Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
When I was a young boy, my father and I talked about three things: sports, cars and politics. To be clear, these were not just the default subjects, these were the only subjects we discussed.
If memory serves, my Dad and I only veered off the sports-cars-politics track once when I was 17, to talk briefly - and uncomfortably - about girls and temporal vices such as cigarettes and alcohol. In his mind, all three were connected and similarly perilous.
I have since pieced together that my Dad, who passed away in 1993, was something of a bon vivant in our little Middle Tennessee hometown in the middle 1940s, and so he probably felt duty-bound to have at least one man-to-man talk with me to keep me on the straight and narrow. I remember thinking afterward, "Whew, I'm glad that's over. We'll never have to do that again."
And we didn't.
Having had our once-a-lifetime serious chat, we retreated happily back to our comfort zones: quarterbacks, carburetors and Congress. These conversations have proven useful in my adult life as I have, at different points, been a newspaper sports editor, an automotive journalist and a government reporter. I would be silly to think there's no cause and effect.
Actually, it was part of the man code in the middle of the 20th century to keep conversations tightly focused on approved male topics. Sports, cars and politics were the only subjects I remember my father discussing with other adult men.
On the other hand, my conversations with our two sons - ages 9 and 14 - can veer in almost any direction. We talk about schoolwork, money, careers, friends, family history; the list is long.
Having said that, my 9-year-old son has recently - and curiously - latched onto cars as his favorite conversation starter.
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Actually, I guess it's not that curious since I drop him off at school in a different car every week due to my weekly Test Drive column. He is probably one of the few 9-year-olds in America who can identify a Tesla Model S at 100 yards.
"Daddy?" he'll ask from the back seat of the family car. "What would you pay for a 1929 Mercedes Benz?"
"Oh, I don't know," I'll answer. "Maybe $20,000, but probably nothing. What would I do with it?"
"I found one on your phone for just $12,000," he'll report. "I think you should buy it."
"Nope, not going to happen," I'll reply.
This is a game he has invented. There's an app on my iPhone called CarGurus, a digital car-finding service that will aggregate automobile ads from a defined geographic area. He will play endlessly, looking up used cars and having me guess the prices. On late-model used cars I can usually come close; with older cars, the game is much tougher.
Lately, I have noticed that all this mindless car banter is actually taking root in his brain. He will tell me when he doesn't think a car I'm testing lives up to its sticker price, or he'll ask me some arcane question that tells me he is paying attention.
"Daddy," he said earlier this week, "I didn't know Subaru made a pickup truck, but I saw one downtown."
"Yes," I said, "it was kind of a weird-looking truck/car called the Baha. I think they stopped making them about 10 years ago."
It has occurred to me that having deep recall on a narrow subject like automobiles is actually a good thing. Think how many IT professionals started out as self-taught computer hobbyists. So now, when I get bored hearing the same questions over and over - "Dad, what would you pay for a '65 Mustang?" - I try to answer enthusiastically.
I had a vision of a conversation 30 years from now when someone asks my son, "So, how do you know so much about cars?"
"My Dad taught me," I imagine he'll say, proudly.
OK, now I need a Kleenex.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.