Phil Brewer's Blog

My dad took me for a road trip when I was 16-years-old. My parents divorced when I was one. I lived with my mother in Illinois, while my dad lived in Arizona. I only visited once a year, usually for two weeks. I looked forward to seeing him, but I didn’t normally have fun. He and his new family lived much differently, held different rules, and expected me to fit right in. She had two kids of her own, and the three of them resented the attention given me during these trips.

But when I was 16, we went on a trip together, just the two of us. He didn’t have much money then, but he saved up enough for us to go. He had a mid-sized pickup truck that would double as car and hotel for our adventure.

Dad was under forty then and was tall with a demanding…