Life on a Dirt Road, 1964

On a hot day when our neighbor said "let's hop in the car and go", that's exactly what we all did. On a trip to nowhere, the most important destination in the world was always in the boundaries of our immediate neighborhood. Whether it was the corner store or the corner gas station, a good time always waited.

First off, the punch buttons on the car radio found the best music. The bouncing suspension of our neighbor's old station wagon proved valiant whenever we traversed the dirt road of our street. The numerous ruts and potholes were an amusement park ride as we rolled over scattering dust and gravel.

I loved sticking my arms out the window catching the wind from the moving car. Someone richer than I always found a dime or two in their pocket for the pop machine. As we rolled into the Texaco station, and the ding hose announced us, I recall the wonderful smell of gasoline as it pumped into the tank. The blue paper towels were a fascination for me (why, I don't know), and the smell of fresh gas always makes me think of them. On a vivid and marvelous summer day I can still see the plastic banner streamers at the gas station flapping in the wind; I can feel the icy-cold water of the pop cooler as I reached in to pull out my selection.

My life was about fishing out a cold bottle of pop with ice water streams dripping down the bottle. My life was also about summer, playing outside near the clothesline, or pulling not yet ripened fruit off the trees. On the days that a car ride was offered I accepted without even asking where we were going. There was freedom on the road, and something as tedious as stopping for gas, or just cruising into the station for a bottle of pop, was a summer miracle. Scorching days; the smell of hot rubber from cars or bike tires; the feel of a cold blast from a garden hose and the taste of road dust take me right back to 1960something.