Mom's driving

Tales from the Backyard…When I was 5, my mother always made me go to church and sit beside her.  Now a kid with what is now called ADD should not be forced to sit for an hour or more, especially in church, so it became a ritual on Sundays that I would go to church, squirm for an hour and then when we got back home I would run and hide until found and receive a spanking.  One day I had had enough and said I was going to run away.  My mom said “good, I’ll pack you a lunch”, knowing I wouldn't.  She did and made me a little hobo stick and bandanna to carry the lunch in and off I went.  It was about a quarter mile or more in any direction to the nearest road so I took to the woods and made my way past the nearest neighbors.  After a couple of hours, my mom realized I was not around and sent all my siblings to find me.  No luck.  What to do now she thought, Dads working and I can’t drive.  Another hour or so and getting dark, worried, she packed the kids in the car and tried to drive.  I use that term ”tried” very loosely because as I remember, when I saw her coming down the dirt road, or should I say, through the fields, over the road through the ditch and other fields, back over the road to the other ditch, I guess you could say she was driving.  The car stopped next to a barbed wire fence and my brothers and sister scrambled out of the car hooting and laughing, better than any carnival ride they said.  We left the car for my dad, and walked home, everyone very happy.  That was the only time my mother ever got behind the wheel.