The ‘caddy’ blues

My father was not affluent, but he had a penchant for Cadillacs. When I was a senior in high school he scraped together enough money and bought a big black shiny Cadillac, the car of his dreams. It was slightly used but it was a shining black beauty to him, (and to me), and he kept it gleaming. Of course I saw it as a way to impress girls and I wanted in on the action. I begged for months to use it to no avail, he would not even discuss it. My father could have cared less what I said but he adored my mother, worshipping the very ground she walked upon, and I knew the way to the keys to the car was through her.

I worked on her incessantly for months. Finally one day she grew tired of hearing me beg and succumbed and just like that’ I had approval to use that bad boy. I never will forget the look in my father’s steely blue eyes as he grudgingly gave me the keys to his beloved caddy. He was not tall but he was stout and his arms were thick as oak limbs with wrists as big as my leg. I had been on the receiving end of them and had experienced being beaten within an inch of my life by him on more than one occasion and I clearly understood what would happen if I messed with him or his caddy. “Not a scratch”, he growled, “Not a scratch”.

My best friend and I were sporting around town in it with our girlfriends. We decided to go out to our hangout on Highway 50 and show off a little, (or maybe a lot), and were cruising down the highway radio blaring and doing about fifty. As I approached the top of a hill and just as I reached the summit another car appeared’ in my lane. I re-actively tried to go into his lane to avoid the collision, but it was too late and we had a head-on collision with the right front quadrant of the caddy folding up the right quadrant of the other car demolishing it. The guy driving the other car was drunk as a skunk’ and as drunks often do did not get a scratch; however his wife who was sitting directly in front of the direct hit was instantly killed. Both the man and woman in the back seat were very seriously hurt; (the woman in the back had her feet severed and nearly bled to death).

No-one in my car got a scratch. (Cadillacs were built like Sherman tanks in those days and were constructed of nearly solid steel through and through and that car held up extremely well, but the 1958 Ford the drunk was driving was like a tin can and folded up on impact.) The highway patrol arrested the driver of the other car and took us both in to town. (I never will forget that patrolman beating the heck out of that drunk; every time he would stand up he would knock him back down. That was my first exposure to police brutality; not that the guy did not deserve it.) The patrolman looked at me and said you didn’t see anything and I hastily agreed.

The patrolman asked me if I wanted to call my parents to come get me. I declined and asked if he would do it, explaining that my father would most likely kill me. He looked surprised but agreed. My father was not happy. He was really concerned about his car’, and apparently the shock of hearing the news that his caddy was totaled by me the very first time I ever used it was so disturbing that he forgot to even ask if I was all right and only asked the patrolman about his car. I will never forget the expression on his face when my father came to pick me up. The patrolman had explained that it was not my fault and that the drunk had caused the accident, but I really do not think that it really sank in. He was in a state that I would describe as controlled rage. He was so obsessed with that car, that never once did he consider how close I had just come to losing my life and what a traumatic experience I had just witnessed. He was mad at me for weeks about it.

I have never forgotten that experience and I held it against him for years. All is forgiven now, but it bothered me for a long, long time. Material things are not nearly as important as we sometimes make of them. Even if that car had never been wrecked, it would have long since been demolished and/or rusted away in a junk yard somewhere. The same goes for boats, houses, jewelry, furniture, or whatever. God tells us not to worship idols. He is not referring to images alone, He is also referring to material things. They can distract and obsess our attention from the important things in life like God and family, and all to no avail because soon they will be either rotted away or passed on to someone else. Material things are way down the list with me, and in fact are not even on it anymore…How about you?

Matt. 6:19
Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and
rust destroy and where thieves
break in and steal;
but lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven where neither moth
nor rust destroys and where thieves
do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.