Can’t blame Dad for trying. He’s no expert mechanic but he certainly practices good car maintenance and knows his way around the most basic emergency procedures that tend to arise over the standard lifespan of a vehicle. He tried to impart some of that knowledge to his girls. But we were always more interested in being behind the wheel than under the hood.

Because when you grow up in Tulsa, road-tripping your way around Texarkana (and that one memorable summer vacation out west, all the way to Boise), driving was a joy. Driving meant freedom. Driving meant wide-open roads and singing at the top of your lungs and playing silly games to pass the time, hitting the occasional quirky roadside diner (even though you packed enough food for an army), stopping on a whim to read a historical marker if you felt like it, then still managing to catch up afterward with that same horse trailer you saw drive off in the distance when you pulled off onto the shoulder. And when night fell, there’d be long, quiet stretches with just the steady rhythm of wheels on road beneath you, the stars above, and the moon following your car as it flew down the highway with Dad at the wheel.