Photo by Vladimir Mucibabic
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The “real man’s” guide to holidaying A few helpful hints for the perfect summer vacation By Gerry Bowler
WARNING: The following article contains humour and therefore should only be taken somewhat seriously. A while back the Mormon church ran a series of ads encouraging domestic togetherness. In one of them a family, tired of being neglected by the workaholic father, lures the busy man into a camper and kidnaps him. As they drive away they giggle at their own daring and tell Dad that he really has no choice but to accompany them. Though some viewers might have been left with a warm glow of appreciation for the notion of mandatory conviviality, I was less impressed. I wanted the Mormons to show us the sequel about the inevitable consequences of making a family travel together: the father cursing by the side of the road in a downpour as he tries to fix a flat tire while the rest of the clan merrily plays cribbage in the van; the teenage daughter, wearying of her younger brother, ditching him at Canada’s Wonderland so she can text her boyfriend in private. There’s Mom, hours overdue for a rendezvous at the food court as she is caught up in a frenzy of shoe-buying at the Mall of America;
Junior disappears with new friends at the beach leaving his tearstricken parents convinced he has drowned. And finally we have the long, sullen drive home as each family member nurses his or her grievances and vows never to do this sort of thing again. The idea of family vacations is a relatively new one in human history. There is no record of ancient Egyptian parents packing up the brood and hiking off to Giza to watch the Hebrew slaves erecting the new pyramids and boasting, “Someday, little Imenhotep, this plateau will be packed with tourists from far-off lands having their pockets picked and being cheated by swarms of touts.” When the Roman emperor Tiberius vacationed on the isle of Capri, you may be sure that he took pains to leave the family at home—the one time he didn’t, he ended up murdered by his kinfolk. It is worth noting that Laura Secord left her kids with her husband when she embarked on her cross-country jaunt in 1813. Only with the post-war Baby Boom and the affordability of Detroit’s chrome-bedizened land yachts did it occur to families that they might journey together to amusement parks, snake
seven – issue thirty-one july – august, 2013 page 19