Country driveways, Part 2

The first thing that tips you on what kind of people and place you're dealing with is the makeshift barbed-wire gate across the dirt road leading to the trailer. Its construction was typical: tree limbs about 5' long and no more than 2" diameter. Three of these limbs were spaced equally apart, standing vertically with three strands of wire strung across horizontally, connecting all three limbs to make a gate.

Now that type of gate is the poor man's answer for keeping their prized horse or cow penned in — all of which poor rural folks couldn't afford the feed for the animal, but hey, they've got to start somewhere if they're trying to live the fictional western TV family (Cartwright dreamers) type of life. That's the people, now the challenge to deliver to the home comes.

I'm sitting there shining my lights on this "driveway," which is guaranteed to get me stuck up to my axles. Whether I gun it or take it slow doesn't seem to matter. Hell has to be paid. I decided to go for faster is better, and damn if the mud wasn't flying everywhere, truck bouncing and flailing away, tires trying to grip anything solid — do these people perform these daredevil dirt stunts just to get in and out of their own damn driveway twice a day?! The Ford-branded U-Haul sounded like a jet taking off since I've got it floored and probably doing 30mph in that short space.

After taking the package to the house, you figure it'd be easier to get out. Wrong again. Now I'll admit that on the occasion these people weren't home, leaving the driveway was play time. I would put the U-Haul in drive and floor it turning the wheel just enough and throwing mud and water like a water skier behind a boat. They call it mudding in those parts of the woods, but I call it fun — especially when you're using someone else's truck, and getting paid all the while!