Full Throttle T-Bucket

I had to wait until I was a grown-up to get to have the experience of having brothers. My family consisted of my parents and their 3 little girls born very close together. When my sisters and I got married we added husbands to the family mix, and I got to have brother-in-laws.

Subjects such as dolls and fashion and hairdos and shopping and decorating are all familiar enough, and my father had his hobbies like fishing and collecting and art. But when the guys came along they brought with them interests that were entirely unexplored by our family. Then my sons were born and there were these fascinating men around for them to learn from.

Hal is into computers and trivia games. He can do a headstand, swim across a lake, and knows all about baseball. Mark can play the guitar, shoot a hockey puck and is a race car driver.

Although my aunts married men who were into cars and racing, I hadn't really paid any attention to the sport of it until Mark came along. I know I work for a car company, and I did occasionally attend the Grand Prix when it used to run downtown, but I could tell you more about the food that was served at the buffet than what was going on with the cars on the track. So you push on the gas and they go real fast around in circles, so what? When Timmy was just a preschooler I took him to see his Uncle Mark race his sprint car. I had no idea what to expect but Timmy was enchanted with the cars and the race. Mark came up in the stands to talk to us when he was wearing his fireproof suit. After he left some guys turned around and wanted to talk: "You know that driver? Wow! How fast to those sprint cars go?" I had to admit I had no idea, but Timmy caught on to the excitement of it. For months after that he would play with his little playmobile race cars and even named some of the people after Mark and his brother.

Mark raced for a few more years after that but eventually had to give it up in exchange for just filling up their garage with various old cars and parts that he is "working on." And now he has found a new avenue for exercising his grease monkey talents. It is a club though their church which is building a hot-rod car based on replica parts from a model-T. There is a blog that is chronicling the vehicle as it goes together, and when it's finished they are going to raffle it off and donate the profits to the Open Door Rescue Mission. Check it out: http://kensingtonchurch-fullthrottle.blogspot.com/ and while you're there buy a raffle ticket, I'm going to!