2024 Thursday — Vacation Thoughts

Two week vacations, holidays, were the norm when I was a kid. They allowed many of my friends' families to visit grandparents in other states. The 14 days was necessary to travel, visit relatives, and travel back. My folks put a new twist on the two week vacation when they decided to make it the length of summer and to not come back. The new sights, the new aromas, and the voices were less interesting to me than what my parents were actually doing.

As I ended 8th grade, my parents sold our home, the one that we had moved into just two years previously. I was closing a door on a year of my education; Mom & Pops were closing a door on living in California. They did not know where we were going to live, they only knew they didn't want it to be California.

My mom, stepdad, younger brother and I piled into our two-door pick-up truck with the over-the-cab camper and set out to put California in the rear view mirror. We were headed to "we weren't sure where."

I had always lived in California; it's where I was born. When I had finished 6th grade we moved from Los Angeles County to one of the dozens of new tract house developments in Orange County. Much had happened in those two years: Pops was commuting everyday back to LA County to work; my older sister no longer liked living with Mom & Pops so she had moved out of our home to live with our birth dad; and I had stepped out of the world of tomboy as I instantly became a teenager with one visit to a beauty shop -- I exchanged my ponytail for a bouffant hairdo.

In two short years our family dynamic had changed significantly. I'm guessing the honeymoon stage of Mom & Pops' new marriage had ended. My folks weren't leaving on a vacation, they were escaping; with hindsight I think they were running away. I must have "drank the Kool-Aid" because I had no remorse, no desperation about leaving California. I had joined their team "We were entering an adventure." We were also traveling east to see grandparents in Georgia and in Florida.

My parents were looking for something we no longer had; to recover what we had once been. The day after school ended, we left Orange County. The other side of San Bernardino brought us the desert; it was a vast barren wilderness that stretched the long distance of several days. We read Burma Shave signs; stopped along the roadside to make and eat lunch, and camped at night. We were at the mercy of our dashboard radio for an outside voice. A few days later we left behind sagebrush to crossover into a well watered land.

It was the summer of '63; we were entering the Deep South that Mom had exited when she married her first husband, my birth dad, in autumn of '46. We arrived at Mom's parent's place and nothing had changed, except my grandparents ages. My parents had driven away from California and a world that was becoming addicted to constant motion and perpetual change and driven to a place that had no momentum and was stuck in cultural hate. Mom realized there was nothing in her hometown she wanted. Our stay with Mom's parents was short.

Next we headed to Florida. My step grandparents were transplants from Wisconsin. I found them and Tampa/St. Petersburg full of life, entertaining, and fun. The Gulf shoreline taught me to appreciate an entirely new type of coast. It was tropical, humid, and populated with schools of pincher crabs that seemed as curious and afraid of me as I was of them.

My parents were unsure of what they were looking for and unsure was all they were finding. I have fond memories of that vacation. I wasn't bothered by the foggy future. I wasn't even bothered by their lack of knowing where we'd live next.

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too!



For Prompt & Day 4:
For me holidays were few and far between as a child. Occasionally a day drive to the Jersey Shore or an excursion to visit cousins. However the opportunity to see the world beyond your home as a child is an eye opening experience. // Was there a time as a kid you escaped the confines of your home town and visited the wider world? Maybe that opportunity didn’t come till you were older. // Take a minute to see those sights, smell those smells, and hear those voices from a time away from home…
Now tell us more…