Driving with Dad
It was September of 1980. Mom and Dad had brought me down from Ohio to South Carolina to start college, and once again Dad was getting on my nerves. A lot of things that Dad did irritated me. His staunch standards and inflexible beliefs. The way he made us boys work on our property whether we wanted to or not. (Oh, those dreaded words on a Friday night: “We’re going to drag some brush tomorrow, boys.”) Even the way he came into my bedroom every Sunday morning at eight and put his hand gently in the middle of my back and said, “Time to get up.” And now here I was, eighteen years old and more than ready to be on my own, free from the responsibilities and frustrations of home, and he seemed determined to get on my nerves one more time. Anyone who’s lived in the dorms (nowadays “residence halls”) at a university knows the importance of arriving early each semester to claim your storage space and bunk. I had arrived after only one other roommate had arrived, so the pickings were still prett...