I Miss Vacation

When I was young, the family would all pile into the family truckster and head off to one of our two vacations. Vacation one was usually to Maine, where my grandmother had a house in Owl's Head. My parents, my three siblings and I, along with the family dog and usually a few cats (yep, litter boxes on the floor of the back seat and a dog on tranquilizers that usually wore off on Buttermilk Lane - where he would promptly throw up) crowded into an Oldsmobile sedan for the in excess of eight-hour trip to coastal Maine. Lunch was sandwiches my mother would have made the night before (we usually left at 0 dark 30), eaten on the side of the road, usually somewhere in Massachusetts. It was always nice to eat your tuna sandwich with the car exhaust assaulting your nose as you tried to eat your lunch. We would arrive in Maine in the middle of the afternoon for at least a week's stay in our own little paradise.

Our second vacation was often to Amagansett, a little town on the eastern end of Long Island, where my father would have secured a rental property from a colleague in "the industry." Another week of sun and surf in the Hamptons playground. I could start with stories of vacations that would populate this blog for weeks and perhaps will throw in a nugget here and there in the future.

Once out on my own, I managed to get away now and then, but never for the full two weeks a summer that I used to have. There just isn't the time (or the resources) anymore. And now that I work for the government, annual leave comes in a slow trickle. But we manage the long weekend now and then. Now our vacations often coincide with professional meetings (Chicago in a few weeks and Williamsburg, VA in the fall).

I spotted this article in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday. It just made me sad. The article starts off with the statistic that "roughly 50 percent of working Americans won't take warm-weather getaways this year." Hey, I'm in the majority! WooHoo!

The article continues that we have that statistic because we are "a nation whose glob-gripping federal government is the only one in the whole industrialized world not to legally require generous periods of paid kick-back-and-hang time." Further we are "a nation that's socially screwed up, particularly in comparison with European countries like France, which orders its citizens outside to play for the entire month in August." I was in France for the summer of 1983 and they aren't kidding, you have to go to the country because there is no one left in Paris to help you.

There is an argument to be made that we are, as a society, not taking vacations because we are too in touch with our work. The other 50% of people that will take vacations, will likely bring laptops, blackberries and cellphones to make sure they stay in touch with their offices. As my wife and I like to say, at least we work in a profession where "there are no archival emergencies. Unless the records are wet or on fire, don't call me."

The article advances the notion that another reason we are hesitant to take vacations is that we are afraid of losing our jobs to the young guy down the hall (hey, he has no leave and evidently no life, so let's pay him less and jettison the dead weight, who wants to spend more time with his family).

So where are you going this summer? Do you need someone to carry your bags?