I'm going with idol on this: Is it blueish smoke, steam, or acrid dark smoke? Other questions that matter are: does the coolant level in the reservoir change from hot to cold? Can you actually see coolant under your car after you pour it in? Is the temp gauge working and saying you're overheating? Do you have power steering and is that working (the noise could be the power steering pump and you could be looking at two unrelated problems).
Either way, there's a lot of things it probably could be and you kind of need someone to look at it. If I were to guess I'd say you have a radiator leak somewhere and you're overheating, and you also might have air in the system (from said leak). Possibly a bad vacuum hose as well. The good news is you seem to know a lot of people who can look at it for free or hella cheap.
I will go on and say that you probably shouldn't pay to have anything fixed (assuming you're paying any decent amount of money at all) mechanics may disagree with me, but they are mechanics after all. A 1992 Taurus is way past it's prime and you're going to get either nickle and dimed to death or you're going to get this fixed just to have the engine block explode in a few months (exaggeration?). Dealing with a car like this is a bit like negotiating a contract: you have to have a firm walk away point. For instance, tell yourself you're throwing $500 more into this car to keep it running tops (obviously not including gas and insurance), and start saving. As soon as you get close to that number, you either ditch it or make very well sure that you will ditch it the next time you need repairs.
I don't think you're going to have much luck selling a 92 Taurus for any worthwhile price, so you're not getting any of this money back. It's pretty much time to start planning for your transportation future. That doesn't mean car payments, actually, getting a new car is probably the last thing you should do. 99.5% of the time it's a bad idea unless you have a lot of extra money kicking around. That said, I don't know how much money you have kicking around, but if you have to make payments, don't buy the car (new).
What you want to be doing is looking at buying a better used car. Something newer, and preferably Toyota or Honda. My 1993 Tercel was the best auto purchase I ever made as far as keeping costs down and getting my money's worth.