That's My Boy

Long weekend full of running errands across the Midwest: pick up the PRS MC-58 in Cinncinnati, drop off my 560SL, go home, put the kid on a plane to Florida, head to Indianapolis, pick up the Heritage Patriot amp that electronics maestro Bobby Getchell refurbished with NOS Mullard tubes.

The Saturday mission was particularly annoying because the heater fan in the SL has decided to take personal time off until further notice and the soft top seals only marginally better in the up position than it does when it's folded. So it was going to be a cold trip. I bundled John up with extra fleece blankets and made sure his hat was snugged down tight. On 71 South, he requested that we push the old Benz a little harder, but even without an airbag ahead of him I wasn't inclined to take further risks. Instead we settled down to an easy lope along with traffic. "There isn't much to do in Mister Say-dees," he opined, but he didn't complain beyond that, making random observations about the cars and the landscape.

That old canvas top made more racket at seventy miles per hour than I could have imagined possible. Luckily, it was worse on my side than his, and although there was no blower to push the air the heater core was still hot and the car warmed up over time. And how like a big speedboat that Sport Leicht is, turning 2700rpm at the freeway speed but smooth with it, the long Astral Silver nose floating over the bumps, the big wheel stable in my hands, serene and strong. It was too loud for conversation most of the time, so we smiled at each other, to reassure him that everything was fine, to reassure me that he was not too cold.

From time to time we'd pass a minivan or SUV with the mother hard-faced in the front and the kids safe behind rings of steel and tinted glass. John would wave; they never waved back. For me, they had a disapproving look. Because only a bad father would drag his son a hundred and fifteen freezing miles down the road in a twenty-five-year-old roadster. It was plain as day, what they thought of me.

The easy response would be to say: look, we survived, no harm done. But the same could be said for nearly any irresponsible or dangerous endeavor. Every day, parents endanger their kids and the vast majority of them never come to a consequence. The fact is that there was additional risk involved with the trip; it was riskier than making the same trip in a modern SL, riskier than making the trip in a Honda Odyssey, riskier than leaving John at home with his iPad. And no doubt this is just one in many such additional risks we'll take.

Yet this is how we will continue to roll. I won't still be here when he is my age. We started this relationship late. I have limited time with him. We'll spend it in pursuit of adventure, and if we start with adventure of the mildest sort, it's okay, we don't have forever, but we have time.

I was impressed with my son during the trip. He was quiet, he was well-behaved, he dealt with the cold and the noise. I took him to the Creation Museum afterwards. "I didn't see God in there," he noted. I'd promised him there would be dinosaurs and something about God. And he wasn't impressed by the story of Noah and the flood. "Where did the water go when the flood was over?"

"It... um..." At this point I thought about telling him that, in my opinion, the Noah story was a metaphor for localized flooding in the Middle East. "It went into the sea. The water went back into the sea."

"There was already water in the sea, Daddy. This water had to go somewhere else."

"Take it up," I said, hoisting him onto my shoulders as we walked past the bronze Diplodocus, "with the folks from Answers in Genesis, LLC."