A Father, a Son and 29 Cars

The one place where I really got to know my dad was in a car.

For some, it’s while playing catch or fishing or watching Monday night football, but for me, the times when I connected with my father best was when we were locked inside a car like his ’65 Corvette together, side by side, facing the same direction, destination unknown. I still remember him at the wheel of that Stingray and being his most honest, real and boyish self — hand gripping the shifter, feet dancing on the pedals, staring wide-eyed at the road ahead and revving the engine like all hell was about to break loose.

Then, and only then, did I see my father — a mild-mannered and introverted doctor — come to life as we catapulted forth, tires squealing behind us, like the Millennium Falcon jumping to light speed.

It was as if only in this tiny little capsule was he allowed to hide from the expectations of the world — the suit he had to wear as a doctor, the responsible nature he had to don as a father — and return to his most primal self, as he thrusted the pedal to the floor and hurled us headlong into the distance.

At first, being only four years old, it scared the shit out of me.

But over time, I grew to love that deranged, irrational little thrill of the launch from a stop light.

It was our own personal version of two astronauts blasting off into outer space together.

I knew that when I hopped in a car with my dad, it was our time. Mom couldn’t interfere, my two little younger brothers wouldn’t interrupt, and I could have my dad all to myself, hear how he saw the world, and learn what I needed to know about it.

Over the years, it was the one place where we had our most memorable conversations.

It was where he introduced me to all my favorite music, from the Eagles to the Beatles to REO Speedwagon to Boston, Journey and U2. It was where he told me I was going to have another baby brother, when I was five. It was where he told me when we were buying a new house and were going to move to a new town, sending both horror and curiosity through my soul. It was where he told me about the birds and the bees. And one sad day, it was when he told me that he and my mother were getting a divorce.

The conversations were sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, and sometimes made me cry.

But I can’t imagine them happening anywhere else. Because it was inside that secret time capsule that we could both be vulnerable and honest. There was no need to worry about what the world would think, because they weren’t there to see it.

Over the years, even though we would drift apart— me siding with my mother’s reasons for the divorce, him insisting she had it better than she knew—cars kept us talking. Even as I went off into the creative arts to make a career as a musician and writer (him not exactly supporting it), me becoming a liberal (him staying a conservative), at some point I’d have to call him up, because my car would have some strange, bizarre problem that I couldn’t figure out, and only he would have the answer. A broken tie-rod, a worn-out fuel pump, shot rear wheel bearing, whatever it was, my dad would know it cold. “If you’re not sure what’s going wrong with it, you just have listen to what the car’s trying to tell you,” he told me on the phone one night. In time, I learned to identify problems by ear: The “thud” of a worn-out shock absorber, the grinding of a thinned-out brake pad. Goddamn, the old man was right. And in that way, he was still the rock of wisdom I always saw him as as a kid (even if I no longer listened to his advice on women).

Once in a while, when I was lucky, when I’d take a break from my life in New York or LA and come home for a vacation, we’d go on another romp together again in whatever Saab or Volvo or BMW was the latest to grace his garage. Even if it was just shallow talk about engine size, compression rations, drag coefficients, turbos vs V-8, Pirelli tires vs Michelins, Koni shock absorbers vs Bilsteins, we were at least connecting again, sharing in our mutual worship of the automobile, other differences be damned.

But as I think back on all the drives I’ve had with my dad in all the different cars over the years, I’m struck by one particular, unexpected realization:

Cars aren’t really so much things, or objects or merely “vehicles.”

What cars really are is fascinating places.

Yes, places. Like a room or house or venue or geographical location. But private and secure.

Intimate places that people of shared mind or circumstance inhabit, for short periods of time. Just like a movie theater, a restaurant booth, coffee shop or living room or a treehouse.

For the people inside, it’s a room that envelops and protects you. But, it’s more than that: it’s also traveling across a landscape — usually at a high rate of speed.

Think about that.

Imagine, for a second, that you had an apartment that could fly. Literally extricate itself from its foundation, leave its physical address, and scream across the land at 100 mph.

And not only that, but no one else could barge in on and enter! It’s all to yourself.

There you and your lucky fellow car mates would be, staring out the windows as your magical flying apartment looked out at the world, and you could all talk to each other about the surrounding magical beauty of the buildings, mountains and rivers moving around you at warp speeds. And you could let those views inspire whatever conversation you’d care to pursue.

