Archive

The ‘Coming Home’ car

October 12, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Keith Schell

In the life of the average person, a car is simply intended to be a tool. A mechanical contrivance designed for your convenience. Something to get you from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and back again. A means to an end and no more. 

Of course, when you are young, everyone buying their first car wants the coolest add-ons they can possibly afford; the booming stereo that causes neighbourhood annoyance and driver hearing loss, the spoilers and/or racing stripes, and all the other bells and whistles they can possibly add to their car to make it the coolest (or hottest?) thing on the street. 

At one time in my youth, I wanted all the toys I could afford on my car as well. But as you get older, your perspective on automotive ownership begins to change, or at least, mine certainly has. And with that change, all I really want these days is a reliable, low-maintenance set of wheels that I know I can count on whenever I turn the key (or is it a ‘fob’ these days?).  

But as you age, and depending on your perspective, a car can mean so much more to the life of the average person. A car can be a conveyance of joy in the life of its owner. 

Depending upon where you are in the journey of life, and depending on how you look at it, an automobile serves one of two basic purposes in the life of the average person. 

And those two basic purposes for an automobile are: Going away from home and coming back to home.  

Again, depending upon your point of view, a car can mean different things to different people: To a twenty-something person trying to spread their wings and establish their own life, it becomes an exciting ‘getting away’ contrivance; the means of transportation that whisks you away from the home of your parents and carries you off into the life you are trying to establish for yourself. 

Your car takes you to your life experiences and participations: your job, your concerts, your activities and parties with friends, and so forth; and then gets you back home again afterwards. No muss and no fuss.  

But as you get older, or get married and have kids, the bond of family becomes more important to you and the perspective on the family car begins to change. Rather than being a ‘going away’ car, it becomes the noblest of vehicles: a happy ‘coming home’ car, the means of transportation that brings you the joy of coming home to see your loved ones and solidify the bonds of love and family. How many times have you been happy to get home from work, courtesy of your car, pulling into your driveway and looking forward to being happily greeted by your spouse, your little kids and your family pets? And in your childhood, how many times over the holidays did your parents say to you and your siblings, “Let’s go visit Grandma and Grandpa!” and whisked everybody away in the family ‘coming home’ car; coming home to see their own parents in the homes your Mom or Dad grew up in, for a happy family visit?  

And these days, how happy and relieved are your parents, now grandparents, to see you and your ‘coming home’ car full of loved ones safely pulling into their driveway for a visit, especially if you have come to see them from a great distance, signifying that the happy family reunion has begun?   

And as everyone starts piling out of the ‘coming home’ car to participate in happy family hellos, hugs, and bathroom runs, your car has just served the noblest purpose it can achieve in its lifetime: Nobody truly appreciates it, for the automobile is simply a tool of convenience and conveyance and is taken for granted by most people. But when you think about it in certain terms, the automobile is the great closer of distances, the re-uniter of families, and the bringer-together of loved ones for happy family visits.  

And, on any holiday weekend, if you see a bunch of cars parked on the street or in the driveway of a home someplace, you know that the automobiles in that situation have just participated in the finest purpose the car was ever created for: the bringing back together of families. 

And in that simple act of bringing families together, no ‘coming home’ car (or truck) could ever serve a nobler and more worthwhile purpose.  

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all! 

Readers Comments (0)