| If It’s June, It Must Be Vacation Time |
| Friday, 18 June 2010 14:45 | |||
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June 16, 2010 – It’s June, and thoughts turn toward taking a vacation.
How many of you are old enough to remember when vacations didn’t come automatically? When few of our Moms worked outside the home and few Dads had enough time on their hands where they could pull up stakes and family and take off for the wild blue yonder for a couple of weeks? It’s only been recently when vacations – like Spring Break in South Texas to summer in the Hamptons and winters in Cancun started coming into the mainstream. Okay, maybe they’re still a little rare, but almost non-existent in the period between the wars (and I’m talkin’ the Second World War, Korea and Viet Nam.) It was during those times when vacations, if taken at all, were usually by car, occurred in the summer and were shorter than two weeks. In our neck of the woods, some families had cabins (many handed down through the generations) up north they went to in August, when Missouri was its hottest and most humid, but most took long weekends, or maybe a week if they could swing it – to motor over to the other states around us, visit St. Louis or Kansas City, see the sights, visit museums and maybe take in a major league ball game – or just motor somewhere that was no more than a day’s drive away, to stay with family or friends. And although action slowed precipitously after 9/11 and later when the economy tanked, there was still more zipping around the country (and world) than there had been between the 1950’s and early 1980’s. For one thing, airline travel has become much more commonplace than it was during and in between those war years. In those days, most air travel was reserved for the wealthy and those who traveled long distances often on business. All that’s changed now, and the world continues to ramp up at a crazy pace. And in a way, at least from my point of view, that’s too bad, ‘cause as well-traveled as we are, we’re missing a lot. A good friend of mine (and fellow writer) wrote a piece once that reminded us to stop on occasion and remember to feed the birds. It was good advice then; it still is. Enjoy the last half of June; will be in touch sometime after the 4th.
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