LOVE THE BACK ROADS

September 1, 2026

Ever since I got my driver’s license almost sixty years ago, I have loved to drive country back roads.  I also like to drive back roads in towns and cities!  I love driving back roads today as much or more than I ever have.

I remember getting ready for solo back road adventures at age sixteen by filling up my 1965 Ford Falcon with regular gasoline that cost nineteen cents per gallon during “gas wars.” (Does anyone remember gas wars or even know what they were?)  Back then I wanted to store gas for the future because I thought at some point it was surely going to cost a lot more than nineteen cents a gallon!

My family could not afford much when I was young so every now and then to make a weekend special my parents would load my younger sister and I into the family car and drive on country roads outside of San Antonio, Texas.  Life was simple then.  For entertainment on these drives, we would look out the window hoping to spot a whitetail deer.  We would also ask our parents to tell us stories that we had heard them tell many times before.  My father, who was quiet most of the time, would sometimes sing after being relentlessly pestered by my mother.  One of the songs he sang was “Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are, or would you rather be a mule…….”   He would also sing another song with some not so politically correct lyrics to the tune of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas.”

My mother would sing, “Que Sera Sera.”  I recall that the words are “When I was just a little girl, I used to ask my mother, what will I be?  Will I be pretty?  Will I be rich?  Here’s what she said to me: Que Sera Sera.  Whatever will be, will be.  The future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera.”  Now that I look back, these early drives may be what caused me to love back roads so much today.

Driving the back roads all over the world has given me the opportunity to see how people live, work and play.  It does my heart good to see kids playing in front yards of homes with not a care in the world and to see people gathering at these homes enjoying life in the moment.  I also see homes, schools, churches and business buildings that have long been abandoned but were once full of the sounds of people with dreams and happiness.  I wonder why some survived, some thrived and some died.  I wonder what happened to those families, congregations, businesses and communities. Cemeteries seem to be the places where most dreams end up, buried because people don’t pursue them.  I wonder if the failure to pursue dreams played a role in what happened to these buildings and the people in them?  One of my major takeaways in life is to pursue your dreams and ideas; don’t let them die.  Never forget where you come from because regardless of where that was, it helped make you who you are, with God’s favor.  It is my hope and prayer that what God has allowed me to create continues to bless future generations.

Written by KING AEROSPACE Founder, Jerry Allan King-Echevarria.