road trip
There's a wonderful large equipment "store" off Highway 99 near Madera. There are brand new shiny trucks anxious to get in the dirt, and their slightly used cousins hankering for a second shot in the play yard. These are BIG machines ~ plows, tractors, scrapers, bulldozers, earth movers ~ Tonka toys on steroids ready for heavy construction duty. These are the very machines that build our wonderful network of highways and byways.
I must confess that every time I pass this lot full of big boy toys I get nostalgic. Nostalgic not only for every road trip I've ever taken, but also for the days when my brothers, and then my son, used to play with their kid-size Tonkas in the back yard.
My brothers would lovingly get out those machines and hug them for dear life as they made their way to any available patch of dirt. They made different engine sounds as their bulldozers and dump trunks maneuvered piles of dirt into imaginary cities. Oh, how they loved their Tonkas!
Years later when it was my son's turn, the toy companies were making the trucks from plastic, which didn't have the same aesthetic or durability as the old-fashioned metal ones. I was thrilled when I found a rusted and slightly beat up but still very usable yellow dump truck at a garage sale. I brought it home and with a bit of sandpaper and yellow Rust-o-leum paint, I gave that Tonka a new lease on life. I don't know who was more thrilled ~ my son, me or the truck!
God does that. He takes beat up but still very usable people like me and you, and gives us a new lease on life. And I don't know who is more thrilled ~ God or us!
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