MY FATHER'S CARS

 

I was thinking this morning… ☀️ I was in junior secondary school when my dad got his first car. It was a cream Volkswagen Beetle. That was in 1981, six years after Volkswagen started production in Nigeria. Prior to that, he was content with his bicycle. 🚲

He loved his Volkswagen Beetle and cared for it like the other valuables he had. He washed and polished it so often that I began to think he might one day ‘starch’ the car. Years later, he sold the Volkswagen Beetle and bought a Mercedes-Benz 230, this time yellow in colour. He loved his Benz just as much. 🚗✨

My dad’s cars were not simply for mobility; they were also his status signature. I saw how owning the cars made him feel and how they changed his status. Like many of his friends’ children, we joined the class of people who rode to church in our father’s car. ⛪

My grandfather didn’t have a car, but my dad understood the proverb that says a man who drives his father’s car has no authority to sit in a council of men who own bicycles. As a result, he worked hard and made sacrifices so he could own a car and sit with his peers.

As I became an adult and graduated from the university, I never had the privilege of driving my dad’s car. I waited to get a job and make my own sacrifices so I could own my own car. I understood as well that driving my father’s car wouldn’t give me a seat in the council of men who own bicycles.

In 1997, I eventually got my first car, which my cheeky friends later tagged “Kevwe.” According to them, I would always call my mechanic, Kevwe, to be on standby whenever I planned to travel out of town with the vehicle. Can you imagine? 😄

My dad is no longer with us, but I will always remember him and what his cars meant to him. Most importantly, I will never forget the lesson that everything has its time and that one should not borrow to pose. Cutting your coat according to your cloth is one way to put it, but in the context of my dad’s cars, I would say that a man who drives his father’s car has no authority to sit in the council of men who own bicycles. As Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Stay hopeful. God's got our back.

Happy Sunday!

......Just the thoughts of a certain Wey Mey