Latest / Amazing Life Breakthrough / Ep 71 | It Was Never Really About the Car

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Ep 71 | It Was Never Really About the Car · Amazing Life Breakthrough

0:08
SPEAKER_00: Years after the car was gone, I found an old block of wood sitting in the corner of the garage.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't worth anything.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would have looked at it and thought it belonged in a display case.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: It was worn smooth from use, stained with traces of old red paint, and to anybody else it probably would have looked like scrap wood that should have been thrown away years earlier.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: But I knew exactly what it was.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: It was our sanding block, and the moment I picked it up, I wasn't really standing in the garage anymore.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: I was back there with my dad, back in those evenings when the two of us were working on an old 1969 Buick Skylark, sanding the body, pulling dents, fixing mechanical problems, eating sandwiches, talking, working, and slowly turning a car I was embarrassed to drive into something I couldn't wait to drive down the street for all to see.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: And standing there years later with that little block of wood in my hand, I understood something I probably couldn't have understood when I was young.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: It was really never about the car.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Amazing Life Breakthrough.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm Steve Klein, and this is where we explore the ordinary experiences, meaningful discoveries, and life lessons that help us understand what matters most, find purpose in the moments we sometimes overlook, and live life to the fullest.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: On Tuesday, I told you about building a deck with my wife and how sometimes the things we build together have a way of building us too.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to go a little deeper into that idea.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes you don't understand what a shared project gave you until the project is long gone.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: My 1969 Buick Skylark originally belonged to my grandfather.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: By the time it became mine, it wasn't exactly the kind of car that was going to make a teenager feel cool pulling into the school parking lot.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: It was big, it was slow.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: The paint was this faded, oxidized green, it had dents, it looked old, and my friends gave me a hard time about it.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: I even joined in and made fun of the old Buick myself.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: But somewhere underneath all that embarrassment I could see what that car might become.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And after I had totaled my dad's car and was carrying more than a little shame about it, I finally told him I wanted to restore the Buick.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: What happened next became one of those experiences I didn't fully understand until years later.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: My dad didn't just agree to help me, he got excited about it.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: He had grown up working around cars himself, tinkering with jallopes and stock cars with his brother, and I think that old Buick gave him a chance to reconnect with something he loved.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: So that winter the two of us started working, we pulled dents, we sanded the body, we repaired the rear quarter panel, we worked on the engine and transmission, we replaced chrome, fixed leaking windows, and spent hour after hour in the garage figuring things out together.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: At the time I thought we were restoring a car.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Years later I realized we were building something else too.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: When I would drive my friends to school in high school, I even joined in and made fun of the name Buick myself.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: To be honest, I was a little embarrassed by my car.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: But underneath all that embarrassment I could see something they couldn't.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: I could see what that car might become around that same period of my life.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: I had totaled my dad's car and I felt terrible about it.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: There was embarrassment there and probably some shame too.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: I had made a mistake, and now sitting in our driveway was this old Buick that needed a lot of work.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Eventually I told my dad I wanted to restore it, and what surprised me was how excited he became about the idea.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: He didn't reluctantly say, Okay, I guess I'll help you.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: He was into it.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And I mean really into it.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: My dad had a history with cars himself.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Years earlier, he had spent time tinkering with jallopes and stock cars with his brother.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: So I think when I told him I wanted to restore this Buick, something came alive in him too.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it brought back some of his own memories.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And so we started.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: What followed was basically an entire winter of working on that cart, and they were dents to pull, bodywork to repair, chrome that needed replacing, the rear quarter panel needed Bondo and a whole lot of attention.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: The windows leaked, and my uncle Tom helped us get factory rubber so we could seal them correctly.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Some of the tools we used had come from my uncle Chester.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a moment.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm working beside my dad on a car that came from my grandfather, using tools connected to another generation of family.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: At the time, I don't think I was standing there thinking about legacy.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: I was just a young guy who wanted a cool car.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: But looking back, there was family history all over that garage, and there were also plenty of mechanical things to tackle.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: We replaced lifters, we worked on gaskets, we flushed the transmission, and then came the wheels.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I wanted mag wheels on this car, and naturally they didn't fit quite the way I imagined they would.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: So we made them fit.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: We ended up cutting part of the fender and raising the rear with air shocks.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that would be the first recommendation in every automotive restoration manual, but when you're young and you have a vision for what a car should look like, you can become remarkably creative.