Monday, June 22, 2009

Our 15th Father's Day

Father’s Day at our house has always been the same: start with church, take Sean to Red Lobster for lunch, give him a gift, then he takes a nap. Relatively uneventful. But not since we moved to Michigan. The Oldsmobile Homecoming Car Show occurs Father’s Day weekend and believe you me, that’s what we’ve done the past three Father’s Day. This weekend was no exception.

Lansing is home to Oldsmobile; even though Olds doesn’t exist anymore there are still a lot of Cutlass/Delta 88/Alero/Toronado fans in the city. There are enough of them to host a car show celebrating all that was wonderful about Oldsmobile. There were over 300 cars on display. That, my friends, is a lot of metal to view.


And view it we did. Sean has a particular way he likes to do car shows: he starts at the very end of the parking lot, then methodically goes down each row, viewing each car. And by viewing I don’t mean glancing. I mean going up to each car, examining the metal, the engine, the interior, all while holding the Car Show Pose. CSP involves standing several inches away from the vehicle with your hands clasped behind your back. You can lean in but NO touching! The CSP was taught to him by his father and has been passed down to our children. It’s instinctive now: the minute they approach a car they assume the position.

Michael and Rebecca are car show lovers, too. Sean and those two could have spent hours longer than we did, looking at the cars over and over. I can handle the first time around; I don’t need the double-takes. Amy’s not so wild about the first go-round. But she and I were good sports and hung in there until the very end. When Sean said he wanted to look at a few more cars (many we’d already seen) I took Amy back to our car, started the air conditioning and we waited for the diehard car enthusiasts to finish up.

I think Sean had a pretty good Father’s Day weekend. A car show, church, two Star Trek DVD’s, lunch at Red Lobster and a nap. Not a bad way to celebrate a guy who’s been a fabulous dad for fifteen years.


Sean and Michael by one of the last rear-wheel drive Cutlasses.


The owner of this classic drove up from Cumming, Georgia. Seeing that license plate was a taste of home! (Chuck, you need to drive that '59 Corvette up here, too! Lots of shows for you to enter!)


This sums up the attitude of the car owners!

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