Everyone that has a passion for cars usually has that one special make and model from their past that they long to have again, the quintessential “if I could go back in time” car that, for whatever reason, captured their heart. For my best friend, the first generation Ford Mustang was such a vehicle because he had one and never appreciated it as much then as he did later. For my mother, it was the 64 Chevy Impala Super Sport she had in high school. For me, the Jeep Grand Wagoneer was that vehicle and because of it, I owned a number of other Jeeps later on down the road.

From 1989 until 2002, my folks owned a “grand” total of four of them, each one unique in both personality and temperament. Two of them came our way by means of a family member and others found their way into their driveway as well. My cousin Pat, a doctor living in Maryville, Tennessee, purchased his first one new in 1983 and six years later, when he decided to get another new one, my Dad ended up buying his first one and bringing it home. I remember well the day it showed up in our driveway in the spring of 1989.

It was shiny black, decked out with the ubiquitous wood paneling and trim that pretty much defined the vehicle during the latter half of its run and trimmed with a light caramel colored leather and corduroy upholstered interior. Inside, simple round gauges nested within an instrument panel and dashboard awash in synthetic wood, an array of simple knobs and switches and a big leather-wrapped steering wheel. Door handles, window switches and even swivel vent windows all harkened back to another era of automotive design. Sumptuous, luxurious carpeting was everywhere, even on the back of the seats and there were no less than twelve individual pieces of glass to let in the great outdoors.

While our Wagoneer Limited (Grand would come later) was only six years old then, technically it was really a twenty year old design when ours was assembled in the factory. Ancient in terms of automobile lifespans, it was the result of a slow evolution that started as a basic outdoorsman’s vehicle, something of a station wagon with the Jeep characteristics of off-road prowess and the promise of adventure in the wilderness. Over that twenty years, it had gradually morphed into a luxury family cruiser, capable of swallowing a family of five, including luggage and camping gear, and with the ability to actually get you to the campsite in style.

Riding upright and tall on 15 inch white wall tires, the Wagoneer cut a striking profile as it cruised both city street and back road landscapes, swilling gas with reckless abandon and flying in the face of convention, all while looking down its hood at its more modern, fuel injected brethren. What did it have to be ashamed of? It could go pretty much anywhere, capable of rock climbing, fording creeks or sitting idly in front of the country club where it managed to fit right in. It was the perfect combination of anachronistic style, opulent luxury and complete capability, almost an American version of the Rolls Royce. The luxury Sport Utility Vehicle was born and the market is full of its progeny to this day.

Ours wasn’t even a primary vehicle but more of a third car. Next to my conservative, fuel sipping Nissan Maxima, the Wagoneer was a gargantuan behemoth of a vehicle and the first time I drove it, I experienced what I was to later recognize as “King of the Road” syndrome. Having driven nothing but cars and the occasional pickup truck, I can honestly say there was nothing quite like sitting up high in a big, brawny Jeep Wagoneer with a commanding view of the road and a physical presence second to none. The Maxima, loved as it was, suddenly found itself playing second fiddle to a giant Woody 4×4 from a company that had recently been swallowed whole by Chrysler.

Dad never minded me driving it when he or Mom wasn’t using it, probably because I, more than anyone, assumed responsibility for its appearance (Dad took care of the stuff that cost money like batteries, tires, front end alignments, tune ups and assorted repairs). The paint, always a weak point with Wagoneers, was already beginning to show signs of failure but a few dozen coats of wax really brought out the shine and kept it going. The rich leather upholstery was saddle soaped to the softness of butter and the dash gleamed from the liberal application of Armor All. I probably took better care of the Wagoneer and its successors than I do my own car today.

The Wagoneer spent a good bit of time on the road between our house, the lake and my parent’s cabin in the mountains of Hiawassee, Georgia. It was the natural choice for hauling the family to weekend getaways and when the occasional snow fell in the mountains, you knew the Wagoneer was the best choice to drive because it had the sure footedness of a mountain goat when the terrain got slippery.

It had its quirks as well though. The big 360 cubic inch engine relied on a carburetor and if you didn’t know how to crank one, you could be pretty sure of flooding it. Once cranked, it needed time to warm up or else you might find it puttering and sputtering up the road in protest. A Wagoneer had to be woken gently and coaxed onto the road, especially in cold weather. Another quirk on ours was that you could crank it and then pull the key out of the ignition, probably the result of worn tumblers but a pretty neat way in hot weather to keep it cool should you have to get out somewhere. You just left it running, pulled the key out of the ignition and locked the doors. In this age of remote-start vehicles, the Wagoneer was already ahead of the game, whether intentional or not.

Speaking of air conditioning, the 1983 Wagoneer Limited was the first vehicle to feature dual zone climate control because up until the Chrysler makeover it would receive in later years, the heater, integrated into the dash and the air conditioner, bolted under the dash, were two separate units. You could, had you wanted to, toast your feet while cooling your body. Cold air was a given, as I think the air conditioner unit was lifted from a walk-in cooler.

Another cool feature was the rear tailgate, similar to that of a pickup truck. To access the cavernous rear cargo hold, you inserted the key (or used a dashboard switch if you were in the driver’s seat) into the rear keyhole, turned it to the left and the enormous rear window would lower electronically into the tailgate. Once lowered, you reached inside the vehicle and located the door opener on the tailgate and pulled up, allowing the tailgate to be carefully lowered to a horizontal angle. It was very comfortable to sit on with its 18 oz carpeting and if I had to haul a lot of friends around, nobody seemed to mind sitting in the cargo area with all that carpeted room.

Each member of my family claimed the vehicle as if it belong to them, but in reality the Wagoneer belonged more than anyone else to the family pet, a large German Shepherd/Siberian Husky mix who loved to travel in it to the lake or the mountains and who always seemed to know when such a trip was forthcoming. All you had to do was get out the suitcases and he would wait by the vehicle, ready to go.

The Wagoneer was a faithful family friend that spent many a mile traveling the roads around Central and North Georgia over the years we owned it but one day my Dad, always a car wheeler-dealer, sold it to someone unexpectedly who then wrecked and totaled it a few weeks later. Mourning ensued and before long, another one, this time a 1985 Grand Wagoneer, found its way into our driveway.

The “new” one, a deep shade of blue with the tan interior, was pretty but it just never was the Jeep that the first one had been. It was plagued with problems and its first owner had lived in the mountains of North Carolina, where it had been tuned to compensate for the altitude. Always a beast to crank, the blue Grand Wagoneer spent a lot more time sitting in the driveway than it did on the road, though I never gave up on trying to get it to run better. Dad had it re-tuned, replaced parts and more but I think it was homesick for the mountains and just plain stubborn. It didn’t stick around very long.

Fortunately, Cousin Pat decided to buy a truck and we ended up with his 1989 model which had been even better cared for than his first one and with less mileage on the odometer. The blue one was sold and the new-to-us dark pewter gray Grand Wagoneer soon took its place at their house. It was a fine example with a beautiful burgundy interior, still in leather and corduroy, but it benefitted from a major overhaul of some of the more problematic issues left over from the AMC era by its new parent company, Chrysler. The instrument panel was modernized, the air conditioning controls were integrated with the heater and it even had big headrests now. A digital overhead compass with temperature display gave the vehicle some semblance of having technology in it somewhere and the massive hood now featured a standup hood ornament so you could see where the hood actually ended. It was beautiful and substantial and once again, I adopted it and went to work preserving the shoddy paint job and keeping the leather soft and the exterior clean.

This one also served us all well and we enjoyed it for several years, myself especially. When I moved to my first apartment, the Grand Wagoneer swallowed all my stuff in a few trips and then somehow it ended up living at my apartment for a time. Mom and Dad had two cars and a pickup truck by then so it was a while before they started in about bringing it back, which I reluctantly did.

Bedfore the 89 model became ours, Dad had a brief spate of new car fever in 1991 and with the news that Chrysler was ending production of the Grand Wagoneer after a 28 year run, he toyed with the idea of getting a brand new one that we would keep and preserve from now on. We had never gotten any choice in the colors we had received and since he could choose, it wasn’t long before Dad came home with the most gorgeous Grand Wagoneer ever built and the finest example of the make as well. Of all the combinations of colors available on Grand Wagoneers, the Hunter Green metallic with woodgrain appliqués and sand colored leather/corduroy upholstery was the pinnacle of automotive couture and as the last of the Jeep SJ Grand Wagoneers ever to be made, it promised to be a true collectors item in years to come. Sadly for me, Dad balked at the 30k price tag, about $50,000 in today’s money and after only two days with the vehicle, he returned it to the local dealer. I have, as he well knows, never forgiven him!

Image by Wagonmaster.com

When the silver one was about eight years old, Dad sold it to a landscape architect who had also owned a number of Grand Wagoneers over the years and I thought it would be the last one but surprisingly one day, he was driving along and spotted a low mileage 1991 model for sale and bought it. The golden sand colored Grand Wagoneer was in flawless condition and the previous owner had paid a nice sum to have the vehicle professionally repainted to replace the defective paint that all Wagoneer owners know so well. The new paint and clear coat was perfect and actually better than the original paint had been when new.

