I grew up on a dirt road. Cooper Street was located five miles from the nearest small village. I have often wondered, why wasn’t it called Cooper Road? I thought streets were in villages and cities? To compensate some people called it Cooper Street Road.
I used to joke with people that where I grew up there were more cows than people. But it was not a joke.
In the winter sometimes we would get snowed in. A couple of times we got snowed in for days. I remember one time in particular when my father put on snow shoes and headed across the swamp to where his logging skidder was located so he could open up the road. Only my father did those kind of things.
A couple of times in the spring the road got so muddy and rutted that our cars bottomed out and the school bus but wouldn’t come down the road. Fun times were had in Dad’s old pickup truck as he drove us to the end of the road to meet the school bus.
And sometimes he wouldn’t, leaving us to walk home after football or field hockey practice.
All of this came to mind today as once again the group bike ride turned into a solo effort. I turned off before the speedsters did and soon found myself on….tada…. a dirt road. After I got past the initial misgivings of “what if I get a flat or fall as no one would find me for days”, I began to enjoy the romance of once again being on a dirt road.
There were no houses. My only companions were a grass snake on the road and farmers’ fields beside me. I stopped at the bottom of a gully to take a nature break and take in nature as a little stream flowed under the road. There is something about being out in the middle of nowhere that is charming and peaceful. No cars, no people, no power lines only solitude and the sound of my tires on the road beneath me.
Cooper Street is a paved road now and there are more houses than there were before. But the memories of that dusty old road live on for us that remember.