On an evening jog in Tucson in the winter of 2016, I caught a glimpse of my dream car! Nostalgia washed over me as I reveled in its beauty. The car had a timeless nature and beauty about it that took my breath away.
I was approaching the home stretch right near the Arizona Inn when it caught my eyes. I couldn’t resist. I stopped to snap a few pictures of the car. The exterior of the magnificent design looked incredible against the backdrop of the fading Arizona sunset.
I refused to let the car drop back into the recesses of my mind. The replica of my dream car had again reignited my fuel and my passion after many years. This was where it all started. This was the car that prompted several key people I would soon meet to help me find my way back home. This was the project that produced a synergy between the people of my past and the new friends who would become a part of my new life and who would become a part of me.
Trying to connect with my blue-collar family had always been a struggle. Due to my lacking a mechanical inclination at birth, I was ostracized no matter how hard I tried to fit in. They had a common thread; cars. I was the outsider. A Dad who was a machinist and a mechanical savant in every sense of the word. A son who knew little to nothing about cars or how to fix them. I longed to connect with my dad on one of the things that he was most passionate about: cars.
I pondered this dream of a car in my mind for longer than I can remember. Life, time constraints, and obligations had a way of interfering with my creative pursuits. The things we love, and our passions most often take a back seat. Our dreams get the leftovers of who we truly are.
Stories are meant to be told; as it is my duty as a storyteller to share my own story with you. To touch you. To change your life. To make you stop and think about where you need to go, and how you should go about getting there.
Old dreams die hard. Other people can keep trying to kill them, but they are always hiding in the recesses of your mind. They are always there beckoning you in the way that this old car beckoned me, in the Arizona sunset on an unexpected day.
Such is life, though one thing I have learned is if you wait to do something until everything is perfect in your mind, not much of anything ever gets started yet alone accomplished. That leads me into one of the points I wanted to illustrate about this new journey of mine deep into old roots.
I call my experience the MGA story.
My story is a simple story about new friends who helped me to find my way back home and back to my roots: place we all need to get back to before we leave this lifetime and go wherever it is we go from here.
Like many dreams, my dream started with an image I came across. This dream of bringing this old MG car back to life.
The seedling started to grow in my mind just after I read “E-2” by Pam Grout. My good friend, Julia Drew, turned me onto the book. The book had changed the entire direction of my life the way books sometimes do, its defining theme reminding me we have the power to control our own thoughts. We can become prisoners of our own minds without ever realizing it.
The thoughts we let in or out; the thoughts we let grow or die ultimately dictate the direction, tone, and outcome of where we want our lives to go. These thoughts dictate what we want our lives to be about.
Caught up in the storm of immersing myself with the philosophy of E2, I gravitated toward one of the experiments included in the book content.
I followed the instructions of the E2 experience: I put an image of a beautiful MGA roadster in front of myself. Then, I practiced thinking about the image until it was like white background noise.
The image in question permeates your brain without exerting so much energy that it drains you. The concept in the book is not a new concept by any means; I had read it before. This was the first time I consciously and consistently applied the principal to see what would happen.
i wanted to make the MGA roadster mine: somehow, some way. Instead, I got caught up in daily life. The dream died temporarily. Luckily for me, it would later be rekindled. Some people aren’t so lucky. They die largely unfulfilled, and sadly, their dreams die with them.
I am lucky, however, and you will find out why later in my story.
After the dust of my life settled, I found myself back in a position where I was under the illusion of my own control. I began to nurture myself in ways that helped me feel confident again; that improved my self-esteem. Eventually, I felt comfortable taking chances again, thus I finally rolled the dice on bringing this dream into reality.
One April morning, I logged onto Craigslist to find the car I desired: I was in luck once again and a raw MGA roadster was up for sale. The car was being sold at a price that was reasonable to me. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The car restoration was about more than just restoring a classic car. The restoration was about restoring my connection to my family and my past that I had never resolved. I wanted to dig deep into old roots to ferret out what I needed to continue my own personal growth.