Well, an apartment like that would be the coolest one on the planet, that’s what.

But that’s what a car is.

It’s a private sanctuary, where you and others can have a solitary, personalized experience, while you move across time and space, insulated against the corrupting influences of the world outside.

But there’s one more thing that makes a car unlike any other space out there:

You’re both facing the same direction. And that’s not small.

You’re both looking at the world in the same way. Both on the same journey. You might have differing opinions, different backgrounds, but for that moment, you’re both heading towards the same place. And that makes it hard to hate the person next to you. You’re almost bound by a common sense of direction to get along and find commonality.

So if you want to bond with someone, get in a car together. You’ll find out something real and true about each other you’d never find out somewhere else.

Because a car is a place where your mutual confinement means your minds can really get to know one another. Where you can be inspired to share something of true depth with your passenger, or just close your damn eyes and bask in the simple delight of bouncing along as the potholes and undulations of the road massage you into a delirious bliss.

Now that’s something beautiful.

And our shared appreciation of that simple rhythm of the road bonded me to my dad even as we started to live very different lives. Because no matter whatever would come between us over the years, our love of cars always brought us back together again. For a phone call, for a drive, or even to wash a car together again, 40 years after he taught me how to wash his blue BMW 2002. Over the years, there were 29 cars between us — ones we’d wash, wax, fix, argue about, even race. And for those prescious moments around them, we were once again members of the same religion, true believers in the redemptive powers of the automobile.

And it was inside a car together a few years later, where he’d tell me, “Brace yourself, Mark. Unfortunately, I’ve been diagnosed with cancer, and might only have 6 months to live.”

He would turn out to beat it, though, at least for another fifteen years. But when it came back a third time, his body, like the wheels that carried us for so many years, could no longer resist father time, and he succumbed to the eventual forces of resistance at age 75.

But before he left, I had one last glorious moment in a car with him. Even though he wasn’t actually there.

Well he was “there,” but not physically. You’ll see.

When the doctors told him he only had maybe two to three weeks left on this planet, I knew I had to see him one last time. I’d seen him only a month earlier for Thanksgiving, but I didn’t know at the time it would be my last, so I made one last visit to say a final goodbye.

But when I got there, he funnily enough handed me a “to-do” list of things to do around the house — ever the protective father wanting those around him to be safe. Change the light bulbs, fix the broken dishwasher, replace the pool filter and — wait for it — take his car out to be washed and waxed one last time. He just wanted it ready to go in case my step mother wanted to sell it after he passed.

It was a heartbreaking drive, having to pilot his beautiful 500 hp sports car around town alone for one last journey, knowing I would never get to drive in it with him again — or in any other car, for that matter.

But I got it washed and waxed up to perfection, just as he wanted. And on the way home, I tried to find some Beatles or Eagles or John Denver on a radio station so I could summon his spirit during my drive. But before I could do so, as I turned the stereo on, instead what happened was, the CD that happened to still be in his CD player at the time sprang to life.

And it happened to be my CD.

It was one I’d released a year before, titled “The Ground Below,” and handed him before he began a long drive from Florida to Maine. And somehow, despite the hundreds of other CDs he’d owned, it was still mine that he was listening to, all these many drives later. He’d never taken it out. And while he’d so rarely taken the time to shower me with praise for my music, or my writing, or really any of my life decisions, here was all the evidence I needed that I mattered to him: When he was all alone, in his favorite car — his favorite place — it was my music he chose as his soundtrack.

Despite it being incredibly hard to get any verbal proof out of my dad over the years that he approved of me, that he treasured me, if I pay attention to all our time in cars, all our conversations, it was there all along, just in a more subtle form then I knew.

It was in the way he taught me to work the clutch. In the way he taught me to shift as soon as the engine’s revs got too high. To always assume every other driver on the road is an idiot. To always use my turn indicators. To change the oil every 3000 miles. To wash the tree sap off the hood as soon as it fell. To look for cops underneath an overpass. Even to dry the car with a chamois, not a towel.

It was all there — the notion of showering the things you love with attention. Even if not in words.

So here’s to the 29 cars that helped me see a father’s love can take many forms.

You just have to listen to what the car is trying to tell you.