The Stopping Place

The Stopping Place

There comes a time in every young boy’s life when he finally gets to drive. He eagerly awaits the day when dad takes him out and lets him get behind the wheel. When I was a young boy, around the age of eight, my father took me out for a drive on the back roads. Growing up in Southwest Virginia one becomes familiar with the back roads. Back roads are for the people who want to escape the fast-paced action that is our world, for those who want to relax and just enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. While driving on a back road we could enjoy the polychromatic foliage of an autumn day with all the yellows, reds, and oranges or the stillness of nature on a frigid, snowy winter day where the snow covers the nakedness of tree’s branches and forms a blanket for the ground or the refreshing sound of renewal during spring when life burst vividly from its long winter sleep or the cooling rain of a hot, summer day that adds that sweet aroma of freshness to the air.


The back roads are also a great place for a boy to spend quality time with his father and discover to the joy of driving. My father pulled over, scooted his seat back, and told me to come sit on his lap. Then he said, “Put it down into drive and pull easily back onto the road.” My legs weren’t quite long enough to reach the pedals yet so my dad would control the brakes and the gas. He gave it a little gas, and I pulled easily back onto the road. I was driving! I can still remember the feel of the leather steering wheel with its raised grips in the palm of my tiny hand. There wasn’t a boy who was happier in the entire world. But my dad always let his hand rest on the bottom of the steering wheel in case we passed another car or he needed to take quick control.


My getting to drive with my dad was a right of passage. He was saying I was now old enough to start learning how to drive and experience the excitement of driving especially in the foot hills of Southwest Virginia. We would always drive down this one road called Dry Branch. My dad would drive until we came to what we called the stopping place.


Back roads always have this little place, somewhere along the road, where you can stop. We always stopped at the same place. We really enjoyed the beauty of this spot. We could see a doe, a mother deer, grazing on the grass with her young. If it was night we could hear the melody of the crickets as they sang their peaceful song.


But what I loved about the stopping place was that I knew that it was my turn to drive. Eventually, my legs got long enough that I could start controlling the brakes and the gas. I would drive from Dry Branch to Forty-Foot– named for the forty-inch footprint found there. I grew older and taller, allowing me to drive with my dad there next to me in the passenger seat. Then one day I got my license, I could finally drive by myself. Now that I’m older and my dad is no longer with me when I drive every time, when I drive down those roads today I have great memories of which to reminisce. But what I look forward to the most is the day when I set my own son down on my lap and tell him, “Put it down into drive and pull easily back onto the road.”