A Son's Story

Many of my earliest memories of my father are associated with driving. The first were travels in the family station wagon, as a toddler with five boys, products of a blended family - his, hers and ours (A.K.A. me). There were full vacation trips, weekend outings here and there, his own solo excursions exploring all the roads and trails of the mountains that surrounded the central valley of California in a restored Military Willy-Overland Jeep. There were motorcycles as well, ours and his. These memories have led me to frame them with a phrase - Drives with Dad.

My Dad is a driver. He drove Route 66 at fifteen. He has been north of the 38th parallel in Korea. He has been to all fifty states, several provinces of Canada, and all the way to the Arctic Circle in Alaska. He has driven behind the Iron Curtain during the early days of the Cold War as an Embassy guard in Hungary. He has toured the wilderness of Iceland and traversed many of the countries in Europe. Those are my Dad’s stories to tell, and he has, however, my memories began in the back seat of Dad’s car.

These early memories are of weekend excursions. They would begin with my Dad saying to my Mom, “Want to go for a drive?” And my mother blurting out, “Sure,” before he had even finished. Dad would get the car ready. Mom would pack an ice chest of lunch, snacks, and sodas. Before the Saturday morning coffee was cold, we’d be on the road to the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Mojave Desert, or the central coast of California, to name a few frequented destinations. By the time I was a teenager, I had traveled most of the roads and freeways within a 200 mile radius of our home, in Bakersfield, California.

In 2017, my father and I began some new adventures. Our first adventure was a trip to Scotland, just he and I. We hired a private guide with a minivan and explored the borderlands and highlands. We slept in a family clan house that had a thousand year history along the borderlands of Scotland and England. We visited ancient castles and ruins. We walked along Hadrian’s Wall and explored the Roman fort of Vindolanda. We passed through Loch Lomond (“You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll get to Scotland before ye”), and did our obligatory look for Nessie in Loch Ness. And of course, we visited Whisky distilleries and sampled a “Wee dram.”

In 2018, my father bought himself a Ruby Red Ford Mustang GT for his 85th birthday and we took it to Kansas. We did a cannonball run from California, stopping to take selfies at the state border crossings. Most of the interesting sites were generally seen from the highway at 85 mph. A few notable stops were at the old family homestead in Neodesha, Kansas, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie,” near Independence, Kansas. We visited family - nephews, nieces, cousins, children and grandchildren. Being the youngest of his family of eight, no siblings are still alive. We finished the journey with a trip to a race track in Vegas, where I learned performance driving in a Mustang GT350. This trip inspired a book I wrote during the Covid lockdowns, titled “Life is Like a Fast Car,” some philosophical musings written and published in order to have a creative outlet during the world crisis.

In 2019, we returned to Scotland. This trip started in London, exploring the banks of the Thames, the London Bridge, the Millennium Wheel, the Globe Theater, and the subway system, before leaving like Harry Potter out of King’s Cross Station for Scotland. We explored Glasgow and one of its oldest bars, The Old College Bar. It is now closed; primarily due to Covid and then demolished in a fire. There were bus tours of Glasgow. We traveled by train to the coastal town of Irvine, the namesake of our Scottish clan, Clan Irvine. This led to more highland travels with our favorite Scottish guide. It included a traditional boat ride crossing to the Isle of Skye. Skye is the landing place of Bonnie Prince Charlie's last attempt to take back the throne of England, ending in the Battle of Culloden, in 1746. We took in another distillery on the island, Talisker, where I almost had to carry Dad out. There was a visit to the pitch, with the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club, they have the same colors as Ted Lasso’s fictional football team. We finished the trip with a visit to Aberdeen, where we can trace our Scottish heritage back to Clan Irvine of Drum Castle, granted to the family in 1323 A.D. by Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland.

The next year, 2020, before the world shutdown, we took a trip to a Vegas race track where we took a Mustang GT500 through its trials. Shortly after, with the world shutdown, Dad took on a project. He designed and we built a single person recreation trailer, nicknamed “The Tank.” Once complete, in October, 2020, he drove it, at the age of 87, from California to the corner of Minnesota, the only state he had never been to. His fifty state checklist was now complete.

In 2021, he designed and built a bigger trailer. The trailer, duly named “Tank 2” was finished in 2022, and a solo trip to Texas took place at the age of 88.

Near the end of 2021, Dad acquired a 1930 Model A Roadster. We began restoring the vehicle to functional use for a re-creation of a 1948 journey he took in a similar Model A Coupe as his family returned to Kansas from the migration to California during the 1930’s Dust Bowl. As we began the restoration, we faced many challenges. First there was a near fatal head on collision for us at Cholame Corner, Highway 46 & 41, in January, 2022, this is the corner where the actor James Dean died in 1955 . A month later, Dad swerved to miss an animal, caught an edge and went off the road in the Kern Canyon, East of Bakersfield, California. He was lucky to survive that, very, very lucky. The recovery postponed his Model A trip. Then in the fall of 2022, when all was almost ready for the trip, we discovered the engine needed a rebuild. Not one, but two engine replacements later, “Red” the name of the vehicle, was ready for the journey.

In March 2023, Dad turned ninety years old. We celebrated it by doing a tandem skydive. Yes, at ninety years old.

I don’t know how many drives are left, but the trip from California to Kansas was an adventure to remember.

Scott Patrick Erwin

September 2023