All Dressed Up with No Time to Go

You remember those old-fashioned family vacations? Each family member had their pre-determined location in the station wagon, a station wagon with fake wood paneling on it sides making it look like it belonged in Robert Young’s den. In my family growing up Dad drove, I sat next to him and the oldest brother sat next to me on the front seat. Mom sat behind my father in order to reach each family member to hand them supplies: cups of water from the thermos, snack foods – including Space Food Sticks (I did not make those up, they were, and I quote from Wikipeida, a “non-frozen balance energy snack in rod form containing nutritionally balanced amounts of carbohydrate, fat and protein) and the occasional comic book. My kid sister sat in the back seat with Mom and the second oldest son had the run of the back of the station wagon. This was before car seats and seat belt laws so he lived back there with pillows and the luggage.

The biggest versions of these trips meant you were on the road visiting tourist traps, museums, malls, crummy roadside restaurants featuring gift shops with more things made in China than Beijing itself and, if your little sister was like mine, every gas station restroom between here and Galveston. The smaller ones had you visiting family members and bunking on a sleeper sofa with a mattress actually harder than the petrified sandwich crusts found when it was pulled open for the first time since the Eisenhower administration.

You remember those? So do I. That is exactly why my family did nothing like that this past summer.

I exaggerate. The main reason we did not go anywhere was finding free time was impossible. I’m not talking about the 47 year-old chief breadwinner for the family. I had vacation days aplenty. Everybody else was too busy. Between the orchestra camp at KU (kid #3), the drum major camp in Illinois (kid #2), the summer community theater production (kid #1), the lifeguard job (kid #2), the babysitting jobs (kid #1), the petsitting jobs (kid #3), and the summer part-time job (wife #1 and only) we couldn’t figure out three days in a row when everyone was available.

Fortunately, my family is easy to please. Even though there was no Grand Canyon adventure or Hawaiian escapades (look no further than the Brady Bunch to see those aren’t all they are cracked up to be) there was no complaining. While they are open to greater adventures they are content with simpler pleasures.

You hear the term “destination” used to describe places tourists desire to visit. The marketing people like to use it. “Make Disney Land your destination vacation!” Truthfully, I find it a little odd to use such a generic word for something which is supposed to be special. Wherever you’re headed is technically a destination. “Make Kwik Shop your 1:00 AM insatiable craving for microwave burritos destination!”
Everyone in my family is perfectly happy if our “destination vacation” is simply a big book store. We can spend the better part of a long weekend in Barnes and Noble. I say that both because it is true and because I hold out hope a Barnes and Noble executive will stumble across this column and feel I have earned a sizable gift certificate for the shameless plug I just handed to his company.

We all like books. Even the youngsters like the feel, the smell and the sensation of holding the book and turning the pages. Technology is working on making that a thing of the past. The aforementioned Barnes and Noble is for sale (which may mean the gift certificate proposition is more time sensitive than originally thought). Bookstores are inching their way onto the endangered species list. With the ease of shopping on-line brick and mortar locations are not truly necessary and more and more people don’t bother to use them. Also, e-books have made a huge jump in the market.

E-books are downloads of the text of an entire book onto your computer or some such device. All the words are there with none of the pages, covers or dust jackets. Storage is in bytes not linear inches of bookshelves. I have a few on my laptop but I have to say I like pages better than pixels.

I will probably migrate over to e-books eventually, but if the bookstores disappear my family may be relegated to the microwave burritos for our vacation destinations.