Like most of us Baby Boomers, when Ginny and I were kids, we looked forward to the end of the school year with great anticipation. Not just because it meant the end of nine months of drudgery and nonsense, but because we knew that we most likely would be going on a trip during Dad's vacation. We looked forward to these trips for lots of reasons, but I suspect that one was just the chance to get away from everything and everyone that we ran across in our daily lives. It was the opportunity for us to be a small, simple family, just Mom, Dad, Ginny and I out on the road for a couple of weeks.
Of course, we always traveled by car, since back then in the early to mid 1960's was considered 'fancy', and was in fact pretty darn expensive. With gasoline costing somewhere around .15c per gallon (you read that right), it was much cheaper to take the old station wagon and run it all over the country.
Dad had been working for Con Edison, the power company in NYC for many years, and so even in the early 60's he got a pretty generous 3 weeks of vacation time. And to this day, I remember the weeks he took; 'last two in August, first in September'. He liked those weeks because earlier in the summer he could usually count on some good overtime hours, which helped pay for the trips. And since he took the first week in September, every couple of years he'd get an 'extra' day, since Labor Day, a paid holiday, would be the Monday of the second week in September. And to Dad, an extra day away from the incredibly hard physical work he did was worth a lot.
Around July 4th, Mom and Dad would start dropping ideas for where we'd be going that year. A couple of years we went 'upstate', which to those of you who live on Long Island know means "someplace over the bridge". One year we stayed near West Point, spending a week, I think, at a little place called "Motel On The Lake". Which was, as the name implies, a small motel situated right on the shore of a small lake. We took day trips to West Point, ate at a couple of local restaurants, and spent long hours playing in and around the lake. Dad always liked the 'upstate' area, and one of the kicks he'd get would be to take a route that had him drive up the Storm King Highway, a three mile stretch of road that runs around the edge of, to nobody's surprise, Storm King Mountain! He like driving that road because during it's construction from 1916 to 1922, his adoptive Dad, Pop Pop Flood, had been part of the crew that built the road. And he'd mention it every time we drove up or down it, he was so proud that his Dad had a hand in what was pretty amazing engineering and construction. I've never forgotten that, and have myself ridden up and down that road a couple of times, always thinking to myself that Pop Pop worked on it.
Our 'biggest' trip was of course, the time we drove to Dallas to visit our Aunt Clarence, Aunt Ann, and cousins Richard and Robert, who had moved there a year or so prior to our trip. That trip was so long, and involved so many sites and events, that it deserves it's own post, which I'll work on in the coming weeks. I'm pretty sure that was the trip that instilled the wanderlust in me that is still so strong to this day!
Another time, I think it was the year between 7th and 8th grade, Dad found out that 8th grade social studies was going to be "American History", and he decided that I should see some of the places where a lot of our History was made. So, we packed up the car and headed south, for a tour of the Civil War battlefields and encampments. Now, as altruistic as this sounds, and I'm sure Dad was trying to be helpful to me, the truth is he had always had a fondness for the southern part of the country, and was just as happy to visit there as anyplace else. In fact, he and Mom had honeymooned in Virginia and the Carolinas, and vacationed there again a year or two after their honeymoon. Dad, in fact, was offered a chance to relocate to North Carolina by the owner of a motel he and Mom were staying at. Dad must have struck up a friendship with the guy, apparently Dad helped him with a repair or two while he was there, and the owner asked Dad to come to work for him, with the intention of having Dad take over the place when he retired. Dad was very intrigued, but eventually decided against it when he and Mom got a lot of pressure from family members that 'your family is in NY', and it wouldn't be right to 'walk away' from family. I know Dad spoke wistfully years later of how he should have taken the job (mostly when things were tough, as they were often), and I think he might have been very happy there. Mom? Not so sure, but my suspicion is that if Dad were happy, Mom would have been happy. In any event, it didn't happen, and I didn't grow up saying 'Y'all, so that's probably a good thing.
We did the VA, NC trip a couple of times, and as Ginny and I got older, and had things to do in our neighborhood, the family road trips faded away. Of course, Dad's 1960 Valiant wagon wasn't getting any younger, and it was getting pretty chancy to take it on a long trip. Quick aside, he bought the car in 1963, I think, and kept it until the late early fall of 1971. I'm sure when it finally got parked wherever it ended up (he had an accident with it somewhere in the Bronx, a bad pothole blew out the front end), it probably sprang apart like the Blues Brothers car did at the end of the big chase in that move!
There were a couple of trips with Mom, Dad, and Ginny, I think they went to Disney World in 1972, in Dad's new car, the '71 Duster, but I didn't go, because I was working for the Recreation Department at the time, and summer was 'full time' 40+ hours a week, you couldn't take three weeks off in the busiest time of the year! After that, Dad and Mom went on a few trips to VFW Conventions, and they'd always visit Dad's sister Audrey and her family down in PA. Audrey and George owned a campground, "Fantasy Island Campground", a combination RV and tent place, and they always had a spare RV for guests, so Mom and Dad would stay there for a week or so each year.
And I guess it was those vacation trips that got me so interested in being on the road. I loved looking out at the different places we passed through, seeing the different businesses and towns, many of which were so unlike where we lived. I couldn't imagine what might be better than a couple of weeks on the road several times a year.
I took my first 'on my own' road trip in the spring of 1975. Took my brand new Mustang 2 (we'll discuss that in a future post - maybe) down to Florida, hung around there a while, and decided I definitely liked driving all over the place. So to this day, it's what I do.
I don't have any trips planned for this summer - yet. Got some things going on here that are preventing that sort of planning, but I know that something will pop up before we get to the cold weather, even if it's after the traditional summer travel season. And I'm sure that I'll find some silly little attraction, or a sleepy little restaurant that will catch my imagination and remind me of some of the trips we took way back when. And now, thanks to the internet and these great blog sites, you all can share these trips with me. So buckle up those seat belts, get out your 'auto bingo' cards, pack a bag of snacks, and get ready to roll!
