Childhood Vacations

So, just back from Colorado and I got to thinking about all of those childhood vacation - were they good or bad?

Well first one - bad.  I was under one year old and a coke bottle exploded in my face!  $250,000 US dollars later, in 1955 dollars!, and I had eye sight restored, though damaged for life.

Next one I remember was to the Pacific Coast - awesome.  Huge Pacific storm hit the shores and campground!  The waves were incredible!  I was about three and I really wanted to see the waves come over the dunes!  My parents utterly freaked out!

The rest of the early ones were mostly just good ones, until we moved to Europe.

There we had to climb every peak, travel every twisty tiny road and this boy does not handle 15,000 feet well at all!  Nor does my sister handle twisty tiny roads to this very day.  I still can not eat Frosted Flakes without remembering the horror of the roads in the Pyrenees Mountains!  Urp!

And then, mother went crazy and never did come back to Earth.  So all vacations became a nightmare.

She reverted to only eating SPAM, because it was real meat and in Europe, apparently there was no real meat.  I hated SPAM from the first bite on.  But if it is all there is to eat, well you gag it down!  She had cases of it flown in from the US!  Boiled SPAM, fried SPAM, baked SPAM, braised SPAM - she made it all, often with parsnips or rutabaga - guaranteed to keep my stomach empty and my throat burning from vomiting so much!  I learned how to eat about two hours at friends homes before she made dinner so at least that food would not be lost!  My sister just poured honey on any style of SPAM and sucked it down!  I am gagging right now, just remembering that one - and the lip smacking noises!  Yes, all vacations everyday featured "slap-slap sandwiches", a slice of SPAM between two pieces of bread .... oh dear Lord ... urp!

Worse vacation ever?  That is a hard one ...

We went to the winter carnival in Basel in 1967 and mother got bored.  So, next thing I know, we are stuffed onto a train to Interlochen, shuttled to a cog train to climb the Jungfrau.  My brain exploded at 15,000 feet or whatever height that restaurant is inside the mountain! I was so ill.  I was sipping tea when the witch hunt started for whom ever had lost it in the bathroom.  I was terrified it was me they hunted - nope it was some drunk guy!  But, I was in hiding for hours!  When it was time to go, they had to evacuate the hotel and restaurant due to a raging blizzard and we missed getting our seats, so the engineer let us sit in the cab with him!  Super cool!  Were it not for the 100 mph plus winds and the 13 feet of snow which had fallen on the tracks, mother screaming we were going to die for hours on end!, it might have been fun!  Eventually, the train iced and that was it.  By now the engineer had had it with mother and went to find his gun.  We all sat close to the boilers and waited eight hours, with no food or water, for a locomotive with a snow plow head to rescue us!  Yeah, a two day tour that should have taken only 12 hours!

No, I doubt any vacation could ever equal that one - especially with the crazy lady literally screaming the entire time that we were all going to die!  Father got the porter to spike her drink and knocked my mother out for most of the snow bound train day!

And then we had to suffer through a very drunk, then hung over screaming mother - but we were back to the hotel by then ...

:)