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Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: On old station wagons, the resurrection and other things that defy science

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A Lee Enterprises, Incorporated newspaper. Majority shareholder: David Hoffmann, Hoffmann Media Group.

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Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: On old station wagons, the resurrection and other things that defy science

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Dimon Kendrick-Holmes

Every Easter, I think about my mother’s 1978 Mercury Marquis station wagon with fake wood paneling.

It could have very well been the inspiration for the Family Truckster, that dead-on parody of station wagons driven by Chevy Chase in “National Lampoon’s Family Vacation.”

This massive yellow car, which packed a 427 under the hood and steered like a battleship, was temporarily entrusted to me when I was a college student living in Nashville, Tennessee.

My little brother had wanted to borrow my car for his prom in Alabama, and I agreed because the station wagon would come in handy a month or so later when the semester ended and I had to move all my stuff out of the freshman dorm.

It was Good Friday of 1987, and I was driving the station wagon to Chattanooga to launch a four-year tradition of spending Easter weekend with my grandmother.

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She lived on Lookout Mountain, but I was giving a friend a lift home and had to drop him off downtown. I was running low on gas but wanted to dispatch him first because he was a cheapskate and I didn’t want to get mad when I stopped and pumped gas and he didn’t give me any money.

So we met his father in a Chattanooga parking lot, and then I drove away and promptly ran out of gas in front of an historic hotel called the Read House. I hitched a ride to a gas station and came back and filled up, but the station wagon wouldn’t crank.

I called my Uncle Henry, who also lived on the mountain. I wasn’t sure if he knew anything about cars but he was a graduate of Vanderbilt Medical School. He showed up and suggested that the fuel line was clogged and that we should prime the carburetor.

I popped the hood and we sloshed some gas into the carburetor, then I got behind the wheel and turned the key.

The engine immediately burst into flames. My uncle slammed down the hood and we could see flames flickering through the grill.

I grabbed the gas can and ran into the Read House and told the doorman to call the fire department. He told me to take the gas can and, I quote, “Get the hell out of the Read House, sir.”

A red firetruck pulled up less than a minute later. That’s how important the Read House was to downtown Chattanooga.

As the yellow paint on the hood turned an eerie shade of pink, a fireman wearing thick gloves popped it open and sprayed foam all over the engine. When the smoke cleared, I could see the crispy remains of wires and hoses.

“You can just take this to the junkyard,” the friendly fireman said.

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A tow truck arrived and hauled the station wagon to a garage at the foot of the mountain, and then my uncle drove me to my grandmother’s.

On Lookout Mountain, my grandmother told me not to worry. She never worried about anything. As her pastor told us years later at her funeral, this was a woman who spent the Great Depression studying romance languages at Sweet Briar.

She pulled a giant pot roast out of the oven and everything was fine.

The next morning, which was Saturday, we ate a big breakfast and then I called the garage and asked the mechanic what he suggested I do with the station wagon.

“Well, you can come down and get it,” he said.

“You mean tow it somewhere else?” I asked.

“What?” he said. “Just drive it off. It’s ready to go.”

He had to be kidding. But my grandmother drove me down the mountain and the mechanic handed me the keys.

I asked him about all the wires and hoses that had burned up. He laughed. “Those are just anti-pollution devices,” he said. “You don’t need ‘em.”

Sure enough, the station wagon cranked right up.

As I drove the station wagon back up the mountain, I looked through the windshield at the charred hood and thought about how it didn’t make any sense.

And then I thought about the resurrection.

Then and now, I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and I realize that such a feat defies science.

Sure, it was a stretch comparing that station wagon to the resurrection, but I was 18 years old, and at that moment I had the faith of a child.

I’d like to go back to that place, and sometimes I do.

Happy Easter, everybody.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes is North Carolina editor for Lee Enterprises. Contact him at dimon.kendrick-holmes@greensboro.com.

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