I was born a truck driver.

Woke up this morning thinking of the first time I was ever behind the wheel of a vehicle and flashed back to when I was 14 years old and had been farmed out to a family where the mom and dad both worked and lived on a working farm.  They had 2 sons.  One was named Billy and the other may or may not have been named Donnie.  Little bit fuzzy on how old they were even.  I do know I was picked up on Sunday night and returned home on Saturday morning.  It was kind of nice though because the house had running water and I had my own little bed in a tiny room right under the attic eave.  May have been small, but it was a lot more than I had at home.  It did not have a door.  It had one at one time, but for some reason it did not have one anymore, but I did not care.  I was safe.  Hotter than hell, but safe.

The mother sold Stanley products so she was gone most of the day.  The father worked at a farm equipment store in Hutch as a salesman so he was also gone.  My job was to tend the boys, and the chickens, and watch the old sow which was due to drop her piggies soon.  And as luck would have it she decided to do that one day just before the mom and dad came home.  She also began to eat them!  Remember that I was 14 and probably weighed in at 50 pounds soaking wet.  I stood no chance against a 300-400 pound sow in the throes of birth, but I tried.  I grabbed a couple of the babies and put them in a box.  She was very mad and I could not get to any more.  The boys were terrified when dad came home.  He immediately got his gun and dispensed the sow to the promised land and by then a friend was there and the boys and I were sent inside.  There were a few piggies saved and I have blocked the rest of what happened from my mind and that is how I survived a lot of my life.  Sometimes not remembering is a good thing.

But that has nothing to do with my first driving experience, does it?

The time came that a harvest was upon the land.  This family owned land here and there so there was a need to move from field to field which worked well most of the time since the hired hands were there to do it.  I stayed at home with the boys and it was not until harvest was over and all the equipment needed to be brought home that I was pressed into service.  Everything was moved except the last piece which was a big grain hauling truck.  Not an 18 wheeler, (Thank God!) but way bigger than a pickup.  The wife explained to me how simple this would be to drive.  Needless to say, this was a stick shift.  I knew what a stick shift was and I knew what a clutch was and I knew what a brake was.

"You just push the clutch in, start the truck, let the clutch out slowly and it is in low gear so you just give it a little gas and coast the mile to the farm."  OK.  That sounded simple enough and after a couple times of killing it and restarting it, I was off.  And then I remembered the bridge and the left hand turn I had to take.  I sweated blood until I was across the bridge and headed down the straightaway.  The fact that I had made it across the bridge AND negotiated the left hand turn exhilarated me!  I just had to putt on down the road to the driveway and turn right, go a few yards and stop.  I prayed I would not miss the driveway because there was no way in hell I would ever get it in reverse.  I envisioned having to drive around a section (what land in the country is divided into) to get another chance, so I was ready when the drive came up and I whipped around the corner, steered to the center of the yard and turned the key to the off position.  Then and only then, did I let myself breathe a sigh of relief and pride welled up in my throat.  I had done it!  I had driven that big truck across a bridge and around 2 corners!  I began to dream of the day I could drive and have my own car.  And here I am.

Not to be boasting, as pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction,  but, here I am 60+ years later and I have a perfectly clean driving record.  No dings in my car from me.  The ones that are there were there when I got the car.  No tickets for anything.  I do have a lead foot at times, but don't we all?  I was pulled over one night long ago in Fowler, but I think the cop was thinking to put the moves on me since I was a woman presumably alone at 1:00 in the morning.  Sadly for him when he walked up to the door Bret and Shelly awoke and wanted to know what was going on now?  Did I mention, God is my co-pilot?

I did not own a car or a drivers license until I was 24 years old.  When I married Duane he just assumed I could drive, so I did.  I was stopped one night in Liberal, Kansas with a broken tail light and the officer told me I needed a license or next time I would get a ticket for not having one.  Getting a license back then was easy.  All I had to do was present myself and a vehicle at the drivers license place and show them I could drive.  That and $5.00 was all it took.  Luckily the car I was driving at the time had brakes and such.  I was not always so lucky.  We usually bought a vehicle at the sale for less than $50.00 and drove it till it gave up the ghost and was abandoned in someones yard.  I recall one time I had the 4 youngest and was going to see mother and the tail lights went out.  I knew it was a fuse and I knew we did not keep such things around, but luckily I smoked and cigarettes were in packs with tin foil!  I carefully fold up a piece of that and voila!  The tail lights came on.

