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For about ten years I have enjoyed attending a Writers' Group at the Unitarian Church. Most of the attendees are Unitarians, but being broad minded they are pleased to welcome those of us who are not. The group meets about twice a month, throughout most of the year. However, if a member plays hooky for months at a time he or she is welcomed back with open arms, no questions asked.
The 'drill' amounts to this. We discuss an idea and then write about it. After about 45 minutes we take turns reading what we have written to the group and get postive feedback. If a writer doesn't choose to read his/her work, this choice is accepted no questions asked. There is no pressure.
The last meeting was a special pleasure. The prompt, provided by our soft-spoken leader, Fran, was to consider the importance of roads in American life. We shared favorite songs about roads and highways and talked about family trips we have taken. Finally, we each wrote about roads. The variations were many. A few ccontributions included:
the sound of popping gravel outside a boyhood home announcing uninvited guests or the premature return of parents from church,
a 14-year-old boy's summer traveling with a carnie troupe,
eating pita bread and humus in Jerusalem,
traveling Route 66 in the 50's with a very young baby,
traveling in England on the 'tube' visiting a teen aged daughter
and adventures with Flat Stanley.
My contribution (you knew this was coming) is as follows. I have tweaked it since I wrote it at our
meeting, so that it is a little more polished than before.
The County Road
The county road was a central part of life as I was growing up in the sandhill prairies of Southwestern Kansas. We lived on a ranch six miles from a small town and our only connection to church, groceries, schools, and friends was a dirt road maintained by the county. Once every so often, usually prompted by my daddy, a big road grader would come out scraping the road, smoothing out the washboard ruts. The ruts were so ubiquitous that the frame of one of our cars shook loose and had to be welded back into place. Once the road was graded, for a few days at least, it was smooth to drive on. I remember one time, at my father’s suggestion, I took a slice of my mother’s freshly made apple pie out to the grader’s operator.
About the time I was two or three years old, my mother with my older sister and brother, had a horrific accident on this road. Much of the road was hardly wider than two tire tracks and it twisted and turned as well. Weeds had grown tall, lots of sunflowers and grasses, which concealed a car coming from the opposite direction. Mother’s car collided with this car on a curve in the road. My brother, in the front passenger seat, struck the dashboard and bears a scar on his forehead to this day. My sister, standing up in back, behind the front seat as children were apt to do in those days, hurtled into the front window, struck it with her head and was thrown again into the back seat where she collapsed on the car floor. Both adults received minor injuries. I survived simply because I stayed at home with my grandmother instead of standing in my usual place – beside my mother in the front seat. I mention these seating arrangements to remind us all of the cavalier way children were allowed to ride in cars 70 or so years ago.
Both my sister and brother recovered from their injuries, but this accident became part of our family mythology, thereafter.
Other memories include the several times my mother, or another one of the family driving the car, got stranded in the banks of sand on each side of the road. Usually someone would come along and help the stuckee out, but my mother had to walk home at least once – two or three miles in heels.
Another time my father came upon a group of women, members of my mother’s PEO Chapter, stuck in the sand on their way to a meeting at our house. He told them he’d pull them out if they’d tell him what PEO meant.
My best friend and I rode our bikes to town when we were in the sixth grade. Of course, much of the way we had to walk our bikes over sand hills. Goat’s head stickers would pierce our tires, but I’m not sure they caused any lasting damage. Once in town it was fun to ride around on the elm tree shaded, bumpy brick streets.
One winter, when I was a teenager we had such a blizzard that the County National Guard sent a tank out to bring me in to town so I could go to school. That was a big disappointment to me, because the inside of the tank was about as interesting as the inside of a tin can.
The road is gone now, as are our meadows and pasture land. The sandhill prairie is now covered with sprinkler-watered silage crops fed to the cattle in the many feedlots around our hometown.
