Jaunting in July

Well, whatayaknow…we’re well into July with another Independence Day more than a week in the books.

Fireworks, barbeques, pool parties and even one or two or three quickly devoured Red, White and Blue Good Humors on a stick.

And that was just before lunch.

Now the summer really begins to heat up. 

July is an all business kind of summer month; one of only two full months of summer, really…at least officially.

July is when all the schools are finally closed and all the pools and beaches are finally open.

July is the first real vacation month where people might actually close their laptops, walk away from their spread sheets, power points and Twitter feeds,  pack up their families and or themselves and go jaunting in July to their vacation destination of choice.

Today, people head off to all sorts of vacation destinations.

There are beach people, mountain people, even 110 degree Florida theme park people.

Resort people, camping people…all kinds of people….all on vacation…all in July.

It was a bit different when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, a jaunt to the local beach or pool was considered a vacation…but only if my dad came along, and only if it occurred in the middle of the week.

If I was just with my mom or it was a Saturday or Sunday, then it wasn’t a vacation at all…just business as usual. 

Every once in a while though we did get to go on a “real” vacation, which consisted of all of us piling into our old, but reliable, pre-air-conditioned 57 Chevy and accompanying my dad on a business trip to Canajoharie, NY, where he periodically dropped in on the upstate Beechnut Life Saver and Gum factory to take care of some pressing candy business or another.

I’m not sure what he actually did up there, but I like to imagine that it had something to do with peppermint and Oompa Loompas.

While my dad went off to work, the rest of us got to hang out at the pool at the Thruway Motel in nearby Albany.

I know it doesn’t sound like much now, but it was a very advanced pool. It had a very cool water slide, which was about all of nine feet long and…wait for it…an actual diving board. 

I know….

What more could a kid want.

Who needs waves, tall pines or big eared mice to entertain?

And if we were good, at lunch time my mom would order us…again, wait for it…this exotic sandwich called a Turkey Club, which had three slices of toasted bread, and was cut into quarters, the way they did it on tropical islands…at least according to my mom.

In the evening, after another tasty meal at the Thruway Cantina, we would saunter across the parking lot to the new Cinerama movie theatre where we would catch the latest summer blockbuster, featuring a cast of thousand, most notably “How the West Was Won”, which seemed to always be playing, and was literally about 3 hours long.

I know….

Hard to imagine how great it really was. And the Albany popcorn was so much better than your everyday, local popcorn for some reason.

I think they might have smuggled it in from Canada.

By the next day, of course, we were all vacationed out—I mean how much can a person take—so we piled back into the Chevy, barely able to hold our heads up and motored south, back down the Thruway, from whence we came.  A reluctant return to the summer reality of prickly heat afternoons and firefly catching nights.

I guess compared to today, it really wasn’t much. But it was what we had, and it must have been something…because I’m still thinking about it today.

I guess because it’s July.

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