Leaves tumble over the asphalt. Fall wind howls through the pines lining my front yard near the street. I’m on my way home from the bus stop. Football just ended and It became time for me to find things to do with the free time I have after school. Our driveway is long and narrow. It somehow feels like the longest part of the quarter mile walk I have from the elementary school where I get off the bus. I think about this, how it’ll happen everyday. Not that it hasn’t over the past two years. I guess it’s just a different boring. This was my first football season. When walking inside I feel the cold of my face becoming immediately unused to the heat in my home. Nobody is there. I walk downstairs to what seems like a cave, unlit and warm, to lay down. Normally, my Dad is waiting for me to come home from practice, excited to hear how it was and tell me about his experience with football in high school. Instead I was alone for an hour or so.

I used to laugh at how depressing and boring this situation was. I somehow felt out of place, even in my bed. But I had no problem with myself, or how I lived.

After an hour or so, Angie, my step mom, would come home after picking Trystin up from the pre-school across town. I would always walk upstairs to greet them, see if angie needed help with anything. She asked why I hadn’t turned on any lights. I guess I hadn’t noticed. Before Angie and my step family I would wait in child care for my dad to pick me up after work. We would come home and there were no open blinds or lights. Just a TV and leather couch where I would wait for him to shower and get ready for food. That was my sense of comfort. Cold leather, faint blue light, and a quiet buzz from the fan in his room, that seemed to always be on. Angie didn’t like this. Upon arrival she would open all the blinds and turn on as much lights as she wanted. This pushed me into my room in the basement. Which I was ok with. I would sleep and then be called up for dinner.

On that day, my dad wasn’t present, he had been helping my Uncle Jerad move into his new home in Alabama. After dinner, my Dad had texted Angie and I that he had bought a Corvette from my Uncle’s friends in the south. He sent us a picture. It was on a trailer at a gas station, he and my grandpa had been on their way up for a couple hours and would be arriving later tonight. It was black, and had a convertible top. I immediately began looking at the wikipedia page for this car. I looked at new Corvettes, and other sports cars like the Viper and Ford GT.

After dinner, and after showering and cleaning up,  I had found my Dad and Grandpa had been struggling to pull into our narrow driveway with the trailer. The car had a big grey cover over it and wheels and rims were behind it on the trailer. After 15 minutes of work it was in the garage on jack stands and my Grandpa had left with the trailer. This was all great for me, I anticipated getting into the car, instead I was told to go to bed.

On my phone that night I was looking at all sorts of cars and how they worked and how much they cost. I had fallen asleep with my phone lost in my bed. After struggling to find it the next morning I rushed out the door through the garage and saw my dad under the car’s hood. He had told me it would be done by the time I was back from school. I went through the day, asking friends what cars they had in the family. This led to good conversations and made me even more anticipated to get into the car with him.

After school, I did the usual quiet bus ride and cold walk home. But when I walked into the garage, my dad was still working. He had two wheels on. We worked through finishing it. He said he needed to take it to my Uncle Joey’s shop in Lake Orion for an oil change. We got in the car and he turned the key. When I was a kid, the sounds of the cars my uncles were building or cars I saw at shows would scare me. The volatile sound of a built engine pushing pops and rumbles through the exhaust made me move away. This time it was different, It was exciting. The car purred, but purred aggressive and loud. It sounded fast. My dad told me it had an Intake and an exhaust system. He put it in reverse, and rolled back out of the garage.

This confused me at the time, I had never thought anything of manual transmissions before. I found it cool. We rolled out of the driveway and stopped at the end. All of a sudden my dad whips out in front of a guy in a drift and the car screams down the road. He didn’t let off the gas even as he flew by kids that were walking home still. I found my hand gripping the door handle, and my feet planted on the ground. It made me smile. It was like being on a roller coaster. We went through the slight bends like they were nothing, and went up the hill so fast it made my stomach drop. After the top of the hill I saw a stop sign and was relieved for him to slow down. During this fast trip we couldn't hear anything over the music.

It had four subs and an amp in the trunk. I’m pretty sure we were listening to rap. The bass shook the car, making it seem more unstable than it already was going seventy miles an hour through a neighborhood street where the limit was twenty-five. Well, anticipating the stop I look at my dad smiling because it was fun. Instead he keeps focused on the road. Instead of stopping, he yanks the e-brake and slides out onto clarkston road. This made me scared. He gassed up the hill away from Greenview road, the street we were on. My head was stuck in the seat and we took the bend past clintonville at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour faster than we were supposed to. We then got to an actual 100 miles an hour going straight back towards Sashabaw. I felt like I was in a spaceship. The tires were so wide that the faster we went the louder they were.

He finally slowed down and pulled back onto Pine Knob road, heading back towards our house. He stopped speeding and drifting and turned down the music. He had to speak loudly over the heavy purr of the engine. “That was fun, huh?”. I reply “That was crazy”. “Same thing” he insists. We get out of the car and he tells me “I like fast cars” I laughed at this and told him I do too. He owned that car through the next year’s summer, we enjoyed the times we had in it. He then sold it. I wasn’t disappointed, he had told me he planned on buying another with the profit he made from selling the last. We had fun in that car, at cruises and car shows. He then bought a WS6 Trans Am, which was just as fast, and we had just as much fun. After selling that car he bought an even faster Roush Mustang, and supercharged it.

Through this period of time I’ve grown a passion and interest in fast cars. I’ve come to see that my entire family has the same interest, and have had their own experiences with other sports cars. Today this is still an intriguing topic to me, and I plan to work somewhere in the automotive field. I appreciate my family for the way they brought me into this, and their willingness to answer the questions I have regarding cars.

Now, looking back on my time becoming influenced by cars. I can see the experience I’ve acquired from my family. From the times cleaning my Uncle’s old shop, or helping my dad put parts on or take parts off. These seemed to be the only times I was intrigued by what I was learning. The knowledge I have about this passion I value, and i’m grateful for the time taken to teach me.