Perhaps it was in the evening when Mom said, “Tomorrow you can go up to get the mail by yourself.”

Only once in a lifetime does the day come when a thirteen year old farm girl is first told “Tomorrow, you can go get the mail by yourself” when the farm girl lives on a farm where the driveway is very, very long and this means she gets to drive the car — solo.

The mail is delivered to the wood-post-mounted box that stands along the county road 3/4 of a mile from the house.It’s at the end of the long drive that curves out of the yard,  up and down over several hills, the narrow dirt road running smoothly between the fields and the barbed wire fences, between the ditches filled with wild roses and Indian Paintbrush in the summer, and thistles in the fall.

At the end of the road where it forms one branch of the four-way intersection with the county road, there are two mail boxes which face firmly north and keep watch over the prairie between our house and Canada.  Year round they stand there, in sudden rain storms or baking sunshine; in blizzards or in Indian Summer, either of which may happen during the first week of November. And tomorrow, I can go get the mail by myself.

That means that the cautious and obedient driving practice that I have done with Mom over the past six months has been evaluated and approved.  Yes, the girl now knows how to shift without grinding the gears.  Yes, she’s using the clutch properly, slowly accelerating from a dead stop without too much chaos.  Yes, she has learned how to carefully turn around so that she can come back home — without going in the ditch.  

The next morning the car stands in its normal place just outside the east-facing kitchen window, slowly warming in the summer sun all through the forenoon.  At about 10:30, I start to get squirmy.  I know that it’s not “time to get the mail” until near 11:00, but why does time choose this day to drift to a halt?  About 10:45, Mom just says quietly, “Why don’t you go get the mail now?”

She hands me the keys without further comment and I go down the four steps and out the back door.  I have no license.  I have no learner’s permit. What I have is my parents’ decision that it is now time for Sharon to go get the mail by herself.

In Montana farm country in the 1950s, it was a given that no young person had paperwork.  There was no need for it since everyone knew who their parents were.  It was also a given that all of these young people drove all over their own farms and occasionally on an errand to a neighbor’s farm.  That was also expected.  Law enforcement did not have laws to enforce against such young people, their parents or their common sense.  So they practiced.  And they drove.  And they ran errands.

By the time they were fifteen or so when they were pretty good at it,  on the fourth Wednesday of the month between 1:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon they took their driver’s test at the town jail where the cop from the county seat came to give driving tests.  Now they can drive all over the place although it’s still a given that their parents tell them when and where.  That part still has nothing to do with law enforcement except the laws laid down by Dad and Mom.

I start the car and back it out of its spot, nervously come to a full stop, hoping that when I shift from reverse to low that I can begin forward progress without any sounds that might be heard in the kitchen.  Mom stays out of view, knowing that it would spoil the moment if I should see her peering out from behind the curtains.

Moving forward now, headed for the long curve of the road that turns north out of the yard.  I do not yet have the radio on — that luxury will wait until I’m safely parked at the mailbox.  Then, perhaps, something from the Sons of the Pioneers, or perhaps a bit of the daily call in show (for the people who have phones) called Cash on the Line, where the farm ladies call in all excited because today they do know the tune that is being played, and if they properly identify it within a few seconds after their call is answered, they get a small cash prize

The ditch grasshoppers that normally freak me out by jumping as the car goes by sound like they are cheering me today: their buzzing, grating sounds rising from the grass sound like a hoarse, “Well done, farm girl.  Well done.” I drive on.

At the mailbox, safely turned around with the car now facing home again, I turn the engine off and dare to turn the key to the setting where I can turn the radio on but then realize that something seems out of sorts.  No.  I don’t want the radio on.  I turn it off.  Carefully turn the key to its off position.  And sit there in the silence.

Never in my life have I sat alone, 3/4 mile from the house, in charge of the car, listening to the silence, hearing the ditch sounds, watching the clouds piled over the Missouri River four miles south, or headed toward North Dakota twenty miles east, looking over the hundreds of acres of fields, strip-farmed as they are with only every-other-one under cultivation in any given year because the soil is so poor.

Never have I sat where I sit this day.  And because Mom told me “Why don’t you go get the mail now?” about ten minutes earlier than necessary, I have about ten minutes to savor it.