El Camino
Part 1
My final post of 2025, is part of a story I drafted in 2019. I wrote it in the wake of my dad’s passing, when walking through grief left me longing to recapture childhood scenes. It doesn’t quite fit in the book I’m currently writing, but it makes me smile, so I polished it up a little and decided to share it here. Look for Part 2 sometime in the new year.
My dad’s new love was an emblem of his flirtation with conventionality. She was sleek and silver, had air conditioning, power steering, and cruise control.
I didn’t know or care much about cars, but I was delighted to be free from the rusty 1953 Chevy truck with the homemade plywood camper shell I had passed countless hours en route from New Mexico to Old Mexico to Nebraska and back again. The ancient truck, with its conspicuous holes in the dash where a radio should have been, cemented my status as an outsider during my formative years on the Private Sector Welfare Farm. I was the girl who lived miles out of town, at the end of a dirt road, on a commune, in a log cabin without electricity and running water. I had a dad with a ponytail and no mother to speak of.
But our move in the summer of 1979 to Columbus, Nebraska, to live with my grandmother, was a fresh start. Suddenly I was plunked down in middle America, surrounded by mown lawns, and sidewalks, and neighborhood kids, and porch lights that magically came on at dusk.
I don’t remember the El Camino’s year or how long we’d lived in Columbus when my dad found his gently used treasure. In spite of his rejection of middle-class values—he was an anti-capitalist, a quasi-revolutionary, an anarchist—he loved that car. He kept it immaculate, washing and waxing it as regularly as our new neighbors attended church. He sang along to the country station late at night as we drove home from visiting my aunt in Lincoln or his girlfriend in York. I would lie on the bench seat, my head in his lap, perfectly content knowing he was, too. Feeling in that moment as though we had escaped all of the things that kept us from normalcy.
I craved all things normal as a kid. Normal was watching “Happy Days” and “The Muppet Show” and fanatically following the Huskers (Nebraska’s college football team), which we did. Normal was also having HBO, and later MTV, which we did not. Normal was going on ski vacations over spring break, wearing Nikes and shopping for clothes at Brass Buckle. We did none of these things because people who did were giving in to consumerism and capitalism, the forces that were to blame for all that was wrong with the world.
Dad’s tenderness often emerged in the climate-controlled air of El Camino. It wasn’t just the way he sang along to the radio, or the way he indulged me with a trip to the Nike outlet in Boston after he’d made it clear that name brands were off limits. It was as though we were encased in a magical cocoon, shielded from the judgements and disappointments that seemed to follow us, where even Dad’s rules didn’t always apply.
When we drove the El Camino to Boston to visit family, my dad let me bring Cheez Whiz along, the kind that comes in the can with the plastic nozzle you press to make the ‘cheese’ squirt out. I was also allowed to invite a friend. Beth and I had the time of our lives on that cross-country road trip. We rode the entire way semi-reclined under the camper shell, surrounded by pillows, blankets, and snacks. It didn’t seem to matter that my dad was proud to be the kind of road-tripper who “drove straight through,” never making hotel stops or sightseeing forays.
On the dozens of long drives I went on with Dad, if we did stop for an overnight, it was always at a friend’s or relative’s house, not a hotel, and never a resort. There may have been one or two exceptions to this rule during my entire childhood, made because my dad simply couldn’t stay awake to drive.
I think one exception was a quick layover in a motel on the Boston trip with Beth, but there wasn’t anything memorable about it. The hours we spent entertaining each other in the back of the El Camino, emerging only for bathroom breaks when my dad finally decided it was time, are what stand out.
I was borderline euphoric on that vacation. Images of the rainbow stickers and ice cream cone shoelaces bought while shopping in Boston, long days building sandcastles on the beach and non-stop giggling crowd my mind when I attempt to pinpoint what exactly it was that filled my eleven-year-old heart with glee. I had one of my best friends all to myself, a pair of baby blue Nikes, and unlimited Cheez Whiz. Or maybe the ordinary felt extraordinary under the El Camino’s spell.
The El Camino held us through hard days, too. The timeline is fuzzy on this one, but I think it happened the winter before the Boston trip. Dad and I were on a short drive across town. I have no recollection of where we were going, but I remember wondering why he chose that particular moment to tell me he and his girlfriend Mickey had broken up.
I can still see the exact street we drove on when Dad cleared his throat and said my name using his careful voice. I remember the rectangular yards we passed and their leafless, uninterested trees, the way Dad’s voice made everything drab. I bet I could still identify the nondescript, clapboard house with the screened-in porch my father parked in front of while he broke the news. I counted the house’s windows, over and over, noted a baseball-sized hole in one of the screens, wondered how many kids lived there. Anything so I didn’t have to meet his eyes.
I also remember the way my heart sank, then left my body—a deep well of dread in its place—when I understood we wouldn’t be spending any more blissful weekends in York with Mickey and her son. I had already claimed the woman as my new mom and the boy as my younger brother. Now I’d probably never see them again. Dad let the tears roll down his cheeks, put the car in drive and eased back onto the empty street. I sat there numbly wondering how our lucky streak, sparked by the appearance of the El Camino, could end so abruptly.
Maybe Dad’s enchanted automobile had another plan for us. Soon its bench seat comfortably held my him, me, and the woman who would become my bonus-mom: Elaine. To this day, I wonder if the El Camino summoned the only woman on earth who could hold her own with my larger-than-life father, forgive his shenanigans and tend to his wounded heart.
Thank you for reading. Happy New Year!
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Caitlin, beautifully written. I see, and understand your dad. Thank you for sharing this. 💙💫
Happy New Year 🎉 I love your writing Caitlin! Thank you for sharing this slice of life with us. It made me smile too! Looking forward to part 2!