This Nostalgic Life #52
Summer Vacation
This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.
Welcome back to another edition of This Nostalgic Life. In this issue we’re reminiscing about vacations and road trips from many years ago. We hope you enjoy these tales, and when you’re done reading, be sure to drop us a line about an old vacation of your own!
The Big Vacation
by Eric Vardeman
In the summer of 1981, my parents whisked us away on a ten day vacation that took us from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Orlando, Florida and beyond. This was the first vacation we ever took as a family. Before this, it was short weekend trips to local places so a ten day trip was a huge deal. Because we didn’t have a lot of money at the time, we didn’t fly anywhere. Rather, we drove the old ‘76 Ford LTD the entire distance.
If you drove straight though, it would have been a twenty hour drive. Years later, my father told me he and mom batted around the idea of driving straight through to Orlando, non-stop, then stopping on the way home to break the trip up. I don’t know who nixed that idea but I’m glad they did. So, early one Saturday morning we packed up the family truckster and hit the road. My sister and I had the backseat packed with games, toys, and books to distract us from the long stretches of driving. Much like the Griswolds, my parents packed up a cooler and some groceries so we could conserve some money. Over the duration of the trip, we ate almost every breakfast in our hotel rooms and lunches at parks or highway rest stops. Eating out was saved for dinners, mostly.
I was talking to my mother about this trip a couple of weeks ago and she dug out some pictures from the trip so, rather than take you through our trip, day by day, I’m going to list off all the places we visited (in no particular order) and show you some AMAZING photos. Ready? Here we go!
Battleship Memorial Park - located in Mobile, Alabama, I’m fairly certain this stop was for my dad. I remember my mom and sister being bored out of their minds. I thought it was cool though, especially getting to go inside an actual submarine. The picture is me sitting on said submarine…the USS Drum, a WWII Gato-class vessel.
Panama City Beach, Florida - this was before the place was overrun with tourism. It was just a sleepy little beach town in the Florida panhandle. It was the first time these two Indian kids had seen the ocean and we didn’t know how to act. Also, it’s one of the few pictures that features my father as he was usually the one behind the camera. We hit this place on the way down and on the way back.
Disneyworld - to the house of mouse we went! EPCOT wasn’t open yet but we spent two days in Magic Kingdom. I remember getting back to the hotel both nights just smooth worn out but having enough energy to jump into the pool to cool off. I compared the picture of Main Street with one that I have from when I took my kids and, surprisingly, not much has changed.
Sea World - surprisingly, we couldn’t find any pictures from Sea World other than my sister and I standing outside. I remember that I was mesmerized by the dolphins and that my sister and I both got large stuff Shamu’s as souvenirs. The only other proof we could find is this sweet ass captain’s hat I’m wearing the next day at…
Circus World - located in Haines City, Florida, this now defunct amusement park was run by Ringling Brothers. It was meant to be their circus winter camp and also home of their clown college (I’m not even joking). I’m not sure how dad found them gem but, aside from the Hi-C characters there behind us, I don’t remember much about this place. But man, that captain’s hat. Apparently after we were done at the park I had a gig with The Captain & Tennille.
Silver Springs - located just north of Orlando, it was home to the glass bottom boats. I actually remember enjoying the boat rides and being able to see down into the water. Sadly, this was the only picture we found from that day.
On our trip home, we made one final stop on Jackson, Mississippi. There was nothing to see in Jackson, it was just a place to stop before the next day’s eight hour drive home to Bartlesville. However, Jackson stands out in my memory because of this: that night, after dinner, my sister and I took one last dip in the pool. As we were getting out and drying off, my dad saw a guy across the parking lot selling boiled peanuts out of the back of his truck (if you’ve never had boiled peanuts you’re missing out). My dad bought a couple of sacks full and gave me one to run back over to my sister and mother while he paid. As I did so, I misjudged a hop up onto a sidewalk and, because I had walked across the parking lot barefoot, I stubbed my toe directly into the concrete. I crumbled like a sack of dirt. I was bleeding from my toe (heavily because I tore back my toenail), my knee, and my elbow. My dad had to make an emergency run to the store for medical supplies while mom tried to assure me that I wasn’t dying. At least I was injured on the last day, right?
