Sunday Drive

Driving to your relative’s house on Easter Sunday is still common, but taking a “Sunday drive” no longer is. When I was a kid the whole family would pile into the station wagon on a Sunday afternoon and Dad would drive us all to no place in particular; either he or Mom might have had a general direction in mind – but the rest of us were just along for the ride. The weather was always nice (if it wasn’t we stayed home), the AM radio played polka music, and the windows rolled up and down manually. As far as I know, many people did the same thing – driving around on a Sunday with no particular place to go.

Our Sunday drives took us on quiet country roads and through small towns. I remember hearing Mom and Dad talking about somebody as we drove past a farm. One would ask the other “Didn’t she marry that so–and–so from Le Center?”  If a house was being built, they would wonder aloud who was building on the old what’s his name’s place.

Cleary, I wasn’t listening that close, but I do know they loved driving around and looking at what there was to see. Sometimes, we would pull into a driveway unannounced and uninvited. It seems preposterous to me now that our station wagon would just show up with five kids at somebody’s house and we would be welcome there. But, that’s what people did.

Although, I admit, I’m not much for station wagons full of kids rolling into my driveway, I still enjoy driving around – always have I guess. Even in high school my friends and I spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours driving up and down the same streets, county roads and state highways in and around Belle Plaine. We listened to the radio, eight–tracks and cassettes.

Dad used to ask me after a night of cruising around, “Where did you go last night?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I would answer.

“How did you put two hundred miles on a car driving nowhere in particular?” he would ask with a slightly elevated tone.

“I don’t know,” I would say – but thinking to myself, ‘I learned it from you.’ Often it was best to keep thoughts like that to myself.

There are at least two ways to travel: one is to know where you are going and not deviate, the other is to head in a general direction and allow yourself to be distracted and detoured. Which way is best can only be answered when the trip is over.

At one time I knew (or thought I knew) where I wanted to go in life and what I wanted to accomplish. But as I got older some dreams were dashed, and I got sidetracked by the obligations of being a father and provider. Yet, I wouldn’t change a thing as I am happier now than I deserve to be.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about this and expressing my surprise at how it has all turned out. She explained it this way, “You just didn’t know you’d be like this at this age.”

No, I didn’t; I find myself now here, instead of nowhere in particular. Still, I am content to keep heading in the same general direction, not be in too big of a hurry, and take it all in – much like a Sunday driver I guess.