Sunday, August 02, 2020

Vacation

Forty years ago. Three of them gone now.  This is probably at a place we stayed in Ocean City, N.J.  We never stayed at fancy places so this looks about right. We would go back to Philly for a week or so (to visit my grandmother) and then the "shore" as Philly people call it for most of August. Phil usually taught a summer class that ended about then.

Sometimes we would meet up with my brother and his wife and son in Rehoboth, DE. And sometimes we would visit Jeff in Springfield, VA. Unlike most Michiganders we rarely vacationed up north. Having grown up on the east coast, only a beach by the ocean would do. And we needed a boardwalk to entertain  us at night. The kids would ride on small scale ferris wheels and such, we ate fudge, we bought small treats from souvenir shops.  And when it got late, we went back to our rental and played yahtzee or risk and tried to get Tiger Baseball on our radio. WJR had a pretty powerful signal. Twice we went to Cape Cod or Cape Ann instead of NJ. I had gone to college (briefly) there and loved Rockport, MA. The week we spent in Cape Cod, it rained every day. Ugh.

Did you take a summer vacation as a child or as a parent with children? Where did you go?


18 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

So young!

When we were kids? My mother's aunt Tillie had a house right on White Lake upstate in the Catskills. For two summers (I was 5 and 6, probably, my brother a year younger) we spent the summer there, with my father working in the city and coming up on Friday nights. All I really remember is the lake, swimming (I didn't like the mushy bottom) and going for rides in my cousin Martin's motorboat. Fun.

After a year at day camp, my brother and I spent six summers (ages 8 to 13) at sleep away camp in Pennsylvania just across the border from Binghamton, NY. It was a horseback riding camp - my final year I had a horse to take care of - and I loved it. I was never big on swimming, but we had hikes in the woods, archery, riflery, baseball, arts & crafts, etc.

My father always worked and we played. After the camp years, they spent three summers at bungalow colonies, the first two in New Jersey. I was at those, the third summer I worked at my old camp.

Of course, we don't have kids. We spent parts of almost every summer after we were married in England (a few in other European countries), ranging from a couple of weeks to 66 days (June 30 to September 3).

pattinase (abbott) said...

As a child I went to sleepaway camp in the Poconos. I loved it, unlike my brother whose allergies made in intolerable. No horses but a lot of theater and arts and crafts.
I went for a month between ages 9-14. I would cry on the way home.
After that we spent a week in Ocean City.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Every summer my parents drove up (like five hours) to visit us on Parents' Weekend. But mostly he was working all summer.

I can still remember getting a letter from them in the middle of our second summer, saying that they had moved from Kew Gardens to Brooklyn on August 1. Only when they met us at the end of the summer did they tell us that my mother was pregnant. My sister was born five months later. Also, my father was working in Bay Ridge then, and the commute was long and unnecessary.

We were upset that we never got to say goodbye to our friends in Queens.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Parents didn't feel they had to fill you in on things. They just happened.

Jerry House said...

When I was young my father farmed, so no getaways. Later, he started a home construction business, so no getaways then either. But we had fields and woods to explore and a nearby pond for swimming and a bike to ride anywhere so I feel I didn't miss out on anything.

I spent a week at Boy Scout camp and hated it.

In 1960 my parents bought a summer home on Big Island Pond in New Hampshire. It was a great place to relax and swim and sit on the patio and read, with occasional boating and water-skiing thrown in the mix.

As for Kitty, her parents had built a cottage on John's Pond on Cape Cod when she was very young and her mother would bring all four kids and the dog and whatever cats there every summer. Swimming and hikes and waterskiing help her pass the time, with occasional trips to Hyannis. The cottage is still in the family but we haven't been there in a couple of years. We had planned to go in August but...well, COVID. I don't know if we'll ever make it up there again.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Yeah, Phil's family owned a little luncheonette and he never had a vacation as a child. Probably why we all loved the one we took each August with our own kids.

Rick Robinson said...

