My brother David and I buried our father today. Before that, we hadn’t really spoken since he voted one way in 2016, and I voted the other.

The silence in Dad’s old Ohio house was heavier than the damp November air. David, with his Seattle tech-money coat, and me, in the same worn flannel I’ve had for years, were two strangers tasked with dismantling a life. The final stop was the garage.

Under a dusty tarp sat the ghost of our youth: a 1969 Dodge Charger. It was the project Dad started with us when I was sixteen. Our masterpiece. Never finished.

“We should sell it for scrap,” David said, his voice echoing in the cold. “The money could help with the estate costs.”

I felt a familiar flash of anger. To him, it was just steel and rust. An asset. To me, it was the last good time we ever had. Before life pulled him toward software and skylines, and left me here with the shuttered factories and the quiet rage of the forgotten.

“It was Dad’s,” I mumbled, turning away.

We worked without words, sorting through greasy toolboxes and stacks of old magazines. The air was thick with the ghosts of unspoken arguments, of Thanksgivings ruined by cable news headlines shouted across a turkey. He saw me as a relic, stuck in the past. I saw him as a traitor who’d forgotten where he came from.

Then, David found it: a shoebox labeled “Charger Tapes.” Inside were a dozen cassette tapes. He found Dad’s old boombox, blew the dust off, and pushed play.

A hiss, a crackle, and then… our own voices, thin and high-pitched, spilled into the garage.

“Frank’s gonna do the engine, ‘cause he’s stronger!” my ten-year-old self declared.
“And David’s gonna do the paint! He’s the artist!” a younger David shot back.

We stood frozen, listening to two boys who didn’t know about party lines or electoral colleges. Two boys who were just a team. On the next tape, Dad’s voice, younger and stronger than I remembered, filled the space between us.

“Alright boys, lesson one: you always check the oil first. This engine… it’s the heart. You take care of the heart, and the rest will follow.”

David leaned against the workbench, his face turned away from me. I kept my eyes fixed on the car, but the image was blurry. The last tape was just Dad, talking to himself after we’d gone inside for dinner.

“I hope this car keeps them together,” he’d said, his voice soft and full of a hope that felt like a punch to my gut. “Whatever life throws at ‘em, I just hope they always remember they’re a team. Always.”

It felt like one of those Things That Make You Think moments.

Something inside me, a wall I’d spent nearly a decade building, just broke.

“I miss him,” David whispered, and his shoulders started to shake.

All the anger, all the resentment I’d held onto, dissolved into a profound, aching grief. For our father. For the years we’d lost.

“Me too,” I choked out. “I’m sorry, Dave. For everything.”

He nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked at the Charger, not as a pile of scrap, but as Dad saw it. A heart.

“The carburetor’s shot,” he said, his voice thick but steady. “And the wiring is a rat’s nest.”

I looked at him, the brilliant engineer I’d once been so proud of, and I saw my brother again. Not a political opponent. My brother.

“Well,” I said, managing a weak smile. “Let’s get to work.”

That was six months ago. The Charger still doesn’t run perfectly, but its heart is beating again. We argue now, not about the world, but about whether it should be Plum Crazy Purple or Hemi Orange.

Last night, I turned the key. After a cough and a sputter, the engine roared to life. That deep, guttural rumble wasn’t just the sound of a 440 V8. It was the sound of forgiveness. It was the sound of a bridge being built across a divided America, right here in one dusty garage.

We spent eight years shouting about how to fix the country and couldn’t even fix one engine. We forgot the first rule Dad ever taught us: you can’t fix anything until you agree to work together.

If you have a brother, a sister, a parent, or a friend on the other side of that line, call them. Go to the garage. Find your broken engine.