First, the good news: The 1998 Toyota Sienna van with over 165,000 miles which I duct-taped together for the ride to Virginia survived the trip up and back.

And now the bad: The air conditioner did not.

In fact, the air conditioner went out about two hours into the trip on the way up. But thankfully, it was overcast and cool once we hit the mountains in east Tennessee, so it didn’t really matter. It even stayed relatively cool for July during our visit.

But the trip back yesterday evoked way too many memories of those hot retro rides from the 1960s–the choking exhaust fumes, the jarring sound of air brakes, the wet cling of the clothes, the rush of hot air through your hair and into your ears. When it started to rain in Knoxville, we collectively groaned at the prospect of having to roll up our windows and the steamy sauna that would likely ensue.

“Can’t we try it one more time?” Number Three pleaded.

“It won’t work,” I logically intoned.

Eyegal reached down and pressed the “AC” button whose light had all trip long flashed in a desperate “S.O.S.” Somewhere deep within its bowels there was a commotion, and then–cool air.

And for the next hour or so, for as long as we were in the rain, it worked.

Talk about your traveling mercies.

Yesterday’s post on cars sure got Fusion followers waxing nostalgic. If you haven’t weighed in with your earliest car memories, then please feel free to do so. Hal did, and just to bring the point home, so to speak, he sent us a picture of the now-famous ’66 Plymouth Valiant, customized for those long cattle drives home along congested Houston freeways:

Today, I’m duct-taping together a 10-year-old Toyota van with 165,000 miles on it, saying a prayer, and heading to the Land of No Computers, a place where the electronics are still circa 1975 (and I’m not taking a laptop). That’s right, we’re off to grandma’s house in Virginia.

There, people eat apple butter and toast with their morning coffee, read “who-dun-what-to-whom” in the weekly edition of the Franklin County News Post, and come evening, sit on the front porch and carry on honest-to-goodness live conversations while watching the evening storms blow in.

Almost heaven? Not quite. That’s the other Virginia (the faux one). I’m talking about the real thing.

Grace can take a myriad of forms, but for a 16-year-old male who suddenly beholds the set of wheels that he has longed for all his life, this is Grace, raw and uncensored:

When he was about 4-years-old, I recall taking Number Two Son to an outdoor store in Bowling Green, Kentucky where he spied the ride of his dreams: a colorful mountain bike that was several sizes too large. He just couldn’t conceive of why he couldn’t simply drive it off the lot, and he cried huge, Cadillac-sized tears. My heart broke a little bit watching that, but I hoped the day would come when that would be replaced with a scene like that above and those tears would be a distant memory.

We made a deal with the boys a long time ago that goes something like this: make good grades, stay physically fit, work when you can, be involved at church and stay out of (serious) trouble, and we’ll make sure that you have a reliable set of used wheels in which you can begin to seek a little adventure and drive through college after which, of course, you should be able to more or less stand on your own two feet. Or four wheels, as the case may be.

For Number One Son, the ride consisted of a 2000 VW Passat, for Number Two, a 2000 Honda CRV. For me, it consisted of various cars that my Dad kept around, including a red 1967 VW Beetle with a stick, a–and as a die-hard Duke fan I hate to say it–sky blue Ford Rambler Fairlane (3-speed on the column), a puke-green Ford Maverick, an orange 1971 Subaru sports coupe and a yellow 1976 Subaru sedan.

Each one had it owns idiosyncrasies and created its own interesting storyline. Especially the yellow Subaru. The one that dropped its transmission about 15 miles west of Cookeville, Tennessee where I was stranded for 3 days immediately after I graduated from college in May, 1984. I left Searcy, Arkansas with a little under $700 in my bank account. I arrived home with next to nothing.

I’m hoping that my sons will never be stranded like that, but if cars follow their usual pattern of behavior, they most likely will. And do you think I’ll be receiving a call when that happens? You betcha.

So, what wheels did you drive during your formative years? Any special road stories?

For the most part, we’ve enjoyed our neighbors over the years and had good relations with them. But there’s always the exception. Like the septuagenarian widow next door who from the moment we moved in 12 years ago has viewed us at best as a modern-day reincarnation of the Adams Family and at worst as a clan of pesky rodents dead set on ruining her pristine, picture-perfect Southern Living magazine house and showcase yard.

Over the years, she’s accused us of various neighborly transgressions including damaging her sprinkler heads while mowing the property line (she actually has one sprinkler head on our property, and it’s never been damaged), mowing too far onto her property, not caring about or keeping a showcase lawn like hers (guilty!), our boys pelting her house with rotten apples when we first moved in 1995 (they were 6,4, and 2 at the time) and leaving a back patio light on which keeps her awake at night.

But the greatest transgression of all, according to her, has been our cracking and/or chewing of the slats on the wooden fence which separates our properties. I should clarify that by saying cracking allegedly from back yard soccer matches, chewing by Amazing Gracie the Wonderdog, not me or the boys. [...]

Potter v. Beckham:

Are you ready to rumblllllle?!

Actually, with Potter already rolling across the internet and Becks hobbled by a bum left ankle and unlikely to see action v. Chelsea, this one was over before the opening whistle. Maybe Becks should consider taking up Quidditch. Less stress on the joints and all.

Final Score: Harry Potter 1, David Beckham 0

July means church soccer camp and that in turn means that our children’s minister will be calling me again to see if I would be willing to coach. I tell him what I tell him every year, that I really am retired this time, and I go into medical textbook detail about the scar tissue around my L5-S1 vertebrae and how I can run in a straight line reasonably well, but add the constant start and stop plus the twisting, lateral movements of your typical children’s soccer camp and it’s Sciatica City for me. On and on it goes, year in and year out.