We had a swimming pool, and I learned to swim at age 3, so most summers were at home where I would do my (few chores) first thing in the morning and then have the rest of the day to swim, roam the hills beyond our house (we had a small avocado ranch), climb trees or read books from the library when my Mom took me once a week. Of course my Dad worked Mon-Fri and had a long commute into L.A. and back daily. Once he was home, we'd usually spend the early evening out on the patio and often grilled (we said barbecue then) dinner or had cold dinner if the weather was hot, which it often was.

Later, I remember a few driving vacations "up the coast", which meant from home up Hwy 101 and Hwy 1 to Carmel, visiting my aunt and uncle, and then on up the Oregon coast as far as Astoria. Once we drove all the way to Seattle, took the car ferry to Vancouver Island and them north to Campbell River. A very long haul. We stayed at a place on a lake and I got to canoe and swim. I have fond memories of Vancouver Island, Victoria, and the Oregon and Washington coasts. That's a big part of the reason we moved to Portland.

Todd Mason said...

A lot of driving, to visit grandparents and the families who were closer to their childhood homes than my parents were. Or driving infrequently to visit friends, such as a couple of summer trips from New England to Virginia Beach, so that my mother and her lifelong friend Connie and their kids could enjoy what was there. In 1973, we visited the pre-EPCOT Disney World, still very much with the graded tickets. A very mixed bag, all of these...got to know some highways. Last real vacation with my parents and sister was in 1981 from Hawaii to my birth-state of Alaska, landing in Anchorage and visiting with my cousin's family, then driving north on the Al-Can in a rental to Fairbanks, 500 miles or so of charred remains of forests from the big fires in '79 or '80. Visiting with my parents old friends and my aunt's family. My ex Donna and myself went to Hawaii from the DC 'burbs in 1987, and that was particularly fun when we had a Kailua Beach house to ourselves for the last several days; I'm not sure I've taken a vacation (at least one that involved travel) that wasn't driven by a wedding, funeral or convention since.

Todd Mason said...

I didn't quite hate my one experience with Boy Scout Camp, as Jerry did, but close enough. Particularly as they wanted us to use outhouses, which I simply wouldn't do, though I did go along with my one day of cleaning duty...I used the real rest room down at the admin building for my more involved activity...after the first two or three exposures to the outhouse, simply went into the bushes for the liquid relief.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Our cabins had bathrooms but no windows. Only wooden shutter which you lowered when it rained. How did we not get eaten to death by mosquitoes. Maybe the Poconos is mosquito free.
Rick's life in California seems like paradise.

Jeff Meyerson said...

IN our camp, the boys had outhouses, the girls did not. This is still unfair 60 years later.

pattinase (abbott) said...

The boy's camp, Camp Miller, was down the road. Have to ask my brother is they had bathrooms or outhouses.

Todd Mason said...

Patti--probably super-nasty mosquito punks in use.

Jeff--that would be weird. The Girl Scout camp on the other side of Lake Winnipesaukee was too far away to make much movement toward, particularly given I was not anything like a smooth operator at age 12, to check on their plumbing (koff).

Todd Mason said...

Perhaps the terror of outhouses and monthly Friends was what made the investment in real lavatories seem prudent for the girls' camps.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I had never thought of that, Todd, but I bet you are right. Outhouses have been the place of attack for many female soldiers.

George said...

My father's family was mostly living in Connecticut so each summer we would make the drive from Niagara Falls to Norfolk, Connecticut. I would sneak away and read until my aunts would search for me. Rural life held no appeal to me.

Todd Mason said...

Oh, I was referring, too cutely, to menses (and what an even greater draw for mosquitoes, horseflies, etc. that might be), but that is a sobering thought. What might be safer from potential assault, individual door-locking bathrooms or a large multiperson women's room, is a good question, and if either is safer than a multi-user outhouse. And how often hat might've been taken into consideration up through the '80s, to be, sadly, charitable to camp administrators.

Todd Mason said...

George--my maternal grandmother's house did have one attraction: a large front porch where I could sit and read for some hours (I recall reading THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER and Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD while visiting when 10yo)(Lancer Magnum classics purchased from Grant's discount department store for a quarter each, in '75, shortly after mobbed-up Lancer went bust), occasionally in the company of my grandmother's giant old tomcat, with a torn ear from scrapping but by then old enough to be a lap cat--he and my cousin Stephanie (aka "Missy" in those years) were the other major draws.