"The Bridges of Oregon County"

As a country boy, there are certain things that you take for granted. The school bus ride is going to be long...either going or coming. Work before play. Ticks, chiggers, snakes and poison ivy are a given...deal with it. The toilet inside the house is used...rarely. And learning to drive is as natural as breathing...

My Dad did not have the thought process that seems to prevail in our society today. School was for book learning. You played sports During school and When it didn't interfere with church, family and work, in that order. When you were needed for work, you got a day off school. whoopee...

One particular morning when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, Dad informed me that "You're not going to school today" (whoopee...) "I need someone to follow me home from Alton."

Dad worked as a clerk for an auction company and at one of the auctions, he had bought an old two-ton truck. It was a doozy! It had no tail-lights, no mud-flaps, no bed, no licence, no brake-lights... and no brakes. We're talking just about as road worthy as Jed Clampett's Jalopy!

We drove to the east side of Oregon County, past Alton (about 35-40 miles) in Dad's 1973, red and white, long-bed, Ford truck. It had a 300 In-line six-cylinder engine with a three-speed standard transmission and a "Three On The Tree" gear shift.

Now I was well versed in driving Dad's truck... but Not on a major highway, Without a drivers licence, Following a two-ton rattle-trap truck! However, it never crossed my mind to question Dad. You just did what he said.

We were clicking along pretty good when we came west through Alton. But it wasn't long until things almost went "South" (or east, depending on your sense of direction!)

As we went north past Wallace and Owens Supermarket, around a long sweeping curve; a car was stopped in Dad's lane, waiting to turn left into a driveway. (see the area on Google Street View here ) Remember what I said about the two-ton truck?... no brakes? Dad couldn't pass the stopped car because of the oncoming traffic, so he downshifted to second gear but couldn't get it into "granny" and the distance to the car was closing! Dad told me "I was eyeing that steep bank to the right to see if I could find a soft landing place!" At the very last moment, the car was clear, turned left into the driveway and Dad shot past their back bumper!

I motored along pretty good until I came to the stretch of highway just south of the Barren Fork bridge.

Now remember, I had had experience driving around the Homeplace and on some country roads but nothing on a pretty narrow, two-lane blacktop.

As I approached the bridge, I was considering just how narrow it looked. I was thinking I could just "take my part out of the middle" cruise on through without any problem. But just as that thought passed through my mind, barreling from out of sight, around the curve past the bridge, came a Semi-Truck and trailer! Even now, with almost forty years of driving experience under my... bohunkus, that would make me just a tad nervous. As it was, I was slightly... just slightly beyond nervous. That's all I had time for... It was too late to stop, let alone slow down, so I just grabbed the wheel with both hands and stomped on the gas (trying to "beat" him to the bridge!)

We met right in the middle! Actually we passed each other in the middle... I guess. I may have had my eyes closed! But the usual thing happened to me. When I got a mile or so down the road, I almost had to pull over because I got so weak!

We made it home without further ado and I kept off the highways until I "drove" to get my drivers licence... Which is a whole nuther story!