Pulling off to the side of the Highway

I have good memories of family vacations when we all piled into our station wagon and headed out on the open road. I also remember the roadside breakdowns. My father would buy used station wagons that often didn't have much life in them. This made for some precarious situations when the car either overheated or blew an axle bearing. As a family, we spent many an hour on the side of the highway waiting for my dad to figure things out. We would be stranded until we could reconvene our vacation plans which sometimes turned into a trip back home.

Did you ever need to pull off onto the highway strip along the side of the road for any purpose? It can be an odd experience for various reasons. First of all, the items discarded on the side of the road can tell a story. On one such occasion, car trouble sent me to the embankment. I got out of the car to open the hood and noticed lying next to my vehicle were women's thong underwear. All I can say is "why?" and ten feet over sat an ice chest. This scene had a "mystery novel setting" all over it.

In the past, I did a lot of driving for a living. I didn't do a roadside pullover until I took a work partner along for a ride. My passenger was an older and grizzled veteran of the business road trip. He told me to pull over because he needed to pee. Instead of finding a gas station, he wanted me to drive to the side of the highway. He got out, left the car door open for shelter, and proceeded to let the yellow river flow. We got back into the car in two minutes, and off we went to continue our journey.

Over the next two years of partnering up on road trips, we pulled over many times, sometimes to pee, others to vomit, smoke, or stretch. I think this is how things were done back in the early days of interstate freeways. The majority of drivers often ignore the side of the highway, but some of us know that it will always be there for our convenience.