The question was posed a while back, "What is your garage to you? How do you see that space?" Well, I've never been good at short answers and this is no exception so please bear with me. If you'll indulge a longer post, I'd like to tell some of my story and share some thoughts I've been mulling over and sorting out for the last few weeks.

Here goes...

Growing up, my younger brother and I spent countless hours in the garage shoulder to shoulder with my Dad and grandfathers and uncles doing everything from a timing belt on Mom's Dodge Grand Caravan to a transmission swap on Dad's Mazda MX-3 to learning to adjust carburetor jets on Grandpa Dave's '57 Chevy coupe. We built small block Chevy motors for my uncle's dirt track cars and tuned up boat motors and built and modified go-karts. The list could go on and on. The garage was always THE place to be and some project or other was always under way.

Looking back though I've come to realize that what made it special was never the specific work we accomplished. Sure we learned valuable skills and accomplished great things, but we did something else too.

We talked. And just as importantly, we listened.

I can't come close to scratching the surface on how much relationship advice (good and bad) was passed in those garages or how many of Grandpa's stories were told and retold. I can't begin to list the life lessons that were taught and learned through those too few hours and woven into the grease and brake dust and busted knuckles. No topic was off limits and nobody judged. If I needed advice, someone to talk things out with, a hard lesson, an ear to bend, or a story I always knew where to find it. I realized too late in life just how lucky I was and I can truly say I'd give nearly anything to go back and spend one more night in the garage with some of those men. Now I treasure most deeply the rare moments I can still spend shoulder to shoulder working in the garage with the few who are still with us.

Maybe this is a unique experience. I truly hope it's not... But when I step into the garage I hear the echoes of days and evenings long past. I can see my younger self sitting on a bucket next to my Grandpa Dave with a cold can of Coke in my hand, watching June bugs hitting the old fluorescent light fixtures, and being instructed on how to rebuild drum brakes while listening to a story about his childhood. In my mind's eye I can see the ghosts of my Dad and Brother and I working away on my Mustang II project car in highschool, joking mercilessly, and listening to music while we worked. I can smell the grease and oil soaked into my Papa's denim jacket while he explained why we were converting the old Ford 8N tractor to a 12v GM 2-wire alternator he'd picked up from a junk yard earlier that day. The garage holds some of my deepest core memories and, as a father now myself in my early 30's, I'm left wondering if I'll be able to create the same kind of environment for my 2 boys.

There's a line in Pirates of the Carribean where Barbosa says to Jack that the world used to be bigger. Jack replies, "No. The world's the same. There's just less in it." I feel that sentiment deeply when I think about how much we lost when Grandpa Dave left this world behind and the house and shop he built with his own two hands were sold. There's a deep ache when I drive past the family farm, recently sold as my other grandparents moved to be closer to family out of state, knowing that my sons won't get to sit next to those same men and learn like I did. I wonder if the new owners of those places know the significance of the spaces they now occupy. Can they sense that those places once shaped lives as well as metal and machines? Are they carrying on and using those spaces to shape a new generation? Can they somehow feel the gravity those spaces once held? Do they know they're standing on what is... Or was... Hallowed ground?

When my heart aches with nostalgia for the places I can't return to and the people I can't spend those hours with again I try to turn my attention to what I can do to preserve that experience for future generations. I have my own two boys now, one five and one just two months old. My Dad and brother now live too far away to come over on a Saturday night and wrench, and my father-in-law while an awesome Grandpa to my boys and plenty mechanical himself, isn't really a car guy. Most of my friends look at their vehicles as appliances and don't really understand or share any passion for them. I don't hold that against any of them. But it means that the only person my children have to pass this thing on to them is... Me.

The gravity of that thought has me very intentionally trying to make sure that while I'm building and chasing my own dreams I'm also teaching and conveying the "why" to my boys. I try to take my 5-year-old to every car meet or race that I can and we talk about the cars and what makes them different and special. He doesn't understand the passion yet, but he's growing up immersed in it and I hope that one day he finds his own version of this thing we call car culture. And I hope there is some piece of it left for my children to enjoy when their time comes.

To that point I think it's worth mentioning the danger this hobby and way of life it represents is in. We all know "car culture" is a hot topic and the subject of a lot of scrutiny and frustration right now. If you ask me, and nobody did but I'm going to give my opinion anyway, this thing we love so much is very simply the most recent victim of a world driven crazy by disconnection. Oh we're connected by social media and the internet, but that's the problem. We've never been more divided and disconnected from each other in a personal way. Starve anyone of meaningful personal interaction and offer them an intensely addictive platform that rewards clicks and rage bait as an alternative and you have a perfect recipe for a generation of wayward souls hoping for nothing more than the high that comes with the next viral clip. And I don't personally think that we can change it by looking at "car culture".

I think the answer truly lies in "garage culture".

To me, the garage is and should always be a space where people connect. It's a space for relationship building as well as creativity and dream chasing. Where chosen family and blood alike work shoulder to shoulder towards a shared goal regardless of personal differences. It's where we share and connect on a deeper, personal level. And it's the place I think we have to begin to heal as a car culture. As cliche as it sounds, the busted-knuckle bond is what I think is actually going to move us towards fixing the sickness. If you think about it, it's really hard to disrespect a build you watched someone bleed for and cry over. And knowing that buddy that helped you turn the wrenches is cheering you on and has your back is a better drug than any online affirmation. It's hard to be divided when you're actively seeking to understand one another. It's easier to heal when you have help. And you don't need the viral clicks when the people who mean the most to you are in your corner.

To bring this all back home I'll conclude with this. I hope that my children can grow up understanding the value of the space we call our garage. I'll move mountains to make sure that space stays safe for them. I'll bust every last knuckle and sweat every last drop and cry every last tear listening and advising and building them up and I'll beg, borrow, and steal to make sure it's a space where THEIR dreams can come true too. They'll always know I'm in their corner. And I hope that I'm raising young men who can and will stand for what's right and reject the mess that we're in today.

My garage... Our garage, is a space where we build more than just cars. We're building lives and we're doing it together.

This is our hallowed ground.

-T