Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!
Ten years ago when I spoke at my father's funeral, the focus of the eulogy was on passion, purpose, and play. Those were the perfect unifying threads for his life. But having dinner with friends tonight, we heard stories about one of their mother's ill-advised car shopping escapades. I had some entertaining thoughts to myself as we drove home, thinking about how car stories could have been the unifying thread for my father.
The first car I remember him driving was a Plymouth Duster. A gold one. A gold one with a crocodile roof, or so he told us. According to my father's lore, the roof had come from a successful wrestling match between my father's doppelganger, Okie from Muskogee and a Mississippi crocodile. Okie used to visit when we were kids, showing up at the front door with my father's bathrobe on, a guitar, strange hats, and sunglasses. He played guitar badly and handed out jelly beans and jujus, my dad's favorite candy. Strangely, Okie NEVER showed up when my dad was home. We believed it all, and I can still feel that roof under my fingertips. I know I've written about Okie in past years of slicing. He was a lot of fun.
At some point, the Duster was upgraded to a Saab which was totaled when my dad fell asleep driving home from an all-day fishing trip. Saabs are solid, so he was fine, but RIP cute blue Saab. Somehow the dealer convinced my not-so-agile dad to buy a black 16 valve VW Scirocco with special racing seats and lots of bells and whistles. I think I was in college during the short Scirocco era, which means that my younger brothers were new drivers. I shudder a little at the slices they could right about driving that car. It gave a fast lesson in going fast.
I don't think it was more than a month old when he parked it on the wrong side of the street and some drunk driver hit it head on. The damage might have been less if it hadn't been head on. (Lesson: Never park on the wrong side of the street.) Since it wasn't totaled, the new black car got towed to service station to await the insurance inspector, but entrepreneurial car strippers got there first and stripped clean-- anything they could take, they took. That totaled the VW. RIP hot fast car. A more sensible Saab returned to my father's garage bay.
In the twilight of Dad's driving years, he got his self-proclaimed dream car, a BMW that was too big for any of us to feel comfortable in. His driving skills, never great, diminished, and that boat-like Beemer had a number of bumper blemishes before it morphed into a smaller more manageable, but somewhat eccentric turquoise Volvo which eventually got sold right out from under him-- if you asked him. "One day my car was in the garage," he'd say to anyone who'd listen, "and the next thing I knew it was sold right under my nose." (Note: It's tough to revoke an older person's driving privileges.)
Tonight, listening to the stories of an older mother negotiating used car deals as we finished dinner, I thought about my carless but car-craving father negotiating a car to be delivered to his driveway. (The car arrived, my mother and I intervened, and the disappointed salesperson brought the car back to the lot.) Even when dementia was in full force, he loved cars and worked to broker a deal.
Dad definitely had some great car stories. Thinking about his cars and his retirement plans of restoring a Model T, an earlier post of the month, Dad and his cars really did encompass the passion, purpose, and play that defined so much of his life.
