{"id":36909,"date":"2016-12-08T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=36909"},"modified":"2018-03-07T16:53:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T22:53:21","slug":"running-the-roads-with-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/running-the-roads-with-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Running the Roads with Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201975 Chevy<\/strong> pickup didn\u2019t have a tape deck, so we bought a battery-powered radio at Walmart<\/strong> and rode around all day with it sitting on the seat between us.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Carpenters<\/strong>\u2019 greatest hits made a fine soundtrack for a day of running the roads and taking our time being father and sons.<\/span><\/p>\n

My father sang \u201cWe\u2019ve only just begun,\u201d grinning through tobacco-stained teeth, his work shirt unbuttoned and flapping in the hot air.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was young and lean, his arms and neck tan from the welding flash. There was a scrim of grease around his fingernails, and his hands were strong and rough as leather on the steering wheel.<\/span><\/p>\n

My brother slid off his flip-flops, rested his bare feet on the warm hump in the floorboard made by the transmission.<\/span><\/p>\n

Boys always buy two Yoo-hoos<\/strong>. Slam the first, savor the second. Paired with a gas station pulled pork sandwich and a bag of Bugles<\/strong> it\u2019s the perfect road meal.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a known fact \u2013 there\u2019s more road in Pontotoc County<\/strong> than any place else on earth. Endless highways, some just hog trails, winding through miles of \u201cthere-used-to-sets\u201d and \u201cright yonders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dad couldn\u2019t pass the old Randolph school house<\/strong> without stopping a minute.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen Carpenter sang \u201cIt\u2019s yesterday once more\u201d in that warm, velvety voice, that voice like no other human being ever had in this world.<\/span><\/p>\n

We stopped at a pawn shop, clattered around in the junk for half an hour. My brother and I begged for hunting knives but settled for two walkie-talkies the size of toasters with retractable aluminum antennas.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a wonder of technology to hear Kyle\u2019s voice clear from the other side of the parking lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

We stopped every few miles for a couple dollars\u2019 gas, or a popsicle, or to use the walkie-talkies again. We bought one of those two-piece wooden airplanes with the rubber band-driven propeller. We waded knee high in Trace Lake<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week my father and I worked on a tractor. He still likes thin, long-sleeved work shirts, half unbuttoned, but that dark hair, what\u2019s left, has gone gray, and he makes CDs for himself on his computer.<\/span><\/p>\n

He still sings out loud, and once in a while, hunched over a carburetor, he\u2019ll murmur, \u201cWe\u2019ve only just begun,\u201d clinching a pipe in his teeth.<\/span><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t run the roads with dad in a long time, but if I live to be 100 I\u2019ll never feel completely secure without him driving. It\u2019s hard to overstate a boy\u2019s wonder and trust that daddy can fix anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

My father and I both know there are probably more of those special days behind us than in front of us, but we don\u2019t talk about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

That kind of talk will ruin a perfectly good day.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201975 Chevy pickup didn\u2019t have a tape deck, so we bought a battery-powered radio at Walmart and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":36911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11906,1],"tags":[9583,9337,9582,5,642,4087,9584,3,753,9581,187,8734],"class_list":["post-36909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-galen-holley","category-uncategorized","tag-chevy","tag-galen-holley","tag-local-writer","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-pontotoc-county","tag-road-trips","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-trace-lake","tag-tupelo","tag-writers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2016-12-5-Runnin-the-roads-with-dad.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}