Our annual trek up to the farm one year (way back in the mid-1950s) broke virtually every one of today’s vehicle safety standards. The family car was a Studebaker, a product of a family-owned business that began in the eighteenth century, building wagons and carriages. With the advent of motor cars, the company expanded to take advantage of the automotive rage exploding from the “new” assembly-line science pioneered by Henry Ford. The Studebaker joined in the competition, but its last vehicle rolled off the assembly line in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada), in 1966.

Our Studebaker was probably the Champion model in production from 1939 to 1958; that’s the only one on a website showing photos of the various models and their production years. It was a four-door family version, with bench seats in front and rear. (No, it didn’t have a rumble seat further back where the trunk was located.) It was colored putrid, pale green, and had a relatively small interior.

We were a family of six on an eight-to-ten-hour drive, depending on how many pit stops were necessary with three boys in the car. Dad was brilliant this year, planning to drive through the night—fewer childish arguments when we kids were asleep. So he built a couple of wood platforms. The first was custom made to fit the front seat floor, under our mother’s legs. That’s where the youngest of the brood, Jimmy, slept, curled up. Dad designed the second wooden platform for the back seat floorboard; Mike slept there. My sister, Mary Beth, stretched out on the back seat. With only one place left, I inherited the back dashboard—you know, above and behind the rear seat in the space under the sloping rear window. Mom and Dad, of course, were in the front seat, with no seat belts, and long before airbags were a thing.

I don’t remember much, being probably around five or six (mid-1950s). But what I do remember like it was yesterday (maybe this part of the story came a few years later when we had upgraded to the Chevy wagon, with the crown and tail fins) is the time when a fancy “hardtop” sporty car came whizzing by us like we were sitting ducks on the side of the road. It was red and white, sleek, and had no column on the doors between the front-side window and the back-side window. It had a massive engine, judging from the motor sound—probably one of the large block V-8s common in those days when gas sold for about thirty cents a gallon and a fill-up was five bucks. Our goofy old Studebaker was not the wheels of the wealthy by any means. From my vantage point on the back dashboard, the dusk light allowed some visibility; I could see that flashy car speeding up behind us and then around. Wouldn’t it be cool to fly along the highway in one of those babies? We saw it again a few miles down the road—wrapped around a tree, upside down, with no driver to be seen anywhere.

At five or six, I didn’t understand death or car wrecks—the real kind. But I understood slot car wrecks. My older brother and I survived many model car crashes, flying our little racers around the old figure-eight track. Mike’s goal was to circle the track, trying to set new records for how many laps he could stay on without a crash. My goal was to hold the throttle button all the way down and time my spin-outs to knock Mike’s racer off at the turns. This game gives a sense of my brother’s and my differences. For me, car crashes were the point of the game. But the real car that flew past us on the highway and ended up in a tree was a different story. No seat belts, no airbags, no safety standards, a body flung a long way away.

The apostle Paul penned an interesting take on life: “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11). While he was writing about the importance of love over any abilities or skills we have, the application is based on a truism. There comes a time when we need to stop being childish in our outlook on life, being superficial, self-centered, and setting our priorities on the wrong things. It wasn’t until I stopped running away like a child from God, trying to imagine Him out of existence, that I came face to face with reality. Life was not just about partying, making it to retirement, traveling the world, and driving fancy cars. It was then that I was ready to listen to the “adult” advice of the Bible. I didn’t want to crash my life like what I saw passing by on the highway in a flash when I was a child. It was time to make a responsible decision and get my life right with God.

Afternote: Ironically, my first job out of university was working at an advanced research facility, Cornell Aeronautics Laboratory, now called Calspan Corporation, working in auto safety research, studying the benefits of seatbelts and airbags! I became a staunch advocate of seatbelt usage long before it became law in the US.