TumbleDweeeb

  I was five years old when I learned how to start a car. Not just any car… a 1980 Trans Am, dark purple, with T-tops that offered glimpses of Arkansas sky and an exhaust system that announced our arrival half a mile before we appeared. That Phoenix emblazoned across the hood might as well have been a mythological creature to me, a symbol of power and freedom I was far too young to comprehend but old enough to covet.
   This wasn’t just any Trans Am… it had family history woven into its purple paint and chrome accents. My dad had bought it from my uncle Bubba, his baby brother Ronald, cementing it as a vehicle that carried not just passengers but lineage. Perhaps this partially explained my father’s pride in it, and by extension, my own fascination.
   It was 1982, and we lived in Mount Vernon, Arkansas, a place where children could still vanish for hours into woods and fields without triggering amber alerts, and where a father might casually teach his kindergartner how to turn a key in an ignition without considering all possible consequences. My dad had shown me the basics… insert key, turn clockwise… a seemingly innocent lesson that planted a dangerous seed in my impressionable mind.
   The soundtrack of those days was dictated by my father’s musical preferences: Steve Miller Band, John Cougar Mellencamp and Bob Seger dominated our drives, their albums rotating through the car stereo with religious devotion. At five, my entire concept of music consisted of these three artists..  I genuinely believed they were the only three artists that existed in the whole world. If it wasn’t John Cougar Mellencamp, it was Steve Miller’s cosmic blues or Bob Seger’s anthems. My musical universe was ternary, complete, and utterly shaped by what my father chose to play.
   The opportunity presented itself while visiting my cousins. My mother’s voice filtered from inside the house, instructing us to get ready to leave. In my five-year-old logic, this translated perfectly: I knew how to start the car, and we needed to go. Therefore, I should start the car. The grownup reasoning that I should wait for an actual grownup never entered the equation.
   I bolted for the Trans Am, my small legs pumping with purpose. The door opened with a satisfying weight, and I scrambled into the driver’s seat. The key slid into the ignition with promise. One twist of my wrist, and the engine roared to life, a mechanical dragon awakening beneath that long purple hood.
   As if orchestrated by fate, Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” pulsed from the radio… a song about magic coinciding with what felt like my own feat of sorcery. I cranked the volume until the speakers distorted, the car vibrating with sound and power. My feet found the gas pedal, and I pressed down, released and pressed down again, making the engine roar louder, making the body shift side to side. Something my dad showed me.
   The engine’s growl became a threatening snarl that echoed down the dirt road. From the driver’s seat, I was master of this mechanical beast, drunk on the roar and rumble. I didn’t hear my mother’s approach, didn’t register her voice… which had bypassed mere anger and achieved a tone reserved for near-death experiences and full-name usage.
   She appeared at the window like an avenging angel, her face a study in maternal terror and fury. Later, I would understand that she’d envisioned every possible disaster: the car lurching into gear, crashing through a fence, or worse. But in that moment, I only knew I’d discovered something magnificent, something worthy of volume and revving.
   Her hand reached through the window, twisting the key with decisive force, and silence crashed down as the engine died and the music cut out. The sudden absence of noise was more startling than the noise itself had been. My brief career as a Trans Am pilot was over, terminated by maternal intervention.
   The immediate consequences were predictable: a thorough scolding featuring my full name (the universal signal of parental displeasure), and a new family policy whereby keys were removed from vehicles and doors locked even in the relative safety of Mount Vernon. What I couldn’t have known then was how this moment would crystallize in memory—not as a lesson about disobedience, but as a perfect capsule of childhood logic and discovery.
   All I was doing was what Dad had taught me to do. The distinction between knowing how to start a car and having permission to start a car was a nuance lost on my five-year-old understanding. In my small-child universe, I wasn’t being reckless… I was being helpful, putting my newly acquired knowledge to practical use.
    Little did I know that in another five years, I’d be actually driving (1976 Chevy G20 Snub, the Summer of 1987)… a story for another time, with its own set of parental terrors and childhood triumphs. But this first brush with automotive power planted a seed that would grow steadily through my childhood, my fascination with cars and engines only intensifying with age.
   When I think back on that Trans Am now, I remember the golden Phoenix on its hood, the rumble of its engine, and the look on my mother’s face… a complex mixture of fear, relief, and exasperation that only parenthood can produce. And sometimes, when Steve Miller Band plays on some distant radio, I’m transported back to that driver’s seat… feet stretched to reach the pedals, hand on the key, discovering for the first time the intoxicating feeling of bringing something powerful to life. That song has followed me through decades. When the familiar chorus emerges from speakers, I’m simultaneously the middle-aged man I’ve become and the wide-eyed five-year-old I was… the one who thought only three artists existed in the world, the one who felt invincible behind the wheel, the one who was still becoming his father’s son.