1996Ford Contour I cranked it up , turned on defrost and drove maybe 1half mile. The car cut off. Waited a few minutes and it cranked up and ran...turned off defrost. What is this?

Hello, Unfortunately, when problems this strange pop up, you will certainly need diagnosis to identify why the defroster would cause the engine to stall. That is very odd indeed. For the transmission: check the fluid level, and then watch the engine as you shift back and forth from reverse to drive to reverse, etc... If the engine is moving back and forth more than just a little, you probably have bad engine and transmission mounts.