Monday, July 11, 2022

Where Did Summer Go?

 RHYS BOWEN:  Clare and I are working on our next Molly Murphy book. It’s going to be set in the Catskills in a fledgling bungalow colony and we are now deep into our research. At the time we write about, 1907, there were no big resorts in the Catskills and it was just beginning to emerge as a place where Jewish families spent their summers. Jewish farmers who had settled in the area outside New York and were growing fruits and vegetables for the city took in guests for the steamy summer months where city living with the risk of disease became unbearable. Then they built primitive cottages (bungalows) for guests to rent. The bungalows had their own small kitchen (hence the name Kochalayn in Yiddish–cook for yourself).  Families came up for the whole summer. Wives and children stayed. Fathers worked during the week and came up by train at weekends. It was a perfect arrangement. Children had a carefree exposure to country living. They helped collect eggs and pick berries while their mothers played cards (and later mahjong).


Gradually hotels were built, and then resorts until the heyday of Grossingers and the magnificent resorts that attracted the comedians and crooners of the day. All of this fell into decline when plane travel made vacations abroad easier and presumably when women had to enter the workforce and thus did not have summers free. 

And why only Jewish families, may you ask? The horrible truth is that Jews were not welcome elsewhere, so they created their own summer escape.

Older people I know had similar childhoods growing up in San Francisco, where it’s foggy and cold all summer. San Francisco families had cabins on the Russian River or at Clearlake and came up for the summer, leaving the husbands to work all week. It sounded ideal, especially today when we read that most people do not take the vacation days they are owed. A week on a beach is not enough to recharge!

I remember my own summers–we lived in a rambling old house in the country with an acre of orchard. I remember building tree houses, a trapeze, playing with feral kittens in the old shed (occasionally trying to smuggle one into the house), or going off on my bike, only to return when it got dark. It seemed that summers were endless and carefree.   Now I look up and it’s September!

So Reds, do you have fond summer memories? Did your family have a cabin somewhere? Do you make the most of summer now?

JENN McKINLAY: Growing up, we always camped or traveled for weeks during the summer and then my mom bought a cottage on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and that’s where my Hooligans learned to run wild. Mom was a teacher so she made sure we milked every drop of summer freedom for what it was worth. After she bought the cottage, she  left for Canada the day after graduation and came back the day before school started. Now the Hooligans are in college and not free to take off to Canada with me, so it’ll be me and mom and my sis-in-law, which is its own kind of lovely summer break. 

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh yes I have great summer memories too. Early on, my parents rented a really tiny house at the Jersey shore. We’d all jam in there with my mother’s sisters and their kids, and my father would take the train down on weekends. Later on, the whole family group moved to Hatteras Island, and stayed in a giant Coast Guard house that fit everyone. We played lots of board games and spent hours and hours roasting in the sun. Nobody had anywhere to be or anything else to do, so we enjoyed the beach and the family! When we got a little older, we put a surfboard in my cousin's convertible and drove around acting cool and trying to attract boys. That’s where I got my famous  sex education tip: “never lie down on a blanket with a boy.“


HANK PHILLIPI RYAN:
Ahhh….we didn’t have a routine summer thing.  We had ponies, so mostly we went to the local pool and listened to transistor radios, or rode along the trails and fields.  LOTS of reading. One summer, all five kids and two parents and another family of four took a tour of the west on Frontier AiIrlines–they had a deal where you could go on however many flights you wanted in three weeks for a flat rate. (CAN YOU IMAGINE??) No reservations, you just showed up and crossed your fingers.  We hopped on and off–in Denver, Colorado Springs, Jackson Hole, Helena, Sun Valley, Phoenix,  Tucson, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City Durango, on and on. It was incredible, and I think we bankrupted the airline company.

HALLIE EPHRON: My parents sent us to camp, pretty much all summer. Day camp (I loved being a junior counselor) and a month of overnight camp (in Arizona) which I also loved. 

I do not remember a single family “trip.” Not one! Though we did rent a house for a week on Malibu beach a couple of seasons running. A rambling house with hundreds of feet of sandy beach between it and the water. Spectacular. 

