A Perfect Place to have a blowout

President’s Day was a good day for a hike on Sunflower Trail in the nearby Palo Duro Canyon. It was the same place where William and I had our father-and-son excursion a few weeks ago, except we had made a long hike on the Lighthouse Trail. I thought it might be too manly for a woman to undertake, so we decided on a two-mile trail more suited for the only female in our family.

I made a point to consult with my mechanic which car to take on a two hundred mile trip, and he seemed to think the 97 Buick would be up to the task. The starter had been acting up off and on, but I decided to take on the challenge. Wasn’t it a manly thing to take your handsome son and beautiful wife in an old car on a trip to the canyon? I felt good about the trip.

The steering wheel was a bit shaky when I drove down I 27, but I didn’t think too much about it, attributing the problem to the age of he car - some sort of Parkisons disease that most aging car suffer, I supposed. I was dead wrong, and the miscalculation could have easily gotten us killed. The tire on the front driver side was on its way out.

The hike – well, the walk - was pretty good. The scene was acceptable West Texas standard, but all the sunflowers were mere white heads and dry stems. Kathy took a lot of pictures, and William and I kept making fun of her for being slow.

After about fifty minutes of walking, covering about a mile, we got to the highway that marked the end of our walk, but we did not see our car parked on the shoulder of the road. It took us a while to figure out that we had to backtrack in order to get to the place where we started, and by then it was getting late. A park ranger happened by and I waved to him, but he just zoomed by. While we were debating what to do, the guy came back and offered to give us a lift to our car. We were overjoyed, but Kathy acted a little uneasy. We had to ride in the back of the pickup, and being a lady, she was embarrassed to have to do that. But we urged her on, and she obliged.

We got to our car by 5:30, still giving us enough time to drive to Amarillo and have supper with Michael. As we were climbing the steep hill back to the top of the canyon, the steering wheel was shaking pretty badly and I knew something was wrong. However, I kept on driving and fortunately, we made it to the highway alright. I picked my speed up to about 60, and suddenly I heard a boom and almost lost control of the car. Being a good athlete with above average reflexes, I managed to gain control of the car and ease it down to the shoulder of the road. It was still daylight and William, being a tire changing expert, replaced the shredded Goodyear in no time. We made it to the city by 6:30 and had dinner at Jason’s Deli with Michael. Things turned out to be fine. Michael was his usual pleasant self, even though he was irked by us not having the time to go to his favorite sushi restaurant.

Well, I survived to tell the story. The event could have been entirely different, for the blowout could have occurred anywhere. If it happened on the interstate, or on our decent to the canyon on a narrow road, I could easily have lost control of the car, and the result could have been serious. If the blowout had to happen, the Lord made sure it happened in a perfect place - on a flat highway with almost no traffic at all.

We should become more observant of things that seem to happen pretty randomly. If we pay absolutely no attention to them, then we offer no thanks to our Protector.

Help!

Guys, I know the gap between my generation and yours is a lot wider that I have anticipated, so please help me narrow it a little bit by giving me some crucial information concerning dating and courtship of the twenty-first century. This is the subject of my immediate concern, since I have two sons who are in the midst of searching for a mate. I dated Susan for a year when I was a freshman in college. The girl was neither spiritual nor smart, which were the two qualities that I was looking for in a spouse, yet I went ahead and dated her anyway. I had no intention of marrying her, but she was beautiful and a good catch, which made me the envy of my peers. That was one of many dumb things that I did as a young man. So now, please tell me honestly what attributes you are looking for in your future spouse, and why do you date some people even though they are obviously deficient of the important qualities for which you are searching? Help this geezer understand, please.

A Walk

The weather was unseasonably warm last Monday so William and I decided to go hiking in a canyon about a hundred miles away from Lubbock. I was thinking about doing the two-mile trail, but a nice lady in the visitor center encouraged us to go on a six-mile walk instead. “Try the Light House Trail. It’s so beautiful.” For a while I suspended my knowledge of my age and physical condition and decided to take on the challenge. A six-mile walk down and up the canyon might not be a big deal for most people, but for a fifty-five year old man whose longest walk for a while has been no more than two miles in the neighborhood, it definitely presented a little bit of a challenge.

William and I drove down the Canyon and found the trail at the end of a winding road. Before we started, we saw a sign stating that we needed to take at least a gallon of water with us, and worse yet, it also said that one should not take the hike unless he is physically able. Self-doubt began to creep into my heart after I read the sign. “Shall I do it?” I asked myself.

“Let’s go, dad,” William urged as I was standing at the entrance, conjuring up the possible scenarios if something were to happen to me on the way, and the very thought stayed with me throughout the hike. I wasn’t concerned about my well being, really. I just did not want William to have to run all the way back to the car to get help from somewhere. We were in the middle of nowhere and our phones were out of range. I didn’t want to put my son through any kind of crisis. Such a nagging concern sort of robbed me of my joy of looking at the muti-colored walls of the Canyon glimmering in the afternoon sun.

It took us about three hours to finish the walk, and I survived to tell the story.

When the late Jimmy V found out he had terminal cancer and wasn’t given much time to live, he kept on saying, “I am so sorry” to his children. I had trouble understanding why he kept on making apologies to his daughters then, but I started to get it after I began to raise my boys. It mattered little if I had a stroke or heart attack in the midst of my walk, I just didn’t want to put son through that crisis, that anxiety and fright. Sounds irrational, doesn’t it?

On Being Funny

I have been accused by my boys of trying too hard to be funny, but that really isn’t the case. If there is anything to it at all, only the opposite is true. I have been trying very hard not to be funny, for I have always considered funny folks to be superficial people who really don’t have anything to say but a bunch of empty words designed solely to draw laughter from equally empty people.

Funny people are mostly clowns who are inflicted with an inferiority complex and who try to do anything to draw attention to themselves. We can tell much about a generation by looking at who their heroes are. Who are our heroes these days? Letterman and Seinfeld? Jay Leno and Conan O’ Brian? I fear for this generation of young people. I really do.

The fictional characters that I disliked the most when I was a graduate student were those duds in the so-called “Comedies of Manners” who seemed to spend their entire life engaging in battles of wit. O how I hated them and deemed it a great insult to my intellect that I was even required to read about their exploits of conquering women by their wits.

Please don’t tell me that I am funny, because I take that as an insult, and the last thing that I would try to do is to say anything for the sole purpose of drawing a laugh. Believe me, I am deeper than that.