Somehow I ended up roaring over a mountain in a blue Super Bee Charger with a “Go Fast, Don’t Die” sticker in the back window.
What happened was:
My little Honda Accord broke down at a gas station in Lander six minutes before I was supposed to be at a sentencing hearing a few blocks away, and three hours before I had to be in Green River for a trial.
I took off on foot for the sentencing hearing, and called my dad while on the run.
(The Husband was working out of town and could not help.)
Dad sensed the Honda’s starter had gone out, but what he said was, “I’ll bring you a car.”
Oh boy. Dad’s loaner cars are not just loaner cars. They’re rodded Mustangs, probably-not-deleted diesel trucks or actual time machines.
I’m not kidding – the man once restored a DeLorean to mint condition.
“We can’t fix my car?” I whined. I didn’t intend to be ungrateful, but pulling up to a press job in a DeLorean isn’t exactly inconspicuous.
The Honda, on the other hand, zings me from point A to B with all the subtlety of a well-intentioned soccer mom. Which I am.
So I got off lucky, really, when Dad brought the Super Bee. My mom's race rod.
My Uncle Rodney picked me up in his truck and took me to a Lander parts shop where Dad had parked the blazing blue beast, and had already started wrenching on my Honda.
“Don’t hit an animal,” said Dad as we transferred my bags. In a later text he added: “There’s a loaded, chambered pistol in the door if you need it. Sorry it’s only a .380.”
In her own text message, Mom chirped, “You can get where you’re going fast!”
My editor was less cozy with the whole arrangement.
“DON’T GO A-HUNDO” he bellowed over the phone.
(My editor already lives in terror of the morbid abandon with which I drive while on assignment, and of me being gunned down for climbing the wrong house during a crime scene.)
I got in the car, waved goodbye and charged up South Pass.
Gosh, I thought while passing all the baffled greenies, should I have Dad call every law enforcement agency from here to Utah now to tell them this beast ain’t stolen?
And I marveled at the ease of it all. The way my dad and uncle bent their schedules to get me on the road. The way my mom just handed over her race rod.
As usual, people bend to meet my breakneck deadlines. The public must have its news.
But this is a tender balance, and I don’t take it for granted.
Consider the tremendous efforts to which each stroke of my pen owes its existence.
My dad didn’t start out with lots of cool cars. He started out as a truck driver. He found out he’d been laid off from his trucking job minutes after he finished building the bookshelves for my preschool’s classroom.
He got a job carrying lumber. And he flipped cars for extra money to feed four (later five) mouths. When I was 14, my parents scraped together a loan to buy their own shop.
Because Dad did all that (and my mom also worked like an army ant on speed even though she’s never tried speed), I can cross the state and rip open a story or three with my pen.
It serves as a metaphor, of course.
While I bury my head in words, people are building the churning clockwork world all around me.
They raise the beef I eat. They haul the parts my car needs. They build the equipment that hauls those parts. They turn wrenches. They feed our energy grid. They battle time, watch seasons, fight machinery and coax goods from the reluctant earth.
The press is the nation’s lantern. It’s a high calling.
But the builders, haulers, miners, growers, and fixers are the nation’s backbone.
As all this horsepower rattles up my backbone and into my dominant right hand, it reminds me that I can only do what I do – that I can only do anything – because of them.
Let me not forget it.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
