Pete's Log: Ethereal Sounds

Entry #2594, (Life in General)
(posted when I was 46 years old.)

Some time ago, JB inherited a toy car from her cousin. She enjoys making her dolls drive it around the house and putting all its interactive features to good use: lights, blinkers, engine sounds, and the car horn.

A doll is seen from behind sitting in a pink doll car. The car is a convertible and the doll’s head sticks above the windshield. Centered in the view is the car’s dashboard, including the buttons for the car’s radio

It also has radio buttons, which play short song clips—generic doo-wop and surf rock sounding things. And then there's the button that made it play classical music. It was infused with static in a way that brought me back to long ago road trips when I'd be in the middle of nowhere, trying to find anything to listen to and each station I found would soon fade out.

I was seriously admiring this attention to detail by whoever made this particular clip for a toy car, when suddenly the music ended and an announcer cut in. That's when I realized I was actually listening to live radio. The toy car had a cheap radio receiver and this coupled with tiny speakers and no visible antenna to speak of added up to a strange nostalgic sound.