My First Car

By Robert Rysdam Sr.

It was a sunny day and I came home from school to find my dad was standing in front of our old pale white two story house with faded paint falling off and a fence that was half fallen down. He had on his dirty old blue coveralls with holes in them from work. He was an auto mechanic for the little garage and gas station in town. It was not often he was home so soon.  I thought something must be wrong. He never got off work that early. As I got closer, I saw a little smirk on his dirty face turn into a smile and quickly turn to a smirk as if I didn’t see the smile moments before.  The only thing I could say was “what’s up”?  As I got closer, He threw me the keys to an old and rusty pickup truck, and said “let’s go for a ride, I need your help to work on a car for a good friend of mine who has been sick for a long time. He can’t get around much anymore.”

I always helped my dad do odd jobs working on cars, and most of these jobs were the dirty kind that gets grease under your fingernails, and so deep into your skin gasoline won’t not even get it off.   Some of the people we worked for made fun of me because I did not talk very well. I had a speech problem since I could remember, so I did not talk much if I did not have to.  I took four or five years of speech therapy and it seemed not to help much. I still talked like I was a student from another country who had not mastered the English language yet. ( The last year of high school my speech therapist and I had a breakthrough. It was so surprising to both of us that she wrote a book about our breakthrough.  My speech problem stopped all at once. then all my years that I had suffered from harassment and teasing were over. ) But working on cars, I didn’t  need to talk, and I felt I could do anything. I also enjoyed working at the little garage as an apprentice mechanic part- time to get credits from school.

As I backed out of our gravel drive way on to the narrow street in front of our house, we started our little trip out of town. I could not help thinking something was going on besides helping my dad. At the time my dad was younger than I am now, but I still thought of him as an old man. I knew he had something on his mind. It was not my birthday, but then he never needed a reason for a joke or just to surprise one of us kids. My dad did not know how to show love for us kids in the usual way that most parents do. He drank a lot and always had more than enough for us kids; it was like a family tradition to drink, and drink we did. My dad drank to forget the war that took his youth, and made him a broken man with one good eye and hearing only in just one ear. Booze and cars held my dad and me together by giving us something in common.

I drove for what seemed minutes, but in reality was a half- hour, past farms and ranches that were covered in sagebrush and  fields  full of ponds  from the melting snow to a place that did not look like either farm nor ranch. As I turned in the driveway, I had to dodge old broken down rusty cars that had half paint and half primer left on them and trucks with flat tires. Some of the rusty old stuff I didn’t recognize. They looked like scary things nightmares were made of. As we made our way through the amazing little junk yard, I saw an old man who looked as though he was part of this scary looking rusty old place, but dirtier.

After I got to the end of the drive, my dad stepped out of the old truck. I just sat there and waited, looking around at all the cars, some of which I knew  could be fixed up, when all at once a glowing image from behind a shed that was ready to fall caught my eye, it looked like it was going fast just sitting there. It had the shape of a car from the future. It was a dark blue that looked like twilight with the moon shining on it. All as once my dad yelled at me to come over and meet the old man who looked like the rusty old stuff that was all-round us. I don’t remember his name, but I cannot forget his dark bearded face and rosy cheeks. He had a smile like he knew something. I noticed keys in his old rusty looking hand.

 He asked me if I needed a car.

 “Yes I just got my driver’s license.”

He said,” this one need some work.”

“That’s ok; I got some good to help.”

And without even asking, I took the keys and looked around to see which one it was. It was the blue thunderbird that I saw glowing beside the old shed. I wanted to hug and kiss my dad but I held back, all of his kids knew that showing emotions that way was not allowed.  Since my dad was in the war he lost most his of his willingness to become close to or show love anyone because in the war he lost so many friends. I knew he showed his love in other ways, and I learned to understand. 

It was not just the car. It was my dad showing his love in the only way he knew how. When you grow up with a war veteran, you have to learn to understand what they have been through. I could feel the pain he felt, and I did not let him know. I tried to be the best son a man could ever want. I drank with him and got drunk. I worked on cars and chased women because it made him proud of me.  He taught me a lot of good stuff, hunting and fishing, and always to be an honest man.

 

My dad is gone now, and most of us need to understand that just because parents don’t how to show love doesn’t mean they don’t love you. You need to understand that the cruel and sometimes gruesome dark sides that haunt parents make it vary hard on innocent children. Yet some parents find many ways to show their love.