Image by Wagonmaster.com

At some point, Dad decided he had too many cars and he “loaned” the Grand Wagoneer to me to try and sell it for him. I think he figured if I drove it enough, I’d just buy it from him myself. Believe me, the thought crossed my mind enough but I had recently married and we already had two Jeep SUV’s, a Cherokee and a Grand Cherokee. I put a tiny “for sale” sticker in the window and kept on driving it, hoping nobody would notice and got by with this for six months. When we moved into our new house on New Year’s Eve, 2001, the Grand Wagoneer and our own two Jeeps moved everything except the furniture, with the Wagoneer hauling the most stuff of all.

Eventually, as hard as it was to part with it, I had to let it go. Dad had found a buyer and I reluctantly took the Jeep back to him in Athens where he was living by then. I never saw a finer example, save for the Hunter Green one, than that beautiful sandy gold Grand Wagoneer and it left me with a lot of good memories. All of them did, really. I never owned one outright but I cared for four of them with a lot of care and attention because I recognized them for what they were and they rewarded me with a lot of fun miles, admiring stares from people who thought they were beautiful vehicles and memories that will last a lifetime.

My wife flinches every time one with a “for sale” sign passes by, though those instances are rare and getting rarer every year considering the last one was produced 22 years ago. I’m even forbidden from traveling to Texas where there just happens to be a specialty shop that sells low mileage, perfectly restored examples today for upwards of $35k out of fear that I might come home with one. I’ve been told if I do, I had better be prepared to sleep in it, which is not at all unreasonable considering my cousin and his wife used to throw an air mattress in the back of theirs and go camping in it.

Fifty years ago, Jeep created the Wagoneer, the vehicle that would eventually come to define the luxury Sport Utility Vehicle. When most automotive designs are scrapped after five or six years in production, the Grand Wagoneer soldiered on for a remarkable 28 years, against all odds and surviving ownership by several parent companies, all of whom were wise enough to realize the jewel they had and to perpetuate its continuance. Long after the last piece of woodgrain appliqué was applied and the last massive tailgate was bolted to the rear, others have stepped up and preserved them, elevating them to an iconic cult classic and it is not unusual to see them tooling around the Napa Valley or Martha’s Vineyard, sharing parking lots with Bentley’s or even parked by the lake, tailgate down while a picnic ensues.

The Grand Wagoneer conjures images of a fading past, of family vacations to the beach, the mountains or anywhere a Jeep vehicle could travel. Images of a father fishing in a mountain stream and mother preparing the picnic lunch while the kids and dog run around a Jeep Wagoneer were images of the promise of adventure that only a Wagoneer could deliver and they were as American as baseball and apple pie. For those that experienced the lure of the great outdoors or just the golf course, the Wagoneer was guaranteed to deliver and for many who came along during the nearly thirty years it was produced, those memories will never fade.

Happy 50th Birthday to the Jeep Grand Wagoneer and thanks for all the memories!

The most recent act of savage brutality to be unleashed on innocent people has touched a lot of lives, hardened our resolve, brought questions to our mind about our safety and made us wonder what kind of world we now find ourselves in. It wasn’t just the bombing in Boston either but the whole string of life-changing events this week that has shown us the world we live in and which makes us ask these questions.

The bombing wasn’t even off the front page before it was followed by news of Ricin poisoning attempts and then before that could even unfold, along came Wednesday with what may be one of the largest explosions ever to occur in our country at a fertilizer plant in Texas. Images of entire neighborhoods leveled, buildings with roofs blown off and news of dead firefighters and first responders coming in faster than you could count. A tornado in all its violence nearly seemed tame compared to the instantaneous destruction and death unleashed in only a matter of seconds. The New York Times could barely keep up all that was happening.

As I write this, I look out at a beautiful blue sky on a quiet spring day, many miles removed from Boston, Washington DC or Texas, a scene almost idyllic and pastoral, in total opposition to the scenes that came out of those cities. On such a day, it hardly seems real that evil still lurks when we least expect it and that faulty safety measures can mean the difference between a normal town and one that looks like an atomic bomb has gone off.

My thoughts go back to the two young men, one now dead and the other in critical condition, that for reasons I will never understand decided to take their hatred and insecurities out on innocent people and in doing so, brought down the wrath of society on them in a manhunt that gripped the nation for an entire day. They were very effective in what they set out to do. They maimed and crippled. They killed people, and this time one of them was an eight year old child, the same age as my own son. Yes, that does indeed hit very close to home.

With so many running in the Boston Marathon, it was inevitable that it would touch lives all over the country. I have both a cousin and a friend who lives in the area. I also knew someone who ran in the marathon, the father of three more of my cousins who finished the race only minutes before the bomb blasts and was mercifully spared but in his case, those minutes could have been the difference between life and death.

So it turns out that it is unlikely the attack was related to one of the mainstream terrorist cells currently pursued by our government but as we search for answers, we wonder more and more who our enemies are. Right now, I’m still angry about it and while the news and legal community wants to argue about the rights of the sole surviving terrorist, most of us just want to see closure with justice distributed in a manner befitting their actions. As far as I’m concerned, terrorists don’t have the same rights because they have crossed a line that goes much further than a random criminal act. They deprived hundreds of their rights….the right to a normal life, the right to life itself and for so many others, the right to feel relatively safe in the towns they live in.

Every time one of these people, regardless of what gene pool they originated from, commits an act of unspeakable violence, it’s like the pebble thrown in a lake and the effects of their actions are like the ripples that spread out upon the water, growing larger and larger until they touch everything in their path.  Look at how these events have changed us as a society. For starters, we worry now, even though the likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack is less probable than getting killed by a teenager driving an automobile while texting.

Globally, terrorism generally claims about the same number of people who drown in a bathtub each year. About a thousand people a year are shot in hunting accidents and around a hundred die from them. Five hundred murders were committed in Chicago last year and about 577,000 people are estimated to die of cancer this year. The list goes on and on but I, like most people, don’t think a lot about all the different ways we can be killed or die prematurely in the normal course of events.

Some of that I can control. If I take only showers instead of baths, it is highly unlikely I will die in a bathtub.  I can avoid being killed in a hunting accident by staying away from places where people hunt. If I never go to Chicago, I won’t be killed in Chicago but I could just as easily be killed in Jenkinsburg Georgia by a lunatic with a gun. I worry a lot more about cancer than I do any of the others because it has taken members of my family and because people I care about now are fighting it.

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Americans worry about another such event taking place but statistically, if one of those events were to occur every quarter for the next five years, the chance of being killed in one is 0.02 percent according to author John Mueller. We stand a greater chance of being killed by a stray comet than by a terrorist attack but we worry a lot more about the former than we ever do the latter because human beings are behind them. Our worry over something that is statistically very unlikely to occur again has changed us dramatically as a society and I wonder sometimes if our pre-9/11 selves would even recognize us today.

To be sure, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 constituted by far the most destructive act of terrorism that has ever been unleashed on our society, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3000 people, many of whom were rescuers attempting to save those that we now know could not have been saved but that one singular event caused a huge ripple on the pond that is America. The economic costs of  our reaction to those events have been considerably greater than any the terrorists may have inflicted upon us. Just as an example, a good many more than 3000 Americans have died since then because their fears persuaded them to drive in cars rather than travel by plane and then there is the number of service members killed because they were pulled into wars that resulted from these events.

This is not the world I grew up in. My generation and my parent’s generation worried mostly about Russia and the ever-present threat of nuclear war obliterating everything and everyone I ever cared about. I felt secure in what my parents always told me though…that we had the same power to destroy them and thus, nuclear war was very unlikely to happen. Our stick was as big as there stick was. We had the comfort of “Mutually Assured Destruction” that made us feel safer and we went on with life and enjoyed it.

The Berlin wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled and we began to find more common ground with the people over there, easing things a bit more. Life carried on and then one day in September of 2001, the rules all changed and the world was a different place. We all are reminded of it every time we go to the airport to fly somewhere and have to endure the security checks in place. Flying once was something I looked forward to; now it is the equivalent of a root canal in my mind. We are reminded of it when we visit our nation’s Capital and see armed guards carrying assault rifles standing on the parapets of the Capitol building. Metal detectors and body scanners have become a way of life. Fear has driven us to extreme measures to protect ourselves from people we don’t know who are driven to kill us it seems.

The sad thing is that we have funneled so much money towards keeping the terrorists at bay that we have underfunded many of the programs that help to keep us safe from things that are much more likely to occur such as exploding fertilizer plants with chemicals that can do more damage and cause more death than most terrorists could hope to do. By allowing the disregarding of safeguards and the failure to enforce safety measures in factories, plants, consumer products, transportation industries and more, we open ourselves up to greater risks more likely to occur than a terrorist attack. This is the state we find our country to be in, only twelve years into the new millennia and the sad thing is that some in our society refer to this as “the new normal” and expect us to accept that this is the life we are given and we must make the best of it. I strongly disagree with that statement.

Just this morning, my pastor reminded us in church that we cannot allow ourselves to become indifferent to the tragedies that test us and I do agree with that statement. Indifference is a form of acceptance and if we choose to be indifferent to the things that we face, if we choose to accept them as the new normal, then we lose the very thing that defines us as Americans. If we choose to accept the fate that is given to us and not to struggle against those who would decide our fate for us, as our ancestors did, we don’t deserve to be Americans.

