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home early from work, driving happily in the old Buick along Walker Mill Road and found us sitting on the creek bank, our feet in the water. He stopped the car, leaned across the passenger seat, and rolled down the window.
"Does Mama know you're here?" he asked, then, "No, I guess she doesn't. Don't be late for dinner." And he drove on.
Yeah, Dad and Mom were as different and toast and jelly, but they worked well together. I made it home on time for dinner, Dad winking at me as I sat down at the table, dishing onto my plate a double-sized portion of mashed potatoes.

I was 11 then, but suddenly I was 16 and the Buick was all mine. And there was Walker Mill Road and the challenge of Mom's crystal ball thinking. Before long, my friends and I had persuaded a couple of other kids with cars (well, actually, Ken had borrowed his mother's car and loaded the trunk with cinderblocks to make the front end rise menacingly-cool!) that a drag race would be fun. At the appointed time we gathered, swaggering and boasting. The artsy-fartsy crowd was there to cheer me on.
I dunno. We lived in a pretty small town and everyone knew everyone else, and everyone knew my parents, so that might have been why the local police stepped up surveillance when I got my driver's license. Or maybe it just seemed that way. Whatever. The police never patrolled Walker Mill Road, so why there should be an officer conveniently driving along it just as we started the race I'll never know. I never cared to ask. But I was the ringleader, so it was my car that one officer drove to the station while I rode with the other in the squad car. Hoo, boy! I could hear Mom all the way to the station, which meant I got blessed out twice by the time I got home to actually hear her. Not only had I disobeyed, but I had been caught doing it. Hauled off to the police station, yet. My friends walked the short distance to my house, where they hid out in the back yard. What a way to spend a Saturday evening.
"Yeah, she's here," the sergeant told my dad over the phone. "Come on in and take her home."
We walked out to Dad's pickup in silence. I looked at my car, parked between two patrol cars.
"We'll get it later," Dad said. I didn't say anything; Mom's I-told-you-so lecture still ringing in my head before the fact, I knew better than to interrupt her. Dad and I rode in silence.
"Well," he finally said, and I waited for the inevitable lecture about riling Mom, waking sleeping dogs, whatever. "Did you win?"

Learn more about this author, Dixie Bibeau.
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