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Slowly, this tired old Buick began changing, and every stage required work.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it wasn't glamorous work either.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: It was sanding, then more sanding, and when you thought you were finished sanding, wet sanding, then priming, then finding another spot that needed attention and going back over it again.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: That is the part of restoration people don't always see.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Everyone notices the finished paint.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: They don't see the hours spent preparing the surface.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And in our case, the preparation mattered because we eventually decided to take the car to Earl Scheib for the paint job.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Back then, Earl Scheib was known as one of those budget paint shops.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: You could get a car painted without spending a fortune, but a lot depended on the preparation you did beforehand.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So my dad and I prepared that car.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: We worked on it until we thought it was ready, then we dropped it off, and two days later we went back to pick it up.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: I can still remember what it felt like seeing it.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Candy Apple Red, chrome shining, custom wheels, the rear end sitting up higher.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: It looked like a completely different automobile.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: People would sometimes mistake it for a Chevelle, and I love that.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, this was the same Buick my friends had made fun of.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: So naturally I couldn't wait to drive it to school.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: I pulled into that parking lot and some of my friends came over.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: They were looking around asking me where my car was.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I told them it's right here.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe me at first.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: They were standing around the car admiring it without realizing they were looking at the same old Buick they had laughed about before.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And yes, as a teenager that felt pretty good.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: I'll admit it.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: There was pride there, there was a little redemption too.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: The ugly car they used to call the green beast had become a beautiful Buick.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: The kid who had been embarrassed by it was now proud to be seen in it.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: But that's not why I'm telling you the story today.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Because the strange thing about possessions is that the thing you think matters so much at one stage of life can become almost incidental later.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Eventually that car was gone.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't have it sitting in a garage somewhere under a cover.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: I can't walk outside today, start it up, and hear that engine again.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: But I still have the experience.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: I still have the memory of those evenings with my dad.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's worth more to me now than the car would be.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: When you're young, you sometimes think love is mostly expressed through words.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And words do matter.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: We need to tell people what they mean to us.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: But my dad showed me another kind of love.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: He worked beside me.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: He didn't restore the car for me, he restored it with me.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: There's an enormous difference.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: He let me struggle with things.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: He taught me, he helped me, he trusted me with tools and decisions.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: We figured things out together.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And through all of that, he was communicating something even when he wasn't saying it directly.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: You're worth my time.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Those are powerful messages for a young person.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is where Tuesday's idea about building something together becomes deeper.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: When you're in the middle of the project, you're focused on the project.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Is this board level?
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Does this part fit?
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Where does this bolt go?
8:45
SPEAKER_00: How are we going to fix this dent?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't this wheel fit?
8:49
SPEAKER_00: But decades later, those aren't necessarily the questions you remember, you remember who answered them with you.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: That's the part that lasts.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: There's also something beautiful about the fact that we were restoring something old instead of simply replacing it.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: The Buick already had history.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: It had belonged to my grandfather.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't perfect.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: It was worn.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: It needed work.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: But there was something worth saving underneath all of that.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And maybe relationships are like that sometimes too.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: The strongest relationships aren't perfect.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: They've been bumped, they've been scratched, they've gone through s seasons where things don't look quite the way they once did.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they need attention, sometimes they need patience, sometimes they need somebody willing to look beyond the worn surface and say, there's still something valuable here.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Restoration takes time.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: You don't sand a car once and call it finished.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: You keep working the surface, you fix what needs fixing, you replace what can't be saved, and little by little something begins to come back to life.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: But here's something else this taught me.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: My dad didn't just restore a car with me, he restored something in me.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: I remember how this began?
