Eric Church sings the words "Detroit built brakes so that they could make a Chevy slow down" in his fast-driving, rollicking song "Hands of Time" released on the 2025 album Evangeline vs. the Machine. As I reached my 40th birthday in December, those words resonated with me in a significant way.
General Motors built classic cars like the Chevy Corvette and in the early days the biggest challenge to auto makers was how to make the cars they were building go faster. At the time, the biggest challenge was how to make the motor produce more power than a horse could. Of course, combustion engines quickly allowed speed of transportation to increase and time to destinations decrease which allowed regular every day Joe's like you and I to visit places our great-grandparents could have only dreamed of seeing.
In the summer between second and third grade, my family embarked on a trip from our quaint hometown in Central Pennsylvania to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The memories made on that trip have stood the test of time, even if the only people who still are alive to recall those details are me, my brother and my cousin. I remember counting down the days until we all hopped in that little brown Dodge Caravan and like the Beverly Hillbillies trucked across the country with a borrowed hard-top for luggage, a cooler in the middle for drinks and sandwiches and nothing but highway ahead of us for three days.
Other times, it might have been a sporting event, a concert or a different family event but I was always trying to make time go faster. Even in early adulthood, you would watch the clock until the work day was through. In those days, it was to head out to my local watering hole and talk about sports or ogle at the college student slinging drinks and making small talk with everyone on the other side of the bar.
As I've gotten older, time seems to no longer stand still though. The days go by faster as each one passes and now I'm trying to slow the days down. How we handle each day is up to us.
I was talking with one of my childhood friends this morning. I have been friends with him for three decades now, ever since a mutual friend introduced us on the playground at recess in fourth grade. He reminded me that he turns 40 in a mere two weeks and that our glory days might be behind us in one way. But in another way, it's now our responsibility to ourselves to ensure that the back half of our lives is just starting and didn't begin 5-10 years ago.
During that conversation it hit me that when I was that little guy waiting to go west for a family vacation a 40 year old was about as old as I could imagine. Turning 40 meant you were old to a youngster. Now that I'm 40, I don't feel that way. I feel like life is only just beginning. I spent my 20s building what I thought my forever career would be. As I transitioned to my 30s, that changed and I then spent my 30s moving from place to place building what was my second act. My 40s feel like a renaissance. I don't have those same restrictions holding me back from pursuing my goals and taking risks doesn't feel quite as risky.
As a young man, I became a super fan of Bruce Springsteen. This year marks 30 years down the road with The Boss. I will never forget going to watch Vladimir Guerrero and the Harrisburg Senators and sitting behind home plate on City Island when Glory Days came across the speakers. I turned to my Dad after the "I had a friend was a big baseball player" line came out and asked him, who is this?
"The Boss," my mom interrupted. I responded that I didn't know Tony Danza was a singer. My dad immediately said, no, not the guy from Who's The Boss, but Bruce Springsteen. For my birthday, I just asked for the Born in the USA album after finding out from my Uncle that was the album Glory Days was on. Flash forward a couple of years and my mom and I were standing in line at the Uni-Mart waiting to get tickets to see Bruce and the E Street Band on the Reunion Tour. I'll never forget that first show, the tickets cost $67.50 and we weren't on the floor. Our seats weren't great, but that price tag in 1999 was pretty stiff for our family.
Flash forward to today and the buzzword in 2026 is AI. Claude this, ChatGPT that, Grok this, Gemini that. Images, videos and words are no longer able to be seen as fact. Sora can generate a lifelike video in seconds. It reminds me of another Springsteen lyric. This one is from the Magic album's title track, "Trust none of what you hear, and even less of what you see."
Today I bought tickets for what will be my 15th Springsteen show. These tickets aren't great either, and surely aren't as good as the ones I had on the Magic Tour in Philly (thanks Coach Heckert), the Wrecking Ball Tour in DC or The River Tour in Rochester, but I'll be in the house for Springsteen yet again. The difference now is that I'm not going to be counting down the days until that event in Pittsburgh in May, it will be here before you know it.
This past weekend was the Daytona 500 which marked the start of another NASCAR season. That same kid in 1996 who saw a young Hall of Famer in a Double-A stadium in Harrisburg, watched Dale Earnhardt win that same Daytona 500 in 1998. Then unfortunately 25 years ago, we all stood by that little tube TV in the living room as Mike Helton told the nation, and more importantly my 19-year old brother, that we lost a hero on that February afternoon.
My brother shot me a text on Sunday saying "wow, it was 25 years ago we lost Dale." A quarter-century has gone by in the blink of an eye. Four days before that I watched teary-eyed as Harrison Ford delivered another killer performance in Shrinking and delivered the line to a newborn "Enjoy the ride kid."
Time flies by. People come and go. But we have a choice in life of how we enjoy the ride. How are you handling the hands of time? Father Time still remains unbeaten. Don't let life pass you by, before you know it the old man will be creeping in - and there will be no brakes to slow him down.