The dirt road was not much to speak of, so most folks didn’t. It was rutted, the kind of nasty ruts that could swallow a small child whole, never to be seen again.
No signs marked its path until my uncle Jay painted a small board with an arrow and the family name and attached it to a fence post with baling wire. People simply referred to it as the road to the Manley farm, the first right turn after crossing the bridge. It was a quiet, dirt path that meandered past Mrs. Ellis’s house and abruptly ended at a gargantuan cactus patch about a block past the railroad bridge.
My visits to the farm were during the summer, and I usually stayed for three weeks. I vividly remember the chickens, a noisy five hundred or so troupe circling the farmhouse, scratching the dirt, and being ever-busy. I also remember that almost everything on that farm wanted to kill me. The Mountain Boomers, Coyotes, and Rattlesnakes were my first worry, so I carried my completely ineffective Red Ryder BB Gun as protection.
My grandfather Jasper decided it was time for me to drive a car, as most farm kids did out of necessity. At ten years old, I had mastered the tractor well enough to tear down parts of his barbed-wire fence without a second thought. He believed I was ready for his old stick shift V8 Ford. My grandmother fretted about his failing eyesight and knew better than to step into the driver’s seat herself: driving cars and deep water haunted her dreams, and she wouldn’t face either. My grandfather needed a chauffeur, skilled or not, for his trips to the domino parlor in the town’s only cafe, The Biscuit Ranch. I was his first and only choice.
My first excursion behind the wheel was chilling, at least to me. What sort of adult would let a ten-year-old kid drive a car? If Grandfather was apprehensive, he hid it well.
Turning out of the farm gate, hitting a hard left, clutching and shifting to second gear, working the accelerator, and attempting to steer the metal beast without running us into a ditch was all I could handle. By the grace of God, we made it to the railroad bridge where the hobos gathered, so we stopped so Grandfather could visit a spell. He enjoyed chawing with the hobos, swapping stories, chewing and sharing his Red Man tobacco, and telling dirty jokes: things that weren’t allowed at home. One of the hobo’s remarked that I drove exceptionally well for a little kid, and he and his buddy could hitch a ride into town. My grandfather was out of chewing tobacco, so he invited the hobos into the back seat for our first trip to the feed store in town.
I was feeling optimistic and a bit cocky about my driving skills by the time we pulled up to the highway intersection. Grandfather checked for traffic and, finding none, told me to hit it, which I did: skidding out onto the pavement in front of the large truck he didn’t see coming; my small PF Flyer-covered foot floored the beast and hit second into third gear, squealing the tires like a stock car driver. The hobos in the back seat laughed and said I was the best kid driver they had ever known. The Ford made it to the feed store; then, we stopped at the Domino parlor, where I was introduced as the main chauffeur for the Manley family. When my mother came to collect me toward the end of July, I was car-driving Jessie. My grandmother marched me to the barn while my mother threw the grandest hissy fit ever after her father bragged about my good driving.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 