The Healing Journey

June 15, 2025

My Father’s Cars

By Brian D. Wallace

He hated cars
They always defeated him
Getting stuck on a hill
With a station wagon full of kids
Stalling out in front of Howard Johnson’s
On our rare family trip to a restaurant
Bucking and broncing in the church parking lot
After the Ave Maria and Alleluias
It was a rolling humiliation
Constantly finding new ways to thwart him
A dead battery, busted muffler
frozen transmission, failed blinker
flat tire, and blown engine
The hits kept coming
Along with his muttered curses and imprecations
As if heaven rained down its four-wheeled jinx on him
While other families seemed imbued
With the blessings of pleasant motoring
In shiny new Chevys and Fords
Two tone, rag tops Sunday drives
Cruising through the park– life’s a lark–
While he was continually punished
Getting behind the wheel or God forbid
Looking under the hood
Where he became manic and dangerous
We traveled with a plastic milk container
Filled with water for the radiator
And a quart of oil in a glass jar
To spoon feed the spouting motor
And always rolling to a stop for air,
More air for the tires as the pump bells
Rang furiously like pinball machines
Which is why it was so curious
That toward the end of his life
He started the matchbox collection
Of all thing, cars– cars in miniature
once the bane of his existence
now harmlessly encased in the china cabinet
Where they could never let him down
And I can understand what accumulating toys
—tiny, inconsequential, abundant– might mean
to this fatherless child of the Depression
but I also find myself sometimes wondering
what we did with his acquisitions
if we drove them off like daydreams one by one
dismantling the last of his few sanctuaries
when he could no longer tell us not to touch them
Such an odd little man with a shy smile
Dressed in the Irish knit sweater my mother bought him
When I found myself absently staring at his picture
And discovered he had his mother’s nose
Though he never had her affection
And come to think of it — she never owned a car
… And I could have been a better son.
©Brian D. Wallace

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