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.”
Vacation Week
By Jimmy Johnson
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36 responses to “Vacation Week”
There was a great strip about this being a “short week”. It is especially nice as many others are on vacation so the drive to work is easier and many of my customers are not calling or emailing me to interrupt me.
Enjoy everyone.
Debbe:
‘Emb….Sean Connery could read New York’s yellow pages to me and I would never get bored.’
A bass? I’m guessing the answer is ‘Yes’, but am thinking the British accent probably helped. I am relatively notorious locally for a radio-announcer bass voice [some also detect what’s left of the NY accent]. Actually announced an evening classical record program on the college station on and off over several years; I’ve mentioned that here before.
There’s a younger Ph.D. English prof, now retired perhaps, who makes me sound like a tenor, and who actually completed a BA in music a year or two ago. His senior recital was splendid; I wrote that up for the local daily.
I was going to take an adventure vacation and go into a war zone where I could take pictures and maybe sell them to pay for the trip. But I decided that Chicago is just too hot and humid right now.
Growing up in Houston, our big occasional “vacation” was going 50 miles away to Galveston sometimes. Vacation was just not a thing in my father’s life experiences he grew up with. I’ve made up for it and have arranged nice vacations for my wife and I. (Henry Ford/Greenfield Village, Key West/Bahamas, Nature Conservancy site in New Mexico, Route 66) But Galveston will still be forever my favorite place
TruckerRon, by what this article says, I would say nurture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Keane
eMb, I would say Connery is more a baritone than a bass, but mostly it’s his lovely Scottish accent that catches my ear.
When I was a child vacations were always spent visiting my mom’s parents. This was summers, Thanksgivings, Christmases, Columbus Day, any time I had more than two says out of school. And since that set of grandparents lived about an hour’s drive from Daddy’s parents, we spent a good bit of time there, too. I was an adult before I leaned that some people actually went places they didn’t have relatives for vacations.
Debbe, where would one find yellow pages in this digital era? The only paper directory we have is one put out by the HOA.
I was looking for the beginning of the “ghost” series and came up with this double standard.
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2005/02/25#.U7F9nkAcbYQ
Wayne, excellent retrieval.
Since we lived in country with grandparents (which I continued to do most of my younger life) the relatives came to us. I got to really dislike visiting relatives who came and stayed and stayed and stayed, then packed cars full of “freebies” from country to take home with them.
This has something to do with being stuck with the work, as female children were expected to wash dishes, cook, make beds, clean. Males were treated differently, which should have been a Life Lesson!
Still annoys me when I hear the adult now visitors talk nostalgically about the vacations out on the farm.
Love, Jackie Monies
Thanks for the squelch Jackie.
Vacations in our house were to grandparents or a cabin near Florissant, Colorado. Trips to Colorado always meant bringing home bushels of peaches for canning. Those Colorado trips always lead to hard work when the trip was over.
Wayne, sandcastler,
I’ve been told that women don’t ALWAYS have sex on their minds (unlike the other half the population).
Tripped up by the past tense of read? ‘. . . always led . . .’ [assuming you wanted past tense].
Sorry to hear about your bad experience with visitors Jackie, but we used to go every summer to my great grandparents farm in Indiana and it wasn’t like that at all. Mom still worked hard taking care of us kids and helping Grandma and Grand daddy when she could. It was a farm with no running water so it was a challange for her. But there were still lots of good memories. Brushing my teeth by the fence next to the corn field was special, I can still smell the Morning Glories on the fence. Grand Daddy had a civil war cannonball with a handle welded to it that we used to play with on the porch rolling it along the warped small boards making a great BRRRRRP sound that irritated Grand Daddy no end so he would pitch the cannonball out into the yard. Only one memory that was bad that marked me for life, maybe some time I will tell it. Jackie you have probabley watched cats jump for fresh milk squirted through a side vent in a barn too.
Thank you David for straightening the male egos. Besides we ladies are the lucky ones, we have our toy drawer. 😀
Double standard? You want double standard? I’ll give you double standard!
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/1998/04/08#.U7GoYPldWa8
For those who don’t check late night entries, here’s the new animated feature link I posted last night:
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/151871-new-hand-drawn-animation-disney-legend-will-captivate/
Lady Mindy, speaking of jumping out of the shower, is Angus still using the smoke alarm prank to make you do that? 🙂
Dearest Virgin, here is somewhere else you could go for an adventure vacation, take lots of pictures, and sell them for money to pay for the trip. And the worst danger would be sunburn. 😉
http://galleryplus.ebayimg.com/ws/web/281071286053_1_0_1/1000×1000.jpg
John in Richmond, love Galveston as well. We are keeping our sailboat there this summer as our “floating condo”…it’s nice to not have to drive back to Katy at night! 🙂
Why go to a beach to run around nude, Old Ghost? I prefer places where I don’t have to worry about sand damage.
TruckerRon,
I just watched it. Beautiful!
For the photo ops, DV. Although I do agree that at the beach the danged sand gets into everything.
Ghost – Actually I believe Angus is still at my old store, bothering my old crew. Someone got annoyed with his opening and closing of the walk-in freezer door and tried tightening the latch mechanism; that freezer died soon after. I do not think it a coincidence. He must like one of them better than me. If any of them start grousing about malfunctioning smoke alarms, I’ll know for sure. 🙂