The road less traveled (unless you happen to live on one)

You can always tell.

It’s either a road grime-colored vehicle or dress pants which have that tell-tale mark about calf-high that tattles on someone whose path to church involved a gravel road or two.

Whether or not you live on a gravel road, it’s hard to avoid them. But if you do, you learn clotheslines are only useful on days when manure hauling is not on the docket, or on days with gale-force winds which leave clothes dirtier than they were before they were washed.

By Karen Schwaller

There is a lot that happens on gravel roads. They are places where kids grow up in lots of ways: driver’s education class for eight- and nine-year-olds; driving that semi for the first time under Dad’s watchful eye; learning how to handle a loaded hayrack or water tank for the long haul; tractor and implement operating lessons; school bus pick-ups and drop-offs; and they even offer a walking trail for reasons of fitness, spiritual healing and escape.

Athletes are made in farm fields. There is no need to go to the gym when a kid spends a summer stacking square bales, building strength and endurance. I have also walked about a billion miles on our gravel roads — sometimes drowning in a cloud of road dust. I’m certain the medical community will someday be treating something called, “Walker’s Lung.”

Farm fields are places where dreams come true for young and old, and offer a place for a farm mother to spend time with her children once they’re old enough to help with the field work. It’s the only time she’ll see them — especially as teenagers and young adults.

My sister and I developed a strong sister-bond on the gravel road by our house, as we would walk that half-mile to the corner, then sit and throw rocks at a pole for target practice while we discussed the hot topics of the day at school. There was a creek and bridge not far from our driveway which also served as great entertainment for all of us kids in all four seasons.

There was (and still is) the art of rock collecting which I learned from my grandmother who first introduced me to the word “interesting” as it pertained to rocks on our gravel road. I had never really noticed them before she helped us know that rocks are little chunks of art.

There are martial-art conquests with wasps in mailboxes that happen on gravel roads … some of the most entertaining dancing you’ll ever see. And gravel roads can be places of complete tranquility and a little slice of Americana — until the hogs get out.

When that happens, farm families understand Shakespeare’s winter of discontent.

Terrible things happen along gravel roads, too. A bus accident took the life of a 15-year-old young man near our childhood home — right after we had gotten off the bus after school. The gravel road taught me that day we don’t all get a chance to grow old. They are farm-to-market roads and places which allow us to get to and from our fields and the eleva-