I remember as I was growing up, before gas became more precious than gold, that our family would go on buggy rides, as we called them, on Sunday afternoons after church and dinner. It was a great time for the entire family to be together, to wander back roads aimlessly, and to talk about just about anything you could imagine.
Most of the time my dad would surprise us but sometimes he would ask us where we wanted to go. One place I always asked my dad to drive to was the park in town. One reason was that I loved it when we would drive through the creek where there wasn't a bridge (I'm sure that it's gone by now) and listen to the water slosh under the car and get little chills imagining that a huge wall of water would come along and wash us downstream. The other reason I wanted to go to t…