I went through this not too long ago. The airbag parts can be bought off of ebay... there are two auctions right now ending tomorrow for the airbags for only a dollar each, which is great timing. Depending on your front end damage, you could go to
www.certifit.com and pick up new exterior parts cheap, then get them painted or do the work yourself.
When my air bags blew, I needed to pick up the driver side and passenger side airbags, an ECU and seat belt pretensioners. Going through ebay was quick and easy, I just had to make sure the parts worked for my truck. The pretensioners are what your seatbelt plugs into by your center console. I'm not sure about the 97, but my 04 has them and they had to be replaced as well. They were the only thing I couldn't find on ebay, so I had to order them from Ford (no local junk yards had them); they weren't cheap, but not terribly expensive either.
Hope this helps you out a little, in case you decide to do things yourself.
Driver's side airbag - cheap! - can be painted to match
http://cgi.ebay.com/1997-ford-ranger...item2eb254935a
Passenger side airbag - cheap! - can be painted to match
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1997-...#ht_500wt_1029
ECU - About average for the airbag control module
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Air-B...#ht_3246wt_870
I couldn't find pretensioner information, you'll have to check to see if they would need to be swapped out or not.
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2004 Ford Ranger Edge manual 4.0 4x4 with 3" Body lift, 33x12.5 BFG A/T KO's, on Eagle Alloy 057 rims, and alot of mods
2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 manual with Flowmaster American Thunder exhaust
2005 Ford F250 automatic 5.4 4x4 with no mods