But please, he always says, we need you. Yeah, me and the 15 years worth of balls, cones and scrimmage jerseys that I carry around in my large, black, slightly moldy Adidas ball bag. You know, the one with the torn shoulder strap and the bottom that’s starting to fall out.

Eyegal watches all this with a certain cynical bemusement. Each year she rolls her eyes so far back into her head that only the whites show and checks the ibuprofen dish that sits on the coffee table in our family room to make sure that it’s well-stocked.

“You know you’re going to go, and that you’re going to love it, so stop the drama and give me all those practice jerseys so I can wash them. I bet they still smell from last year,” she always says.

And of course, I always do go and did go again this year, out to the expansive and well-groomed pitch at Virgil I. Grissom High School to teach a little touch, technique and, on a good day, even a few tactics. The elementary age children who sign up always arrive clad in their multicolored kits and neon boots, generally eager and willing to play “The Beautiful Game.” As long as they get a water break every 5 minutes or so, that is. [...]

I’ve found yet another reason that I’m head-over-boots in love with “The Beautiful Game.”

Soccer vision.

The following conversation recently took place in a local health care provider’s office. All names have been deleted in order to protect confidentiality and the sacred bong bond between doctor and patient:

Patient (hereafter referred to as “P”): “Doc, I’ve been havin’ these spells of tunnel vision, man.”

Doctor (hereafter referred to as “D”): “In one eye or both eyes?”

P: “Both.”

D: “How long has this been going on?”

P: “Oh, at least 5 or 6 years.” (translation: So long that he can’t really remember)

D: “How often does this happen?”

P: “Um, hard to say, pretty often I guess.”

D: “How long does the tunnel vision last when it happens?”

P: “Oh, anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour or so, just depends.”

D: “On what?”

P: “Huh?”

D: “Depends on what?”

P: (chuckle) “Oh, I don’t know.” [...]

I have come to the point where I question the validity of online quizzes, inventories and assessments. Why you ask?

Because of this:

This is the so-called “rating” that Ocular Fusion received when I visited the site “What’s My Blog Rated?”

That’s right, after nearly two years of edgy, envelope-pushing, controversial-topic-broaching, blood-pressure-popping blogging, all I get is the “Dreaded ‘G.’” I thought for sure I would get at least a PG, maybe even a PG-13 what with an entire category devoted to the topic of “Sex” and all. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would merit the money-making “R,” but a “G?” Please.

So now I’m right up there with Snow White, Bambi and Clifford’s Really Big Movie. I’m ruined.

%$&*#@+~!!! There, that oughta spice things up a bit.

One of my favorite restaurants in Huntsville, Little Rosie’s Taqueria, is in a bit of hot water over the largest outbreak of E. coli poisoning in Alabama in over 20 years. Or maybe they should have used more hot water, I’m not sure.

We eat at this place a lot, so I’m not sure how we managed to dodge this particular bullet. Of course, the lawyers are closely monitoring the situation (thank God!), and health inspectors are reassuring everyone that this was an isolated incident and that in fact Little Rosie’s, in the wake of this, is probably the safest place to eat in Huntsville.

My question is this: Should I show some solidarity and faith in Little Rosie’s and eat there sometime this weekend or should I avoid it like last week’s lettuce? I would appreciate your feedback.

E. coli anyone? Uh, no thanks, I think I’ll pass on that.

Gender bending is something that we don’t even talk about in the Deep South much less practice, so you can imagine how my eyes bugged out when I read this. Apparently, the rest of the country may not be ready to talk about it either.

I’ve always suspected that Hillary had a pair of big brass ones (metaphorically speaking, of course) and that Obama, with those lithe fingers and fine threads, was the embodiment of the modern metrosexual man. Now I have confirmation.

By the way, I would like to announce to the stable of Presidential candidates out there that my vote is officially up for grabs. I’m a man without a party, a social moderate and fiscal conservative with a long libertarian streak who could (ahem) “go either way.”

So go ahead. Woo me.

Okay, you had to know that there was no way that I could write a serious post like yesterday’s without taking a least a little humor break.

Conspicuously absent from the recall list is the Church of Christ. I feel much better now.

Among all the things that Pope Benedict XVI has stated recently, it’s important to remember one thing that he did not say: that those believers outside the Roman Catholic Church are not true Christians.

And I don’t believe that he would say that, because that’s not the official teaching of the Catholic Church (although there are many Catholics still today who might say that). What he did say is that those “ecclesial communities” formed by those other Christians are not churches in the “proper sense” because they do not have apostolic succession and are therefore “defective.” That has always been the view of the Catholic Church and the Pope is, for whatever reasons, basically stating what has always been official teaching.

There is nothing new here. It’s just that after all the ecumenical rapprochement of the late John Paul II, Benedict’s statement, along with his recent loosening of the reigns on the Latin Mass, strike many as a hard right turn toward pre-Vatican II days.

Many, of course, have claimed that their church is the only true church, including a certain denomination with which I am intimately familiar. The difference is, that in the case of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, there is considerable weight behind their historical arguments. [...]

Several have weighed in on the troubling irony that a physician, a member of the health professions sworn to protect the well-being of others, could also moonlight as a terrorist. Here’s a sample, from the ironically cynical, to the psychological analysis, to the grinding of the usual axe.

Primum non nocere– “First do no harm.” Yes, physicians should know better. But since when did the depths of the human condition not cut across professional lines?

Well, truth be told, I was several blocks away when he blew through town. But if I had an extra $1000 lying around, I might have gotten an eye and earful.