The greatest challenge facing me last month as I embarked on a three-week, 5,000 mile “friendship tour” was how to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. How do I avoid dangerous lapses, I asked friends, when I am driving for two, three or four hours straight as I make my way from Minnesota to Kansas, Louisiana to Florida, South Carolina to Virginia? Use music to keep awake, some said, and with Sirius XM Radio I tried that, alternating between music of the 1940s and a classical station. But while Bennie Goodman ("Bugle Call Rag," "Sing Sing Sing") and Tchaikovsky ("1812 Overture") were effective anti-sleep aides, those stations also provided dreamy Jo Stafford ballads ("A Sunday Kind of Love") and Chopin nocturnes.
Others suggested rest stop naps, slapping myself and singing. But the suggestion that really worked: sunflower seeds. It is the concentration you need, the continuous effort to extract and eat the tiny seeds, that keeps you awake.
There are downsides: I ate a lot of seeds, probably doubled my salt intake, and the hulls made a mess in my rental car. But, bottom line, I never once started to nod off. ADVERTISEMENT I faced many choices as I drove through 19 states.
Friends in Kansas took me to see the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, but I opted not to make short drives to the presidential libraries of Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman. Each would have been worth a day, I know, but I was on a schedule, and my scholar granddaughter Morgan was w.
