NEWS

Some of you don’t know me well enough to know to whom I am referring when I say Sparkles. Sparkles is my Mach E Ford Mustang. Sparkles is an all-electric vehicle. Sparkles is my leap into the future.

After Bill, my husband of 10 days shy of 49 years, died on March 15, 2021, the fog of grief had me unable to look ahead, to contemplate my future. What future did I have without Bill?

I decided that one thing I could do is buy a new car all on my own, while I was still young enough to drive and enjoy it. So I looked at a four-door sedan like the one I had driven for many years. That was thinking about the future, right?

Well, my sons had a different idea. Both of them told me repeatedly that I needed to drive an SUV, that it was easier to get into and out of, and safer on the road. I told them that I didn’t like the way SUVs looked, much less drove. So, no thank you.

Then, late one sleepless night a few months into my hard, single life, I heard the beautiful bass voice of Idris Elba, talking to me about this new Mustang. A Mustang SUV. What? I opened my eyes and saw one of the prettiest cars I had seen in a long time. It had a sleek shape and was all-electric. An all-electric, Mustang SUV? What was this dark magic I was seeing?

The next day, I called Huntersville Ford and asked if they had any of those new Mustang SUVs. The salesman I spoke with actually laughed and said, “No ma’am. There aren’t any of those in the state. Ford had to close its Mustang plant due to the chip shortage, and we don’t have any idea when we will get them in the dealership.”

I sighed and asked him to put me on the waiting list. He gave me a half-hearted shrug of an answer, “Okay,” as if that were the last thing that would ever happen.

Well, bless Pat, as folks around here say, he called a few days later, with amazement in his voice, to tell me that they had gotten in one of the cars I was interested in seeing. But I’d better hurry up and look at it because a bunch of people were on the list.

I threw on my clothes, drove to Huntersville, and it was love at first sight. It was even prettier in person. I didn’t much want a white car, but this car had metallic sparkles in the paint that danced in the sunlight. It wasn’t white. It was sparkly. Thus, that day Sparkles and I drove out of that dealership, and we set forth on our adventures, our leap into the future.

The first longish adventure we had was last summer to the beach, which exceeded the mileage that I get on one charge by a few miles. I had found a gas station on the road to the beach that had a super charger, meaning the charge would be delivered quickly. In a matter of 30 minutes or so, I could get enough miles to finish the trip to the beach. Charging is still a relatively new endeavor, and it took several times of plugging and unplugging the machine to get it to work, but finally the miles added up and Sparkles and I were back on the road.

I know that such charging stations must be more plentiful and better capable of delivering the charge before more people will invest in electric cars, but I don’t mind being in the vanguard. I don’t take Sparkles on long trips very often, so we can wait for the technology to catch up.

Meanwhile, in Davidson, Mooresville, Cornelius, Huntersville, Statesville, and sometimes, Charlotte, Sparkles and I are kicking it. Future, here we come.