I’ve never really thought of my Dad as a car guy, though in hindsight, he did have some good cars. A Jeep CJ5 and a Camaro, a B21o A TJ, and most notably, three Miatas — two red NAs and a green NC.
He loved them, and tried to teach me to drive a stick in one of them. After he sold the first one, he’d tell us that “Mom made me sell it because it was too much fun.” Not nice, in hindsight!
He always either had a Miata or was talking about buying another one. He still talks about getting another one when he’s lucid, fantasizing about someday getting to drive again.
I moved home to Traverse City a few years ago to be nearer to him. It really is the perfect place for a Miata; lots of lonely, twisting roads through the woods, endless, broad beaches. I’m about as old as he was when he bought that first Miata now. I try to imagine the inside of his head as he commuted to his job teaching 8th grade history, stopped off for a beer with friends, blasted Aretha Franklin on the way home to me, my siblings, my Mom.
It’s impossible to know what that was really like for him, what he was feeling or thinking about in those days. Last year I bought him a nice NA Miata model to keep in the house, but he can’t see it really, may not remember it at all. I should really take him out for a ride in one.
By Rory Caroll