One thing gives me hope though and that is the unyielding strength of the American people and the resilience and resourcefulness that has defined us as a nation for 236 years. More and more, we are put to the test by an event or events which challenge the courage and strength of our people. Whether that test comes in the form of terrorism or tornadoes, plant explosions or school shootings, it is our unique blend of strengths, heritage, courage, spirit and the desire to chart our own course that is the example we should show to the world.

I heard a section of poetry recently in the movie “Skyfall” that was a quote by Tennyson and which was used to describe the current state of affairs in Great Brittain, a country so much like our own and from which much of our own culture originated from.  It aptly describes us as a nation that has been battered but not beaten, that has lost some of its strength but which is still strong. I believe it is that strength that will make the difference down the road and that our actions, driven by our character and nature, will remind the world that we haven’t gone anywhere. In this, we are all “Boston Strong”

From Tennyson:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Reblogged from Down the Road:

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It's not entirely true that I didn't plan our Route 66 trip. I did book motels in advance. I wanted to stay in independent motels as much as possible, and Route 66 boasts several that are well known because of their connection to the Mother Road.

Two of those motels really stood out. The first was the Munger Moss Motel…

Read more… 449 more words

When I was a kid, one of my favorite family traditions was to take Sunday drives (well, for me it was a ride) and I must have gotten that from my grandfather. After the big weekly Sunday meal at their house, it was sometimes hard for the family to stay awake and an outing was a sure way to get everyone’s blood circulating and the lungs full of fresh air because we didn’t necessarily take a Sunday drive in the car. We more often than not went in the pickup truck.

The pickup truck, the ubiquitous tool of the Southern man, that vital apparatus so necessary to Southern living was, in most cases, a work truck used for hauling off tree limbs and trash, picking up bags of fertilizer, taking the lawn mower to the service center and picking up supplies for the family restaurant. On a Sunday afternoon however, the pickup truck was the center of a family fun outing that to this day brings back memories of a simpler time and a more leisurely way of life. Pickups came and went as he liked to trade them every couple of years but in every case, the tailgate always said “Chevrolet” and was almost always down.

Since Dad usually had to work the Sunday shift down at Fresh Air Barbecue, he rarely got to come for Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house, leaving Mom to look after my brother Chris and I. In addition, there was my Aunt Charlotte and her two sons, George and David, who were my first cousins, plus of course my grandparents to round out a total of eight going off in the pickup truck. My grandfather always drove and my grandmother and Aunt Charlotte would get in the cab of the pickup while my Mom, who preferred to be outdoors anyway, always rode in the back with the four of us and kept us from doing something stupid like falling off the tailgate.

Back in those days, which really wasn’t that long ago, most of the roads north of Jenkinsburg and in other remote parts of the county were dirt roads. Long, dusty ribbons of red Georgia dirt, they meandered through the farmlands, pastures, forests and pecan orchards that still made up so much of my part of Georgia in the 60′s and 70′s and there was no better time to enjoy them than during the early springtime. The exhilaration of riding in the open air on the tailgate of a pickup truck was, for a kid, enough to overcome the stupor induced by an overindulgence of homemade biscuits and fried chicken any time.

We’d ride up Oak Road, past the big silo and ramshackle barns, yelling at cows and just being noisy in general. We never felt we were in any danger as we watched the road glide by under our bare feet because my grandfather never got above 20 miles per hour. It was a nice, slow pace watching the world go by backwards as clouds of red dust billowed up behind us. We never knew where we were going but we certainly knew where we had just been.

If we got too noisy my grandfather would toot the horn or holler out the window at us. None of his trucks had air conditioning until the 1980′s so the ones sitting up front got plenty of fresh air too. I can just imagine my grandmother’s mortification at the horn blowing and his rather loud voice adding to the noise come from the back. We honestly looked like the Walton family from television albeit 35 years later in history.

Sometimes we’d stop along the way so he could speak to a farmer or someone else on the road that he knew. We passed by old farmhouses, some dating back to the 19th century, big houses painted white with inviting front porches and a tire swing in the front yard. We rode over old bridges made entirely of wood that looked like they were on their last leg and which induced the only moments of fear on the journey as I was sure we were all going into the river this time.

We almost always stopped somewhere on the way to pick up some fresh vegetables that he didn’t grow in his own garden such as corn, okra and squash. These stops introduced us to some interesting people and gave us a chance to stretch our legs a few minutes before it was back into the truck and on to the next destination. It was easy back then to ride long distances on dirt because so many of the roads were still that way and if we touched pavement on our Sunday excursions, it was usually just crossing over one road to continue on to the other side. These were special trips with special people who made memories I will never forget.

Today seemed like the perfect day for a dirt road drive. The weather was partly sunny with only a little wind and the temperature was dead on 70°. The only thing missing was a Chevrolet pickup truck and the rest of my family to make it perfect. One problem was easy enough to solve though. I went and got my grandfather’s pickup truck. The old blue and silver Chevy, now 26 years old, roared to life after a couple of pats to the gas pedal and within a few seconds, all eight cylinders of the big 350 cubic inch motor had settled down into a harmonious rhythm.

My grandfather’s last truck was somewhat of a departure from all the previous workhorses he had owned over the years. I don’t know if he thought it would be his last one or if my grandmother had finally won the battle and convinced him to buy one with a few creature comforts but whatever the case, he went all out on this one. His 1988 model, which he bought in March of 1987, had about all the bells and whistles a pickup truck could have back then, meaning it had air conditioning, power windows and power door locks, plus a radio that had both AM and FM. It even had a cloth bench seat instead of the usual sticky, hot vinyl seats his earlier models had. For a man who loved his Cadillacs, he sure hated to spend money on a truck but this time he did, whatever the reason and he meant to get his money’s worth out of this one.

He drove the truck for nine years, right up to the day before he left us at the age of 89. No one even entertained the thought of selling the truck after he died and the very thought of doing so never entered my grandmother’s mind. Instead, it became something of a family pickup, the kind everyone borrows when they need a truck. I’ve used it many times myself, including two moves, numerous trips to Home Depot for fertilizer and any number of pickup-related tasks. Whenever it was needed, the Chevy Silverado was ready for action, including the occasional dirt road trip.

After my grandmother died, Mom became the caretaker of the pickup and it spent part of 2011 and much of 2012 undergoing a complete restoration. The original interior, except the headliner, was fine but General Motors seemed to forget everything they knew about paint in the 80′s and the Chevrolet’s exterior was a prime example of what happens when good paint goes bad. The bed was removed, everything was scraped and primed, new rubber door seals were installed, a new headliner was added and the air conditioner was rebuilt. Add to that a new paint job and the pickup was in better condition than anything that rolled out of Detroit back then.

My wife and son climbed in and all three of us rode comfortably on the wide, flat bench seat as we headed out in search of a dirt road. Fortunately one was close by and within minutes, we were crawling along with the speedometer perched at 20 mph and dust billowing behind us as the vistas unfolded before our eyes. We passed by farmhouses, some quite modern and new compared to the ones I remembered. We drove by tranquil creeks and pastures full of lazy cows also enjoying the pleasant weather.

Bradford pear trees were in abundance and they were at about 80% of full bloom. Here and there, flowers poked out in places, as their roots drew water from the still-saturated soil, moist from an abundance of rain in the preceding weeks. Some of the roads we used to travel aren’t dirt anymore and we spent almost as much time on paved roads getting from one dirt road to another but they are still in abundance and we enjoyed each one of them. The old pickup performed beautifully and I felt like my grandfather was along for the ride.

The silo is still there on Oak Road and the barn nearby; other old barns have long since collapsed and many have been replaced with metal ones that serve the purpose but are bereft of the old country charm exhibited by their predecessors. Another change was the fair amount of signs warning trespassers that they were under 24-hour camera surveillance. Someone was sure making a lot of money from signs at least, if not video cameras too. Still, despite the encroachment of modern life, the country is still very much the country and the beauty of the trees, the openness of the pastures and the renewal being brought on by Spring was very much in existence.

We eventually wound our way over to the western side of the county and decided to pay a visit to the old cemetery where my great-great-great-great grandparents are buried. Born in 1770, my 4x great grandfather was one of the original settlers to our area and since his time, eight generations of his family have lived here. I made it a point to get a picture of my son while we were there standing next to the monument to people seven generations removed from him but every bit as responsible for his being here as I am. After that we enjoyed the rest of our drive and getting to spend some time together seeing nature in a different way.

Dirt roads are a lot like paved roads in that they can take you from one place to another, just in a different way. How they differ is in the perspective that they offer that is hard to get anywhere else. They force you to slow down your pace a bit and in doing so, they reveal the beauty of nature and the handiwork of God all around you. You notice things on dirt roads that you won’t see on a highway or an interstate because you can actually pay attention to what is around you. You can stop and smell the air and enjoy being away from traffic jams and convenience stores and you won’t miss them either. You won’t (usually) see someone driving 60 on a dirt road (there are fools occasionally though) because they just aren’t designed for that. They are pathways that take us back in time to a simpler way of life and a more measured pace of living.

