My Father, One of My Best Friends and Hero.

My father has always been there for me as I have for him. He and my mother met in auto mechanic class and ever since forever for me My father Mr. Earl A. Folks has been a car officiant and repairman of wayward vehicles.

My father would find older model cars in high demand get them running and sell them for three times what he paid. On one of these sales the buyer asked what we would charge to haul the newly purchased 1954 Oldsmobile all the way to Minneapolis, Minnesota from New Orleans, Louisiana. The buyer agreed to pay us $600 dollars to deliver a car he paid $500 to purchase. All in all, he would be paying us $1100 for a 1-week trip to hell and back to deliver a rusted out old car that did not run.

My father had a nice Dodge Ram Dooley that we started our journey hauling in. The car was so heavy it lifted the back of the big truck, so I suggested we weight it down with one of the Suzuki motorcycles we owned. And, as a precaution against breakdown we would have another vehicle for emergencies.

We said our goodbyes to mom and the other kids and started our journey. Not even 3 hours into the journey my dad starts seeing sparks flying up past his window. He looked in his rear view and saw one of the tires of the car was blown and the rim was grinding into the pavement. We pulled over on the side of the interstate. It dark and too late to try and repair on the side of the interstate in the dark. So, we got comfy and slept in the cab waiting until sunrise. I slept in a bit and when I woke the old man was at it as much as he could be. We were pulling the car on a two wheeled dolly, and he had determined we needed to turn the car around. As we got everything situated and started trying to turn the car it ended up going down hill and was stuck away from the side of the interstate but also down an embankment that we couldn’t possibly reach with the truck. And this car weighed more than the truck so no matter how hard we tried to push that Oldsmobile she wasn’t bugging. Thankfully a good Samaritan stopped and helped us pull the car in the right position with his wench. We thanked the stranger and offered him some money, but he refused. We got on our way again after almost a whole day of trying to turn a very heavy car around without the proper equipment.

With part of our day wasted we stopped off at the nearest tire repair on the way and had the blown tire replaced. That cost us $50. We soon made it into Tennessee, Memphis to be exact and as we were coming to a red light my dad says, “Would you look at that hub cap it looks just like ours?”. Well turned out it was ours and the wheel had fallen off the dolly and as we stopped it kept going. Fortunate for us the incident happened right there by Walmart. My father was able to fix the issue quickly. We ate then got back on our journey. When we tired, we pulled over at a rest area and slept in the truck again.

We got up with the sunrise and started back on our way now in Missouri. As we neared St. Louis actually, we were in St. Louis about to change interstates on the right side headed toward Illinois. A small red car went to change lanes and swerved to miss the vehicle we were hauling. My dad swerved as well, and this started something I never want to experience again. Due to the over correction the car started to sway back and forth, remember the car weighed more than the truck, and as the swaying got worse, we very quickly started to spin 360 across and all around the interstate. Amazingly all traffic had backed off so we had the space, but we were on a raised throughway and if the spinning didn’t stop, we were going over the side and would be a tragic story on the news.

The entire time this is going on and my dad is frantically trying to get everything under control, or so I thought. I was holding on to the save me handle as we spun and all the sudden, he stomped on the gas and down shifted the truck which caused us to come to a complete stop, straight but facing the wrong way in the emergency lane. Directly across the interstate was a church with a big white cross. I don’t know if God exists, but something saved us that day and I don’t know that it was just pure physics. I never screamed or cried I only said one thing. “Daddy, please do something.” I’m in my 20s currently in my life and dad is always dad never daddy. Later he would divulge to me that he closed his eyes and let go of the steering wheel so he could try and grasp what needed to be done and he didn’t know what to do at the time. Had I known he was going to close his eyes and let go I’m not sure I could’ve survived that spin without screaming.

So, we calm down and a tow truck driver comes pulling up yelling cancel air rescue and I think he hugged my dad after he kissed the ground we stood on. He was thankful for our lives and that we had hit no one the whole spinning time or hurt ourselves. We just seemed to be missing a small pipe we had in the back of the trunk. The state trooper arrived just as my father was tidying everything back to where it should be, and he asked if we were ok and ready, and we were like “YEAH!”. He stopped traffic and escorted us to our exit to the next interstate section and left.

My father will forever be my hero for this, I know he saved my life with his quick thinking that day in St. Louis.

We had a few more issues but nothing so bad or grand and after dropping the car off we dropped the two wheeled dolly at my uncles in Topeka, while we also rested in a bed for the night. That’s it, My Father, my hero forever because he not only gave me life but saved it again when called for without thought to himself. He’s the guy that fixes everyone’s broken stuff and cuts their grass too. Just because he can, and the neighbor can’t. I always be thankful to have such a wonderful and kind father.