouldn't quit living my life because of it.