So there are a few things we can learn from the pictures posted above. One, I had a deep, deep love for knee high socks, mesh shirts and that OU truckers hat. I will not deny any of that. Style icons apologize for nothing. Secondly, for a family that didn’t really have a lot of money at the time, my parents spoiled my sister and I to the best of their ability with this trip. I remember us having the time of our lives and not caring one damn bit that we were staying in cheap motels, drinking knock off Cragmont Cola drinks, and eating out of our car at times. I honestly didn’t know any different. In the years that followed, we took other trips but none as big as this one. Years later, my parents would spoil my own children (and the rest of us by association) with two different week long trips to the Disney parks in Florida. That’s how my parents were my whole was how they were my whole life…generous to a fault to the best of their abilities.
Panama City or Bust
by Mick Lee
It was June of 1996, and I was eighteen. I was at the age where the open road felt like a calling, as I had spent many years riding in the passenger seat with my Dad, and was eager to hit the road on my own. I had just graduated high school and was hitting the road with my best friend Derek bound for Panama City. His dad loaned us his well-loved '89 Honda Civic, complete with peeling bumper stickers and a cracked dashboard, but it looked and smelled like freedom to us. With a couple hundred bucks between us, a CD case filled with Green Day, Nirvana, and Guns & Roses, we took off from our small town in Virginia and pointed the car vaguely south. Panama City, Florida may have been the destination, but really, it was the trip itself that we really looked forward to.
This was back in the days before smart phones and GPS, so we relied on a beaten up old Rand McNally road atlas that I stole from my Dad’s truck to get us there. And we had to stop to make the occasional call home from a payphone to reassure our parents we hadn’t gotten lost or been arrested anywhere along the way.
Gas was just over a dollar a gallon, and snacks were whatever we could buy at 7-Eleven with loose change—usually Surge, beef jerky, and those pink and blue frosted Pop-Tarts we’d eat straight out of the package. Even though we were on a limited budget, we didn’t follow a straight line to Panama City. We wound our way around took in the sights where ever we happened to be.
At night, we’d just crash at rest stops, stretched out in the two front seats of the car, hoping some hitch-hiking serial killer didn’t wander by and take an interest in us.
Every stop brought its own highlights. In Pigeon Forge, TN, we wandered into a strip mall arcade and lost three hours to Killer Instinct and Daytona USA. Somewhere in Georgia, we snuck into a movie theater and watched the Kurt Russel movie, Executive Decision. Somewhere in Alabama, a lightning storm had us pulling off the road and sitting on the car hood under an interstate overpass since the windshield wipers didn’t work on the car. And when we got to Panama City, there was a short-lived, but intense 48-hour romance with a young lady who was also on a road trip of freedom.
By the time we hit Panama City in Florida, we were running on fumes…financially, physically, and in the car itself. But we felt free. And I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt that free again actually.
We took pictures on disposable cameras, but they’ve been lost to time. We bummed cigarettes in gas station parking lots. We ran out of quarters to make those phone calls home. The car smelled like sweaty teen guys and fast food fries, and every CD we had in the car we played to death.
We took our time getting back. I knew that the window was already closing. That window of short-lived opportunity where I could just be totally free. I knew everything was about to change…college, jobs, bills, and more. But for that ten days, life was nothing but open lanes and endless possibility. No GPS and no cell phones. No social media to constantly update with photos from the trip. Just the road, the breeze rolling in through the rolled down windows, a CD case full of scratched CDs, and the belief that anything was possible in a beat-up Honda Civic.
I wasn’t just on a trip. I was driving through one of the last great analog summers, and didn’t even know it at the time.
I miss that kind of freedom.
