How well I remember those sandy dirt roads and how I used to hang on to the inside of our old model A Ford. I clenched more than my teeth hoping daddy did not have to back up in our sandy drive to make another run at it. We got stuck a few times too. Heaven forbid, if mama ever tried to drive through those sandy spots! Bless her heart, she never mastered the art of driving, but surely could tell my "deaf eared" daddy how he should drive. He would just smile and drive on as if she was not sitting there "yapping" at him to slow down. I wish there was a map of all of those old back roads back when I was young. Goodness, I even parked on a few of them when I dated. Mostly, so Lila would not tease the living daylights out of me and my friends when we exchanged sweet nothings in the yard. Daddy often let Lila and I straddle the headlamps of the old Model A when we went to visit mama's sister, Aunt Myrtle and family during the warm summer days. My, how thrilled I was to sit there imagining we were flying down the road as my hair whipped around my face and into my mouth! I was afraid to turn loose to wipe it away for fear of falling off. We often made weird noises as we rode. One day, we might pretend we were on a train and another day an airplane. Daddy must have been doing all of 25 miles an hour. Mama kept him at bay by letting him know he was going much too fast. We loved whizzing by the locust trees as we sat on the fenders of that ole’ car while clutching tightly onto those headlamps. The leaves of the Locust trees gave off a pungent odor of wet tea leaves, as we drove by. The Cottonwood trees had a distinct sound of their own as the wind slapped at their waxy leaves. We learned only too soon, not to grab the branch of a Locust tree. A thorn in the thumb is something not to be reckoned for. A bug in the eye was painful too, but we squinted our eyes and chanced it anyway. Driving through a tunnel of overhanging tree limbs was like a jungle of our own. Hitting a rut in the road brought a yelp of dismay from mama and a yelp of delight from Lila and I as we whipped from one side to the other in the back seat. We enjoyed the bumps too. Why do I get the idea that daddy drove as he did, because he knew how delighted we were on "Orville's wild ride"? Do you suppose any child of today could get the enjoyment we found on those old road trips? Daddy certainly knew how to enjoy life and most of it did not cost one red cent. Ahhhh such memories!

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Created March 18, 2011

Updated: 14 June, 2021

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