Tracking the house, Dick Van Dyke ended up owning it years later.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We traveled every summer. My parents loved to pile in the car and go and we covered a lot of territory over the years. There were many trips to Mexico, including terrifying drives on the old Pan American Highway to Mexico City. Lots of trips in the US, too, including one that took us from Dallas to LA to Vancouver, and back down through the Rockies. Otherwise, I ran wild in the summers, playing outside and roaming the neighborhood, swimming at the rec center pool, and hanging out at the country club pool while my parents played golf. Fun times.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My teen summers in the Finger Lakes were wonderful, in a kind of 1970's retro movie way. Crammed into a car with friends to see movies at the Lakeshore Drive- In (my friend Shaun always hid in the trunk to keep the cost down.) My bff Tracy and I would take the bus into Syracuse, which was then a thriving, successful city with glamorous department stores, cute places to eat, and a magnificent Carnegie library right next to where my boyfriend worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA. (See what I mean about a retro movie?)


My folks sailed on Lake Onondaga every weekend on The Tailwind, and we would take dad’s vacation on the same 38-foot boat, dropping mast to go through the lock system of New York’s canals and then out onto Lake Ontario.

Today, Lake Onondaga is considerably cleaner and safer, but everything else is gone - the Drive In flattened, the library renovated beyond recognition, and the city hollowed out when its major industries moved out of the US. Good thing I checked out À la recherche du temps perdu when I had the chance.

RHYS: Ah, the good old days!  Next week we're going down to San Diego where I have rented a house on the beach for a week with the whole family. I'm really looking forward to it, but a week is too short. A month would have been perfect but everyone is too busy to stay longer.

So what are your favorite childhood memories and do you still take long vacations?

55 comments:

  1. When we were growing up, we didn’t travel during the summer but I still have wonderful memories of spending the day at the beach or playing outside with Jean and the kids in the neighborhood . . . .

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  2. Lovely memories, all. My family of six camped in Sequoia National Park amid the giant redwoods every summer for two weeks. We wore our oldest playclothes, swam in snow melt dammed streams, made up treasure hunts with maps and hidden coins of tin foil, and learned about the constellations from my mom at night. Plus lots of hiking, ranger walks, and singing around the campfire. It was bliss.

    Otherwise it was reading, swim lessons, eating peaches and apricots from our trees, making milkshakes in the old two-speed blender, and playing with the neighborhood kids. I also went to sleep away girl scout camp for a number of years, which I also loved.

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    1. I also loved girl scout camp (apart from the year our tent flooded and my sleeping bag got soaked)

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  3. When I was a kid, we used to go to Vermont for a week during the summers. I also used to spend a week at my grandparents for 2 or 3 years. At the time, I had a good time. I mean, I was a kid and got to do different things. Throw in day camp or camping when I was in the Boy Scouts and I had a decent amount of trips when I was a kid.

    But summer is dead and gone as it relates to vacations these days. The last time I had any extended time off where I actually did something was 2005 when I went to Philadelphia for the Wizard World Philly comic convention. And I don't see that changing any time soon. I pretty much just go to work and pay bills year-round. Throw in more than 2 years of pandemic and who really wants to go places with other people around? I have a day trip coming up later this month, the delayed X-mas gift from a friend of mine. But a week-long vacation? Pshaw! Those days are gone and never coming back for me.

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    1. Jay, it sounds like you need a put your feet up, reading stacks of books staycation!

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  4. Such fun and fond memories!

    My husband grew up going to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan most summers. Just as the Jewish families in the Catskills, his mother and her best friend would pile all the kids into a station wagon and drive up to stay in the other family's wonderful "cabin"--with five bedrooms and a dock, with the husbands coming up a couple times. The other family's home there is still owned by one of the daughters, and we were invited up a couple years ago for a revisit. Lots of boat trips in Lake Huron and walks in the woods.

    My family didn't do much in the summer because my mother worked, but we made sure our kids had magical childhood summers, so I got to relive a small bit of that myself.

