Vacations Long Ago

 

Susan Vass’s Ammo Grrll column this Friday recounts a memorable vacation trip she made with her parents and siblings in 1965. She suggested others think back to their memorable vacations from their youth. When I was a kid my parents never took trips except to visit relatives. The ones I remember most are the trips we made from our home in west Texas to visit my mother’s sister in Alexandria, Virginia, probably because they were the longest. Leaving early the first day we would make it made it to my father’s sister’s house in Linden, Texas or his brother’s house in Texarkana and spent the night there. Linden and Texarkana are almost in Louisiana or Arkansas and definitely part of the south, while our home was sixty miles from New Mexico and part of the west. There were so many more trees. That first day was the easy day for driving with over half of the way in mainly empty country where the roads were not crowded, and the towns were far apart. From there the going would get slower and harder. There were no interstates. The highways were mainly crowded two lane roads that went right through the middle of the many towns along the route. It was always our hope to make it all the way from east Texas to Chattanooga in one day, but we never did. On one trip we made it in a long day to Attalla, Alabama. We stayed that night at a little motel I still remember. It was beside the highway. There was a lawn between the rooms and the highway with swings, and my brother and I played out there after dinner until it got dark. At motels my mother and brother and I stayed in the car, while my father went with the manager or desk clerk to check the room and make sure it was okay before checking in. That was common in the days before there were many chain motels. The third day usually took us to some place in southwestern Virginia, with our arriving in Arlington on the following one. On the road we mainly just drove. We didn’t stop at any of the the alligator farms, souvenir joints, or places promising to display freaks of nature such as two headed snakes along the way. We never saw Rock City despite reading invitations to do so on barns all over the place. We did stop at some places on some trips, though. One time in Chattanooga we visited a place called the Confederama which had a large relief diorama with toy soldiers and flashing lights illustrating the story of battles around the city. My brother and I thought that  was cool. Another time we visited the famous natural bridge in Virginia, but such stops were not usual. My aunt’s small house was on a couple of acres on what was then the outskirts of Alexandria. The lot was on a small hill and my brother and I had fun enacting battles as we charged up and down it. We did and saw a lot in the area around Washington on those trips. We saw the Capitol and the famous monuments. We visited Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and the Washington zoo. I saw the ocean. It was fun. My aunt was glad to see her sister’s family and made a fuss over us kids. My uncle did not like kids, but, like many childless men had firm notions of how to raise them and what to expect from them. I came up short, but there was nothing really unpleasant about it. My mother told us he was just a brusque northerner (he grew up New York), but I doubt that was it. The trips run together in memory. I have no records, and am not fully sure what thing happened on which trip. What is clear in my mind is that the trips were good and good for us kids, if not necessarily for my father. It is also clear that it was a different, poorer, and more backward world then in the parts of the south we drove through, and that even with the congestion on the interstates, traveling by car is much easier these days. Those trips were special and may have done something to stimulate my lifelong fondness for the open road.

Vacation

In June we spent several days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. We had a really good time. The weather, except for one day on the road to Beartooth Pass, was fine.  The scenery was spectacular as always. The hiking was good. The streams and rivers were full, and the animals were plentiful.  The only exception on the scenery was a result of the government’s burn-baby-burn policy on forest fires.  Trees have grown back in the areas damaged by the catastrophic fires of 1988, but several areas remain devastated from more recent fires. The excuse for the policy is that forest fires are natural. Well so are cholera, high infant mortality, smallpox, and recurring famines.  Sensible people realize that natural does not imply desirable.  (To the extent there are valid needs to manage  forests, there are less destructive ways of doing so.)  Yellowstone was created for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people”.  Few people enjoy or benefit from landscapes resembling parts of Flanders in 1917.  This is another example of the green obsession or religion making things worse.

Far less seriously, it also makes things annoying.  In the lodges, stores, and restaurants in both parks we were constantly hit with greeny directives, boasts, suggestions, propaganda, and simple inconveniences. The trash cans in the rooms had three bins – one for recycling, one for rotting stuff nominally to become compost, and a sinister one labelled “landfill” for plain old trash which will be thrown away.  The stores did not sell bottled water because virtuous people bring their own bottles and refill them from water fountains, though of course all sorts of other things were sold in bottles.  The lights in one room where we stayed  were purposely ridiculously dim.  Menus in the restaurants touted how sustainable and/or organic the ingredients in the mediocre, overpriced meals were. The kicker for me was a notice in our room in Yellowstone informing people that water is a precious resource in “dry Yellowstone” and asking them not to run the faucet while shaving.  Our room was a few hundred yards from the second largest alpine lake in the world, just down the road from a massive river, and within view of mountains still covered with the remains of huge winter snowfalls. That one was a hard sell.

It can be easy to laugh off that sort of nagging and posturing.  It would be a mistake to laugh off  the movement behind it. The faithful of the green religion are serious and fanatical. They mean us harm, and they are aided and supported by a lot of opportunistic, power hungry politicians and officials. It is something of a  jihad or crusade, and it is not hard to figure out who the infidels are.

Texas Highways

We got a free subscription to Texas Highways when we gave one to a relative who asked for it for Christmas. We had been  subscribers  in the past, but we quit several years ago. We won’t be subscribing again unless it stays free. Texas Highways used to have a distinct voice and function. It was a homey, down home,  booster publication for travel in Texas focused on the interests and experiences of ordinary Texans, whose habits and lifestyles it treated with respect. In recent years it has changed its viewpoint and style to be closer to that of the superior, snarky urbanite who holds only the right opinions (especially the green ones) and appreciates only the approved things but finds occasional condescending amusement in the quaint behavior of the backward rustics – becoming sort of a special education version of Texas Monthly. It is sad. Texas Highways was good at what it once did and filled a real need. 

It still publishes schedules of events around the state, but those are available online at no cost. A this time I can think of no reason to be buying the magazine.