Three months after I graduated from college, and a month before I started flight training to become a US Naval Aviator, I bought a slightly used Datsun. 280Z sports car. My dad thought he’d driven me crazy when I told him I traded in a three-year-old Dodge Dart sporting the famous “slant six” engine for a trunkless coupe. I didn’t tell him that the loss of the modified stereo system (focused on an 8-track tape player) in the Dodge had worried me more. I gave the car dealer my entire collection of fifty 8-track tapes in exchange because the 280Z it featured a new (at the time) cassette deck with the stereo system.
I named myself 280Z (sterling silver in color) “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 was no longer with her in Charleston, South Carolina. The suitors told her that if she married me she would become “a widow of the sea” as she deployed me on my ship for many months at a time. Guess what? apparently the car does it make man. Silver Bullet became a turning point and I soon dropped the irrelevant Lone Ranger title for myself.
The Silver Bullet moved like the wind itself! I especially loved running on I-10 (Interstate Highway 10 East-West) on weekend nights when traveling between Naval Air Station Whiting Field and Pensacola, to “Trader’s Johns” (famous dance club and naval aviators). On several occasions, the police pulled me over for speeding. Lucky 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?
A year after I bought the 280Z I promised to marry a girl from Pensacola. Then 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 have the girl Y I kept the car! Six months after I got married, I received the Wings of Gold and a designation as a Naval Aviator. My new wife, a guinea pig in a cage, and I set out on The Silver Bullet on a bright summer morning to begin the adventure the Navy promised and delivered.
