Grandpa and the Go-Cart

My grandpa was not necessarily a high-speed-thrills type of person. Once on our way to church, when I only slowed before driving past a stop sign, he commented, “That didn’t seem like a stop to me.”

And yet here he is, in this photo passed along to me at a recent family get-together, trying out the go-cart I’d put together using an old $25 frame, a roto-tiller engine, a school-desk seat, a bike-seat satchel containing a few necessary items, and fishing line.

Several years ago, one uncle remembered something Grandpa’d said after his terminal cancer was diagnosed. Instead of spending so much time making sure church rules were followed, he’d said, he wished he’d focused more on extending grace.

But in a way, the pictured go-cart ride may be evidence that he had done just that. My go-cart accelerator was connected to the engine via fishing line that often snapped, necessitating that bike-seat satchel to hold the spool of replacement string. The green plastic seat barely gripped the frame with skinny, rusted bolts threaded through washer after washer. The duct tape on the steering wheels wasn’t just for decoration—it held in place the engine’s “kill” switch, which I’d probably pulled from my dad’s box of electrical odds and ends.

Just getting behind the wheel of that contraption required a certain amount of gracious acceptance of rough edges.