- My family is here, I don't know what to do and,
and if I was my dad I would know exactly what to do.
(soft music playing)
- Hey, I'm Jason and we are about to meet my buddy Roger.
So technically, I actually met him first on Instagram
and tracked down one of his books.
It's called We Stood Upon Stars,
and I realized pretty quickly that it was actually
gonna make me like a way better friend, and then dad,
and husband.
I think when you meet him, you'll feel the same way.
So you ready to go see my buddy's truck?
- Yeah, let me take a fast sip and we'll go
- (Jason) Alright.
I'm for sure exactly what year it is, but it's
it's pretty sweet.
I think you'll like it.
- Yeah, let's go check out this truck.
You want to hop in my car?
- (Jason) Yeah, that sounds good.
We can pick up my car later.
(car dings)
- It's Wade, right?
- (Jason) Yeah, yeah Wade.
Hey Wade.
- Good to see you - (Jason) How's it going?
- Wade, yeah. - Brock.
- Good to meet you. Thanks for letting us come over.
- Yeah, anytime.
- (Jason) You're gonna love this truck, man. It's sweet.
- Alright, can't wait to see it.
Oh wow!
- (Jason) I know it's not a '57, but is this kind of
how you remember it?
- Yeah! It's pretty cool. It's very similar.
Yeah it brings back some memories for sure.
My dad used to take me ever, some of my best memories
were with him in the, in the truck and he used to take me,
drive this truck on some back roads,
and right behind our house there was this really cool
like dirt race track that we would go to and we'd sit
in the back and we'd pull up,
he'd have all his tools back here cause he worked
in the oil fields, and so we'd pull up and there'd still
be tools back there and we'd sit in the back
and watch these races which was,
just as a kid was just spectacular.
I love all the little, kind of character marks
as we called them.
(Jason giggles)
It reminds me of myself.
I thought of that truck for a long time
but I got these vintage VW vans, camper vans.
- (Jason) Oh yeah.
- But I love taking my kids on these back roads and we go
all over the place and,
well, you know one of the things
I remember most about my dad is that,
it seemed like no matter where we went,
and I think it's inevitable in these old cars,
you know they'd always break down.
- (Jason) Oh yeah.
- He could,
just by listening and looking at a couple of things,
he would know exactly what was wrong with it.
So I got all these memories of him,
really from the waist down sticking out from
underneath the truck,
you know and he always had that cigarette
dangling just perfectly
(Jason laughs)
like it was another tool he was using to fix the vehicle.
But he just get out of anything.
And I think as a kid,
that really became my definition of what being a man was.
No matter what happened, you could fix it
and get out of it on your own.
And certainly as you get older,
I think our culture kind of reinforced that.
Like if you opened this thing here,
like I couldn't tell you a thing about it.
So, my memories sound very different than when my dad did it
I really don't know how to get us out of a jam,
and so rather than my kids watching me the way that
I remember watching my dad,
I felt a little bit incompetent because,
you know, when we're stuck we're stuck.
I gotta call for help, I can't-
- (Jason) So you didn't, you didn't learn how to fix
like cars from your dad then?
- No, you know he died before I was 13,
and so one of the things that,
as I've kind of gotten older,
I've always thought about was that if he were alive
I would've learned something about these vehicles
and these engines.
You know, but it just didn't happen that way and,
it's, I think that's probably an area where I struggle
the most still, is this sense of incompletion.
That I didn't become a man the way that I felt
like my father was.
You know, I've carried these things to the point now,
with my own kids,
you know, we were broken down once.
We were somewhere up in North Dakota,
and we broke down and I go through this whole mechanism
just to kind of try to trick my kids,
and so I open up the, the,
my, in my van the engine was in the back,
and so we go back there and pull all our junk out,
looks like a yard sale alongside the road,
(Jason laughs)
and then I opened up the engine compartment
and I start pointing at things like I,
so my kids think I know what I'm doing,
cause it's like I want them to think that,
and so I do but the problem is,
one of them started asking questions.
And he's like, what's that daddy?
And I'm like, well that, that's, an alternator.
(Jason laughs)
I had no idea what it was.
And he's like, well what's that?
And I was like, oh, you know, that's a, a block or something
(Jason laughs)
And then he's like, what's that?
And he's like, that's an alternator.
And he's like, you already said that.
I was like, well my van has two alternators.
(Jason laughs)
And my van breaks down a lot too.
You know, and then, we're sitting in a place
on the side of this road,
that's when we sitting there just going,
man, like I suck at this, like I can't do this.
I don't, my family's here, I don't know what to do,
and man, if I was my dad I would know exactly what to do.
I just had that feeling of, just going,
there's something missing in me
and I don't know how to fix that,
just as much as I don't know how to fix this.
- (Jason) I grew up with a dad, but I can still kind of
relate to your story of like, places where I feel
incomplete or unfinished.
How have you dealt with that?
- Yeah, that's a tough one because,
you know, the, the,
the person that you imagine
most be able to heal that is the one
that you're feeling the wound from.
You, there's only one thing that's bigger than your dad,
and that's the God of this universe.
And so when I started really looking at,
you know, what He would say about manhood,
I started realizing that's so much different
from my view of manhood, and so much different than
our culture's view of manhood.
And so I tried to kind of come up with a,
a new definition, and I wouldn't say it's my definition,
but I tried to understand what, I mean,
what God's definition of being a man was.
I started to, I think, understand the definition
of manhood as really in context of
who it is that makes us a man.
You know, it's our, the love with our wives,
you know, being a father,
whatever we have going on with our own fathers,
with our friends,
ultimately, you know, how we kind of come into
relationship with God.
And so, that's what started breaking me free of my trap
of
having to fix my way out of manhood, you know.
But, ultimately what my kids saw on the side of the road was
a dad that maybe didn't know how to fix an engine,
but knew how to call for help,
we said a little prayer together,
and then I called triple A. (both laugh)
And so the truck driver comes and he gets us out of the jam
and we get back on the road, and so now I've achieved
that thing different than how my dad would've done it,
and different than how my original view of
being a man might've done it,
but we achieved that thing that I wanted,
which was we were back on the road.
And we were actually going super fast.
We were in the back of this tow truck,
so we went the next hundred miles
at lightning speeds compared to
what I'm used to driving in the van.
(car engine turns over)
- (Wade) I guess that second alternator
was taking a little time.
(soft music)