Intrusive Drive

Driving every weekend on back country roads, well every weekend I had gas money, had been my favorite pastime when I was in my early twenties. For a single girl with nothing better to do, it seemed like a better option than collecting house cats.  My intentions were clear; I needed to get lost. If I didn’t, it had been a wasted day.

This had been the beginning of my love affair with rural living. There were so many overlooked roads, I hardly ever drove the same one twice. I had been convinced the only vehicles that worked the pavement on these forgotten roads were the farmers and the rural mail carrier.

I had a friend who would join me from time to time. He also enjoyed the serenity of driving those long-forgotten farm roads. We would ooh and ahh over the really big expensive farms. We watched as fancy horses kept in big pastures would run lap after lap stuck inside those white fences.

Cows with their heads down would march and munch through the grassy fields.  Swaying in the humid breeze, corn and beans waited for the dreaded combine. Silos made of cement or steel would rise like giant skyscrapers towards the heavens.

There were plenty of the everyday farms. Well-loved like a child’s favorite blanket or stuffed rabbit.  In need of a good bath and perhaps a small mend. We would offer opinions as to what we would do if that had been a place either of us chose to reside. These were every day folk, providing the food for tables all over the land.

One Saturday morning, my friend had surprised me and picked me up for breakfast. Over coffee and eggs, he leaned in and said, “I know a road that when you drive on it you would swear you were driving through someone’s barn yard.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“Take me there.”

An hour later after driving far from the noise and grime he turned right on a driveway hidden under dried mud and manure.

“Who lives here?”  I had asked.

I could see people milling about. There had been a small girl swinging on a tire from an old willow tree and a boy sat on one of its branches. A woman swept her front porch on my right. Her laundry flapped in the late summer breeze on a clothes line. Two men walked towards each other from opposite sides of the drive.

The taller of the two had an oily cloth and as he walked, he wiped some sort of metal which looked like an auto part. His hands were intricately sliding between tiny slats of grey.

Both men had grease-stained jeans and mud caked work boots. Their flannel shirts had the left pocket torn at the corner with tiny tools and pens peeking out.

Again, I asked, “Who lives here. Do you know them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are we pulling in?”  I slid down in my seat.

He just smiled as I continued to slide down and stare at my knees.

Finally, as we were leaving the barnyard behind and driving through corn fields on both sides of the driveway, he smiled and said, “I told you, I knew a road where it felt like you were driving through someone’s barnyard.”

Fast forward thirty some years later, I now have my very own everyday farm. I see the people as they drive by slow and stare. I wonder if they are oohing and ahhing. Perhaps they are thinking what they would do if this was their farm. Next time you drive by, stop. Sit on my porch, I sweep it every day. It will make it less of an intrusive drive.