I started my Saturday morning with a trip out into the country to visit a couple who haven't been able to make it to church recently on account of not feeling well, and my travels took me on several miles of country gravel roads.
I know that this will sound silly to many, but it was a joy to be country driving again.
You see, I grew up in a small town in northwest Minnesota, and so much of my formative young adult years were spent driving country gravel roads. Our little town of 900 people sat in the middle of the prairie, and only a couple of us in high school lived in town. We were known as the "Townies." ... The vast majority of students in my small high school lived out of town as their parents either were tied to agriculture, or lived on longtime family farmsteads even if the land was no longer home to a farming operation.
In addition, to get to any other town of some size, you had to travel either northwest, southwest or east, and there was a good likelihood that the shortest distance to one of those towns took you over a gravel road or two.
And then finally, let's face it. In a town of 900 people, the few retail establishments open to minors close by early evening, and that left those of us who hadn't left town to go see a movie, or eat at a restaurant, or go bowling or whatever, in town looking for something to do.
That something to do was often go "cruising," and that meant hitting the country roads. Yes, unfortunately, there was also a lot of "booze cruises," as the events got nicknamed, which meant that you somehow took alcohol with you on your adventure. But even for kids who didn't drink, the main thing to do on a small town Friday and Saturday night was to go cruising. It really is what all us kids had in terms of entertainment options if there wasn't anything going on at the school.
We didn't have rec centers, or movie theaters, or bowling alleys, or teen centers. So we had to make up our own fun, and that often led to cruising. Gas was cheap enough that for a few bucks we could provide ourselves with hours of entertainment cruising around the hundreds of miles of gravel roads that surrounded our little hometown. And we did a lot of growing up on those roads.
So, on Saturday, as soon as I took my first right turn onto that county gravel road, a ton of memories came flooding back.
The sound of the crunching rock under the tires, and then ricocheting up into the wheel wells of the car.
The looseness of the gravel in places where vehicles hadn't yet packed them down.
The ruts left by farm trucks and pickups in the soft roads as we are about to enter spring, and the frost is coming out of the top layers of the county roads.
The site of unkempt ditches that reached all the way to the road's edge, and their corresponding little streams of snow melt starting to come to life.
On these roads, designed to be so straight and narrow that you could use them as a ruler, you can see for miles. And so you drive right down the middle until you see dust being kicked up into the air by and oncoming car. And then at that point, you slow, pull to the right and you make sure to give the passerby a nice big smile and a finger wave. ... Or a friendly nod of the head. ... Really, there is an entire study to be done in the art form of the country gravel road meeting. Some people have just the slighted wiggle of a pointer finger on the steering wheel, and if you don't know to look for it, you might miss it and consider the person rude.
In all, I probably only spent about 10 minutes on gravel roads Saturday morning, but it was a glorious 10 minutes. And it brought back many memories of my youth, and it again fueled my desire to fire sell our home in town and move our troop out to the country. But that is a column for another day.
For today, this is why I am finding faith in gravel roads. ... Amen.
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