To My Father

I wrote this for a fifteen minute writing activity. I like it. So here it is, typed out all pretty-like.

I'm sitting in my dad's red 4x4 Ford: we're fifteen miles from the middle of anywhere, deep in the central Louisiana woods. Surrounding me are hundreds of cars in various stages of metallic decay: Mustangs with no wheels or windows, unidentifiable parts my dad is out there bargaining for.
We're at Mark's Place, a junkyard outside of the village of Pitkin. There is, of course, the stereotypical spotted dog, and though Mark the Proprietor assures me "he won't bite," I am not convinced. My father is taking is time, though I specifically told him not to leave me in the car long in this Deliverance-esque patch of wilderness. Mark's got his own water tower, which runs into his doublewide trailor. When I go inside at his continued bidding, he tells me not to mind the roaches.
It's close on Christmas, and my father comes home with a present for me, from Mark. Elephant figurines. I like elephants. How did Mark know this? I'm severely freaked out and picture Mark dressed as the Marquis de Sade. I don't quite throw up.
Junkyards like Mark's pepper the abandoned old pine woods, appear out of hte dust of winding dir roads. If you need a used car part in Vernon Parish, you're going to happen upon it, and it will be sold by a man in torn jeans, unbuttoned shirt, chewing tobacco and eyeing any woman under fifty with interest.
But this is my father's world, the dirt-poor world he grew up in, the world he feels most comfortable in now. He tells stories of starving in rural Missouri in the mid 50s, of hunting squirrel for dinner. On days when squirrel was scarce, his mother might cut up a few potatoes, fry them in hot grease--if they were very lucky they ate them with beans.
These are the foods he loves still. On special occasions, he brings out the crock pot and the skillet. He cooks pinto beans over night, soaked with a giant hamhock, and the next day he fries potatoes, and he and I eat what he has made, and like it.
This is my father's world--a world of spark plugs, carburators and machinery--all of which means nothing to me. I love him. I love him--but our worlds will never in a million years colide. I do have his nose, his eyes, his humor, and so I ride with him to the junkyard because he wants my company.
How can I ever despise these junkyards, the poverty, the stretches of land where cars go to die and dogs are called "Dog." To despise this is to hate a part of my father. My father--a man who grew up in an atmosphere of racial segregation and intolerance toward anyone different--this man I love doesn't have a hating bone in his body. He names the nameless dogs.
Perhaps he pities the junkyard owner, or perhaps he wishes he had his own barren stretch of land where he might tinker and repair and pull apart until he gives out as his brothers have before him. I'm not sure which he would choose.