I was in my twenties when I found an apartment that fitted my self image. I was recently discharged from the military and I was going to art school. That apartment reflected the inherited car from my Grandfather, an old, square shaped Buick sedan. It wasn’t even close to my previous car, the British Racing Green MGA with the real knock-off spoke wheels and Pirelli Cinturados and a Derrington wood rim steering wheel. No, It was the car of my discarded Grandfather, now passed down to me. Discarded because the once strong Minneapolis Captain fireman was not useful anymore. Off to the nursing home and the inevitable deterioration to death. “You next!” is the well known movie line.

Grandpa had killed my cat when I was young, just because it deserved to be discarded in his opinion. I felt like that too. Then my mother and sex obsessed step father sold my precious MGA when I joined the Navy as the draft came in with a whirlwind of death harvest for Vietnam. I signed on first before I might have gone west to the jungles. When I got to boot camp in San Diego, my DI announced ” hey Peterson, you just got drafted!” Close call.

I went east to the Mediterranean sea instead. So now I sold the Buick right away, traded it for an Austin Healy Sprite. My new roommate, Bruce, made the trade with me. He had just gotten back from Nam. It felt good to be in a roadster again. Made up a bit for the Green MGA and the cat. The cat trauma however, lingered in my hypothalamus for decades.

My post Navy apartment was a dump. Second floor above a Sherman Williams paint store on the wrong side of the tracks. Corner store, separate entrance. I had a neighbor who was down and out too and bummed smokes. When I would ask him how things were going, the neighbor always said: “just take me to the dump” It seems that the latest attitude many of us have. “It’s at the end of it’s service life” or “that old thing? Too expensive to fix, toss it” “ You’re what! Pregnant! Git rid of it, You’ve got your whole life ahead of you!” and our favorite: “Heck, he’s over 80. Forget that cornea transplant. I mean really, how many years does he have left anyway?” “Put her in a home, she won’t notice anyway” And so forth.

Feeling useless because the popular philosophy now is Existential in nature. One man in particular, a philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, went insane in the most beautiful country in the world, Switzerland. He came to the point of knowing the tension and despair for the loss of meaning in his life because of the loss of a personal God. His words are profound: “ But all pleasure seeks eternity-a deep and profound eternity”. Our country has found itself discarding our God of Creation perhaps because He is inconvenient and is sort of a kill joy because of all those rules he has. “I can’t follow all those rules in the Bible!” Of course we can’t, that’s the point of the rules. We need Him. That’s not a rule, it’s a choice because we were built to do so.

So we discard what we feel and know is not worthwhile to us. An old car, out of date food and personal relationships that are used up and don’t make us feel the way we want to. Or the way we feel we are entitled to perhaps. We have so much ‘stuff ‘ that it gets in our way when we don’t like it or need it. Broken things, old things past their expiration dates. Things that we don’t even remember acquiring. And so it goes on and on until it becomes easier to discard than repair. “That car, it was getting old and anyway, I was tired of driving it” How much different is it when it comes to this? “He was getting on my nerves. All this talk about going to a church marriage counselor! It was his fault, so I divorced him” Thus the rise of storage units. Everywhere. I just cannot get rid of that table! The storage unit is full within a week.

It seems prudent to us to just put it in a blue plastic container and park it down by the end of the driveway every Tuesday. ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! Throw out the tub too!’ I can do what I want, that’s what the world says. Another philosopher, De Sade put it well: “If there is no standard, no real moral base, then that old woman walking down the road can either be helped or run over. No difference if there are no moral standards” We can agree on being kind to others is a basic moral standard. Where does that come from? Are we kind to ourselves? Questions abound in my mind about those things. Most likely yours too. Hunger for answers to purpose and how to fulfill it.Those thoughts are the building blocks to our lives.

So, it’s our choices, the small ones that make a great impact on everyone. Should I discard this friend? This inconvenient baby? This old fashioned religious teaching? This God who never did anything I asked Him to do!

Always, always our choice to build, repair, embrace and seek truth in the eyes of the Man who is more alive than any man who ever lived. Jesus, the master repairman of old and stressed lives.

Read the sequel Motorcycle Pilgrimage 1. At this website.

It’s pretty good. Norm Peterson / Jack Gator