By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 26, 2019 | Vacations are considered routine today. For the average working Joe, you can look to the time after World War II when taking some time off—sometimes with pay—began to be routine with working people.
However, for many people who were self-employed, and that includes those working on the farm in earlier America, taking time off was considered a blasphemy, a waste of time, since it was necessary to work daily to put food on the table.
Historians tells us that the Romans were the first people to enjoy travel for pleasure…not managing a week here or there, but wealthy Romans would take off one or two years for their vacations!
Depending on your family’s status, you may remember your first vacation. For me, it was about the summer of 1948, and my family decided to take a trip from our home in Macon to Florida. In those days, the means of transportation was the family car.
The destination was the Florida coast near St. Augustine. Yep, we stayed in what was then known as “tourist cabins.” These were small, individual quarters to sleep, eat and bathe, and not much else. They were not air conditioned, but had a fan to blow air toward you, but not necessarily cool you.
One incident stands out, even before we arrived at the tourist cabins. We stopped along the road to get a refreshment, since it was hot in the summertime. Perhaps my mother had a Coca-Cola (six ounces in those days), and there’s every chance that I got a 12 ounce Royal Crown, or Nehi Orange. Size, remember, is important to a kid.
But my father surprised us all in his beverage selection. He bought himself a beer, something I had never seen him drink before. Routinely at home, he never drank beer. And this purchase of a “cool one” really upset my Primitive Baptist mother. In sports terms, it would be called the “play of the day.”
While in the St. Augustine area, a prize destination was the alligator farm. I had never seen an alligator before, and suspect my parents had never seen many either. To look into those pens and see alligator-after-alligator, crawling all over themselves, was mesmerizing. If I remember correctly, I also dreamed of them that night.
Then it was down the road a bit, to Marineland, gawking at those amazing different creatures of the ocean. Of course, we also got around in St. Augustine itself, seeing the old fort and oldest house, etc. Altogether, it was something new for us, a vacation.
One other aspect I remember from that trip. When stopping for a refreshment on the way back home, my father did not buy another beer.
Several have asked: where’s your next trip? So far, nothing big or overseas is on the horizon. However, we keep hearing good stories on activities in Greenville, S.C., and hope to motor up that way soon. Send us ideas about what to see there.
One other venture is on the horizon: the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, anticipated this fall. We’ve never been. When we heard that the Met would present Porgy and Bess this year, we started thinking, and hope to be with family members, especially our two granddaughters, there this year. With them living in Charleston, they need to know about this American classic, and see it in the elegant surroundings of the Metropolitan Opera. That will be a nice, but short, vacation for 2019.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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