My goal was to have a beautiful car to call my own. Residually, I was able to learn the some of the technical aspects of the car; what my Dad and my Grandfather had both been versed in. I had no idea when I started this that I would feel and experience what I did. It was a beautiful surprise that means more to me than the car does sometimes.
The MGA journey was a spiritual experience that helped me to heal and reconnect with a part of my own life. Instead of feeling intimidated and feigning disinterest whenever the topic of cars came up, I became eager to learn and grow in those areas. I took a leap of faith, and I began to believe in myself.
Inadvertently, the MGA experience helped me to reconnect with my father’s life and my father’s passions. During the project, one spirit after another crafted themselves into form and showed me a part of my past that made me feel young and alive again with a seasoned perspective.
The story of the MGA is not so much a story of a car restoration; it was so much more. To tell the whole story, I must start at the beginning: my hometown in Ohio where I struggled to connect with my family.
The part of the dream that makes the story amazing continued when I finally purchased my dream car, the MGA roadster, from a man named Bill. Bill was another Mid-Western man with an auto shop of his own. He had grand plans of breathing new life into this car. Bill rescued the MGA roadster from a previous owner who had let the car sit in a garage since the early 1970’s.
Bill hoarded the same car in his own shop until a few years later when I purchased it from him.
Like many others, Bill let life get in the way of the great MGA car restoration. When he thought he might have time to work on it, his time was cut short due to health issues that physically limited his ability to do the work himself altogether. Bill made the painful decision to relinquish his own dream so that my dream of pursuing an MGA roadster restoration could be fulfilled.
The story doesn’t stop there.
enter two interesting Iraqi brothers who were also starting over in the way that I was. Zeyad and Osama took a car that didn’t start or run. With my direction, the two brothers rebuilt every aspect of the MGA roadster into the finely tuned machine that now runs flawlessly.
Zeyad and Osama weren’t just restorers or mechanics. They became my friends. I helped them to obtain home ownership in America, then found out their closing day was May 17th: the same day my grandmother died, and my brother was born.These amazing individuals believed in me and were invested in my own success enough to make this dream a reality in the way that I had a hand in their dreams. Sometimes people are dropped into our lives to give us just that little extra boost we need, and these guys were no exception.
Their passion and spirit had proven to be contagious in my own life. They are so grateful for every moment and every opportunity that their influence inspires me to have a positive attitude in every situation life throws at me.
Another key individual was Jim Holmes, the man I painstakingly hired with a little stroke of luck and a lot of elbow grease. I was turned onto Jim by a new roommate named Colin Catron and his son, Bodhi. I got the feeling Colin and I were destined to meet and grow close. I would, of course, find out Colin’s birthday was the same day my father passed.
Jim Holmes expertly completed the bodywork and paint on the MGA roadster and succeeded in giving the MGA roadster the touch, style, and finish that would define it.
I’m not going to lie: the experience was somewhat painful and disheartening to see the rusty car being towed off to an unknown fate in the hands of a stranger. The subsequent trips to Jim’s place and to fetch parts from Avra Valley in Marana were bittersweet.
I wasn’t entirely prepared for many things I experienced while Jim worked on the car. Jim and I bonded as I also bonded with his Jack Russell, Scruffy, a timid and wiry-haired terrier. The dog reminded me of a Jack Russell that I bought for my mother after my father committed suicide. I made and sold a lot of Christmas Wreaths to save up for the dog, Spanky, but the purchase gave us 18 years of life, love and memories afterward. Seeing Scruffy stirred up memories of how my brother and I found our father after his suicide and of the dog we bought for mom to ease the loneliness after Dad passed.
Dogs have a funny way of sensing good people when they see them. I guessed it adopted me as a friend in the way that Jim had. Sometimes all humans and animals need in a chaotic world is to feel a sense of love, acceptance and belonging. The dog could sense more than most humans can.
