I didn't get much chance to date in high school. My parents were divorced. My mom didn't drive. I didn't have a car either. No car - almost no dates.
My mom had a boyfriend who lent me his 1956 Ford a few times. In 1959 I drove his car to work at W.T. Grant downtown in Spokane. I worked at the lunch counter with a dish (no pun) named Karen Andersen, who attended Central Valley High School. Her home was almost in Idaho, a long way from my insular world of NE Spokane. I took her home from work, ostensibly, so that she didn't have to hop one of those red interurban buses that served the valley from the corner of Trent and Post.
I was inclined head up to Sprague Avenue and turn left toward the state line. She said, "Just take the freeway." Freeway? That was a brand new thing. I'd never been on it, much less driven there. It was neat. You just merged onto it instead of turning right. It began near the city limits and headed east. I was not aware of its highway number. If I'd heard of the Interstate Highway System, I probably thought the term was about existing two-lane roads.
Today, a check of Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System shows that the system started rolling (no pun) with the Federal-Aid Highway act of 1956, our freshman year at John R. Rogers. The first contracts were let in 1956. The numbering system was developed in 1957. The system's short name is the Interstate System. The bureaucratic name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. It's practical purpose is variously ascribed to defense and evacuation. I think it is more about commerce and trucking that give us things that are desirable and convenient for our standard of living.
Somehow our Spokane corner of the World scored an operational chunk of this thing by 1959. We were there at the beginning. I know I was, driving on I90 with a blond dish of Scandinavian heritage. It's a good memory, augmented by her half-page autograph in my 1960 Treasure Chest annual.