Sure, they are dusty and when it rains they are muddy and can sometimes become impassable. They often aren’t wide enough in places and they can easily be damaged by the elements and those that abuse them. You might get bumped around some and you sure won’t get anywhere in a hurry but isn’t that the point? Dirt roads remind us to do what we should do more often…to enjoy the time we are given with those we care about, to notice the beauty that surrounds us everyday, to think back on good times and special memories and to always anticipate what lies around the curve ahead.

I am a United Methodist, which I suppose if you want to put it in terms that are easy to understand, is sort of a grandchild of the Roman Catholic Church. We sprang from the Episcopal Church or the Church of England if you prefer, which sprang from the Catholic Church when the Protestants broke away and formed their own church. A healthy dose of our liturgy and ceremony comes from the Episcopal Church and much of theirs comes from the Catholic Church so we are all related in several ways. While there are differences both small and large, at the core we are all Christians and we know from where our roots sprang.

It is this sense of spiritual relationship that binds Christians together and although my church doesn’t have a Pope (or even an Archbishop for that matter), it doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the Pope and what he stands for as the head of the Church that eventually gave me the church I come from. You can’t be the head of the largest Christian denomination in the world and not have a significant impact on Christians the world over.

When Paul VI died in 1978, I don’t think I really had much of an idea of what the Pope was or the significance of the position. John Paul I followed him and then died only a few weeks later, paving the way for John Paul II to ascend to the papacy. Like most people my age and younger, most of our lives consisted of the reign of John Paul II and only one Pope ever served longer than he did and that was a hundred years before he came along. I think it is for that reason that his death in 2005 was a shock to me because I really hadn’t known the world of Christianity without his long and significant shadow being a part of it.

In many ways I felt sorry for Pope Benedict XVI who came after him. No one in their right mind would ever want to succeed one of the most popular Popes in history. It’s never easy to step into the shoes of a great leader and to follow behind someone who is acknowledged to be the standard by which most others are judged. This in itself was a cross that Benedict took upon himself, knowing he was following someone that he himself venerated.

When he was elected, many immediately labeled him as a “transitional Pope” just because of his age. Whether that was true or not isn’t for me to say and I certainly won’t judge him or his papacy. Really, isn’t every Pope a transitional Pope between the one they follow and the one who will follow them? I have no doubt from what I have seen that he is a good and holy man and that is enough for me.

The Pope is a standard-bearer for a lot of Christians all over the world. While he is, first and foremost, the standard-bearer for Catholics, he still speaks with the loudest and most far-reaching voice for Christians around the globe. Right now, Pope Francis is the focus of Christians for all the new things he brings to the table, all the firsts he represents, all the aspirations we collectively have and the overall sense of renewal that comes with a new Pope. His influence eventually touches all Christians in some way.

In my church, the Bishop of our Conference is the highest ranking official we have and he is just one of many Bishops in Conferences all over the world. We respect our Bishops, all men and women of strong Christian faith and character, yet I sometimes envy the Episcopal Church for having their Archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic Church for having their Pope. There is a lot to be said for having a central leader that sits at the head of a Church and who serves as the spiritual representation of our beliefs and our doctrine but I also know that this wasn’t the path the Methodists were set upon. Our system has worked, sometimes well, sometimes with bumps in the road, for a couple of hundred years anyway.

Still, having followed all the news, read hundreds of “Tweets” and sifted through many opinions written by others, I have been uplifted at outpouring of Christian faith, just as I have also been dismayed at the acrimonious venom spewed by others. Some have called for an end to the Papacy, calling it outdated and unnecessary in today’s world and claiming it to be out of touch with what Christians want today. When did it become about what we want and stop becoming about what God wants? Who are we to determine and define what Christianity is when that has been done for us?

Christianity is about accepting what God wants from us and in the way God expects us to receive it. If we don’t want it for what it is, we don’t have to accept it. We have that freedom of will to choose. Christianity is about giving in to the will of God and not shaping God into what we want Him to be. It’s pretty much that simple.

The Pope is to the Catholic Church and really, to Christians everywhere, the oldest and longest lasting link to the very foundations and origins of the Christian faith, dating back to Peter, a Disciple of Jesus Christ. As a traditionalist, I embrace the longstanding traditions that date back so many centuries, that fly in the face of a modern world and while I think the Church can grow and change with the times, I think we can also hold on to traditions that date back to the beginnings of it. The Church is one of the few things that can be all things to all people when we accept it.

My grandfather wrote a sermon once that I later preached as my very first sermon. It is the only one of his that I have ever used but I needed to feel his strength that first time and I chose one that I was reminded of today because in that sermon, he mentioned St. Francis of Assisi. He quoted St. Francis when he said “It is of no use, my son, to walk anywhere to preach unless we preach everywhere as we walk.”  When they announced Pope Francis, it made me smile to think about that, especially after hearing of what a Godly and humble servant he was as a Cardinal Priest. I hope he lives up to the example of St. Francis.

Today is a day of celebration. We have witnessed a historic moment in the history of Christianity, regardless of the denomination. The election of a new Pope brought Christians together for a moment in common and shared wonder, in both prayer and in celebration and when we pray together and celebrate together, we are reminded that the differences that separate us are far less important than the common threads which bind us together.

The “What do you do?” question is one that I get a lot. It’s not always easy to define what being a County Administrator is, much less explain what all it involves. A doctor doesn’t have to explain what being a doctor is. A firefighter usually only has to explain once to a group of school children what they do and the child will remember it the rest of their lives. In the part of the country where I live, a taxidermist doesn’t even have to go into detail.

My day pretty much is divided up into three parts: morning, work and evening. Not much happens in the morning other than getting ready for work. A lot more happens in the evening during the time of getting over work. This is, more or less, a typical day for me though and sometimes they are smooth and sometimes they feel like you’re riding on four flat tires. To answer the question of “what do I do?”, here is a snapshot of one day in my life.

6:01 AM. My day begins when I wake up with Don Earnhart. Of course, Don is the local radio station owner so a lot of people wake up with Don. His wife Suzanne doesn’t seem to mind. Why 6:01 you might ask? Because my alarm clock’s snooze button works in 9 minute increments. I don’t know who thought that up or why but it seems to be common and since I like to hit the snooze button at least once, 6:01 allows me the extra nine minutes of sleep that I want and then I can get up precisely at 6:10. Whether I do or not depends on whether there is music or a good story on the radio. It almost invariably ends up being 6:19 when I finally get out of the bed.

6:19 AM. The first order of business is to get the boy up. The boy, who is 8 and going on 9 very much enjoys his sleep…he’s not not a morning person and he is very consistent about that. For example, most boys leap out of bed on Christmas morning and drag us to the Christmas tree. In our family, my wife and I get up, get a shower, have our coffee and start breakfast before going and dragging him out of the bed to see what Santa brought him. Usually the only way to get him up and get him dressed is if I promise him that if he hurries, he can lay back down on our bed for another ten minutes. He does this and goes promptly back into a deep sleep.

7:00 AM. After getting through all the morning routines, which includes feeding the cat, walking the dog and feeding him and at least two trips back into the house to get something I forgot, I am usually sitting in the drive thru of the local McDonalds waiting on my coffee and my sausage-egg McMuffin. I rarely eat lunch so breakfast is a necessity and coffee helps sustain life. I usually have time to read at least two articles on my iPad from the New York Times as the line winds its way around the building. Because I am consistent, I frequently can pull up to the speaker and say “Good Morning” and they’ll just say “$4.06, drive around”. I know, its pretty sad when McDonalds knows your order. Every now and then I’ll order a chicken biscuit just to shake things up. Usually when I do, they just put the usual in the bag anyway.

This morning, the drive thru is running smoothly, they were taking debit cards (some days they do, some they don’t) and they weren’t out of large coffee cups so the wait wasn’t long. If there is a serious problem at McDonalds such as being out of coffee (rare) or the place has a fire and the fire truck has to come (less rare), I’ll usually post something to Facebook from my iPhone to let others know they need to make alternate plans and I head two buildings over to the Burger King (which is never equipped for the breakfast rush that only seems to come when McDonalds has a serious malfunction). Burger King has Seattle’s Best coffee which is owned by Starbucks (good) but they don’t put the cream and sugar in the coffee like McDonald’s does (bad) so I have to wait until I get to work to start on my coffee.

7:10 AM. I arrive at work and head to my office. While eating my breakfast, I check my email, respond to a request from another county who needs an RFP or “Request for Proposal” that I just happen to have. The phone rings and since the office doesn’t open for another 40 minutes, the call has worked its way from the reception desk all the way back to my office. The caller wants to know about Federal aid and after deciphering what the problem is, I determine that he really needs to call the State and give him the number, reminding them that they probably won’t answer until after 8:00 AM so he may need to wait. I use the rest of my quiet time to finish checking emails, go over my schedule for they day and write a short news release about an upcoming meeting.