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    1. I love that "cabin". My dear friend Lyn Hamilton had a similar cabin on a lake north of Toronto. I went to stay, expecting a cabin and found a fabulous 4 bedroom home.

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  5. My father built a cottage near a river in the Eastern Townships in Quebec. My mother, my brothers and I went there all summer. My father joined us during the weekends and during his holidays.
    We spent our time roaming the surrounding and playing in the water. I have very fond memories of this time.
    I had the same sex education as Lucy: never lie down on a blanket with a boy (or on anything else…)
    Danielle

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    1. LOL Danielle, maybe our mothers got those words from the same book!

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    2. Nobody ever gave me that advice about the blanket. All I heard from all quarters was, "Save yourself for marriage." When I was nineteen I made a conscious decision to jettison that order, and I'm glad I did!

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    3. My mother told me an aspirin was the most effective form of birth control ever. Put it between your knees and hold it tightly there. :-D

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  7. As a kid, we did not go on long summer vacations since my dad worked. But we did drive to NJ or PA twice to visit my uncle, aunt & 2 cousins for a week. I remember being carsick on those winding Alleghany roads & also touring the Hershey Chocolate factory.

    I did not spend much time playing outdoors with my friends, except in the evenings or on weekends. I worked a part-time job from 11 and a full-time summer job from 15.

    JENN AND HANK: I am envious of your NS summers and Frontier Airlines western vacation, respectively!

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  8. I love reading about all of your summer memories today!

    My grandmother owned a cottage on a beautiful lake about a 15 minute drive from our small town. My dad worked pretty much 7 days a week all year round in his family's tiny grocery store. He was the oldest of 6 siblings and the only one who stayed in the business. All the other siblings ' families stayed at the cottage for at least part of the summer. My dad's youngest sister ruled the roost and although the cousins were more like siblings, there was quiet drama among the women in that tiny kitchen. We visited almost daily swimming and boating.

    Coincidentally, last Saturday, my vrry dear cousin and I went through family photos together and what memories of those summers! I thought we'd be weeping but we found ourselves laughing and grinning at the clothes and at the combinations of family members. What a kick! (I'm returning on Thursday for box #2!)

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    1. My mom came from a small family. we were the only grandchildren so I longed for cousins!

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  9. My parents both worked, so there were very few long vacations in the summer. We went to Gettysburg one year, and Boston another. But my grandmothers traded watching the little ones and I spent my summers riding my bike, at the local pool, reading, or hanging out with my best friend.

    The Hubby's family had a trailer up at Sherkston Shores in Ontario on the northern edge of Lake Erie. His mom would take the 3 boys up for the summer and his dad would join them on the weekends.

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  10. I love all your memories! Ah summer time! As a carless family in a land of cars, with two librarian parents, we were lucky to get to the beach for a week most summers. The Oregon coast is beautiful, but often very windy in the summer and the water is always COLD! We still loved it. My twin and I spent a week each year at Camp Namanu and have wonderful memories of that beautiful spot on the Sandy River. I learned to love nature there and how miserable mosquito bites can be (my sis and I were sent to the nurse to have our water blisters lanced...ouch!) Most of my memories are of being at home: afternoons at Creston Pool swimming and sunning and hanging with friends; running through the sprinkler in the yard, playing outside for hours with the neighbor girls during the long summer nights, and sitting in the back yard while mom read to us.

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    1. Hallie here: I love the Oregon coasts! I was entranced by the tide pools and all the creatures therein.

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    2. I think the Oregon coast is beautiful, but the climate is terrible. It is always, cold, windy and usually grey skies. I prefer California, blue skies sunshine and our beautiful coast too.

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  11. We spent two or three weeks every summer at my grandparents' Cape Cod cottage, swimming, sailing, and roaming the beach. I lived in the cottage and worked in a restaurant during college summers (bliss! prep all morning,, beach time, dinner shift started at 3:30). My kids grew up vacationing at the same cottage.

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  12. I have memories of family camping trips, the most memorable one being six weeks long in British Columbia. We rented a truck camper and drove all around and explored the province. BC is so beautiful and I loved it -- especially seeing a bear for the first time.

