He drove all his cars the same way he plowed
with a slow-witted mule: his way was the way. The only way.
Do it or be damned. (Not his language) Shift or be damned.
Grind if you like, but eventually there was no choice.
Muscle and will trumped iron in spades.
Many cars later, after a fleet of mule-powered vehicles
had ground to an irreparable stop at his hands,
and under his feet, a 1963 Plymouth Reliant, push-button
drive shifter, rolled off the assembly line. My wise
Aunt & Uncle bought him what was the last car he needed.
Before that my 3 siblings and I rode thrilled in the front
or back seat; in a rare show of faith we shared the coveted
shotgun position. The roughened sound of asphalt never changed
through the open windows, grinding the air as we swept past,
accentuating the smell of rain coming or dead possum.
Or the temptation of honeysuckle in season. The smoky
sensations of muscadines or scuppernongs.
Air conditioning was not an option. A lesson we learned early,
riding from Dallas the 600 miles to my grandparent’s house
in my parent’s Buick Le Sabre, 6 of us elbow to elbow, the road
and air streaming in ways our engineer father might explain – fluid flow
and boundary layers, our hands cupped outside the window,
air pressure inside the car lower than outside, classic Venturi effect.
My grandfather’s home garden fallow, and the old farm now tended
by a sharecropper, the farmhouse reduce to scavenged handmade nails,
and rough-hewn planks, he would talk about his neighbors,
the many miles of neighbors. Each one a Mister or a Mrs.
Those who raised the best butter beans, tomatoes,
muscadines or scuppernongs, who had the freshest eggs
or best summer squash, the best honey with comb
or without. Whose watermelons were worthiest, whose peaches
were juicy and cantaloupes ripest. He sought these things
for 93 years. Strong in that surety, in the memory
and confidence of his hands on the white-moon of the wheel.