8:00 AM. In the quiet, I can hear the sounds of doors opening and closing as the employees are arriving at work. Through the ventilation system, I can tell that several are getting coffee in the break room and that someone is invariably using a speakerphone in their office that everyone in the building can hear. This particular morning I have an interview scheduled with a candidate for a job so I am going through various parts of the applicant’s resume and qualifications, gauging strong and weak points and making a list of questions that will help me identify the suitability of the candidate. Three phone calls. One is about a road that needs paving but it turns out the road is privately owned so there isn’t anything we can do about it right now. Two of them are routine business calls but between the three calls, about 35 minutes of the hour have been eaten up.

9:00 AM. Out of coffee. An email comes in about one of the bills working its way through the legislature that, if passed, will allow wireless phone providers to put cellular towers where they want to regardless of the local government’s position or zoning. While I certainly agree that cellular towers are a necessity and a present day reality, I am not in agreement that just because their companies have a powerful lobbying force that the voice of the people, their local elected officials, can have their power to represent their constituents removed from them by the state. The counties have a lobby as well to help get their position across but in the face of billion dollar corporations, ours is a tiny voice that can easily be overlooked. Meanwhile, two more calls come in with another 15 or so minutes consumed.

10:00 AM. Coffee replenished. Back to work on the resumes. A text message comes in on my iPhone from an attorney handling a case for us. He needs some information and I provide him with which county employee he can get it from and he updates me on a pending case. When I finish and exit out, I see the text message I got from my eight year old the previous day. He had been spending the night at a friend’s house and got “a little bit homesick”. We went back and forth a bit and then I called him and talked to him until he felt better. I plan to keep his message to remind me of this time when he is still little and needs his Daddy. I know those days will soon be in the past and it makes me sad when I think about that.

A department head drops in with a request for a part-time employee to do some limited duration work. Since the position is not funded in the budget currently but the work that would be performed by the employee is critical to a certain process going on in the department, I tell him that I will have to research whether funding can be pulled from another area. This is where it becomes a balancing act. The position needed will ensure a project gets completed in a timely manner and without the position, the project will be delayed which in the end could potentially cost more than the amount needed to secure a temp. Pay now or pay later becomes the question.

11:00 AM. Time for the interview. During the hourlong session, I get about six emails and two phone calls. After the interview, a department head calls to tell me about a broken door that could cause a security issue. I find the head of the maintenance department and send him to fix the door. Meanwhile, our insurance broker arrives to discuss the impact of healthcare reform on our county.

12:15 PM. I meet with the insurance broker and the Chairman of my board to discuss our insurance program and Federal healthcare reform, known by many as “Obamacare”. Much to my dismay, I learned that the new healthcare reform program is going to cost the County an additional $60,000 in what basically amounts to new taxes and that none of our 212 employees will see any benefit from it at all. All I can think about is $60,000 that could have funded two needed firefighters in next year’s budget. Or two automated defibrillators for our building. For a small county government, $60,000 is a lot of money.

1:30 PM. Lunch meeting, which I usually don’t do but since there are business matters to discuss, we head to Hunters, a local establishment that has been in business for a long time in various locations. Fried chicken, green beans and real mashed potatoes too. It’s going to be a long afternoon with an extra meal that I don’t really need as I’m trying to keep off the 70 pounds I shed two years ago.

2:30 PM. Thank God for my personal Keurig coffee maker at work. It’s the best money I ever spent. Time to catch up on emails. Fourteen are waiting in the inbox, plus I have to check the junk mail for strays that wind up there every day. Two are from the County Attorney with legal opinions on various matters. County governments have a range of issues going on at any given time and juggling is a necessary skill to keep all those balls in the air. Some of them require legal interpretation and safeguards against possible litigation.

The County Attorney is a County Administrator’s best friend at times and it is helpful when you have worked with the same one for many years because you learn not to take constructive criticism personally. Law has always fascinated me and when I look at an issue, I try to put on my “lawyer” hat and think the way an attorney does and it is satisfying when my County Attorney confirms my interpretation of a matter.

3:00 PM. I take a meeting with the Code Enforcement officer about a personnel matter, followed by a discussion about his current caseload and what issues he is dealing with. The code enforcement officer’s job is not an easy one. Most of the issues he deals with is making sure that county codes are followed and enforcing them…everything from dilapidated houses and unkept lawns to junked cars and illegal disposal of dangerous materials, all of which keeps the code enforcement officer busy. Because we are a small government and only have one officer to enforce code, most of his time is spent dealing with complaint issues…there just isn’t a lot of time for proactive policing of code violations. Still, I can see progress in this area taking place and a few others have noticed too.

3:30 PM. I find myself picking up a policy revision I’ve been working on that will update our vacation and sick leave policies. Most of the revisions are tweaks but a few substantive changes will hopefully make things easier for the employees once the transitionary period is overcome. Between typing, I take a call from the chairman of my board and another of my commissioners. Commissioners, in addition to being local level legislators and policymakers are frequently the conduit of information about things the public have concerns about…roads that need scraping or fixing, site attendant issues at the solid waste sites and development issues are frequent topics of discussion but there are a lot more.

Citizen complaints come in directly too. One of the earlier calls in the day was from a citizen who complained about a firefighter he saw somewhere that he didn’t think he should be there on duty. It turned out the firefighter was from another county and had stopped in the parts store on his way home from work. Some are not as easy to explain and some are not easy to correct but I usually find a solution and if I can’t, I have a network of other County Administrators I can turn to for experienced answers.

4:30 PM. It’s time to check the mailbox and see what has come in for the day. I’m convinced that the reasons our rain forests are disappearing at such an alarming rate is directly related to the incredible amount of junk mail we get. My box is full of brochures and flyers from vendors of all sorts, each one trying to get a piece of the public funding pie. The empty trash can of earlier that morning is now a testament to the fact that junk mail is what keeps the U.S. Postal Service in business. There are, however, a few manilla envelopes that aren’t junk and which require my attention so I spend the rest of the time at work going through the legitimate mail, comment where necessary and forward them on to the appropriate department head to be handled.

5:15 PM. It’s time to go home. I enjoy going to work every day but after 10 hours of work, 16 phone calls, a bazillion emails, four unscheduled office vists, one lunch and a partridge in a pear tree, I’m ready to leave the office behind. The drive home is short, only two and a half miles but its productive as I can use that time to return a call from someone I missed earlier.

5:30 PM. My tireless son, who I am convinced is visited by someone in the middle of the night to inject him with “Red Bull”, wants to play catch. Since I can’t throw a baseball with any degree of accuracy, we developed our system using a tennis ball. Tennis was about the only sport I was ever any good at and that I enjoyed playing; his favorite sport is baseball so I serve the tennis ball to him (which is basically the same size as a baseball) and he runs and catches the ball and throws it back to me, allowing me to practice my return. The benefits to this method is that I can hit the ball pretty much anywhere I want it to go-high up for field catches, off the driveway for ground balls and so forth. Another benefit is if he misses the catch or I miss his throw, the tennis ball is soft and doesn’t damage anything.

6:30 PM. My wife has a City Council meeting so we are left at home to our own devices. My son decides he wants a pizza for dinner from the freezer and I decide to have a bowl of Special K since I’m not hungry and had lunch. After dinner, we settle down for television. Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Sponge Bob Squarepants. Believe me, I know. It’s his favorite cartoon and they run many each night on TV.

9:00 PM. Time for my son to go to bed. This is an every-night routine with us. He has to go to bed and he doesn’t want to. He is a night owl, like his father, and would stay up all night if we let him. Getting him in bed is the first step. First, he wanted to stay up until his mother got home. Since she had texted me and told me she would be home shortly, I let him stay up a few extra minutes so he could say good night to her. Once he is in the bed, he will then get up about 10 minutes later to use the bathroom, then he will get up again about 15 minutes later and get a drink of water. I know because he comes to the den to report this each time he gets up. It’s almost comical at times the way he “checks in” with us before he does anything. I’m not going to argue about it because I know there will come a time soon where he won’t tell us anything and we’ll always be wondering what he’s up to. It’s just another aspect of his childhood that is here today and will be gone tomorrow. Like playing catch with a tennis ball.

10:00 PM. I realized that I had forgotten to watch “Dallas” the night before but fortunately, the trusty DVR took care of that and I can watch it now. I was a big fan of the show in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s when it first ran in prime time. I was very pleased when I found out that it was coming back to television last year and even more pleased that they didn’t goof it up. It’s better than it was back then, darker and more serious. I think both versions are reflective of the times they were shown in because we live in a darker, more troubled world in 2013 than we did in the 70′s.

It’s bittersweet in some ways because as I watch this episode, I know it is one of the last ones that veteran actor Larry Hagman will appear in. He died just a few months ago while they were still filming this season and only got to appear in the first half of it.  There will never be another J.R. Ewing, although his son is doing his best to out-JR his father in the show.

12:30 AM. That’s about all I can handle for one day. At this hour, its getting hard for me to keep my eyes open and I’ve read the same page twice. I’ll walk the dog, check all the doors, give the cat a snack so he’ll settle down and head off to bed. I rarely ever get to bed before midnight unless I don’t feel well and frequently will stay up to 1:00 AM if I’m not too tired but tonight I’m ready for bed now. The good news is I usually go to sleep within minutes and can function on 5 hours of sleep without slowing down too much. The lights are off and sleep is not far away now.

