I'll Take the Dirt Road...

My daughter got her drivers license a couple weeks ago. She spent months learning to park, back up, merge, watch for crazy drivers. Now she's can legally drive all by herself.

One nice byproduct of the whole process was the time we spent together as she practiced. She's truly one of my favorite people to hang out with. One day we were talking about what life was like when I learned to drive. That got me thinking on life experience -- especially the kind I have that my children likely never will.

I grew up on a dirt road. It was really a gravel road, but most of the rock would get ground into the roadbed or washed away long before the county would get around to adding more. Most of my friends lived on dirt roads, too.

This brings up driving issues my kids would never consider.

For instance, if you brake suddenly on a dirt road, and hit a patch of gravel, you scoot. Same thing when you're turning from a dirt road on to a paved one. You don't want to do that too quickly or you spin out.

Dirt roads are usually narrow. Until our road was paved, when I was 13, it wasn't even possible to drive past an oncoming car except in a few spots. If you met another car, someone had to pull over to the side and stop, and in some places even back up.

We lived about half way up a ridge. Overhanging trees made shady spots that kept snow and ice on the road for days. So my dad would put tire chains on the his Pontiac Tempest stationwagon, and off we'd go, careening down the ridge in a barely controlled skid. Deep ditches awaited if we ran off the road. Somehow, we never did.

In summer, the problem was dust -- and lack of air conditioning. It's common rural courtesy to slow down when you drive past someone's home on a dirt road. You don't want to be the showoff who stirs up the dust that settles all over them and their belongings.

Dust is a problem inside the car, too. What your own car creates pretty much stays behind you, but a passing car is another thing. When any passenger called out, "A car's coming!" everyone grabbed a window crank to get the windows rolled up, fast. Then, we'd sit sweltering in the heat until the dust died down enough to roll them down again.

Dust, window cranks, pulling over just to pass... Life on the dirt road is a lost experience for most of us now.

But the country group Sawyer Brown remembered it in 1992.

I'll take the dirt road. It's all I know. I've been walking it for years. It's gone where I need to go. It ain't easy. It ain't supposed to be. But I'll take my time. And life won't pass me by. It's right there to find... on the dirt road.