After my father's death early Saturday morning, the most I could handle was Monster Jam. I said goodbye to him midnight Friday. His heart lacking the strength to push fluid from his lungs, each breath sounded like the raw end of a leaky scuba hose; his deep gasps would halt for twenty, thirty, forty-five seconds, then just as I thought his end was nigh, life jolted back with a wet snore.
"Tell him it's okay to pass," the Hospice nurse advised. I know others who had waited for family to leave, so I followed her instructions. I quietly sang the Lord's Prayer, the holiest thing I know, and told dad I loved him. I drove home and set my alarm at 5:15 to be there first thing the next morning, but before I returned, my father left this world.
For my own son's sake, I wanted a normal weekend. It was still too soon for explanations. I took the kid to Munch's for breakfast with my brother, then a soccer game, and after a long afternoon nap, Monster Jam.
Our friend J got us tickets. J (short for Jonathan) runs logistics for Feld Entertainment, Monster Jam's producers. He met us by the pit gate. J sports a gray pony tail and has a skater's build. He is one of the smartest guys I know. A Georgia native, J learned the spectacle business while working Disney on Ice. I have more fat in my forearms than J has on his entire body.
We checked out the trucks in pit row, strange hybrids of rubber, steel and market research. Each vehicle carries a brand, a Hot Wheels tie-in. Big Kahuna, a rusty Hawaiian pick-up, comes with a surfboard on back. Monster Mutt has floppy ears; Candice Jolly, a mom, drives the Dalmatian spin-off. These trucks are not trucks at all. They are engine and suspension, packaged in a fiberglass shell.
I wanted to see Grave Digger, the famed mock panel truck and one of the two Monster Trucks I could actually name. J let my fifteen-year-old son sit on the five-foot BKT tires, and hoist himself into Grave Digger's cockpit. My wife traced her finger along the design of the impressively detailed shell, hand-painted in Ellenton. A tombstone with RIP.
Words buckle before death. The Hospice literature tells me I will experience, denial, anger and grief — in no given order. One day into life without my father, I claim only peevishness, like I have eczema of the soul.
My dad's passing was overdue, welcome even, though custom keeps us from talking that way. I refuse to trade platitudes and kept the news to myself. My father was a loving man, remote to those closest to him. It's vexed.
When we mourn, we process the memories of real people and vexed relationships — not ideals.
On Saturday, all I could handle was spectacle. (Point of fact: my WASPish father would not have gone to Monster Jam.) I wanted to see Grave Digger crush a junked sedan.
We took our second row seats at Raymond James. I snapped a selfie, along with the other 40,000+ fans, around the dirt-packed infield. We rose for the obligatory national anthem.
Big Kahuna, Grave Digger, Monster Mutt, Dragon, Mad Scientist and the others roared into the arena. They raced in circles like nitro-fueled, steel elephants. The drivers popped wheelies; the announcer reminded parents and kids to drive Ford trucks and eat at Dairy Queen.
"I feel like I'm watching a Will Ferrell movie," my wife joked.
Monster trucks, like great comedians, defy interpretation. Despite a massive fan base, the shows are rarely reviewed. The scholarly literature is non-existent. Monster Jam is physical comedy with a nitro boost, wordless and writ large.
The lumbering, acrobatic trucks throw a rude thumb at the laws of physics. Ten thousand pound super-suspension machines lurch into big air, freezing time in the eternal space of a thousand Instagram posts, bouncing back to earth on their low-pressure, custom fabricated tires.
Trucks die and return to life. Engines stall then roar back, ticks before the competition clock expires. The fiberglass shells fly off steel frames, littering the infield. An axle rod splits and a truck drains its fluid. CAT tractors haul away the carnage.
Dragon, a fan favorite, dropped out the second round then returned for the climactic Freestyle. Grave Digger is Monster Jam's marquee star, although this Saturday evening belonged to VP Fuel's Mad Scientist truck.
In his competition-clinching Freestyle display, driver Lee O'Donnell backed Mad Scientist up to the still untested 360 ramp. O'Donnell paused, then spiked dragster fuel through his 1500 horsepower engine, shooting his cornflower blue truck into the air, spinning a full 360, then bouncing back to the infield dirt — defying gravity, mocking death.
The crowd roared.
It was miraculous.
