Accelerating Through the Curve

My daughter Elyse passed driver’s education with flying colors last summer and recently earned her driver’s license. She’s already taken her first road trip to Mankato—shopping (naturally), with a girlfriend (naturally)—including supper at Panera and dessert at the new frozen yogurt shop. Anyway, after teaching her the finer points of parallel parking the morning before her driving test I got to thinking of some of my own driver’s ed. experiences.

By the way, Elyse could not have had a better parallel parking teacher. A few years ago I met another pastor for lunch at Dino’s Gourmet Pizzeria in North Mankato—this is the place where Luke and I created a pizza which would eventually be named “The Luker” and become the featured pizza on their menu in June of 2009. (Italian sausage, pepperoni, black olive, mushroom, and fresh basil, if you must know. But I digress.) There’s parallel parking out front and when I arrived a few minutes before noon there was just one tight spot left. I eased in with the subtleness of a Seve Ballesteros chip shot landing inches from the cup on a fast green. The other pastor happened to be sitting at the window and was, to put it mildly, quite impressed. In awe, even. It was almost as if he felt privileged to see such a feat. “Wow, I should buy you lunch,” he said. Or something like that.

I was ineligible for driver’s education the summer after my freshmen year (when most of the guys took it) because, being one of the youngest in my class I didn’t turn 15 until June 14. I’d been driving with a “learner’s permit” since age 14 and driving tractors and manual transmission pick-up trucks on the farm since I was eight. Finally, the summer after my sophomore year, I would take Driver’s Education. And it wouldn’t end until sometime in July—I wouldn’t get my real license until like eons after my birthday. Life was unfair. This class was long overdue, belated, and anticlimactic.

Elyse tells me that all the boys in school are afraid of me. “Good” is my standard reply. And I wonder: Is it because I’m 6’4” and played defensive tackle in high school? Is it because I’m a pastor? Or might it be the seven-page “Application to Date my Daughter” I have posted online and require to be filled out (with very neat printing and in blue or black ink) prior to a 20-minute interview before any young man can be even evaluated for consideration for permission to date my daughter?

My D.E. teacher, Dr. Hammerstrom, had pretty daughters and I was afraid of him and almost every other father-of-a-daughter in the fatherhood context, especially when they were upstanding members of my church. Maybe all teenage boys are afraid of girls’ dads. Maybe that’s God’s way of keeping things at least somewhat in check.   

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah, Driver’s Education. Specifically, an afternoon drive from Orange City to Sheldon with Dr. Hammerstrom in the passenger seat, and David Vander Laan and “Bobby” Vander Brock in the back seat.

Sheldon, where the girls could flirt with you and you didn’t worry about your dad meeting up with their dad at church or the Co-op. Sheldon, where I’d driven to my grandparents using that despised learner’s permit at least a couple times every month for two years. Sheldon, where (more to the point) there was parallel parking.

I might have been afraid of Dr. Hammerstrom as the father of daughters, but not as a D.E. teacher. I was totally and completely at ease in the driver’s seat. I’d mastered knee-driving a years earlier. Driving with one arm out the window was as natural as walking or smiling or singing “Pass It On.” Driving with two hands (preferred, I think, by Dr. Hammerstrom), would be a piece of cake.

The “gas crisis” would end “holiday basketball tournaments” and lower the speed limits to 55 in a couple years, but in 1972 the speed limits on two-lane highways like Iowa-60 (a.k.a. 33) were still 75 (Trucks, 70; Night, 65).  

My dad and grandfather had taught me well—anything less than ten miles per hour over the limit was considered perfectly kosher. “75” really meant “80.” Or “84” if mom wasn’t paying attention. There were dozens of jokes I remember about ministers and priests having “lead feet” but ten miles over the limit wasn’t considered too fast. It hardly seemed illegal, or so I had learned.

But the most important thing I learned between Orange City and Hospers was the right way to navigate the wide, sweeping curve:  Don’t focus your gaze on any oncoming traffic or the inside line on the highway. Glance at it, but focus on the outside stripe. Slow down—not with the brakes, just coast into it—as you enter the curve. Then, at the apex, accelerate. Accelerate! “Accelerate Out of the Curve” is still as much a part of my inner voice as is “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

And so, with Dr. Hammerstrom and Dave and Bobby along for the ride, I confidently entered the big curve. God, I loved that curve! I coasted in and slowed to the speed limit give or take. And then accelerated at the climax. We shot out of the curve 85, maybe 90. Eventually I would slow down to 80 again. Cruise into Sheldon. Parallel park perfectly. Shift into Park. And smile confidently.

Dr. Hammerstrom always seemed so wise and soft-spoken. He asked, “Randy, have you ever considered becoming a preacher?” His tone seemed serious but in the back seat Bobby and my best buddy Dave were smirking and trying to suppress snorts, guffaws, and giggles. “No, why…” I answered. And Dr. Hammerstrom said, “Because you drive like one.”

I was speechless. I drive like a preacher? What?! No accolades on my parallel parking?  

Around 30 years after getting my license and driving my 1968 Galaxy 500 to the Sioux County Fair loaded with hay and corn for my sheep… and around 30 years after running out of gas with the Judy Lenderink (OMG, the preacher’s daughter) on the way home from the fair dance on the blacktop north of Orange City…

I was now a seminary student and invited to preach back at Trinity Reformed Church on Ascension Sunday. Older and a little bit wiser, I had learned to drive slower, eat slower, walk slower, and talk slower than in my younger days. And as I sermonized about Jesus ascending to heaven and the significance of this third-greatest Christian Holy Day in our daily lives, I saw Dr. Hammerstrom and I remembered his question, “Have you ever thought of being a preacher?”

I accelerated through the curve’s climax, and drove my final point home. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.