The Open Road

Sometimes the best thing in life is just to get out and drive

Nadya got her learner’s permit a week or so ago, and Stephanie is kind of scared to take her out driving. To be totally fair, I think Nadya is a little scared to drive as well. She is kind of tiny, and even small cars are pretty big. It reminded me of when Sean got his permit. He was so excited and ready to start driving! He already had a truck waiting for him. I had found a 2007 Toyota Tacoma PreRunner that had some custom work done on it by the previous owner, and when I saw it I knew it was perfect for a first vehicle for the boy. While we waited for him to get his license I would drive it back and forth to work, figured out all the little things that needed to be fixed and worked on and got it all fixed up, and had it ready to go for him once he got his license and was ready to hit the road. And it was perfect! He loved that truck.

It had a few dents and dings and little things that weren’t quite right, but he embraced all of that. And a couple of those dings he contributed himself. The very first time he drove to school after getting his permit, we got off of 69 and took Lynch Rd, down 41, to Diamond Ave in order to avoid the traffic and construction on the Lloyd (I realize if you’re not from Evansville none of that means anything, but if you ARE from Evansville you know what a nightmare the Lloyd is and why you’d want to avoid it like the plague). For some reason the boy apparently didn’t know how to get anywhere. We’ve only been driving on these roads the majority of his life, but I guess he’d never paid attention to where I was going, so once it was his turn to drive he needed turn by turn directions to get everywhere. He was in the middle lane on Diamond and he asked me if he should get over in the right lane. I told him no, that that lane would be ending up ahead, but that he could get over in the left lane at some point. Without a second’s hesitation or looking at all, he just started to merge into the left lane… with a semi right there next to us! Slammed the driver’s side of the truck into the trailer and put a small dent in the back door and a nice yellow scrape down the bed of the truck. Luckily he didn’t freak out or overreact (even though I might have) and got back in the middle lane without causing a huge wreck. Pretty sure the semi driver yelled some profanities at him and may have thrown a finger his way, but all in all no harm no foul. Luckily. And after that he was always super cautious and careful and observant when he was driving. Dylan said he was the best driver of all of them, always careful and paying attention to the road. Parking lots were his biggest enemy. He backed into a couple poles on a couple different occasions, so his rear bumper took the worst of the wear for his learning curve. One time he came out from work and noticed someone had clipped his front bumper and it had a little fracture in the plastic. Nothing serious or major, but he was so mad! Like I said, he loved that truck. It was his baby. And he worked hard to take care of it.

I taught him how to change the oil, and once he got his permit he always changed it himself after that. We changed the spark plugs together. I did the hard side that required some removing stuff to get to to show him how it was done, and then he replaced the three on the other side himself. There was something wrong with the latch on the tailgate and he figured it out and was able to get it fixed and working all on his own. His mom got him some nice new headlights and taillights since the originals that were still on it were old and kinda foggy. When he replaced the headlights he had some trouble with them not coming on right all the time. He pulled up YouTube videos and did some troubleshooting and figured out it was a problem with the fuses and told me what he needed so he could get everything working right. He never did get around to replacing the taillights. He needed to get the tailgate fixed first. Which he had done just a few weeks before the wreck. He told me what the problem was and how he had fixed it, and we had talked about swapping out the taillights after work sometime when he was at my house in the coming weeks. I’ve got the box with those taillights out here in my garage, along with a case of plastic push rivets where he was replacing missing/broken ones getting his truck all squared away.

And he loved to drive. Once he got his license, he wanted to be the one who drove everywhere. Sometimes it kind of upset me… I liked riding with him and listening to music and talking and hanging out. But he wanted to drive himself everywhere! If we were going back to Kentucky to visit my parents, he’d drive himself so he could go hang out with his friends there, and also because he just liked to be out driving himself. And I get it. When I was younger (and honestly, even still) I loved to just get out on the road and drive. Backroads, open highway, going somewhere or just driving nowhere at all, I love to be behind the wheel just going. There’s freedom and control and peace in being behind the wheel with the radio on.

I changed the oil in my truck and my work car (which will eventually become Nadya’s car once she gets up the courage to start driving and get her license). I used the oil filter wrench he got me for my birthday…because we always had problems getting our big hands in to get a good grip on the oil filters. They don’t put those things in convenient places. And the first time we changed the oil on the car it took both of us fighting with it before I finally got pissed off and just put a screwdriver through it and ripped it off. That was a wild learning experience for him…he didn’t know you could do that. 🤣 I replaced the spark plugs in the car as well. I found a YouTube video that explained step by step what needed to be taken out and what tools to use and did it without issue. He’d have been proud of me for that, I think. I used his tool set he was given after his summer internship working at WSI last summer. He had the tool set in the backseat of his truck the morning of the wreck. He was going to get his own toolbox at work and he wanted to get everything set up with all of his stuff.

I hope there are vehicles in Heaven. And I hope he’s got a truck he can work on and a shop with all of the tools he could ever need. Because if Heaven really is a place of eternal joy, I know how much he loved his truck and how much he loved working on it. And being able to do that would be something that would bring him a lot of joy. I know being able to work on our trucks together again, just one more time, would bring me more joy than anything.