I still say my prayers at bedtime, the way I was taught and raised. Sometimes I think I fall asleep in the middle of them but I know God already knows what I was going to say. Maybe He puts me to sleep to keep me from running on too long. He’s pretty busy and there are a lot of people calling for His attention. I thank Him for my day and my family and my health. I ask Him for help for those I know need it and to forgive me for all my shortcomings. I close my eyes and the next thing I know, Don is talking on the radio again.

Time to do it all over again.

Andy tries to counsel him to be cautious about the purchase but Barney is immediately taken in by the kindly old widow, Mrs. Lesch (wonderfully portrayed by Ellen Corby, aka “Grandma Walton”) whose late husband coincidentally shared his proper name with Barney and who treasured the car. Barney buys the vehicle of course and one of the funniest scenes in television follows with the car breaking down several times amid the sounds of grinding gears and failing parts. Barney has just purchased a $300.00 lemon.

It wasn’t so much the part of the show where Barney finds out his car is a lemon that I relate to as much as the visible joy on his face when the car first comes in sight. There is nothing in the world that adequately describes the feeling of that first time seeing what will be your very first car and 31 years after that experience for me, I can still remember how it felt when that happened to me.

Just a few weeks before my 16th birthday, Dad came home unexpectedly in the middle of the day. I was sitting in the den watching something on television with my brother when he walked in and said he had something to show us. We jumped up immediately because anytime Dad said he had something to show us, we knew it was going to be something worth getting up to see. He was always bringing something home-a car, a pickup truck, a cat from the family restaurant…one time a bus. Yes, he bought a bus once that he got a deal on so he could flip it and make a few extra dollars. Dad enjoyed buying and selling cars more than anyone I ever knew, much to my mother’s dismay I’m afraid. We were banking on a helicopter this time.

As it turned out, a helicopter was not to be in the cards for us but I didn’t really care at the moment. I didn’t now how to fly one anyway but I sure knew how to drive a car and when Dad handed me the keys to the 1975 Ford Elite that sat shining in the driveway and told me it was mine, I had an epiphanic moment that I had never experienced before and to date, have never experienced again. Like Barney, I was suddenly Mr. Independent Wheels.

Except I wasn’t…not quite yet. I still had two weeks to go before my 16th birthday; until then, I was at the mercy of my parents good graces. Dad did let me drive him around in the car for a little while that day but with his work schedule and my mother’s fear of my driving, the time my car and I got to spend together was mostly in the driveway. I spent the time getting to know my new ride intimately.

My Elite was seven years old when Dad bought it for me and while many of my past “rides” have faded from memory, I can still remember the details of this car quite well. First off was the color…Ginger Glow Metallic. This was a fancy way of saying “Brown”. Brown with a saddle colored vinyl padded top. This was a 1975 model and padded vinyl tops were the height of automotive fashion at that time. It had a big grille and large round headlights with a stand-up hood ornament on the end (another fashion statement that would carry on into the 1990′s).

It was a good thing that it had a hood ornament too because the hood was as long as the landing deck of an aircraft carrier and without it, it was hard to judge from the driver’s seat just where the front end of this behemoth began. It was also a coupe (coo pay as Barney would pronounce it) aka as a two-door car and what doors they were…when fully opened and extended the car had a wider wingspan than a Boeing 747-they were long and weighed a ton. Getting in and out was a breeze but God help you if you ever parked in a narrow space between two other vehicles and mine did not have the optional sunroof which could have been used as a backup escape route in such occurrences.

As a matter of fact, my car had very options at all. The few that it did have consisted of an AM-FM radio, a passenger side rearview mirror and air conditioning. The driver side mirror, automatic transmission, power steering and power brakes were all standard. It also had a set of white wall tires fitted with wire wheel hub caps that the previous owner had taken from a Ford LTD. Chrome trim was everywhere…over the wheel wells, around the grille, the roof moldings and of course, the front and rear bumper.

The inside was upholstered in medium brown “Westminster” cloth which covered a full-length bench seat. This was the kind of seat where if the driver pulled the lever to move the seat, everyone in the front seat went with them. The back seat had a clear vinyl seat cover installed over the original upholstery to keep it new. My brother still loves to poke fun at the slippery vinyl cover over that seat. The doors and dashboard were covered in thick padded vinyl and a forest of plastic wood grain trim gave it a touch of overwrought elegance and class.

Billed as a “Mid-sized car in the Thunderbird tradition”, the Elite was the epitome of a 1970′s automobile with pretensions of grandeur, from its vinyl roof with dual “opera windows” to its faux wire wheel hub caps. Sold for three model years as a lower priced alternative to the then-venerated Ford Thunderbird, the Elite was the car for young people on the move in 1975.

In 1982 however, its time was already past and it’s kind was well on the way out in favor of more fuel-efficient cars. For me though, it was my first car and each time I saw it, I would swell with pride at its shiny metallic brown paint and long sloping hood. Mid sized it might have been in its day but compared to what passes for a midsize car in 2013, the Elite was a land yacht that was a lot to handle when my birthday finally came and my license was in hand.

For starters, the car was a whopping 18 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. That’s almost two and a half feet longer than my 2012 midsize car and nearly half a foot wider. 16 feet of that was the hood. Okay, not really but it seemed like it. Cruising behind the big, hard plastic steering wheel, I felt like the Captain of my own ship because it handled only slightly better than the Queen Mary and because parking it was something akin to docking a boat. Backing up was worse because the narrow window and huge pillars made rear visibility virtually nonexistent and during the two years I had it, I managed to back over one bicycle, a couple of metal trash cans and a friend’s brand new Chevy Camaro.

The car was not without its virtues though. For one thing, it would run like a politician. One of the reasons the car had such a long front end was because underneath that hood was a monster sized engine consisting of 351 cubic inches of Detroit motor with eight pulsing cylinders and four wide-open carburetor barrels, all humming with raw Ford power. It took a lot to get a car that size moving but the Elite had what it took and I often found myself at wide open throttle heading down the open roads and highways in the county in which I still live.

It took all of two days for every police officer in the county to know my car and who was driving it…in fact I was pulled over just a couple of days after I got my driver’s license because one of the neighbors called the police and told them I was driving without a license. With the car came freedom to go where I wanted when I wanted to, held back by only two things: gasoline and repairs.

First off, the car held just over 26 gallons of gasoline and when I turned 16, gas was at an all time high of $1.50 something a gallon. That sounds wonderful today but in 1982, that was a lot of money for a gallon of gasoline. Considering that I didn’t have a job other than some work in the family restaurant for $3.00 an hour, my earnings were pretty low and then there was the gas mileage of the car itself to consider…with my driving habits, I was lucky to get 12 miles to the gallon so my independence on the weekends consisted mostly of cruising around town and parking on the square. Every $5 and $10 bill I managed to get usually went right into the tank. The car spent most of its life with the fuel needle perched somewhere between empty and a quarter of a tank. Birthdays and Christmas was about the only time I had enough money to see the needle anywhere near the “F” on the fuel gauge.

Then there was the upkeep of the car. Whoever owned the Elite before Dad got it had taken very good care of it so that it looked brand new when he got it. I’m sure the person that drove it was probably some little old lady who never went over 40 miles an hour and babied the car so it wasn’t quite prepared for the undeserved treatment it suddenly found itself subjected to in its twilight years. Tire burnouts, high-speed runs and traveling around town with sometimes as many as eight people took a harsh toll on its motor, tires, shocks, springs and general appearance.

The Ford Elite kept Maurice Biles in business. In two years, it went through three sets of white wall tires, several alternators and batteries, a shock absorber, muffler, belts, hoses and a variety of other items. Most of these were paid for by Dad who once tried to cut his losses by buying me an AMC Pacer to replace it. I wouldn’t have any part of the Pacer and stuck to the Elite, despite its troublesome record of reliability.

It overheated. It sometimes wouldn’t crank. The brakes went out on it one time and it managed to lose a few wire hub caps, resulting in mismatched Ford wheel covers on one side. It was a bear to change a flat tire on and it backfired now and then. Despite everything, it never had a problem drinking gasoline or oil for that matter. I learned early to keep a box of Quaker State in the trunk for emergencies.

One thing that never failed until the end was the air conditioning. Ford automobiles of the 1970′s had some of the best air conditioners around and mine could have been used for a backup if our refrigerator had ever died. I once turned it on full blast for an hour and used a thermometer to see how cold we could get the interior. In the heat of summer, the Elite got down to a near-frosty 51 degrees after an hour at full speed.

Other things were not so reliable. One day I cranked it up and the motor caught on fire. Seriously, there were flames coming from under the hood. Fortunately, Emory Spencer, a neighbor who sometimes helped me fix the car came running and with him, Terry King, a firefighter who happened to be visiting. They got the fire out before any serious damage occurred and after a new paint job on the hood and a new carburetor, the Elite was on the road again.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the time I evaded Barney Wilder, a local police officer who had once been the Sheriff of the county or the time I ran over a friend’s dog and got a tongue lashing that I have never forgotten (the dog did run out in front of me and I couldn’t avoid it). Suffice to say considering the way I drove, the number of friends who rode with me and the Elite itself, I am very fortunate that God watched after this particular teenage driver.

