About “Joe's Impala”

This car used to belong to a friend of mine named Joe Padilla. When I was much younger (maybe around 12/13), I used to walk by his house to get to my grandfathers house. I would see Joe out in his hard and I'd always stop and ask him if he was ever going to sell me his car. He used to laugh and say no, I'm gonna fix it some day. Well, some day never came as he was killed in a motorcyle crash quite some time ago. He left the car to his brother Freddie who got the car running (350/4-speed) and had it painted the blue it is now. He ran into hard times and knew that I always used to bug Joe about how I wanted this Impala. I just happened to be home on leave (just finished a deployment to Kuwait in 2000) when I ran across Freddie and he offered me this car. I jumped at the chance and have been working on it when ever I take leave and go home on visits. Well, I got tired of doing that so I had my brother truck it up from NM to CA so I could finish it. Oddly enought as I write this, I'm currently deployed again so I had to put it on hold yet again. So...one of these days, I will be driving "Joe's" Impala SS. I know he'd really like what I've done to the car so far.