Cars

I'm a Renaisance Man. I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things. I tell stories, sometimes, when I'm in the mood or especially when someone asks me. I don't want to believe I have an ego problem, but I admit I have an ego. All I really desire is when you hear that I have passed, I hope you can say, "Too bad, he was a nice guy." In those days, there was no traveling. Only the trip to Chicago to my Father’s funeral in 1983. That trip was sponsored by an older man who was a friend and neighbor. He gave me some cash in folded bills and let me use his late model car to drive my family down to Chicago, from East Central Minnesota, to be with my Brother, Sister and Mother. Most folks know that you can’t have this life of a vagabond, being on the road, while also being a family man. I did have many jobs as a truck driver over the road. It paid good wages and that is what was needed to support the family. When I could, I’d get off the road to be closer to home, but invariably got back into the cab of a semi when we needed to make a better paycheck. Traveling for money is a lot different than living the life of a traveler. It was in early 1990’s that I got a job that afforded me a block of time off of work while the paycheck still came in. I was working at a YMCA camp in extreme Northern Minnesota on the Canadian border. The camp was on a lake, and the lake had to follow natures guidance and freeze and thaw each year. Since it was impossible to cross a freezing or thawing lake with a boat on the water or on foot over the ice, I was just given April and November off. I drove a 1978 Chevy sedan in those days. We took the kids out of school and loaded up the family car. We headed Southwest and left the Northshore of Lake Superior buried in 42 inches of snow. We drove all night, and after a short nap in the middle of the night while we sat in the car in a rest area on the I-35, we pulled in to Wichita, Kansas in time for breakfast at a diner I spotted...

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