MMTT4S - We Need a Holiday

Vacations are synonymous with summer.

Growing up, I was one of four children – the eldest, wisest, and best looking, by the way - and as a family of six, our vacations took some serious front end prep. Other than the typical logistics of packing, loading the station wagon, mapping out routes, and securing lodging, our trips required some creative planning. My dad was a minister and mom had her hands full at home with 3 boys and a girl – 6 ½ years separating the four of us. We traveled on a budget. We ate PBJs, chips, and Vienna sausages at roadside picnic tables or while we rolled down the road if time was of the essence. McDonalds was a rare treat. Incredibly rare. Destinations typically involved family – visiting grandparents in Virginia, North Carolina, or on the coast of South Carolina. This kept costly hotels out of the picture. We got to know state welcome centers and rest stops fairly well. Our station wagons – the UPS-brown wood-grained Brown Bomber and it’s successor, the pea green wood-grained Green Ghost – were the perfect vehicles for us, too. My favorite spot was the back-in-the-back – the rear facing bench seat that gave you a completely different perspective on your travel. You could see where you’ve been, make faces at the vehicles behind you, but most importantly, you could escape from those pesky siblings and simply stare out of a bigger window and wonder about life. When we laid down all rear seats of our station wagon, all four of us kids could easily sleep on a queen-sized pallet of blankets. Seat belts? We didn’t need no stinkin’ seat belts!  People were safer drivers then, I guess. After all, unfolding a paper map and rotating it 16 times is much less distracting than glancing at a cell phone map. Besides, that back end sleeping arrangement saved the money that a hotel room would have cost. Now, I’m actually considering adding a nifty wood grain wrap to our Kia Sorrento in honor of these classics. I’m sure my wife wouldn’t mind. In fact, that might make for a pleasant surprise when she walks out onto our driveway.  I’ll file that one away for future consideration.

We loved every minute of our vacation travel, too. Well, maybe not the few minutes of elbowing in the backseat or the occasional arm punch that quickly followed with a loud explanation about how either or both siblings had illegally crossed over into occupied territory. “He’s in my space – the defense rests.” Judge Daddy hardly ever ruled in favor of the plaintiff or defense. His ruling typically involved a threat of punishment delivered equally across the hind end of all parties. That was effective because he would actually stop the car, not just throw out empty warnings.  Notwithstanding the normal adolescent backseat shenanigans that would usually show up after rounds of "I Spy" and various alphabet games had lost their luster, our trips were wonderful and memorable. We knew no different and we enjoyed the company of each other. Pop made it an adventure and Mom was a capable copilot. We kids just went along and experienced all that we could.

For most of my childhood and teen years, we spent our summers ocean front in Pappy and Granny’s teal beach house on stilts (the Surf Pearl) at Surfside, South Carolina. Days of sand castles, shells, and surf were what we lived for, it seemed. I’ll have more to say about the beach in a later post. Needless to say, life was grand while we were there.

Periodically, we would wind our way through the mountain roads that snaked through North Carolina, the eastern tip of Tennessee, and the southwest corner of Virginia until we reached Pawpaw and Grandma’s home in Cedar Bluff. Those hairpin turns were unnerving and the vistas were mesmerizing. Once there, we’d play with cousins, throw lots of baseball, and take daily walks up to the corner convenience store next to Aunt Chris’s beauty shop, where Grandma would treat us to orange push-ups, half of which would trickle down our hands and chins and end up on our shirts and shorts during our walk back.

Pappy and Granny had another home, this one in the shadow of the Smokies in Saluda, North Carolina. This antique three-story wooden palace and surrounding woodlands offered lots of adventures for us kids. I don’t think the house was haunted, but it should have been. I was pretty sure that ghosts were missing an excellent opportunity. Granny’s treasure hunts and hide-and-seek were the things of legend in this house. We were always thrilled when Pappy would crank up the riding mower and load us in the attached wagon trailer for an excursion through the woods and around the property. The highlight of the trip, though, may have been ending our days of adventure with snacks on the screened-in porch, watching the black-capped chickadees take their own snack from the bird feeder. 