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  13. My father and his brother each built a cottage next to each other on land half-way between where both families lived in the winter time. The first construction began in 1956, and to tell the truth construction of some kind, be it wise or not has never stopped. We moved out as soon as school was over and moved back the day before school began, with the always annoying trip home on Friday to do the laundry and have a bath – we had a well, but no hot water, but did have a sink and toilet. Things improved over the years incrementally.
    As kids – there were 6 of us – we were fairly well-matched age-wise and so always had someone to play or fight with. We built treehouses in real trees – we would find the scraps of wood from the latest construction project, try and bum nails from our fathers, but usually we had to straighten out old ones, and then build the edifice ourselves – no adult help, and definitely no kits. My cousin and I would open the windows at 6 in the morning, and sneak out to run in the early morning dew, and then sneak back in through the window and back to bed. Believe it or not, my mother never knew this until I told her many years later. I loved the place and the life and all that entailed and hated the life in town. Semi-naked, barefoot and free, it was.
    I went to university, married, lived in Quebec and Ontario for 35 years and then moved back to Nova Scotia to be with my parents and my mother’s Alzheimer’s. To make this a perfect story – we renovated (actually sort of built on) the old cottage, and now are retired here full time. We have running water as well as an acre of gardens, and trees, and chickens, few but good neighbours and a view as near to perfection as you can get. Summer vacation is now our life.
    By the way Hank, I travelled Frontier airlines in 1972. There was a deal for “out of the USA-ers” that you could fly on several of the smaller airlines for a month for $50. That was cheaper than getting a ticket from Regina to Halifax, so I started in Seattle and moseyed north and south and definitely east until I got to Boston a month later. I saw so much that I would never have the opportunity to see again – and got home as well!

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    1. "Summer vacation is now our life." Could anything be more perfect than that?

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    2. How did I miss out on those Frontier Airlines deals? Could it be that I had three kids under five at the time?

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  14. My grandparents had bought a big old Victorian farmhouse on a spring-fed lake about 25 miles north of Milwaukee just before WWII. It had a double-decker boathouse right on the water, the upper level of which was a roofed pavilion, and there was a tiny "summer kitchen" behind the main house. The lake was a steep-sided kettle lake, formed by the glacier that had once covered the state.

    Over the years, the verandas acquired screening, the pavilion on top of the boathouse was enclosed to create a two-bedroom cottage literally on the water for my grandparents, the summer kitchen grew a bathroom, a screened porch and a bedroom, the Big House was divided and re-divided, and my parents built a two bedroom bungalow with a fireplace.

    Various family members, and some family friends who became long-term tenants, avoided the polio epidemic by spending their summers out there. I read my way through the public library in the nearest small town. We all learned to type in summer school in that town (and learned a lot about small town prejudice.) My dad and my grandfather commuted daily on highways that became faster, and the nearby small town became a Milwaukee suburb.

    After my parents died, my brother inherited the place, and I got empty it so he and his wife could remodel it. It is now unrecognizable.

    But the place as it was, the place I opened and closed every year for decades, haunts my dreams and my imagination. I've found out that it haunts the dreams of cousins, too, and of the children of those long-term tenants. It is the wallpaper on my computer. It-- if everyone were still alive-- is my vision of what paradise would be. (Minus the strife-- there is always strife-- but what does a kid remember of strife?)

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    1. How you must miss it. I hope your brother takes good care of it (and invites you often!)

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    2. Alas, not at all. His wife (2nd, now deceased; first was nicer) didn't like his Milwaukee sisters. She is gone, but at least their daughter calls it her "happy place."

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  15. RHYS: What a timely post! As a child, I remember that my family often would go on one trip during the summer to various places, usually to Southern California to visit my grandfather. I remember when we went to Disneyland one summer and my grandfather met us there. Every summer I recall my family going to the Renaissance Faire in Novato (?) for the day. I would wear my Princess costume. Yes, I loved storybook fairytales.

