Well, at least partway down the driveway.
Photo Above: Bruce Ingram and grandson Eli “driving,” but not quite to Fincastle.
Photo Courtesy of Elaine Ingram | Photo styling by Janette Spencer.
“Bruce, have you lost your mind?!” my wife Elaine screamed. “He’s going to wreck the truck.”
The short-version backstory on why our 9-year-old grandson Eli was piloting my pickup out of the garage on a March day includes his grandmother’s improvements to our six raised beds, the resulting cornucopia and her subsequent purchase of lumber for a seventh bed and the rich composted soil to fill it, which she had hauled home in the truck.
She then tasked Eli and me with toting the soil (bucket by bucket for me and pail by pail for Eli) from the truck bed to the garden … a distance of about 35 yards.
I should also explain why that truck full of dirt had been parked inside the garage: Rain had been forecast for the night before …and water-logged soil is more challenging to transport than the dry version. Furthermore, I should confess that Elaine had good reason to question my ability to instruct Eli on how to maneuver a vehicle out of or into our garage. On four separate occasions, I’ve either scraped the right side of the pickup or destroyed the molding on the right garage door.
Nevertheless, it was perfectly understandable, at least to Eli and me, that after hauling dirt for about an hour, we began to discuss ways of making our task more manageable. My grandson also had other topics on his mind that morning—primarily that life is constantly unfair for him as the younger sibling. Sam could stay up later, Eli was tired of wearing his brother’s old clothes and the older brother always “got to do things” that he was not allowed to do … which led me to begin this conversation.
“Has your daddy ever let Sam drive a car?”
“No,” Eli said.
“Well, how would you like to drive the pickup this morning?”
“That would be awesome!”
“So where would you like to go?”
“I want to drive to Fincastle and go to the library!” was the immediate reply.
The Fincastle, Virginia, library is about six miles from our Botetourt County home, and my grandson and I would probably be breaking quite a few laws to fulfill his wish. They would include (but likely not be limited to) child neglect, child endangerment, driving under age, driving without a permit and there has to be some law somewhere concerning a grandson sitting between his grandfather’s legs while in a driver’s seat…in a moving vehicle.
All of which led to my counter offer.
“How about settling for driving the truck out of the garage, and going up the driveway a few yards so we could be closer to the garden?”
“Awesome,” replied Eli.
Eli and I had just pulled out of the garage when my spouse simultaneously decided it was time to check on our progress … which explains the screams mentioned earlier. Those shrieks were followed by a series of reprimands, which led to my grandson and me parking the truck well short of its destination.
Anyway, we were well satisfied with our epic excursion, and the bucket and pail seemed much lighter as we quickly finished topping off the bed.
And unbeknownst to Elaine, we drove the pickup back inside the garage … without a scratch.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2025 issue.