10:03
SPEAKER_00: I had totaled his car and I was ashamed.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: There was something in me that needed rebuilding too.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And instead of simply defining me by the mistake, my dad joined me in another project.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: He helped me take something worn down and make it beautiful.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: He gave me a chance to work, to learn, to succeed, to feel proud of something again.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: That's a powerful gift.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when someone we love makes a mistake, the most meaningful thing we can do isn't continually remind them of what went wrong.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: It's helped them build what comes next.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's with a child, and maybe it's with a spouse, maybe it's with somebody who needs another opportunity.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Accountability and consequences still matter.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: But people also need a path forward.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: My my path forward happened to involve sandpaper, Bondo, grease, air shocks, and an old Buick.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Yours probably won't, but the principle still applies.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: People grow when somebody believes there is something worth restoring.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And years later, when I found that little sanding block, all of that came back.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: The paint was still on it.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: You could see the wear from those hours of use.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't valuable because it was rare.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: It was valuable because of what it represented.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: My dad's time, our conversations, his patience, the work we did, the mistakes we solved, the winter we spent together.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: The car itself was gone, but somehow this little piece of wood had become a reminder of something far bigger.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if you have something like that.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's sitting in a drawer, maybe it's in your garage, and maybe it's an old recipe card covered in stains from cooking with your mother, a tool that belonged to your father and a fishing pole, a sewing machine, a piece of furniture you made with somebody, a photograph from a trip, a Christmas decoration your kids helped make when they were little.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: To somebody else these things may look ordinary.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: But you know the story.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: And often the story is where the value lives.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: So here's my challenge for you this week.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: First think back to something you built, fixed, created, or worked on with someone who matters to you.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't just remember the finished thing, remember the process.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: What do you remember about that person?
12:14
SPEAKER_00: What did they teach you?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: How did they make you feel?
12:16
SPEAKER_00: What did you learn about yourself?
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And if you're fortunate enough that they're still in your life, maybe tell them you don't need a big speech.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Just say, you know I was thinking about when we did that together?
12:28
SPEAKER_00: That meant more to me than I realized at the time.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And then maybe you could add, thank you for being there, doing it with me.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Those words may mean more than you know.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And then ask yourself one more question.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Who could I create that kind of memory with now?
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we're so busy preserving old memories that we forget we're currently making new ones.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your child doesn't need another thing purchased for them.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they need an afternoon beside you.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your spouse doesn't need a perfect date night.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's something the two of you could tackle together and laugh about when it inevitably doesn't go exactly as planned.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe an aging parent has something they could teach you while there's still time to ask.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a grandchild would love to know how to use a tool that's been sitting in your garage for 30 years.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: We don't always know which ordinary afternoon is going to become the memory somebody carries for the rest of their life.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: My dad and I weren't trying to create a legacy.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: We were trying to fix an old Buick.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: But that's the funny thing about legacy.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it gets built when you're not thinking about legacy at all.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: It gets built while you're standing next to somebody working with your hands, solving a problem, sharing a sandwich, passing down a tool, and giving them your time.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: The car was beautiful when we finished it, and I was proud of it.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: I love seeing my friends' faces when they realized what they were looking at.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: But none of that is the part I treasure most today.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: The treasure was my dad standing beside me in that garage.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: And years later, all it took was an old sanding block covered with faded red paint to remind me.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And what it reminded me of most is it was never really about the car.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: If this episode brought someone to mind, consider sharing it with them.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And if you're enjoying Amazing Life Breakthrough, follow or subscribe so you don't miss future episodes.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to support the podcast and help keep these messages going, you can make a small donation at AmazingLifebreakthrough.com.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Your support, your shares, and simply being here listening all help this podcast continue reaching people who may need one of these messages at exactly the right time.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm Steve Klein.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Build something, fix something, create something with somebody you love, but remember that years from now, the thing itself may be gone.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: What you built between you can remain.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And remember to live life to the fullest.