Automotive Therapy

A car, a quite comfortable car sits high, on the late afternoon of a clear day.  Open roads are calling to be driven before sunset, before twilight drops its curtain. Out there somewhere are enticing winding roads. Just a short piece of motoring away and there are country roads for miles. With the windows down and the sunroof open the car heads out of the city and onto narrower and narrower roads.  Quickly the curbs and berms drop away. Mailboxes start to appear and soon a mix of newer ranch houses and old short wood frame farm houses sit in front of fields and ponds.

Golden sunlight is still pouring down. A steady breeze blows from the southwest. The car’s metal nose is pointed north. Very quickly the car and its passengers have made their way out and beyond the small lots and wood frame houses of their neighborhood.  The car passes soybean fields and grain silos.  It passes cows at pasture.  Driving a little below the speed limit the car passes sheep grazing quietly in a green landscape. The road shifts from blacktop to dirt.

An ATV darts out a short distance ahead of the car.  It fires across the road and starts riding on the edge of a field near the beginning of a woodlot. The helmeted rider turns onto a trail leading into the mature woodlot. The car slows to make sure no one is following the rider on another ATV.  No one is in a rush.  There is no need for unnecessary danger.

The road has become more path than road. The bouncing is nonstop. The sound of not quite ringing, not quite crunching of the tires on the sometimes dirt, sometimes gravel road, works its way into the car’s cabin. Time to turn on the radio to something rock and roll-ey.  Time to sing along.  The driver turns up the Tedeschi-Trucks band singing a very bluesy take on the old folk classic Be Home Soon.  Everyone sings. Arms rest on the door frame or hang out of the car.

The dirt road curves as it hits the county line. The road as it continues on in this new county does not seem to have been graded this year.  A culvert lies ahead and the road narrows to one lane.  The culvert must be blocked for a stand of trees to the righthand side of the car is flooded and there are puddles on either side of the little bridge. The car splashes through.  The singers keep singing.  All eyes scan for deer for it is late in the day. Time is now when deer begin to leave their daybeds and move.

Everything is so green.  A chipmunk darts across the car’s path but vehicle’s pace has slowed and the little tree rat is in no danger. In the old days this is where you would crack open the road beers and hold them between you legs.  That was then, this is today, and society is justifiably safer and more cautious. But the older riders remember and they turn the music to an oldies station and start singing along with the Bee Gees song the New York Mining Disaster. With its occupants lost in a long ago past the car continues on.

For forty-five minutes the world is as it once was.  For the price of a gallon and a half of gas the riders decompress from a world that grows harder and harder to live in or understand.