Two years afterwards, on my eighteenth birthday, my Dad brought home another car for me, a Honda Civic hatchback that got double the mileage of the Elite and was about half as big. By then, the Elite looked every bit of its nine years of age, covered with dents, dings, chipped paint, cracked windshield, seats with busted springs and, in the end, a non-working air conditioner, a necessity in Georgia. A friend of my Dad bought the Elite for a few hundred dollars and shortly thereafter wrecked it beyond repair.

The Civic was practical, reliable and fuel-efficient and it served me well for the next several years but it was never the car, the automobile that my 1975 Ford Elite had been. The Elite had presence, the Elite had power and despite all of its shortcomings, it was darn fun to drive. Every now and then, rarely, I will spot one going down the road, usually a perfectly restored example proudly owned by some car collector and for just a moment, I’ll feel that same sense of joy and excitement that my own Elite elicited from me over three decades ago. I wish I had been more appreciative of it back then and maybe had kept it going as I would love to have it today.

I’d need a larger, 1970′s sized garage though and I imagine if I ever find one and bring it home with me, my wife will make me sleep in it. Rest in peace, faithful friend.

Each year as we approach this day, the word “love” begins to get a lot more attention than it does most other times of the year. Different people delineate the day in a large variety of ways so there really isn’t a set way to celebrate it or a pure definition for what it is-so to put it simply, it is a day set aside to acknowledge and honor those that we love in all the different ways we love somebody.

For some men, it is a time of dread because the expectations of a girlfriend or a wife may be different from what the man had in mind. For some women, it is an anxious time-will that long-awaited proposal be forthcoming this Valentine’s Day? Will he surprise her with flowers and chocolates, that old, time-honored tradition of the day or will he truly devote the time and effort that reflects how he feels about her? We tell everyone at Christmas that “It’s not the gift, it’s the thought that counts” but the rules are a bit different near Valentine’s Day because it’s more about the effort than the thought.

I didn’t get that for a long time. In grade school, Valentine’s Day meant a class party on the day closest to it. Your mother took you to the dime store (that’s a dollar store today) and you went home with a small box of little Valentine cards, usually with some cartoonish character printed on the front and a snappy line that always said “Be my Valentine” somewhere on it. Armed with a pencil and a list of your classmates, you sat down and signed your name to each card, then you put the name of each classmate on the small enclosed envelopes and a card went into each one.

For your best friends, you picked the cards you liked the best and the rest were just inserted and sealed. Licking the glue on the envelope was the first treat of Valentine’s Day or not, depending on whether you liked the taste. As my son filled out his cards this year, I was glad to see that very little had changed in this annual ritual of the cards. At the actual party, cupcakes and Kool-Aid would be served, plus a few of the little candy hearts that are still a staple of Valentines celebrations today. Everyone would read what their hearts said, cut up some about it and then each kid got to go around the room and distribute his or her Valentine cards to the classmates. The girls usually wrote silly stuff on their cards; the boys just did good to sign their names legibly. Of course, since everyone’s parents took them to pretty much the same place and bought the same card packs, you were bound to get repeats of the same card-and if you got one of your favorite ones from somebody else, they went up a notch in your eyes.

In high school, Valentine’s Day meant craziness and interrupted schedules most of the day as the local flower shops made frequent deliveries to the campus all day long. The teachers were usually pretty good-natured about it as girls all over campus were surprised by the delivery of some pink carnations and, if you were somebody’s really special somebody, roses. The girls carried those little white bud vases around with them all day so that everyone could admire the flowers and congratulate the recipient. Sometimes a guy might get flowers from his girl but these usually ended up in a locker, to be snuck out after school.

After high school, some got married and some didn’t but Valentine’s Day marched on and it flourished. The local florists would draft anyone who had a decent car and could tell a flower from a tree to help-either assembling the arrangements, delivering them or both. I helped Miss Susannah at Flowerland one year and spent most of the afternoon assembling the same arrangement over and over from a picture provided by FTD. Phone calls went ignored at the store on that day because if you hadn’t gotten your order in before the actual day, you were pretty much out of luck or forced to come to the flower shop and pick something out of the shelves where some generic arrangements were always out.

These scenarios, from grade school to high school to adulthood are still played out each year at Valentine’s Day in cities and states all over the nation but even after decades of commercialized exposure to it, do we ever really stop and think about what we are celebrating? We are celebrating love, one of the most used and least understood words in our language.

While love is defined in the clinical sense as a profound sense of affection, attraction to or desire for something, be that a person or a thing, a place or an ideal, it really doesn’t take into account the depth of it and how it comes into being. Men don’t always like the word; women usually do like it and there are probably few other words that highlight the differences in how a man expresses himself and how a woman expresses herself than the word love does. Believe me, as a man, it is a lot easier for me to write about it than it is to talk about it so here are the loves in my life.

I love my parents-my love for them goes back to a time before I have memory and it began as a love of dependency into a love caring and respect. Not that we always agreed, nor will we ever agree on everything but my love for my parents and let me add, my grandparents has always been constant and it is returned. I knew my parents loved me because my father got up every morning early and worked in a restaurant twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week for YEARS to support his family and make sure that we had all that we needed and a lot of things that we didn’t.

My mother worked at home for the family business, juggling the financial books with raising two children and cooking meals for all of us every night. My grandparents filled in wherever the need presented itself. These figures loom large in my lifetime, for they all made sacrifices for my brother and I, big ones now and then and a whole lot of little small ones that add up over time. Even when I have failed them, they didn’t stop their love or change how they felt-it was and is a constant to this day.

I love my brother-as I have written before, he is the one person that comes from the same background, genetic composition and environment as I do and who is the most like me-yet we are also very much our own person. An older brother such as I am accepts a younger brother for who he is, takes pride when he achieves something (especially if you contributed to the achievement) and teaches them all you can to help them along the way. A younger brother accepts that the older brother isn’t always right but trusts him not to steer him too far off the road. This kind of love comes from shared experiences, bonds of unerring trust and mutual respect, forged over many years.

Over my life, I have been blessed to have friends and cousins that I love like brothers and sisters-some younger, some older-that I have a bond with, either by blood or by choice, and through shared experiences and memories have come to claim them as immediate family. Likewise, there are older friends, those my parents age and older, who have become family through the same process and you can never have too many mothers, fathers and grandparents looking out for you. Family love is the most enduring and goes back the farthest and you can count yourself lucky if you never live a day of your life without some form of it.

So you go along, sustained by your family and your friends and then one day you run into a different kind of love and that is the kind that brings someone into your life to share that life with you. That happened to me one day and I don’t know how I was lucky enough to find her and to find somebody that would put up with all my bad habits. She has hung in there through good times and bad times and I won’t embarrass her too much by going into all the things that I love about her but I hope she knows that I love her and I hope she knows why I love her.

Ok, I’ll go into a few things. One, she is protective of the people she loves and she is loyal to a fault. If I ever find myself going into a fight, she is the one I want by my side. Two, she has always been supportive of me in whatever I have tried to do, be it work, community or wanting to write. It’s easy for some people to rain on other people’s parade but not her-she is encouraging and supportive to me. Third, I love to hear her laugh, see her smile and watch her when she does both. After all these years she still laughs at some of the things I say and I am determined to keep coming up with new material for her. Four, I love her for the way she tries to do things where they are needed, even when she is tired, like helping with programs at church or our son’s school and giving of her time and talent that way. Fifth, I love her as a mother to our child and being a mother suits her. As my wife, I don’t tell her often enough how much I appreciate who she is and what she means to me.

Finally, I love my son. There is nothing in the world that can compare to the love one has for their children except maybe how wonderful it is to have that loved returned tenfold. At his current age, he is always happy to see me, always wants to spend time with me, always wants me to tell him about things and always wants to impress me with what he has learned to do each day. I didn’t care whether he was a boy or a girl when he was “baking”; all I wanted was a happy and healthy child and that’s what I got but I have always thought God threw in a lot of extras with him and I am even more grateful for that.

Children can make the things that look old and overly familiar to you become brand-new again when seen through their eyes and it helps you to gain a new perspective. It’s also very satisfying when I see traces of myself-and occasionally, outright duplication-in something that he says and does, or even an expression he makes-but sometimes it reminds you that you have habits and mannerisms that you would prefer NOT to pass on to him. No matter how you cut it though, it’s always fresh and new, an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. You only think you know the meaning of unconditional love until you have a child; then the meaning really becomes clear.

Valentine’s Day is about love, in all its many forms, in all the ways it can be expressed and in all the meanings it has for each one of us. One of my favorite passages of scripture is from First Corinthians 13: Love is patient, love is kind. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant….Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love is never meant to be kept to one’s self; it is meant to be shared with others, invested in others and in doing so, you make an investment that pays the best dividends you could ever hope for. Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Originally published 02/14/2011

When a Pope is chosen by (and from among) the College of Cardinals, each is asked the same question by the Supreme Elector of the Church: “Do you accept election?”. In the life of a person who is destined to become the Pope, that question and the answer that follows it will be the single most important decision that the individual will likely ever make. Of course, any candidate for such a unique and influential position knows when they enter the conclave what their answer would likely be if they are chosen but I’m sure it feels very different when your electors are standing there in front of you actually asking that question.

