OP-ED: Sweet memories of long-ago summer vacations
It was the early 1950s, and Dad was two years into recovering from a serious railroad accident. Somehow, he and Mom had scraped together enough money to buy a very used four-door Plymouth. Its wool seats smelled like wet dog. (We didn’t even have a dry dog.) Apparently, Plymouth included that feature.
The car had roll-down windows, little wing vents, and no radio. We kept an old coffee can on the back-seat floor in case somebody got carsick. It wasn’t factory equipment, but we used it often.
Our entertainment options were limited. We looked out the window, counted cows, watched for out-of-state license plates, and asked, “How much farther?” I handled most of that last assignment personally.
Usually, Dad took us on Sunday afternoon drives through the mountains. If things went especially well, the trip might end at the new Dairy Queen for soft ice cream, which was about as close to luxury travel as our family could afford.
One summer, Mom and Dad decided we were going on three real but very short vacations: Cook Forest, Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City.
The preparation was as predictable as sunrise.
The night before departure, Mom fixed meatloaf, baked beans, potato salad, and cherry Jell-O with fruit cocktail suspended inside. The Jell-O looked like something archaeologists would uncover centuries later in Pompeii.
Nothing went to waste. The leftovers were carefully packed so that somewhere along a two-lane road through central Pennsylvania, Dad could locate a picnic table and transform yesterday’s dinner into today’s travel cuisine.
Out came meatloaf sandwiches on white bread, baked beans, Lemon Blend, and whatever else survived the journey. We didn’t just eat leftovers. We gave them a tour of Pennsylvania.
Washington and Atlantic City each produced adventures that I’ve already written about elsewhere. One involved my first encounter with the Atlantic Ocean in my Hopalong Cassidy cowboy boots and ended with Dad getting a horrible sunburn that sent us home the following day. I lost my favorite toy plastic soldier in Washington traffic. Both incidents are still too painful to discuss.
Fortunately, Cook Forest turned out to be a much greater success.
We stayed in a one-room cabin that had an outhouse and zero amenities. By modern standards, it was probably one step above camping.
Still, it was pretty cool.
Nothing broke down. Nobody got sunburned. Nobody nearly drowned. No treasured possessions disappeared forever. After our recent track record, that qualified as an excellent vacation.
I remember the towering trees and the feeling that we were far away from home, even though we were only a few hours up the road. When you’re a kid, distance isn’t about miles. It’s about how different things look from your backyard.
Along the way, we stopped at Pymatuning to see the famous carp. If you’ve ever witnessed thousands of enormous fish piling over one another in pursuit of bread tossed by tourists, you understand why nobody forgets it. They made the entire lake look like it had developed hiccups.
Once we drove to Massachusetts to visit Great Uncle Mike. The Andrea Doria sank that same night, but our family had absolutely nothing to do with it.
When I was 16, my parents let me drive them to the New York World’s Fair. When I pulled into traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, I nearly reduced our family tree to a historical document.
Looking back now, I realize how much planning and sacrifice went into those trips. Money was tight. The Plymouth was a bald-tire junker. Yet Mom and Dad loaded us into that car and took us anyway.
They wanted their boys to see something beyond the neighborhood.
What I remember most isn’t the destinations. It’s that my parents were determined to give their kids an adventure.
The good part of the good old days was who we went with.