Member-only story
The Trials of Driving with an 87-Year-Old Man and No Springsteen
It’s not racing in the street, for sure
If you’ve been following my Mayberry Chronicles over the past year or so, you know that I am now living in beautiful East Texas with my 87-year-old stepfather following the death of my mom. It has been (and continues to be) an interesting journey, but there has been one development that I never expected when I gained an octogenarian roommate and that he never dreamed could happen either.
My stepdad started driving tractors on an Indiana farm when he was six and raced stock cars for more than half his life; driving has always been a huge part of who he is. Time and age, however, are cruel masters, and his vision has started to fail him. It took a while to convince him that the solution for seeing two vehicles ahead of him when there was actually only one was not to just ignore the one on the left, but he has finally started letting me do all the driving. It’s been a hard transition for him, and I give him a tremendous amount of credit for accepting it.
What I have had to accept is the brutal fact that 90% of my time behind the wheel is now sadly devoid of any Bruce Springsteen. When we take dad’s vehicle, he insists on listen to NASCAR Radio on Sirius, and when we take mine we typically ride with no radio (I don’t have…
