Big Dog...Little Dog: A Bedtime Story: 10/13/17

Big Dog...Little Dog: A Bedtime Story by P.D. Eastman is the first Fred and Ted book. Fred is a tall dog who loves green. Ted is a short dog who loves red. They live together in a green and red house and drive their own color coordinated cars.

I am revisiting the Fred and Ted books for the road narrative project. An impromptu overnight trip to the mountains might not qualify as a road trip but it is a short book, so it has a short trip.

In the earliest modern day American road trips, like those that traversed the Lincoln Highway, it was common (and common sense) for road-trippers to caravan. If one car got stuck in the mud or sand the other could winch out the car or drive into the next town for help.

Two Lincoln Highway road trip memoirs: Across the Continent on the Lincoln Highway by Effie Price Gladding and It Might Have Been Worse: A Motor Trip from Coast to Coast by Beatrice Larned Massey both mention traveling with another car. The Gladdings had Mr. N. whom they met along the way, and the Masseys had the Doctor and Toodles.

The stopping at a hotel without reservations or exact plans because a particular place was calling is another old school road trip trope. Though the routes were planned, reservations were rarely made in advance. The having wildly different experiences in the same hotel is another part of the early road trip adventure, though switching rooms, such as Fred and Ted end up doing, is not something I've come across before.

Four stars

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