What they should be asking the candidate is more like this: Do you accept that for the rest of your natural life, you will become the head of the largest Christian church in the world, responsible for the message, the outreach and the mission of the Church and countries in which this church exists; that you will be acknowledged to be the absolute final word on anything related to church doctrine and belief; that your life, in addition to belonging to God will now also belong to billions of people who will look to you for leadership and that the only escape from this will be your death?

No single question asked to any individual will likely ever carry that kind of weight and responsibility. To the man who accepts it, he has just accepted a prison sentence that, but for an act of desperate measures, will be with him for the rest of his days. To be sure, the Pope lives in the religious equivalent of a castle; he has attendants and assistants that help him with every need and who manage nearly every minute of his life. He wants for nothing in the material way, yet he has just given himself to pretty much every person, even those who are not of the Catholic or even the Christian faith because he is still looked to for leadership and guidance by so many.

Very few in the world can truly understand the burden that holding a position of such importance carries with it but there are a handful. Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, who at 86 years old is only a year older than Pope Benedict, is one such example. When she ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1952, she was only 26 years old and since that day forward she has carried the burden of wearing the crown for the most important monarchy in the world. Like the Pope, she carries the additional burden of being the head of the Church of England, which includes the Episcopal Church here in the United States. She wasn’t born to be the Queen but she had little choice in the matter when the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII, forced her father to become the King, putting her directly in the line of succession. At least she had the 16 years that her father served to contemplate and prepare herself for own ascension to the throne.

While the methods by which a Pope is chosen or a Monarch succeeds to the throne differ, in the end they both carry the same burdens; life, in the service of others; scrutiny, by the press, the people and leaders all over the world; sacrifices, of time, of personal needs and eventually, of ones health. Most, though not all, who reach the age of 85 and 86 can barely do the normal tasks associated with everyday living. I can’t imagine having to do those tasks as well as endure the rigors of 16-hour days taking care of the business of the Vatican or Buckingham Palace.

In most cases throughout history, the Popes are chosen at a point where the best years of their lives have already been spent. The passion of a young priest, the physical abilities and stamina to do mission work, the drive to get up each day and do the work that has been set before them, all begin to fade as the years advance. Pope John Paul II was chosen when he 58 and he was considered young by the standards of most chosen to wear the crown of St. Peter. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, was 20 years older when he started his journey as Pope. While theological knowledge and wisdom tend to accompany age, the physical strength is usually no longer in step with the needs of the job.

The Pope is old and the Pope is tired. He recognized that his physical strength, his mental stamina and his spiritual force was diminishing each day and while I am sure he didn’t want to be the first Pope in modern times to abdicate the papacy, he ultimately did what he felt in his heart was the right thing to do, for the good of the church and really, for the world. In doing so, he refused to allow his physical condition to be a vehicle that could ultimately damage the Church that he has given his life to.

For an inmate in prison, life without parole offers only one out and that is when life ends. For the head of the Catholic Church or the monarch that rules over the British Empire, they do at least have the choice to set it aside, even if the thought of doing so is probably abhorrent to them.

I wonder if it will be difficult for him to watch as a new Pope is chosen and elected and to watch life go on without him? I wonder what his thoughts will be after having held such an exalted and powerful position on the world stage to suddenly go off and live quietly for the few remaining years he likely has?

However you look at it, abdication of the papacy or of a monarchy has far reaching implications and in both cases carries with it a certain stigma in the eyes of some. There are many out there who agree with my position that the Pope made a decision he knew to be in the best interests of the Church but there are likely as many out there who feel that his decision to step down was neither allowable, nor advisable.

Edward VIII abdicated for personal reasons, in the prime of his life and with several decades of life still ahead of him. His decision rocked the British Empire and caused a rift in the royal family that never healed and is still a sore subject to the Queen and her contemporaries that survive.

I am hopeful that history will judge Pope Benedict XVI a little more kindly that it did King Edward VIII. He agreed to take on one of the most difficult jobs in the world at the age of 78, when most men his age are on the golf course. He took on the problems of the church at a time when the church was being assaulted in many directions, including scandals within its own walls. He expended nearly eight years of his health and his time trying to ensure the Church would go on after his time was finished and he knew when he took the job that he would not have the years his predecessor had to do it all.

Speaking of his predecessor, he also happened to be the one picked to fill the shoes of one of the most popular and longest-serving Popes in history, which is never easy because the expectations are so great…but then he and all of his predecessors have filled the “Shoes of the Fisherman”, in that they are the successors to St. Peter, the Apostle upon whom the Church was built. To say that they all had big shoes to fill would be an understatement.

In the end, he served when asked, gave all that he had and recognized that the time had come that he could no longer give the Church what it needed. In doing so, I think he showed remarkable courage and ultimate example of the doctrine by which a Catholic priest is called…to be an example of humility and self sacrifice. In relinquishing the reigns of power and stepping aside for another, he subjected himself to an act of humility through a tremendous sacrifice.

How could anyone ask more of him? For as little as my opinion is worth, I respect his decision and I wish him peace in the time he has left. Right now, out there in some country, a Cardinal Priest of the Church has been marked to be the next Pope, though only one knows who that will be and He hasn’t told us yet. Whoever it is, I respect him for taking on the burdens he will shoulder and wish him the best in all that he will do.

We met up in the lobby of the Red Hotel on Pacific Avenue in the upscale part of town. After introductions and the exchanging of a few pleasantries, we got right down to conversation. “I know this must have come as a complete surprise to you” I said as he poured bottled water down his fill opening. “How did you feel when you found out that the public had decided to let you go?”

“I must admit, I was pretty steamed by the whole thing,” he answered. “I mean, you spend your whole life doing your job, day in and day out and then suddenly, when you least expect it, they just pull the plug on you”.

“That must have been quite a shock,” I said. “Did you have any idea this was going to happen to you?”

“Not a clue” said the Iron. “I keep going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in my mind, trying to remember any sign that I might have overlooked but I can’t recall any hint that this was coming. I just came in, was told to report upstairs and when I got there, the ironing board was waiting for me”.

“Did they give you any reason for the public’s opinion or their decision?” I asked. He paused in thought for a moment, then said “Only something about how sorry they were, that times were changing and that I just wasn’t pulling in the numbers anymore. They said my popularity was down and that it was time they brought in a ringer”.

“A bell?” I asked. “A cat” he answered, with a hint of sadness.

The Iron’s story isn’t the first time that Monopoly has unceremoniously retired one of its players. Over the years, the Canon and the Man on Horseback have all fallen to the whims of passing fancy and after 78 years with the company, the Iron has seen them come and go.

“I remember one time there was this bag of money” he reflected “and we all thought he was really a keeper but then one day they just yanked the purse strings and he was gone. You think you’re doing something significant, something lasting but then you find out life has been pulling the worsted wool over your eyes”.

It was when I mentioned his retirement package that he really got up a full head of steam. In addition to $5000 in Monopoly money, he was given a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and the deed to Mediterranean Avenue.

“That was really the biggest slap in the face,” he hissed. “Mediterranean Avenue? It’s the cheapest piece of property in town! No one wants that place,” he said, referring to the somewhat distressed property just ten blocks and one corner over from where we sat. “It’s in the worst part of town, right up the street from the jail in the low rent district. Most people just hurry right through there, hop on the Reading Railroad and get out of dodge”.

I asked him whether or not he would try to file an appeal or even take his case to the courts of public opinion. “I tried calling the Chairman of the Board” he stated, still fuming “but my calls have not been returned. As for public opinion, I don’t think I’m ready right now. It’s always better to be cool when dealing with the Permanent Press and I’m just not there yet”.

I thought this was a good time for a break and we paused for a moment so he could refill his water reservoir and cool down for a bit. He seemed to become more relaxed and talked about his friends, his life and his work over nearly eight decades. When I asked him about how his friends took the news he responded “Oh I think they were pretty sad but they really couldn’t put up more than a token resistance to the decision. They all came by and told me how much they would miss me though…. the Hat, the Shoe, the Racecar, the Battleship, that thing that no one could ever figure out what it was [the Wheelbarrow], all of them. They were a great bunch of characters and we spent many a turn on the same spot over the years”.

On talking about his life, he said “I came along right in the middle of the Great Depression so I’ve been around and around the block a few times. I always tried to stay on the move though, never at the same address for very long. Some might think that kind of rootless existence isn’t stable but I really got to see the world and just when I thought my luck had run out, someone would slip me $200 bucks and that was enough to keep me in the game”.

“Do you have any plans for the future?” I asked him and he nodded, saying “I’ve put some feelers out. I have applications in at the Water Works and the Electric Company. Even at my age, I’m still great at smoothing out problems, even the occasional wrinkle that occurs. Those are skill sets my coworkers at Monopoly are going to miss when I’m gone,” he concluded.

It was time to wrap up the interview so I asked the Iron if he had any parting words or thoughts he would like to share.

“Life is always a game of chance” he said as if in deep thought. “You never know what throw of the dice will land you where but you have to make the best of it and even when it seems you’ve reached the end of the line, keep pressing on. Seize each opportunity and when one comes along, always strike while the iron is hot”.

Thank you, Mr. Iron, for helping us keep a handle on things.