When we were kids we often went for Sunday drives.  They weren't trips with destinations, sometimes we just kept driving on back roads as long as we could.  We saw rivers and creeks and woods and lakes with fish jumping.  We saw the abandoned farm houses and barns left over from when farms were operated by single families and driven to extinction by corporate farming. 

We really never had new cars.  They were often old beaters that had worn upholstery or faded paint.  The only thing most had in common were radios and huge back seats.   We'd load up on lunch and just get in and go.  Sometimes we had food or drinks with us to snack on as we rode aimlessly through the countryside.

We could ride for an hour on narrow rock roads that split a huge cornfield and see nothing but the towering tasseled stalk with their blond haired ears of corn growing. A wheat field that spread out a golden carpet for what looked like miles.  

We didi this all through the year too.  We'd ride in the Winter with windows up and heat on.  It still got cold in the back seat so we brought blankets.  In the Summer it would get so hot that we hung out of the windows to cool off.  Summer was better than Winter though since we sometimes stopped at a swimming hole and played in the water.

Spring and Fall though were the best.  They were never really to hot or to cold.  We could get three kinds of weather in a single ride.  We would leave the house in warm and sunny and by the time we'd been going an hour we would be seeing snowflakes or intense rain and lightning.

I learned how to spot deer on the side of the roads and how to find them after dark too.  Just look for their eyes glowing.  I learned how to tell if it was raining in the distance by the curtain of gray that went from the clouds to the ground.  I learned to watch the world go by and see the things that were all around me.

I never really thought about it at the time but the radio was always tuned to a rock and roll station even though my Dad claimed he hated it.  We sang along with it too, Elvis, Leslie Gore, the Beatles.  It was a magic time to be a child then, there was hope and magic in space flight and computers.  Even our remote rural world became more modern.

We still take weekend drives today, usually with no set destination in mind, we go or do what strikes our fancy.  There is a certain freedom in it all.  We speak to our wander lust in those drives and that is something that I learned when I was just a kid going for a ride.