Driveway Minutes

As I do most days, I was listening to NPR yesterday on my way home.
Just as I was entering Modesto, 'All Things Considered' co-host
Melissa Block began a segment on a husband and wife
searching for their lost son and parents in the rubble of their
apartment building which had collapsed during Monday's earthquake in
China.

You can find the story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=90447603.

Wow. I don't know if I have ever had a "driveway moment" before, but
I did yesterday. Actually, I had TWO driveway moments while listening
to this story. I went to my in-laws to meet my wife, but could not
turn off the radio for fear of missing a moment of the gripping,
agonizing story. After a few moments, my wife came outside and said she was ready to
go home. After the short drive, I found myself in my own driveway
with the story still not finished. I stayed in the car until the piece

came to its final, gut wrenching conclusion. This, in my opinion, is
journalism at its finest. I mean, I wanted to climb through that
radio and start pulling at those blocks of concrete with my bare
hands. I was WILLING that child to be alive.

The amazing thing was, at that moment, sitting in my car, was that
there were no images, just sound. The sound of heavy equipment
rumbling down a road on its way to the scene of the collapsed
building, the sound of parents wailing. Real and powerful stuff.
Now I understand what my parents' generation experienced in the days
of their youth, listening to the radio, hanging on every word coming
out of a speaker.