{"id":3219,"date":"2021-06-02T08:14:03","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T04:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=3219"},"modified":"2021-06-02T08:14:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T04:14:03","slug":"worth-your-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=3219","title":{"rendered":"Worth your time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At my house I have these things called books. They&#8217;re kind of like stories online&#8230; if you printed them out on pieces of paper and then you glued all the pages together. (Usually they come with these cardboard-y pages on the top and bottom called the front and back &#8220;cover.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Recently I&#8217;ve found two books worth your time. The first was written in 2018, though I hadn&#8217;t come across it until about two weeks ago. It&#8217;s called\u00a0<em>Don&#8217;t Make Me Pull Over!: The Informal History of the Family Road Trip<\/em>. Richard Ratay looks back on the family road trips he took as the youngest of four children in the &#8217;70s and &#8217;80s, that God-forsaken time before cellphones, GPS, and online hotel reservations. (Seriously, I don&#8217;t know how any of us functioned.) In addition to his personal story&#8211;side note: he&#8217;s a great storyteller&#8211;Ratay offers the history of many of the roads and destinations he mentions. And that uniquely American contribution to the world&#8230; the roadside attraction.<\/p>\n<p>World&#8217;s largest chair, anyone?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s in the book, and my hometown of Binghamton, New York, gets a little ink. The giant chair on top of Pa\u2019s Woodshed.\u00a0Haven\u2019t thought about that since about 1992.<br \/>\nThat one was a pretty short road trip for us.<br \/>\nAnd we didn\u2019t need a GPS.<br \/>\nTune in Friday for a hot tip on another great read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At my house I have these things called books. They&#8217;re kind of like stories online&#8230; if you printed them out on pieces of paper and then you glued all the pages together. (Usually they come with these cardboard-y pages on &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=3219\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3221,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3219\/revisions\/3221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}