    At summer school, I went swimming every morning with my class. Amazing that we all got to go swimming in the mornings before we went to our elementary school a few blocks away from the community center swimming pool. I also remember at the age of 5 walking with my class from the elementary school to the high school where there was a memorial park next to the HS. We had a picnic. We ate watermelon. I think it was the first time I had watermelon.

    One summer we went to Hawaii with my parents, my grandfather, his sister and brother in law.

    After my grandfather died, we did not travel anywhere that summer, though my Mom and I got to do lots of fun stuff like day trips to Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiradelli square with my cousins,

    And I also had my first boyfriend that summer. We went to Great America with my Mom and cousin.

    One summer my Mom and I travelled to Chicago to visit another cousin. I was amazed that my Uncle's house was built just before Abe Lincoln became President of the USA. I have so many wonderful Summer memories. Because my Mom was a schoolteacher, it meant that she got three ? months vacation. My father always worked.

    I remember fun summer activities during the summer. Sometimes we would go to Tilden Park where they had pony rides or to the Animal Farm.

    Diana

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  16. Wonderful memories, thanks to all for sharing! Summers when we were kids meant vacations to my mom's parents--a big old house with a wrap-around porch, a creek to play in "Stay out of the creek" the grown-ups would say as we divested ourselves of shoes and socks and naturally headed for the creek as soon as their attention was diverted. Tables on the porch groaning with Sunday dinners, two porch swings, an endless supply of rockers, an old hound snoozing in the early morning sun, helping my grandmother gather eggs.... always a houseful of cousins to play with. Being upstairs in a featherbed at night, drifting off to sleep listening to cowbells on the hillsides and the soft murmur of adult talk and laughter under it all. It remains heaven in my memories.

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    1. Oh Flora, this sounds so perfect. I loved my summers except that I was mostly alone. I'd have loved a big group of friends.

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    2. Flora, your post reminds me of John Denver's song:
      "It could hold eight kids and four hound dogs
      And a piggy we stole from the shed
      We didn't get much sleep but we had a lot of fun
      On grandma's feather bed"

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    3. Those big old houses do hold memories, don't they?

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  17. This brings up such wonderful memories. Being a child of the 50s family vacations meant getting in the car and going - usually to visit family in South Florida. In those days it was US 1 the whole way. Got to see some cool things - Highlights included listening to my mother scream over every bridge on the Overseas Highway on the way to Key West The 7 Mile Bridge was especially memorable. I was a kid, I thought it was funny. Taking the ferry from Stock Island to Cuba (see above re 1950s) so my dad could go to the casinos in Varadero. I was put in the hotel day care with a bunch of other kids. We were right on the beach and got to swim and build sand castles to our hearts content. We spent time in Havana which was gorgeous. Young as I was, I still remember the monuments and glorious churches.

    In later years we rented bungalows at the Jersey Shore where we could invite old friends and make new ones. When the folks had nothing planned, I went to my great grandparents or my godmother's parents farms. Winter vacations were always spent on the great-grandparents farm. Magical memories.

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    1. Cuba? How lucky was that, Kait! These memories sound perfect

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  18. Summer family trips were never in the cards for us, as my dad was a construction worker and worked long days while the Ohio weather held. For a few years we did have a membership at a private swim club, and a family friend would pick up my non-driving mom and me almost every day to spend the day lazing under the shade trees and swimming in the pool. But my strongest memories are from my pre-teen and teen years. We lived in a subdivision with a pool and all the kids spent most days there, swimming and learning the ins and outs of social interaction.

    As we were raising our son, we did try to do at least one meaningful vacation each summer, and we have some great memories from Smoky Mountain National Park, Mammoth Cave, houseboating on Lake Cumberland, Rocky Mountain National Park, Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands, Zion National Park, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone....

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    1. Our kids grew up with a pool too, Susan. They learned to swim almost when they could walk. In Texas we had our own pool but the subdivision had two huge ones, so naturally the kids hung out there while we had to clean our pool for nothing!

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  19. CAMP! I forgot. Yes, I went to Girl Scout camp for several years, and I still know all the songs. They are taking up room in my brain that probably should have been used for something more valuable. John Jacob Jinkleheimer Smith? White Coral Bells? The Titanic Song. (Where we gaily sang: "Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship when down." SO FUN!)

