Take a Sunday Drive
There’s nothing like meandering down a dirt or gravel road and watching corn, wheat or some other crop swaying gently in the breeze.
If you’re of a certain age, you might have fond memories of sitting in the back seat for Sunday drives with your grandparents or parents. I have the faintest of such memories with my own grandparents.
Recently, I sent out the paid version of this newsletter to subscribers. In it, I wrote about The Lost Art of Sauntering. And I took the liberty of expanding the definition of sauntering. One of the ways I did so was to explore the old-fashioned Sunday drive. But I felt like this topic deserved more attention.
If you’ve never heard the term, long before our society sped up to breakneck speed, people left church and went on a long, leisurely drive, often on an unplanned route for the mere sake of just enjoying the moment. Today, you might hear someone referred to as a “Sunday driver” in a negative context. I’m here to offer a positive context.
Sunday drives don’t have any set agenda, destination or timetable. In other words, their pace is at the opposite extreme of most of the rest of our routines. If you’re too young to have ever experienced a Sunday drive, check out this video of Brett Eldredge’s song “Sunday Drive.” It’s so well done.
Sunday drives usually venture off the beaten path onto old highways or dirt/gravel roads outside the city. There’s nothing like meandering down a dirt or gravel road and watching corn, wheat or some other crop swaying gently in the breeze. And the sound of the tires, especially on gravel, is so comforting.
My grandfather taught me how to drive on a gravel road just a mile or so from his house. I was scared to death of oncoming traffic, so he thought a gravel road was in order. He was right. So right. Today, that road has been paved and the land around it has been developed. I’m all for progress. But when they pave paradise and put up a parking lot, as Joni Mitchell sang, I’m not always sure it’s progress.
But I digress.
As I’ve thought about Sunday drives, I’ve done quite a bit of research and have learned so much.
This story says the practice started in the horse and buggy days.
According to the Chicago Tribune, it was born out of a pandemic: “Building on the precedent of the high society horse-drawn carriages that rolled down elegant boulevards in the late 19th century, the Sunday Drive is thought to have originated in the 1920s — just a few years after the great influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed at least 50 million people worldwide.”
And this article says families used to bring a wool traveling rug and a Box Brownie camera while also attaching a strip of rubber to their car that dangled below the chassis to avoid travel sickness.
All of this makes me want to start taking Sunday drives after church. How about you? Need a little more inspiration? A topic like this is nothing without inspirational stories, so I’ll include a few below.
Here are some tidbits you might find interesting this week:
Here’s a fun one filed under Boomer Memories
And here’s an emotional one
When Lee isn’t writing essays, devotional books, or Christmas novellas, he is a freelance editor, as well as a freelance journalist who has written hundreds of articles for various newspapers and magazines. He’s also a fan of NASCAR, baseball, tennis, books, movies and coffee shops.
I too have fond memories of Sunday drives with my grandparents. Sweet, sweet memories. Thank you for bringing them back to my remembrance, Lee.