Vacation Week. That’s what we called the week of the Fourth where I grew up in Alabama. West Point Manufacturing Co., later WestPoint Pepperell, would close all the textile mills that week, and everyone took their paid vacation, including my father. If the family went out of town, we’d visit relatives. It was the only travel I knew at that time, and it was high adventure. I loved it. Some years, Daddy would elect to stay home and tackle some huge house-related maintenance project. Those were bad years. A lot of lucky kids got to go with their parents to Panama City, Florida, the “Redneck Riviera.” The local joke was, they’d have to clean the beaches of lint after “vacation week.”