Thursday
7/14/04
Southward Ha!
Imagine, if you will, taking a little spin back in time. Back in time to, say, 1975. Polyester pants were still groovy, stereos only came from Crazy Eddie’s, and the President of the United States fell down a lot.
It was during that very same 1975 that a tousled-haired youth, remarkable only for his Zen-like patience and a striking resemblance to me, stared vacantly from the rear seat of a Dodge Aspen station wagon as it sped along the Eastern seaboard. Before long the car slowed to a halt in front of the Franklin Institute Science Museum and disgorged it’s passengers, each of whom was already enjoying that most quintessentially American of summer vacations: the family road trip.
As I recall, my folks and I had a pretty good time on that trip to the City of Brotherly Love; we poked and prodded things in the science museum, we got to eat food in restaurants that mother would never imagine serving us at home, and, it being Philadelphia, there was no shortage of old buildings in which to knock about.
So, today it’s a mere twenty nine summers later, and our humble manse is a beehive of travel related activity as we prepare to retrace my youthful steps to the torrid climes of Pennsylvania. Steamer trunks are being packed with the necessities of voyage, drapes are being pulled, sheets are being thrown over the furniture and the downstairs staff is being summarily dismissed for the duration of our journey. The lads are exited as schoolboys, which is just as well as they are indeed schoolboys, and my Lovely Bride is all a twitter with the notion of browsing the exotic bazaars of downtown Philadelphia.
Well, I suppose that might be more accurately phrased in the vernacular as: we’re going to throw our crap in the back of the mini-van and go stay at a Marriott in Philadelphia and see some old stuff… but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, now does it?
Anyway, my still unrequited and rather distracting love for the prose of S.J. Perelman notwithstanding, truly one of the greatest pleasures of fatherhood is doing the same fun stuff with the boys that I got to do as a kid. When on vacation there is, after all, mandatory jumping on the hotel beds, we get to eat out all the time guilt free, and there really isn’t anything cooler than a good science museum. All things considered, I’m going to have a better time now with the boys than I did when I was the kid.
Later, gator!
|
Southward Ha!
Imagine, if you will, taking a little spin back in time. Back in time to, say, 1975. Polyester pants were still groovy, stereos only came from Crazy Eddie’s, and the President of the United States fell down a lot.
It was during that very same 1975 that a tousled-haired youth, remarkable only for his Zen-like patience and a striking resemblance to me, stared vacantly from the rear seat of a Dodge Aspen station wagon as it sped along the Eastern seaboard. Before long the car slowed to a halt in front of the Franklin Institute Science Museum and disgorged it’s passengers, each of whom was already enjoying that most quintessentially American of summer vacations: the family road trip.
As I recall, my folks and I had a pretty good time on that trip to the City of Brotherly Love; we poked and prodded things in the science museum, we got to eat food in restaurants that mother would never imagine serving us at home, and, it being Philadelphia, there was no shortage of old buildings in which to knock about.
So, today it’s a mere twenty nine summers later, and our humble manse is a beehive of travel related activity as we prepare to retrace my youthful steps to the torrid climes of Pennsylvania. Steamer trunks are being packed with the necessities of voyage, drapes are being pulled, sheets are being thrown over the furniture and the downstairs staff is being summarily dismissed for the duration of our journey. The lads are exited as schoolboys, which is just as well as they are indeed schoolboys, and my Lovely Bride is all a twitter with the notion of browsing the exotic bazaars of downtown Philadelphia.
Well, I suppose that might be more accurately phrased in the vernacular as: we’re going to throw our crap in the back of the mini-van and go stay at a Marriott in Philadelphia and see some old stuff… but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, now does it?
Anyway, my still unrequited and rather distracting love for the prose of S.J. Perelman notwithstanding, truly one of the greatest pleasures of fatherhood is doing the same fun stuff with the boys that I got to do as a kid. When on vacation there is, after all, mandatory jumping on the hotel beds, we get to eat out all the time guilt free, and there really isn’t anything cooler than a good science museum. All things considered, I’m going to have a better time now with the boys than I did when I was the kid.
Later, gator!
