Another rerun of a favorite blog — I’ll always love the memories of my dirt roads…

Been pondering on the front porch this morning. Actually ate my breakfast on the porch sitting in the swing. First time I’ve done that in a long time. Penelope and I have been watching the cardinals and titmouses on the feeders. Oldest brother stopped by for his visit grumbling about the three squirrels stealing seeds from his bird feeders. He scared them when he opened the door and they knocked a feeder off his porch. “I hate to kill them,” he says, “but I hate them stealing my seeds!”

I told him Grandpaw raccoon came back with his lady friends last night and feasted on all the apples I had sliced for my bird friends. I had put some mixed seeds in one feeder and the raccoons just raked it all out looking for the sunflower seeds. I really don’t mind but I am going to ping Grandpaw with the pellet gun if I can catch him on the deck. I bet he’ll come back tonight expecting more apples. Gonna get a little lead instead of an apple slice!

Woke up last night at 2:30 AM and immediately thought of dirt roads — the beauty of an old dirt road. “Sometimes you just got to find an old dirt road and go where it takes you.” I love this anonymous quote.

Years ago Chief’s sister’s grandchildren from Florida were visiting in the summer and I brought them to Roanoke for the day. They had never ridden down a dirt road! I took them up to the farm to middle brother’s house. They loved riding down the dirt road driveway, such a pretty drive with wood ferns and a small creek. Chief and I got a good laugh about all their comments. The youngest one, now all grown up, loves to take a dirt road to no where. She takes beautiful photos of her dirt road travels.

Seems funny that something as simple as a road of packed dirt could hold so many memories. One of my college friends from Japan visited me one summer. She had never been around cows so daddy and I rode her down the dirt road to the farm and took a photo of her standing by our bull named Big Red. I run across that photo occasionally.

As a teenager, a dirt road was a place to park and make out. My high school boyfriend lived on a dirt road. Many happy memories with him on his dirt road. On a double date in high school we got the car stuck parking on one of our family farm roads. I knew better than to call my daddy so one if the boys walked to the hospital and called a friend with a truck to pull us out.

Driving down the road to my youngest brother’s house yesterday, I remembered picking huckleberries along one side of the road with daddy. The berries made delicious pies. I glanced on the other side of the road and remembered burying our family yard dog Okami on Stew’s farm land. I found her dead in the yard one afternoon a few months after Chief died.

All those rides down the farm’s dirt roads with my brothers in the back of daddy’s pickup truck. No one rides in the back of pickups now. Too many child restraint laws. And I remember the time daddy took me with him to gather up the cows who had gotten out of the fenced pasture. He had me stand in the middle of the dirt road with my arms outstretched near the pasture gate. He herds them down the road in the truck, straight towards me. I was scared to death, actually I was petrified, when I saw them running towards me but soon as they got close to me the cows turned and went through the gate. When the dust cleared I could see Daddy laughing. Daddy knew I was scared and got a good chuckle from the look on my face. Funny, though, I have no memories of mama on those dirt roads. Guess she was a city girl.

The last time I wandered around the farm and walked a dirt road was with Chief when we were Christmas tree hunting several years ago. The first time Chief and I walked the dirt roads at the farm we wandered around in one of the old barns. We always thought Thomas was conceived in that barn.

Chief and I came home from our honeymoon down a dirt road in the woods. We drove down that road for 13 years till his mother gave us his childhood home. Our three children came home from the hospital as newborns down that dirt road. We have countless family photos posed on that dirt road.

All those memories travel down a dirt road on my heart. You drive slower on a dirt road and observe the world as it passes. Life is a dirt road. Sometimes it’s hard packed and fast, sometimes it’s muddy and slippery. Other times it’s full of bumps and rocks and we have to learn to navigate, choose which fork to travel. When we’re young we go down that dirt road wide open with the wind on our face. As we age, we slow down and watch life push us down different paths. When we’re old, we choose a slower dirt road and memories in our hearts make for peaceful travels.