Growing Up Southern: November 25, 2017

Vacations created much excitement in our family. I can practically remember every one we took. The first was a week-end jaunt to Harrison, Arkansas.  My younger brother had not become fully toilet-trained, but was sufficiently “toilet-aware” to risk such a journey. We headed north. Lawzee. Believe it or not, none of us, save my dad, had ever seen a mountain. The ones we saw weren’t the Rockies, but we didn’t care. They were sure something.

Setting a pattern that would last for years, we joined an aunt and uncle and two cousins on the trip. I can’t remember how my uncle Raymond got us to quit singing “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain.” I think it included a threat to leave my cousin JoAnn and me on the side of the road to be picked up on the way back.

It proved a memorable trip, with both simple and majestic wonders. I remember a coin-operated radio in a place called the “Log Cabin Inn.” For two-bits, you got maybe 30 minutes of music. We listened in awe until the grownups ran out of quarters. Next day we visited an attraction long-since closed: Diamond Cave, near Jasper, Arkansas. Oh, it was magnificent! I can still recall how the guide told us how to differentiate between stalagmites and stalactites. The wonder. The wonder.

We thus initiated annual vacations. Both my dad and my Uncle ran grocery stores, so we would leave on Thursdays and return by Sunday. Once a year. That was it. They knew that such short vacations, with five kids to keep corralled didn’t offer much rest, but they both agreed that it “beat the hell out of chopping cotton.”

Believing that diversity was a strong foundation-stone of life, we alternated destinations. One year we would go to Galveston, Texas, and the next to somewhere in what is now known as the “Redneck Riviera.” There are still old songs that pop up occasionally … popular at some moment in history, that bring back an instant memory, sometimes accompanied by the smell of salt air and the screeching of sea gulls.

As I say, some aspects weren’t as pleasant for my dad as they were for us. He didn’t particularly like to drive, and he certainly didn’t enjoy long periods marked by prolonged close contact with bratty children. Further there were spots along the way, like the passage through Mobile, Alabama—including its frightening and mocking tunnel—that he knew in his heart were created by the Dark One to punish him for previous sins. Not a man to be distracted from a goal, I was always certain that he would not have detoured off our stated route a half-mile to witness The Second Coming. Thus, I never saw the Vicksburg Civil War Park until I was a grown man and could take myself there if I chose.

The women let the men have a few beers on these trips. That took “some of the swelling out” for them. They actually could get pretty funny at times, especially when they had snuck around and exceeded the quota. As for the kids, nobody needed to tell us how to have fun. Even the normally demure and taciturn women donned what I’m sure were considered sexy bathing suites at the time. Oh, it was glorious.

Time passed. The older kids dropped out. My older cousin decided he liked fast cars and girls who were attracted to them. My sister stayed home next year. She blamed it on work, but we all knew she had just settled on a new boyfriend, thus making a choice that would comfort her for over 50 years. The annual trips faded away without a formal declaration of cessation.

 I can still remember them, though, whenever I wish, and I do often, very often.