Family Vacations by Helen Chappell
Certain mornings, when the light falls just so and there’s a faint smell of bacon in the air, I have a f lashback to my childhood. After spending the night in a strange place, my family and I are checking out of a motel and hitting the road for another day of Family Trip. In my memories, motels always seem to be bathed in that Edward Hopper light you get on bright cloudless mornings. And having spent the night in a motel, away from home, just added to the surreal feeling. As did grits for breakfast in some small-town café. We did a
lot of traveling through the South and later all the way across country to the freshly opened Disneyland. Back in the mid-century, motels were a big thing. First constructed along the new interstates, when more and more people started to own cars, each one had its own personality, unlike the predictability of Holiday Inns and Hilton Gardens we have today. So, it was kind of a gamble when you needed to stop for the night because you never knew if this night’s neon sign would lure you into a den of filth and worn-out towels or an
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