October 25th, the 20th anniversary of my late father, Jim and I got to talking when I dropped off parts for the car. I could sense the man was bothered. Jim’s friend, a man I had seen a few times at Jim’s house, had committed suicide. I had seen the man at Jim’s property several times. He looked disconnected, but I didn’t know him well enough to try to talk to him about his problems. I shared my experiences with Jim, offered some comforting words, and brought another friendship that much closer.
The MGA Story has many more sentimental meanings to me.
one special memory was the day I went to register the car at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Never having owned a classic car, I assumed they would give me historical license plates. When the clerk handed me the historical plates I had requested, I immediately got the goosebumps. You see, she handed me plates that read: ZPD7.
This was just one of several spiritual signs that kept showing me the way on my journey toward spiritual growth. Synchronicity! ZPD7 immediately reminded me of my father’s Dad. The man was another mechanic who had died before I was born. My grandfather worked on the cars for the Zanesville Police Department in Ohio. From what I was told he was the “go to” guy who got cars back in order when all else failed.
I think about Zanesville Police Department when I look at the plates: ZPD. Additionally, I have always been an incredibly lucky person. I attribute some of my luck to my birthday: 7/7/79, a date I share with my inspirational uncle Dennis Shaw. I have adopted 7 as my lucky number. Another nostalgic tidbit: my grandfather raised his own children on good ol’ Luck Avenue.
ZPD7 = Zanesville Police Department and lucky number 7.
The family memories all live inside the number that glares from the license plates of the newly restored MGA roadster.
The MGA roadster experience wouldn’t be complete without incorporating my trade. Advertising helps me to meet a few new people and helps me stand out a little more during open houses. I love meeting people when I take pleasure drives in the car. After all, that is the most important part of restoring a nostalgic car: being able to drive it when it is completed.
When my friend of 20 years, Tom Curtis, worked on the advertising, I asked him to stick with the classic theme of the car. Tom and I had met in China, and we had grown to become close friends. I entrusted him with the roadster’s logo work like he was my long-lost brother, and he never once failed to deliver.
The images and themes from my favorite book, The Great Gatsby, tumbled around inside my mind. After months of communication and idea sharing, he came up with the new logo that is stamped on the MGA. I can’t thank him enough for putting the finishing touches on the MGA roadster.
The part I haven’t told you yet is that the MGA roadster wasn’t my original dream; not really. You see, my father had an MG when he was a young man. I grew up hearing stories from my mother and others about how much he loved that car. The little bit I knew about the MG car didn’t give me enough information to intentionally buy the right MGA model that my dad previously owned.
Instead, I ended up accidentally falling in love with the exact same make and model he did without even planning it. It was as if my late father had sent the car to me. I was drawn to the car’s style, class, and sleek appeal just as he was.
I hadn’t had a chance to drive the MGA from its completion till December 31st, 2016 the day Ohio State came to Arizona to play one of the biggest college football games of the year. I towed the car from Tucson to Phoenix so my friend and I could tailgate all day and go to the college football playoff.
The plan was to decorate the car in Buckeye colors. Driving it refinished for the very first time on a grand day was surreal. The day would also be my father’s 70th birthday: New Year’s Day.
I dedicated the day to my Dad, and the Ohio State fight song was programmed into the car’s horn to complete the story of the MGA roadster which I have since nicknamed My Guardian Angel. The car saved my life and my roots in more ways than one; as did the journey that got me to where I am today.
The past few years, a song randomly comes onto my Spotify playlist to remind me of Dad and my MGA story. The lyrics to the song come on at the most emotional and crazy times that I cannot explain:
“The ghost that we knew will flicker from view and live a long life.”
In remembrance of my Dad, my Grandfather, my family, the MGA roadster, and my journey to become the man I always knew I could be.
My MGA Story (My Guardian Angel)
© 2025 Archer and the MGA Story
