It's not about the horsepower, the shiny chrome, the leather seats, the automotive legacies, or even the memories of their youth long lost--- it's the romance of the road.
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One of the blessings of living here is that when a child is getting restless, television isn't your only option. You can say, simply, "Go outside and play." You probably won't even get an argument.
When my children were younger, they spent hours and hours in the meadow behind our house. They would head out with the dogs trailing behind them and be gone, sometimes, all day. The meadow is small by literal measurements. Just three or four acres up against a smaller woodlot that borders a small stream. But in their imagination, it was vast and it was their realm.
We don't mow the meadow until some time after the 4th of July, so there are wildflowers to be picked and my daughters would bring me endless bouquets of Indian paintbrushes, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne's lace. There are interesting creatures to be captured, if possible, and studied. Salamanders and toads and even the occasional snake. What can't be caught can still be observed with the fascination that is part of a child's makeup. My girls would report, breathlessly, on their sightings of groundhogs, rabbits, deer and foxes. That meadow, in summer, was their Wild Kingdom and there were no commercials.
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