I joke that I don’t get off the farm much. Church, and go to get supplies a couple times a year. Sugar and cooking oil.

That might have been true for my grandparents 100 years ago. I get off the farm pretty much every day. That means going out our driveway and turning left or right onto US Highway 14. Sleepy Eye is right. Some days I go there multiple times. For a bolt. Or some eggs. Or to mail something. That’s one trip if I’m organized, three if I’m not.

I’ve lived on this highway most of my life. I’m looking at it out my window now, watching semis and cars go by. I’ve moved farm equipment on it. I’ve jogged on the shoulder. I’ve made hay in the ditches, which is “exciting” with semis going past at 65 miles per hour.

But mostly I’ve driven on Highway 14. East is Sleepy Eye, New Ulm, and Rochester where our daughter lives. Some figuring on the back of an envelope says I’ve turned that way 50,000 times in my life, give or take. I turn left not as often. West is Cobden and Brookings, both noted centers of education.

Most of us have a road or street of some type out our driveway. Not all are as busy as Highway 14. Some of you live on quiet residential streets or quieter township roads. It is where you turn left or right to your own appointed tasks. Or maybe you go straight if you don’t have a soybean field there like me.

Unless you live in a cul-de-sac, that is where you see the world go by. Those cars and trucks buzzing by have their own appointed tasks. Business, shopping, appointments, visiting, I’m trying to think where all those people might be going. Maybe some are just driving around.

I’m not sure it’s statistically true, but it seems there is more traffic than when I was young. Or maybe that’s one of those perceptions colored by age. I am trying to become more patient as I get older. But if I have to wait at the end of our driveway for eight cars and two semis, I find myself tapping the steering wheel and saying, “C’mon!”

I usually don’t think about the people going past. I recognize a few neighbors and people from town. But most are just a vehicle. I’m barely aware there are human beings inside. They’re an anonymous blur. At 60 miles per hour, you don’t get too good a look at them.

It’s always been a thought of mine to drive U. S. Highway 14 from one end to the other. I don’t have a bucket list. It’s more of a cup list, but that’s on it.

I’ve gone as far east as Madison, Wisconsin. Further that way, Highway 14 goes south and east to Janesville. Then through miles of suburbs and into Chicago, where it doesn’t quite make it to Lake Michigan. It ends literally a few blocks from there. I’ve driven in Chicago a couple times, where I feel like Jed Clampett driving through Beverly Hills. Only now, Jedd has GPS.

I’ve gone as far west as Rapid City. Our family has driven to the Black Hills, but never gotten any further. We’re hampered by the need to stop and look at odd things and to talk to random people. Further west, Highway 14 goes through Wyoming and ends at the entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

A little digging around, and I found some history of my road. I am calling it my road. But you people in New Ulm, feel free to use it.

There would have been a dirt road past here when our farmsite was set up after 1896. That’s when my great grandparents bought the land. A century ago, roads were a local matter. Cart paths and even walking trails were being improved for new-fangled automobiles. This road ran parallel to the railroad tracks north of it, back when the rails were more important than any road.

I have seen reference to Highway 14 as the Black and Yellow Trail. That name was given to it by tourism promoters out east before it was even US Highway 14, encouraging people to travel west on the road that went from the Black Hills to Yellowstone.

Highway 14 was among the first designated United States highways in 1926. It’s interesting to think of a major east-west roadway being partially dirt and sand. But that’s what it was past here when horses were sharing the road with early cars. My parents were married in 1934, and they remembered 14 being paved soon after.

At times, my road had dreams of becoming something more. There were plans for Highway 14 to go from Boston to Seattle, coast to coast. Those got shuttled somewhere along the way. Then there was consideration in the Fifties of running I-90 on 14. If that would have happened, there’s a chance I wouldn’t be here right now. The interstate likely would have gone south of town and might have plowed through our yard.

Now, most people-moving is done by vehicles like those I see out my window. In earlier times, that would have been by train. If your home was along the tracks, you could look out and watch people go past you. Or you might have sat along a riverbank and watched people go past on a steamship before the rails were laid.

It’s the same sensation. You, still and stationary. Others, going past on their way to somewhere other than here.

We used to have a children’s book about a little boy lying in his bed watching out his window as a train went clattering by in the night. He dreamily imagines the riders on that train, and where they are going and what they are doing. In the same way, the roads past us are fertile ground for our imaginations as we wonder about those travelling through the night or day.

Whether it’s a road, a train, or a river, our mind can also imagine us out there, going left or right, going somewhere else. Maybe we should be in another place? That can range from thinking of a day trip to explore a new place, to wondering what it would be like to live 500 miles east or west. That then can lead to some reflection about how you got to where you are, choices you made along the way, and roads not taken.

All that can come from watching cars go by.