Every now and then, our vacations were a little more extravagant. Pop bought a camper that hooked onto the back of our station wagon, again to battle the cost of hotels and eating out when we traveled. And we were going to travel, by golly. We took the obligatory trip to Disney World in Orlando, visited our nation’s capital, hiked up Stone Mountain – all while making our home base the nearby Jellystone campgrounds. I’ll never forget trekking across to bathhouses for showers, only to get our feet dirty on the way back. Nor will I forget waking to the smell of bacon that Pop was frying in our electric skillet. Best. Bacon. Ever.

Then there was the trip of all trips. Pop had left the pulpit and become a successful insurance rep. I guess he saw college looming in the near future for 4 kids. His efforts often earned wonderful trips for he and my mom. They’ve been to destinations like Switzerland, Hawai’i, Miami, and Montreal, taken numerous cruises, and seen wonderful sites all over the globe. For some reason, they didn’t always take us kids along. We did travel as a family unit, however, on one of the most memorable vacations ever. Pop had won a trip to San Diego this particular year and must have decided a flight out to the west coast and a week in sunny southern California for just he and my mom would be way too peaceful and relaxing. So, instead, we loaded up the family car and hit the road, Griswold Vacation style.

Beignet image courtesy of
NewOrleansOnline.com

Image courtesy of
Houston.culturemap.com

An overnight drive brought us to our first stop – New Orleans – where I had my first heavenly bite of a beignet from Café du Monde. Powdered sugar perfection.
From there we continued our jaunt westward down I-10 to Houston and the NASA Johnson Space Center. I saw the enormous rockets there, not knowing that I’d soon be seeing the stars. Leaving Houston, we chased the sun until we reached the mouth of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Our car, a couple of picnic tables, and a tiny gift shop/ticket booth were the only signs of civilization in this expanse of scrub brush and cactus. Seizing the moment, my dad and I took a couple of sleeping bags and proceeded to sleep on the picnic tables under the stars. I’d never seen so many stars! I imagined traveling among them in one of those rockets we had seen previously at NASA. Needless to say, it took quite some time to finally drift off under that blanket of natural beauty. Well, the coyote calls played a role in that as well. We awoke to the scuffling of deer in the grey pre-dawn and I knew that I had just been a part of a magical experience. After exploring the caverns and almost being kicked out because Pop just had to touch a stalactite, we journeyed ever westward. 

Image courtesy of NPS Photo/Peter Jones

We finally reached San Diego and had a blast at the resort. Yes, a real live resort! With a pool! We saw the sights in San Diego and day-tripped to Los Angeles, Hollywood, Tijuana, and Anaheim. The San DiegoZoo surpassed our expectations, Disneyland was not as impressive as it’s Orlando counterpart, the tour of Universal Studios was well worth it, and Hollywood elicited open-mouthed gawks and stares at both the glitzy extravagance and not-so-subtle weirdness (not much has changed, I guess). Way too soon, we loaded up once again, this time for our trip home…which included the Petrified Forest, Painted Desert and Grand Canyon. We couldn’t just drive straight back. Thankfully.

What stands out to me about our epic holiday is that it was more about the journey than the destination. It’s amazing what you can sometimes experience along the way if you’ll allow the way to share focus with the endpoint.

I certainly have a travelin’ jones. Whether it is innate or instilled I don’t know. I have a feeling I was born with a yearning to wander and that it was nurtured by my parents, who like to wander themselves. Because of this, I treasure vacations. Taking a holiday is refreshing, revitalizing, reconnecting, rewarding. But it’s something more, too. It satisfies some instinctual desire to explore and experience, even temporarily. I long for those moments and detest their conclusions. Maybe that’s why I love summer so. For it is traditionally then that we get away.

So, today’s tune is called “Holiday” and can be found on Jimmy Buffett’s Banana Wind album. It’s not his best effort lyrically and sounds almost like a 50’s era ad for Delta Airlines or Howard Johnson or Miami Beach. Still, it’s a fun little number - it fits - and I find myself singing along every time I hear it and for hours afterwards. The idea is simple – get away, have some fun, reconnect with what’s truly important. We could all use that, don’t you think?

Image courtesy of Amazon.com