Welcome! I'm Sara Ramsey, a novelist and former/future tech worker who recently moved back to rural Iowa. I write about my wild and weird small town life, as well as anything else that strikes my fancy. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please join me!
Hi friend,
I have never taken a driving test.
In the late ‘90s, my county was too small to have a full-time DMV. State motor vehicle people came to the county courthouse twice a month to issue licenses and registrations. Since they were understaffed, they didn’t administer driving tests to most people. They just picked two numbers, 1-31, at random every morning.
If your birthday was one of those numbers, you had to take a driving test. If it wasn’t, and if you passed the written test, you got a license without a driving test — no matter how bad you might be behind the wheel.
My birthday wasn’t picked on the day that my sixteen-year-old self went to the DMV, so I was immediately licensed. Every state I moved to after took my existing license as proof that I didn’t need to test.
So, keep my qualifications in mind as I present to you: advanced lessons in rural driving.
Lesson #1: Watch the ditch, not the road
Driving in rural areas is like the peripheral vision test at the optometrist’s office, but with animals instead of lights. Deer, raccoons, possums, skunks, escaped cows, turkeys, pheasants — all seem more likely to get you on empty country roads than oncoming traffic is. For that reason, I tend to watch the ditches more than I watch the road.
I found a stat that 12-15% of Iowa’s reported car accidents involve animals. There are probably a lot more animal accidents that are never reported. My grandma sometimes drove her car around the yard, trying to hit possums that ate her cats’ food. But I guess that’s attempted murder, so it wouldn’t count in the accident stats anyway.
Like any good horror movie, nighttime is when they come for you. A lot of animals take shelter during the day. When they’re active at night, the only clue you have is to look for glowing eyes in the ditches, illuminated by your headlights. Your goal is to see them before they make a suicidal run across the road.
I’ve never hit a deer, but I usually see six or eight or twenty when taking a long drive at night. It’s only a matter of time before one comes out of the ditch and gets me.
To sum up, send not to know for whom the deer tolls…it tolls for thee.
Lesson #2: Dust is your enemy but also your friend
Most of the roads around here are gravel. City people call these dirt roads, but they’re not. Gravel roads have gravel on top of the dirt. Dirt roads are just dirt. Gravel is better because the rock adds traction and support during mud season. Dirt roads become impassable when it’s too wet (which is not a problem we’re having this summer).
Gravel roads are technically two lanes. But in practice, everyone drives down the center, since the sides can be treacherous due to ridges of gravel left behind by erosion.
Driving down the center, as you can imagine, isn’t the safest either.
Luckily/unluckily, gravel roads beget gravel dust. Gravel dust makes me understand why the Dust Bowl-era farm wives went mad. It’s impossible to keep houses near gravel roads clean. Flying gravel also chips paint and eats away at the underside of your car, and the combination of gravel chips + winter road salt is why most vehicles here develop rust problems. It’s not uncommon to ride around in pickups where the floorboard has rusted through and you can see the road through the bottom of the truck.
When driving in the summer, gravel dust is usually the only sign you have of someone coming around a blind turn. And in summer, most of the corners are very, very blind. Once you hit July, the corn is tall and the ditch weeds are lush, and you’re driving through green tunnels with no visibility around the next bend.
Gravel dust, though, rolls over the hills and corn tassels, giving you a clue that someone is coming so that you can move to the side before they reach you.
Of course, when you meet them, you have to drive through their dust cloud, and you just have to hope there was no one behind them since you can’t see the road until the dust clears. But it’s better than meeting them with no warning at all.
Lesson #3: Wave to everyone you meet
I learned to drive from my dad. I don’t think he ever told me that you’re supposed to keep your hands at “10 and 2”, or even that you’re supposed to have both hands on the steering wheel.
In this world, you drive with one hand high on the wheel, and the other hand either hanging out the window or holding a Mountain Dew.
And in this world, especially on gravel or dirt roads, you wave to everyone you meet.
You won’t have many people to wave to — when I drive four miles on gravel from my parents’ house to town, I usually don’t meet a single car.
But if you meet someone, you wave. It’s not a prim British Royal Family twist-at-the-wrist wave. It’s a laconic lifting of two fingers on the driving hand, held up longer if you know the person. Just an acknowledgement of the other person passing by, out in a lonely green tunnel under a wide, bleached summer sky.
Lesson #4: Watch out for all the other people who never took driving tests either
I don’t know the legalities around what people drive here, but it seems that anything goes as long as you’re not on a state highway.
I’ve seen whole families packed into all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to get around town. I’ve seen Amish kids driving horse-drawn buggies; sometimes the kids look too small to hold the reins. I’ve seen farmers hauling equipment on dubious trailers with questionable safety practices. I’ve seen people riding lawnmowers around town…sometimes while pulling a kids’ wagon or even another lawnmower behind them.
Today I saw a literal toddler riding a mini motorbike on a dirt racing track carved into someone’s backyard (he had a helmet, so I guess safety first?).
Long before my dad taught me to drive, my grandma used to let me and my brother “drive” a couple of miles to town. She would push the gas and brakes for us while one of us sat next to her and turned the steering wheel. We were not at all qualified, but kids learn quick here.
And when I was a kid, I rode around all the time in the back of my granddad’s pickup, sunburned and covered in gravel dust. I’d also ride with my dad or granddad in the cab of the tractor — no seat for me and definitely no seatbelt, just hanging on and watching as they speared a bale of hay with the bale forks or moved some dirt around the field.
Sometimes my granddad would let me steer the tractor too.
Everything I just described seems wildly unsafe in the context of what I would expect to see in a city.
But driving through green tunnels, troubled only by deer and dust, is one of my simplest, sincerest joys.
Come here and maybe you’ll see the appeal. You don’t even have to worry about stoplights, since there aren’t any in my county (all 525 square miles of it). Just enjoy the view of the countryside, wave at anyone you meet, and let the dust drift behind you as you drive on down the road.
Cheers,
Sara
Growing up, the front passenger seat was called the "deer watcher" seat. Whoever sat there understood the importance of the task driving around rural roads in Wisconsin while family members in the back could ride more leisurely. Very funny to be reminded of that from your post. love it!
Oh man, this bring me home. Our county also did the number system and I was one of the unlucky ones!! I had to drive on my 16th birthday and I failed by 1 point. Utter devastation.