Memories Of Telling Night-Night Stories To My Kids While I'm Not Home

If you've read many of my blogs, you know that I spent some years of my life as a truck driver. As such, I was away from home a lot while my children were growing up through their childhoods.

When I was home, I always told them a bedtime story; usually some silly story I made up with strange characters such as "The Cat That Ate Bonsall" (Bonsall was a nearby town) or "A Day In The Life Of A Baseball." Other times I'd tell more traditional stories, but no matter what story I told them I would always add character voices and so forth to make things more entertaining.

But when I was on the road, in the days before smart phones and internet connectivity, I had no way to wish them good night if I was out in the middle of nowhere with no pay phone.

So, I came up with an idea.  I purchased a cheap, small, battery operated cassette tape recorder of questionable quality and took it along with me in my truck, along with several blank cassette tapes.  Now I could tell them stories as I drove, which they could listen to later when I couldn't be home with them!

The batteries in the very low-quality cassette recorder never lasted very long, and often as the stories were nearing their ends the tape would slow down, having the opposite effect in how the story sounded.  I guess you could say the stories built up to a fever pitch by the end - getting faster and faster, my voice getting higher and higher.  While not intentional, this actually added something to the stories, I think.

Have a listen to a few of them and you be the judge.  I present to you:

Feel free to laugh.  It's good for the soul!