Usually I have a book or magazine at hand when watching TV, so I can read during the ad breaks. Thus I can skip the encouragement to waste money on a Windows 7 PC, and avoid any compulsion to ask my caregiver for some new panacea with side effects that range from drowsiness to necrosis.
But occasionally an ad slips through my filters. This one was for a cross-over SUV that had a “sweet rear entertainment system” to the delight of one boy, whereas the deprived kid in the back seat of the other vehicle had to put up with three hours of his parents lamely singing “Angel of the Morning.”
I can’t say I remember my parents singing anything for more than a few minutes on a Sunday afternoon ride, but I did learn that certain pop songs of yore, like “Mairzy Doats,” were just as nonsensical as the ones I listened to. “Wooly Bully,” anyone?
During this time of year in the late 1950s around Greeley, the sugar-beet harvest was in full swing. The railroads were so busy that they put their moth-balled steam locomotives back into service and I learned to spot the plumes of coal smoke from miles away so we could race to see some magnificent machinery, like the Great Western’s No. 90, hard at work. That’s way better than a sweet rear entertainment system.
On trips to the High Plains, which may seem like the most boring part of our planet, my dad would point out the ruins of an old farmstead. On the slope behind, he’d trace the contour of a one-time ditch. He’d point out that below the ditch, the land had been cleared of sagebrush for plowing and a crop that eventually failed — or else the farm would not have been abandoned.
I learned to see that land in a whole new and tragic way; one of the saddest sites was Dearfield, the failed African-American agricultural colony.
On a drive from Greeley to Denver on U.S. 85, my mom recalled her first such trip after moving to Colorado from Wyoming. Every time she spotted a substantial farm, she said, “I asked your dad what town it was, and he was mystified at first.” But to her, they looked like towns, for they were larger than Wyoming settlements like Bill and Dull Center.
We all played a car game to find all the letters of the alphabet on roadside signs. I had the ending down pretty well if we were stopped at a railroad crossing for a freight train.
Almost always, I’d spot a Burlington boxcar with “Way of the Zephyrs” painted on the side, which covered W, Y and Z. The X I’d get from the cross-buck that marked the tracks.
My daughters also suffered from similar childhood deprivation. They read roadside historical markers and learned to spot old mines and railroad grades.
We had a musical car game. You’d end a piece of song lyric on one word, and the next player had to pick up with that word from another song:
“House of the Rising Sun”; “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows”; “Rainbows and What’s on the Other Side,” etc.
They haven’t complained, and neither do I. The lack of a rear entertainment system meant learning more about the world around you, rather than watching some lame DVD for the 18th time.
There have long been concerns about how families seldom eat dinner together any more, and now families are being discouraged even from taking rides in each other’s company, what with that sweet rear entertainment system.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
