I attended a car “meet up” this past weekend. This was a “Cars and Coffee” type event where
car enthusiasts gather for a couple of hours to show off their cars and admire
those of other enthusiasts. These are
great events to attend for the opportunity to look up close at such exotic
vehicles as Lamborghini and Ferraris as well as “old school” muscle cars and
Rat Rods. This isn’t a car show where
awards are given; instead, it is a gathering of people from all walks of life
who share a common love of cars. The types
of cars garnering such enthusiastic devotion are as diverse as the car owners themselves.
A chance encounter with two such enthusiasts stood out to me
in such stark contrast to what has been filling the media these past few months
that I feel compelled to write about it here.
Unless you go through life like an ostrich with your head
buried in the sand, or have been living in a cave until recently, you like me
have been bombarded with stories in the media (print, broadcast, social media,
the blogosphere, etc.) about race relations. Whites killing blacks; black and
white policemen killing blacks; blacks killing blacks; police killing
civilians; the Confederate Flag and what it means to blacks, to southern
whites, to people anywhere and everywhere; demonstrations turning into riots
over civilian deaths, etc. The list goes
on and on, with a common denominator of race vs race.
We’re being bombarded by reports of what separates us.
What I witnessed at this past event showed me in the most
basic terms, what unites us.
Two men, complete strangers to one another; one white, one
black. One a Pittsburgh Steelers fan,
one a Dallas Cowboys fan; one loves Dodge Chargers, the other Ford Mustangs.
On the surface, there is almost zero common ground for these
two individuals. Right from the start,
their race supposedly separates them. On
top of that, add in cars and football?
Other than politics and religion, there are no more polarizing
activities individuals can engage in than cars and football. Fans of all walks of life live and die each
and every Sunday as their chosen football team battles it out on the gridiron
against “them”, the “other guys”. The
ones wearing different colors than “our team”; the ones from “not around here”
who dare to come to “our house” and threaten the success of “our team”. The bitter rival, the vastly inferior team if
not by record, then by the character deficiencies of the organization, the head
coach, the star player.