(I learned lots of little tricks that would do me no good whatsoever later in life.  The way to seal a leak in your gas tank is with a bar of soap!  When the car vapor locks, just wait till it cools off and you can get another 10 or 20 miles down the road.  If you lock the keys in the trunk it is easier to use a pick axe to make a hole over the latch then it is to remove the back seat and put it back in.  And for God's sake do not forget your birth control pills when you are going with your husband to visit your mother in law!)  And that is my Words of Wisdom for today!

Yes, yes! I was a 60's flower child.

Woke up early this morning to think about things and decided that I grew up in the best of all times.  People who know me find it hard to believe that I never used drugs of any kind.  Unless of course we consider alcohol and tobacco, and I think those are both considered in that genre.  I was born in the 40's which was a time of war.  There was talk that I was actually fallout from Hiroshima or Pearl Harbor, but I think not since I was such a cute baby!
We went from peace after World War II to peace keeping missions in Korea, Vietnam, to war in   Iraq and are still a very warring faction and I am not sure where all we have troops now.  We went from a phone on the wall to a phone we wear in our ear.  We went from Frank Sinatra, through Elvis, the Beatles, Garth Brooks and now Miley Cirus and Justin Bieber are the current losers. We went from a black Model T through a lavender Corvette.  Poodle skirts gave way to mini skirts which were traded for culottes and now there are no fashion rules at all.  Baby boomers, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.   Birth control pills, floppy discs, Rubik's cube, a man on the moon and a woman in the space station.  Kent State, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and President Bush hates broccoli!  Do I need to go on with history?  No.
I just want you to grasp the picture.  Some times I like to think back and picture the first Indian who looked up and saw an airplane soaring overhead.  There is an old saying, "Time marches on!"  and one "Time and tide wait for no man."  I can attest to all of this.  We used to go buy a car from the lot on the corner for $250.00, put 19 cent gas in the tank and drive 150 miles to see grandma who inevitably lived on a farm usually in Western (insert name of state here).    Now we take out a loan for $25,000.00, put $4.25 gas in the tank, park our cheap little car in the garage of our house in the suburbs, and crawl on a plane for $650 and fly 2000 miles to see grandma who does not have time for us because it is bingo night at the condo center and she is in charge, but we can stay here at the house and pet her Labradoodle which is her latest designer dog.
The creek where we used to fish is no longer there.  It has been rerouted and is now a kayak course, but take your pole anyway.  You can set there and remember when you used to catch a cat fish and you could actually eat it.  Damn things glow now with radiation and I ain't eating that!  We can walk downtown to the "Historic area" which is now antique shops where I can buy a remenant of history for a price which is more than I used to pay for my car.  If I am really lucky I can find a friend my age and we can play "Oh, God, remember when we had to wear those awful shoes?"  And "Remember when mother used to gather up the pans because the 'tinker man' was due and he would patch the holes in them?"
I know you have a hard time thinking that was a good time, but it was.   It was back before any divorces and before I worked 3 jobs to survive and before I found out cigarettes were cool and a shot of whiskey sure took the edge off the lonliness and an aspirin was the strongest drug in my medicine cabinet..
 Back when we could walk out back, catch a chicken, "wring it's neck", pluck out the feathers and innards and have the biggest and best  pot of chicken and noodle soup in the world 2 hours later. Scraps of food were thrown out in the back yard for the chickens and the chicken would then lay an egg and the cycle continued.
 Back when school supplies included pencils and paper and a new pair of shoes for the winter ahead.  Back when the teacher was Miss Lauver or Mr. Bollinger, because teachers were respected and revered.  Clothes were handed down and when they were thread bare they went into the "rag basket".  In due time they were torn into strips, rolled into a ball and taken to the weaver lady who made them into rugs.  Wool clothes were cut into strips and mother crocheted them into rugs. Those were best cause they were thicker and softer.
Back when we walked to church every Sunday to save the car for an emergency or for when we went to see grandma and great grandma who lived in Plevena, a town of 102 people 24 miles away.
I would just ask that all of you out there stay in touch with your roots.  They are what makes you who you are today and they are unique to you.  You can look back and see all the things your parents did wrong while raising you, but try to remember that they were once young also and they were raised by a parent raising them who probably had no idea what they were doing either!  We all live and learn and some of us actually get to a point in our lives where we can say,

I did the best I could with the knowledge and the tools I had at the time so I forgive me!