The road out of Seguin, and the freedom of mistakes and U-turns

For a small-town girl, the Fourth of July still means a trek up I-10 to Seguin, where we’ll celebrate freedom with dad’s killer brisket, mom’s homemade ice cream and a down-home parade during which the sprawling lawn chair crowds stand up so often — for every flag, every veteran’s group — that it can feel like a Catholic Mass.

The kids wave flags. They watch a long-legged man dressed as Uncle Sam ride a unicycle like he’s done every year since I can remember. They swoon at the beauty queens and stare in wonder at the hydraulic stunts of low-riders. It’s a good time. Maybe why Yahoo! Style named it one of the best small-town parades in America last year.

As I get older, I cherish these trips home, the time with family, the gluttonous caloric intake, the travels down familiar roads with ever-changing eyes.

Recently, I gave a speech to a room full of businesswomen at the Junior League in which I recounted my first trip down that road that took me out of Seguin on my own, and out of my comfort zone.

I wasn’t quite as bold as Hal Ketchum describes in the song “Small Town Saturday Night”: “They go ninety miles an hour to the city limits sign. Put the pedal to the metal ’fore they change their mind.”

The speech was supposed to be about risk-taking. I had to explain that me speaking about risk-taking is a bit like Paula Deen opining on the South Beach Diet.

Some of you may think I’m gutsy now, because I write about controversial topics that earn me hate mail and the online affection of trolls. But the truth is they had to drag me kicking and screaming into writing this column. I’m OKonce I’m on the road. But sometimes, I’m hesitant to embark.

Earlier this year, speaking to a group of journalism students at my old high school, one asked me how I ever got out of that little town. I pointed toward the nearest highway, I-10: “That’s how.”

But it wasn’t quite as easy as that.

In high school, I used to compete in academic University Interscholastic League competitions, mainly journalism-related. Early Saturday mornings, I’d board a bus to some town in our region and try to write a better headline or editorial or news story than anybody else. Yes, I was a nerd.

One Saturday, though, I missed the bus. The meet was scheduled for a school in South San Antonio, about 45 miles away. I was desperate to go. And the thought crossed my mind: “Well, I’m 16, I have a car, I could drive.”

Then the voice of my mother blared from the cautionary intercom in my brain. “Danger! Danger! You’ll end up in … LAREDO!”

My mother rarely drove out of Seguin herself. She still doesn’t. With a truck driver husband, I guess she never really had to. But she would often impart wisdom about the perils of traveling on highways.

One of her favorites was that, if you made the slightest mistake, wrong turn, wrong exit, wrong lane change … you’d end up in LARRRREDDO.

At that point, I’d never been to Laredo. I didn’t know what was there. I’m sorry if you, dear reader, are from Laredo. I just knew it must be a frightful place if my mother was so concerned about us ending up there.

I had no clue how to get to San Antonio. This was in the mid-’90s. No GPS. We didn’t have internet. At that point, I didn’t even have a cellphone.

But I knew someone — the mother of my high school sweetheart. She was a newfangled sort of woman.

Maybe you’d call her a feminist. She went to college. She was working on her master’s degree. She engaged in risky, liberated behaviors such as frequently breaching the city limits of Seguin, Texas, in a moving vehicle.

She could tell me how to get there!

I drove to her house, and she happily gave me directions, along with an encouraging pep talk, and instructions to call her collect from a pay phone if I had any problems.

I got on the road in my four-door Ford Taurus. I was feeling brave. I was feeling proud. I was so full of myself, apparently, that I missed the exit.

“Oh God!” I thought. “I’m doomed. Finished. I’ll never see my family again. I’ll end up in … Laredo!”

Then I remembered the pay phone. I pulled over and called collect. I told my friend’s momwhat happened.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Just turn around.” I was speechless. I felt like a paradigm hadn’t just shifted, it had steamrolled me into a nice flat pancake on the gasstation pavement. “Turn around?” I asked. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that if I made a mistake on a highway, I could just turn around. I could fix it. I could try again.

It was a liberating revelation. I got back on the road. I made it to the meet. I probably won a trophy or two. And I came away with something more profound: The wisdom that mistakes aren’t dead ends. They don’t all lead to Laredo. And when we get stuck, it’s OKto embrace that vulnerability and ask for help.

There’s no shame in it. The shame is not getting on the road.

Since that day, I’ve traveled many miles in every direction. Up I-35 to University of Texas to become the first in my family to attend college. Through the backwoods of East Texas, where one navigates by stars and chicken coops. Through drought-parched West Texas farmland. Through storm-ravaged Louisiana. To a barrier island to await the eye of Hurricane Wilma.

This Fourth, I’ll celebrate the history and promise of this country, the veterans I know and love, and the ones I’ll never know but whose sacrifice I’ll never forget.

And I’ll celebrate another kind of freedom. The one that lets us leave the place we’re from and chase a crazy dream on an unknown road. The one that, someday, after all that rambling, lets us go home.