The Sunday Drive

The Sunday Drive.  It's largely a relic of a bygone era.  With no particular destination, you piled in the car and let the vehicle "just roam around," like Jerry Jeff Walker sang.  I remember we had station wagons, several of them over my childhood, with a luggage rack on top, spoiler and simulated wood grains on the side.  The very back seat faced backward.  Your perspective on the world was framed through that big back window on the Oldsmobile during family vacations or Sunday Drives.

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With gas prices at all time highs right now, driving around for no particular purpose carries with it a high price tag.  However, memories that you can make on these Sunday drives are priceless.  As I sit here reminiscing, I recall breakdowns, running out of gas, playing the license plate game, playing I-spy, having family conversations, singing "You Light up my life" and "Smoky Mountain Rains" at the top of our lungs, engaging in fights with siblings, and I even recall bad odors wafting through the cavernous interior prompting the windows to be quickly rolled down.  

Those family trips in the car seemed like wasting time just to get to the destination, but in retrospect, as I look back, I realize that there was a lot learned and experienced in the trip itself.  My oldest son, Russ, shared a song with Tricia and I last Sunday that really resonated.  I'm going to apologize, because it is a very emotional song and video, at least to me.  My eyes started leaking a little bit as a watched and pondered the lyrics.  Click on the arrow below to watch and listen to Brett Eldredge sing, "Sunday Drive."  I've posted the lyrics below the video.  Perhaps it will dredge up some fond memories for you as well.  Further below the video, I've posted the thoughtful lyrics.  I hope you can recall some of your memories of Sunday Drives...

Sunday Drive

Brett Eldredge

They didn't ever say where we were going
We just climbed into the backseat
Eyes wide open to the picture show outside
I guess we really didn't understand it all
Remember looking up at them in the front row
Hands touched together, almost out of sight
It's been a long, hard week, but now the slow release
Of a Sunday afternoon

And we were only young
But they were trying hard to reach us
How was I to know
That there was something so worth keepin'?

'Cause we were
Watching the world through an open window
Trees lined up like dominoes
This old car could find its own way home
It's the ordinary things that mean so much
That's where I learned it all from them
To fight, to love, to laugh again
Man, I thought we were only wasting time
Out on a Sunday drive

The sun warms your soul just like an old friend
Singing songs along that ribbon of a road
And everyone you love is sitting there so close
You're never thinking that you'd ever get old
No, you'll never get old

Just watching the world through an open window
Trees lined up like dominoes
This old car could find its own way home
It's the ordinary things that mean so much
That's where I learned it all from them
To fight, to love, to laugh again
Man, I thought we were only wasting time
Out on a Sunday drive, oh

I never said where we were going
I just helped them to the backseat
Dad just laughed and said, "Son, don't drive too far
Your momma gets pretty tired these days"
After a few miles I guess they recognized some places
And I listened as they reminisced
About a world that they had always known
And how it's changin'
Probably never gonna be the same again

I caught 'em in the mirror
They were holding hands and smiling
Looking younger than they'd been in years
Oh, through all the years

And they were
Watching the world through an open window
Trees lined up like dominoes
This old car could find its own way home
It's the ordinary things that mean so much
That's where I learned it all from them
To fight, to love, to laugh again
Man, I thought we were only wasting time
Out on a Sunday drive

Out on a Sunday drive

Out on a Sunday drive

Out on a Sunday drive