Driving a familiar highway a few week’s back I was reminded of my former life.
Between the white lines that led me on a straight, flat stretch east across the state and back again in mid-November, I was greeted by passing pickups with blaze orange caps resting on the dash.
Suddenly I was five years old sitting on the passenger’s side of my dad’s pickup, back when pickups didn’t have back seats, barely tall enough to see that landscape as it stretched out before me, bringing us closer and closer to the ranch for hunting season.
When I sat down to write this column that ran today in a couple newspapers in my home state, one out east, one here in the west, it was going to be about the time in my life my family didn’t live on the ranch and how I used to take every chance I got to be my dad’s sidekick, to crawl in the passenger’s side and take that five hour drive to gramma’s.
For harvest.
For cattle shipping day.
For hunting season.
I was going to tell you all about the time when I was five or six when that pickup broke down on a lonely stretch of that highway in the middle of a nasty blizzard, before cell phones and gadgets that connect us and make us safer.
It was the first time I remember staying in a hotel. I called it an “apawtment”
I couldn’t say my “R’s.”
I didn’t know the difference between an apartment and a hotel.
I didn’t know the level of my dad’s anxiety, having a kid out on a stretch of highway, broke down, no heater, no help, in sub-freezing temperatures.
And I didn’t know that it was likely my parent’s couldn’t afford a breakdown, let alone an impromptu hotel stay.
All I knew was that I was on an adventure.
But as I sat down to recall what it was like to climb in the passenger’s seat as a happy little girl and attempt to measure time in miles, the story I wanted to tell transformed from my recollection of a breakdown on Highway 2 to the realization that the sum of my life is made up of a string of memories, stretching long and straight between tall grass in the ditches and appearing before me like that highway moving off toward the setting sun.
Coming Home: Childhood homes bring back ghosts no matter how long we’re away
by Jessie Veeder
12-24-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
Reblogueó esto en El Noticiero de Alvarez Galloso.
Lucky you broke down near that “apawtment” …
The pleasure of not knowing, just being a kid and enjoying what’s around you.
Nice,
Jim
Jessie. I remember that trip very well. My 1979 Ford pick-up.Your dad had invited me to the ranch. We drew tags. A blizzard was forecast. We left Grand Forks anyhow. Your dad and I helped pull someone out of the ditch west of Rugby. We made it to Minot..the gates were closed south. We decided to continue our trip. We then helped two young women..stuck. Your dad walked at the edge of the highway to ensure our turn on 23 west.. We made it! I smoked a cigarette or two. Nine hours later we made it to the ranch. Your grandpa and grandma were waiting.On the way home,blew a water pump..-25 degrees. Between Devils Lake and Lakota.A friendly couple,on their way home from bowling..gave us a ride to Lakota,,the SunLac Inn.We were safe. We got an AWpartment..your dad called your mom.All was good! Imstill have the whitetail buck mount in my basement…every time I look at it I think of that perilous trip.Veeder Ranch memories.To this day I could take you to the very spot where I made that shot.JS
Thought this was a beautiful memory, thanks for sharing 🙂