A driveway is really just a private road. There's plenty of coming and going in a lifetime, and it is a practical thing...but it's really so much more. I think of the land that we bought in 1996. It was as thick with brush and trees as Sleeping Beauty's castle, and we couldn't walk through it from the front. We had to circle around on an old logging trail to get to the house site. We brought chain saws and machetes and hacked a trail to the road. It was then that I began to realize what we were in for. We worked and sweated for days and it was still little more than a walking path. Eventually a tractor was hired and the real muscle was applied. I remember shouting and jumping up and down when that machine started moving. Since the grading man was already there, I had him whack down a big swath in the front so we could have a pasture. Ken never forgave me for that. All that front field ever did was erode and look sickly. Trees and stumps, weeds and trash piled up like a miniature mountain there. I had a wild hair one day and decided to burn the pile. My Father-in-law told me to go buy five gallons of kerosene, soak a bale of hay with it, then light it. While I was out buying hay, I couldn't find a supplier for kerosene and thought, "Gas should do the trick." God protects (sometimes) fools and children. I soaked the hay and threw a match on the mess. Rumor has it that the boom was heard for miles in Douglas County. I was knocked clean off my feet, with eyebrows, eyelashes and some of my hair singed, but I lived to tell the tale. It burned for three days and I never doubted Charles Norton again.
We paid for trucks and trucks of gravel. I never knew there was so much skill involved in laying a strip of crushed rock. Then there came the day when we moved onto the property in our camper and we started using that blessed, 400-foot driveway. Ken and the boys laid out an area to be paved, with three parking pads. I thought it was ridiculous to have that much concrete. It looked like a runway. Ken reminded me that all these kids would one day be driving. I didn't want to think about that part. Then there was that time the menfolk sawed a failing, 50-foot tree and landed it straight onto the pavement, missing the house and Ken. My brain has cascades of memories of life lived on that wonderful place. I see our kids playing monkey-in-the-middle and some kind of baseball-related game in the driveway, always with much yelling and running. There were years and years of basketball games. They would adjust the basketball goal so they could dunk and I would hear loud thumps reverberating off the walls. Each child had an epic story in that driveway. Our oldest, Jon, was running full-tilt down it when one of our 100-pound Golden Retrievers intercepted, causing him to crash and scrape his hip and elbow down to the bone. Our second-born, Daniel, decided to race his Pa down it (Pa was driving the car. Daniel was running), slipped on the gravel and got his leg run over. Try explaining that to the emergency room doctor. Miraculously, he was (mostly) okay. Our third-born, Jesse, hitched a ride, grabbing onto a ladder that was extending out of his Pa's truck, only to get bounced high in the air and into space when the truck skidded onto the concrete. The law of gravity prevailed. Then there was fourth-born Liz, who had the misfortune of backing over two of our animals. Don't ask. One of the animals was her cat, and the carnage was unbelievable. Ken scooped the leftovers into a bag. I gingerly held the bag and drove the car down the road (it was difficult to bury and I didn't want to leave it in the trash). I opened my window and threw the bag over the car and into Mobley Creek. I figured that sending him back to the earth and the fishes and crabs was the most efficient thing to do. Problem was, the bag caught on a branch in the middle of the creek. Every time we drove by, the bag got bigger and my face got redder. It lingered there for some two or three weeks, to my chagrin. There is no accounting for some of the decisions I've made in my lifetime.
I think of the joy of coming home from somewhere, children running out with laughter and smiles to greet me. Pa always talked about the way it felt to pull in there after a long day at work, how he could breathe once he turned off the road. In the end, it wasn't about just that house, or that property, or that driveway. It was about a place called home, where you could be ugly and still be loved. Somewhere, where you felt safe and knew that the earth was going to keep turning. Not everyone's home is like that, but I pray that some way, somehow they can find that place. In this life or the next.
We paid for trucks and trucks of gravel. I never knew there was so much skill involved in laying a strip of crushed rock. Then there came the day when we moved onto the property in our camper and we started using that blessed, 400-foot driveway. Ken and the boys laid out an area to be paved, with three parking pads. I thought it was ridiculous to have that much concrete. It looked like a runway. Ken reminded me that all these kids would one day be driving. I didn't want to think about that part. Then there was that time the menfolk sawed a failing, 50-foot tree and landed it straight onto the pavement, missing the house and Ken. My brain has cascades of memories of life lived on that wonderful place. I see our kids playing monkey-in-the-middle and some kind of baseball-related game in the driveway, always with much yelling and running. There were years and years of basketball games. They would adjust the basketball goal so they could dunk and I would hear loud thumps reverberating off the walls. Each child had an epic story in that driveway. Our oldest, Jon, was running full-tilt down it when one of our 100-pound Golden Retrievers intercepted, causing him to crash and scrape his hip and elbow down to the bone. Our second-born, Daniel, decided to race his Pa down it (Pa was driving the car. Daniel was running), slipped on the gravel and got his leg run over. Try explaining that to the emergency room doctor. Miraculously, he was (mostly) okay. Our third-born, Jesse, hitched a ride, grabbing onto a ladder that was extending out of his Pa's truck, only to get bounced high in the air and into space when the truck skidded onto the concrete. The law of gravity prevailed. Then there was fourth-born Liz, who had the misfortune of backing over two of our animals. Don't ask. One of the animals was her cat, and the carnage was unbelievable. Ken scooped the leftovers into a bag. I gingerly held the bag and drove the car down the road (it was difficult to bury and I didn't want to leave it in the trash). I opened my window and threw the bag over the car and into Mobley Creek. I figured that sending him back to the earth and the fishes and crabs was the most efficient thing to do. Problem was, the bag caught on a branch in the middle of the creek. Every time we drove by, the bag got bigger and my face got redder. It lingered there for some two or three weeks, to my chagrin. There is no accounting for some of the decisions I've made in my lifetime.
I think of the joy of coming home from somewhere, children running out with laughter and smiles to greet me. Pa always talked about the way it felt to pull in there after a long day at work, how he could breathe once he turned off the road. In the end, it wasn't about just that house, or that property, or that driveway. It was about a place called home, where you could be ugly and still be loved. Somewhere, where you felt safe and knew that the earth was going to keep turning. Not everyone's home is like that, but I pray that some way, somehow they can find that place. In this life or the next.
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