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    1. I loved the rounds at camp the most, Hank, and the harmonies. "Dona Nobis Pacem," "The Ashgrove," "Barges," Rose" (although those lyrics are highly questionable), something aoubt cuckoos, plus John Jacob, "White Coral Bells," and so many more.

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    2. I remember it as John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.

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    3. We never sang the Titanic song in England! We did sing the Woad song...Ancient Britons never hit on anything as good as woad to fit on necks and knees and where you sit on...

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  20. Reading the Reds’ recollections brings back the best bits of childhood summers, most notably the sense of genuinely free time and ability to relish it without restrictions. Thank you all for a lovely summertime trip back in time. - Susan Shea

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  21. I grew up in Ohio-my parents, sister & I took a vacation in the Tri-state area each summer. I also spent a week with my aunt in Michigan every summer, which I enjoyed! My husband, our daughters, & I are avid travelers, have toured the 50 States many times, & have visited 24 Countries-lots of fun travels over the years!

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  22. Hallie here: l love reading these memories. And watching my daughter and her husband making memories for my grands. She and her Jack bought his grandmother's cottage on an island in Maine where he'd spent tiime summers all the while he was growing up. Of coure the new kids love it as much as the older ones.

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    1. An island in Maine would be my dream retreat. Or a cottage in Cornwall. Or a villa in Provence...

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  23. We never had one thing we did over the summer. I did go to camp during jr. and sr. high. We would take family vacations.

    I'd point out that the men in these scenarios were working all summer. The women and children got a summer away, but they were working and doing longer commutes to spend time with them during the summer. I feel like they would be pretty burned out from all this. A week at the beach sounds more relaxing than this to me.

    I also can't imagine not using your vacation time. I am always taking mine.

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  24. Arghhhhh! I was finishing up my comments when my computer decided to blink and take it all away. So, a quick summary. My fun in the summer mostly consisted of running the neighborhood with my neighborhood friends, on bike and on foot. It was lots of fun. We did go to Lake Erie, near Sandusky quite a few summers, for a week or a little more. We stayed in a grand old hotel there, where there were live bands (think like Bennie Goodman, but not him) and garden paths to walk. The lake was nice then, not polluted, and we would sunbathe on the beach and play in the water. We did go to Florida, Ft. Myers, for the month of February when I was three (turned four there) and rented a house.

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    1. The above comments are from me. I'm not having a lot of luck here today.

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  25. Summer really is a magical time for travel, isnt it?

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  26. One of our frequent summer trips was to a beach hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi. NATO (that's National Association of Theater Owners!) had conferences there. Wish I could remember what it was called!

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  27. Swimming lessons, summer school, Girl Scout Day camp when I wasn't in summer school and working at the church's concession at the county fair. That was much of my child hood. There was one weekend each summer, for many years, that my mother's family would congregate in a small cabin next to a shallow creek up on St Helena Rd but the owners sold the property to build their dream retirement home. We took day trips to the coast on an exceptionally hot Sundays.

    As a teenager we took a few trips to Grandpa's cabin on the lake in Washington but it always started raining as soon as we cross the state line on the way north and stopped on the day we were leaving.

    I don't think I knew I was missing summer adventures because we're 1) busy, 2) had cousins to play with (Mom took care of them) and 3) didn't know any different..

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  28. My family and my cousins' family had an open air camp northwest of Yosemite. The parents and assorted friends built terraces for dining and cooking, sleeping, a tent platform for changing clothes and a shower house with toilet. We kids swam in the lake and explored old gold mines. At night 15 or more of us would be lined up in sleeping bags looking at the stars surrounded by pines and cedars. This was after we played cut-throat canasta, 3 teams of 9. It was glorious. Later it was years of 4-H camp higher in the Sierras. How lucky we were.

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  29. The movie "A Walk on the Moon" portrays the family cabin vacation, in 1969. As for me, I went to girl scout day camp and twice to overnight camp in Rhode Island. We went to the beach--usually Newport 3rd--on the weekends if it wasn't rainy.

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