By Regena Handy

The drive south happened before I had a real good grasp on geography.

It took place several years before my oldest brother was stationed at Fort Hood near Killeen so I wasn’t headed to see him. Occurred a couple of decades before J.R. (and whoever shot him) brought South Fork and Dallas into our homes every Friday night. And it transpired long, long before we watched Hurricane Harvey devastate the Lone Star State.

We didn’t have a GPS. In fact, we didn’t even have a map. And I’m fairly positive the vehicle we were driving was empty of gas. But my cousins and brother and I had absolutely no problems finding the way or getting where we wanted to go.

You see, all we had to do was use our imagination.

The old vehicle sat near where the fence line met the yard. I have no idea of its make or model. I can tell you that its color was rusted-out brown.

The top was gone, giving it the appearance of a convertible. Only a bench-style, front seat remained. In comparison to today’s standards, the steering wheel was a simple skinny, metal circle. There were brake, gas, and clutch pedals and a column stick shift. Not to brag or anything, but I was a speed demon when I drove that thing. An early version of Danica Patrick.

Though I was the only girl amongst the travelers and this was before the women’s rights movement, we were an enlightened bunch. Rank for driving privileges was based on age alone. So when there were several of us piled onto the old clunker, my brother was the first driver. After him, it went like this: the older cousins, then me, and finally my younger cousin.

But, oh, the journeys we made. We went as short a distance as to the store for a candy bar and as far as the Pacific Ocean. We crossed the great Mississippi, saw the Grand Canyon, encountered hordes of cowboys in Wyoming and Montana.

We might not have had a TV then but there was a large collection of Zane Grey books in our house—we knew all about the western states.

Our trips were limited only by where our dreams would take us. We had no electronics nor need for any such devices. Never were we bored (not a word that you ever wanted to use around my parents because they would quickly remedy that situation). About the only roadblocks we ever encountered were the bees which seemed to believe their right to build nests in our mode of travel took precedence over human adventures. Quite often it was necessary that we show them differently but not without paying a painful price.

As in the way of big brothers, I was often the recipient of driving advice. Never mind that he was just a kid himself. I recall him on one occasion telling me to stop constantly twisting the steering wheel. His words were along this line.

“You’re not always driving around curves, you know. Sometimes you are traveling on a straight road.”

Hmmm. Sounds like a good metaphor for life to me.