Thursday, June 28, 2007

Passing the miles away

When I was a child, our family travels were all by automobile. We did have an AM car radio but I don't recall our using it much. Instead, we had a little blue book with song lyrics, the kinds of songs you'd sing around the campfire such as Home on the Range, or Red River Valley. Dad would belt out his strong baritone and the rest of us would join in. Dad would be driving so he couldn't read the lyrics but he didn't need to in any case. He had them all memorized.

Traveling with our own kids we happened upon the Storyteller Tapes that were recorded stories (familiar fairytales and bible stories) on cassette tapes with booklets containing the written version for the kids to follow along and enjoy the illustrations as well.

Now that it's just Carolyn and I, we visit the local library and check out enough Books on Tape or Books on CD to fill in the hours on long trips. Radio stations are too sparse in the desert areas of our travel and we're pretty picky about listening to commercials anyway. Music CD's are nice for short fill-ins. But books really make the time fly. Sometimes we're even surprised that we're already at a usual rest stop or fueling location and have to backtrack.

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