My dad, Jack Dalton, is 74 years old and spent fifty years at the GM plant in Anderson. He is the kind of man who expresses love through presence, who shows up with his toolbox when your water heater goes out at ten on a Sunday night and waves off any thanks like it embarrasses him. His garage smells like motor oil and cold concrete and something I cannot name exactly except to say it smells like reliability, like all the years he kept things running when they had no right to keep running. When I was a kid and something broke, we did not panic. We waited for Dad. That smell meant the problem was going to get solved.
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