Remembering family vacations from the past
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 29, 2024
- 427
Last week I shared some vacation memories, with the focus on a more generalized point of view, and your response was fantastic.
This time around I’d like to get a little more specific, so fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride as we head back in time again.
Here are five memorable interludes in Dewey Family vacation lore:
Limo-Me Elmo
This was a trip-saving decision so out of character for our father that even today I have to shake my head in amazed wonder. It was summer 1971, and we were in our nation’s capital, by far the most challenging mishmash of confusing big-city streets Dad had ever faced; accordingly, he enlisted the services of a limousine driver, a wizened, brash, intelligent and altogether engaging man named Elmo. This changed everything.
Instead of pinballing around all those avenues running crosswise and finding ourselves in some scary ghetto dead end, we rode in streamlined comfort as Elmo negotiated the cockeyed grid with a seasoned professional’s grace and guile. Even Mom — who was a white-knuckled co-pilot on her best days — relaxed and got into the flow of the day, reveling in pure luxury and falling reverently silent when in the presence of the Lincoln Memorial and JFK’s eternal flame.
What was their motivation?
Not technically a summer vacation memory, but this review wouldn’t be complete without an entry devoted to “The Godfather,” arguably the seminal family film of that era. Others in contention? “The Paper Chase,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind” and “The Birds.”
Moving on, it was Easter 1972 — that year will pop up again — and we were in South Bend, too cool for the public pool or Putt-Putt, the moon rock viewing already in our rearview mirror, and we found ourselves — as a family — at the Colfax Theater for a screening of the most talked-about movie in many years. I still remember the darkness of the opening scene, the utter lack of defining sunlight, as Bonasera requests vengeance for the sexual assault on his daughter. We see Brando, stroking a cat, listening to the undertaker’s plea, finally asking the key question: “Why haven’t you sought out my friendship before?”
Words to that effect. The film is all about that bond, the kind that takes the word “family” into a new dimension, and that’s what Dad missed when he asked, without irony, walking out in the spring sunshine, why the Corleones acted the way they did. Mom got it on a visceral level and often invoked the godfather’s name when things got difficult, though she lacked a viable Luca Brasi as a henchman. “For help,” she would intone, “we must seek out Don Corleone.”
The Communing Rock
Speaking of our mother and her unknowable well of unhappiness, we should broach the subject of Indian Lake, her answer to Dad’s South Bend legacy. Consider, for a moment, her life and the way Beatley’s resort meant something special to her. Add into that potent memory-mixture places like O’Connor’s Landing, the Redbird restaurant, the amusement park midway with its lighted statue of the Blessed Virgin, the Grill, the beach at Fox Island, Spend-a-Day Marina, all of it. I will always remember how happy she was when her brothers were in Russell’s Point at the same time as we were, connecting her past with her present.
Who knows what was in her mind when she sat on the Communing Rock, that venerable stone that offered her a waterfront perch, a place where she felt so comfortable and at ease? I certainly don’t, but I know it’s one of those vacation time-and-place memories I had to include.
A Steppenwolf storm
Cincinnati was separated from Covington, Kentucky by a bridge that spanned the Ohio River, and I still remember that long walk from Riverfront Stadium as Dad eschewed a cab ride in favor of hoofing it. Mom was not happy. But earlier that day, my brother and I shared a half-hour or so, just talking and watching as a malevolent thunderstorm worked its way across the state line, but what makes it indelible in my memory is that not one, but two, tape recorders were operating. One was playing my cassette tape of Steppenwolf’s greatest hits; the other was capturing our conversation or play-by-play (as it were) of the storm’s approach.
The vantage point was a sealed window on an upper floor of the Covington Holiday Inn, but you could still make out the occasional thunderclap, even as one could imagine the pitchfork stabbings of lightning bolts. And the tunes, the power of Steppenwolf at their howling best — “Born To Be Wild,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” “The Pusher” and “Who Needs Ya,” among other songs — added just the right amount of menace to a storm that didn’t need a lot of punch to be visually and sonically awesome. Brothers in arms, indeed.
Into everyone’s life, a little Lorraine must fall
So yeah, Cherokee Village wasn’t much in terms of a vacation destination, not when measured against D.C., Boston, Chicago, St. Louis or Virginia Beach, but it wasn’t without its unique charms. How we ended up in the middle of Arkansas isn’t the point; the fact is Dad booked us into a timeshare arrangement for which he got a three-day reservation for a song. All he and Mom had to do was attend a couple of come-hither seminars and the rest was vacation gravy.
In summer 1972, though I didn’t know it at the time, that trip was destined to be my last with the family. I still remember how I felt when Dad trusted me to drive from Missouri into Arkansas, a vacation first, though I think my siblings were less than pleased at having me behind the wheel of the Country Squire. Anyway, I was 17, and I met a girl at the swimming hole, and she and I got along nicely, so well that we became rather inseparable for the rest of our time there. It was all a lot of teenage fun, and Lorraine was quite fetching in that bikini. I guess I was growing up.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where vacation memories are the coin of the realm.