By Edwin Cooney
For the better part of the past four weeks, I’ve been on
vacation. From Wednesday, August 6th,
through Wednesday, August 27th, I was in Northern California
visiting my two lads and some of the most wonderful friends I’ve ever known.
At one point during my California holiday, I informed those
of you who get these weekly musings that due to a “heavy vacation schedule” I
was suspending the issuance of these columns until my return. A number of you found the idea of a
“heavy vacation schedule” to be quite amusing and perhaps a bit hard to
swallow.
Still, I insist that a heavy vacation schedule is exactly
what I was up against. After all,
my wife and I were on vacation, but no one else we were visiting was also on
holiday (as our British/American hosts Bean and Chris might put it!) Several
times we had to alter our pleasure-laden schedule to accommodate our hosts'
day-to-day obligations.
A vacation, I’ve discovered, is invariably a state of
mind. I once knew a gentleman who
insisted that he was always glad when his vacations were over so he could go
back to work to rest up. Until
just recently I’d concluded that observation was merely indicative of his sense
of ironic humor, but now I’m not so sure.
A vacation, like most things, is of course what one makes of
it. If one is easily put off by
distractions from normal day-to-day activities, a vacation may actually be
counterproductive. On the other
hand, vacationing for millions of entrepreneurs worldwide constitutes a very
productive living.
Although profit-making vacation spots existed in the
nineteenth century, the vacation industry didn’t really take off until the
mid-twentieth century. Howard
Johnson (who added motor lodges to his already profitable restaurant business),
Marion Isbell who created the Ramada Inn chain, and Kemmons Wilson of Holiday
Inn fame made good use of President Eisenhower’s super highway expansion and
the average person's desire for annual vacations thus making handsome fortunes
for themselves and their posterity.
According to the late author David Halberstam who wrote a
book on the 1950s, Charles Kemmons Wilson (who was known by his middle name)
was a homebuilder from Memphis, Tennessee. He got the idea for the construction
of his Holiday Inns during a 1951 summer vacation trip with his wife and two
children to Washington, D.C., thus demonstrating that vacations can mean both
relaxation and good fortune.
For me, the past four weeks have been a time of joy and
sadness, adventure and remembrance.
Between August 1979 and March 2013 I lived in Alameda, California. Here my first wife and I raised our two
boys. Our second son was born in
Oakland and knows no Eastern home.
There I gained the friendship of a wonderful group of men and women with
whom I worked, played, debated, laughed, cried and occasionally even
worshiped. To visit them once
again was to remember being a part of that and wishing that I still could
be. To visit Northern California
once again was an opportunity to enjoy my new and lovely wife’s delight in having
easy access to restaurants and tourist attractions via public
transportation. To visit Alameda,
California once again was an opportunity to wallow in the love and generosity
of people named Shadi, Justine, Sam, Bean, Chris, Kat, Don, Peter, Tony,
Patricia, Gina, Ed, two Steves, several Chris’s of both genders, Chuck, Dan,
Tim, RC, two Brians, two Davids, Mary, Barbara, Richard, Susi, Jim, Sero, Jack,
Eric, Bailey Jane (my little granddaughter), Celia, Ryan, Tiffany and yes –
even more. The joy was to be among
them once again. The sadness lay
in my longing to be with them always and forever.
Shortly after the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy,
Adlai Stevenson observed that to listen to a record album of Jack Kennedy’s wit
was to bring tears and laughter as close together as they could ever be. So it was during my heavily scheduled
recent Northern California vacation.
That we’ll do it all over again next year brings a smile to my lips even
as it brings a simultaneous lump to my throat!
I’m especially encouraged to return to California next year
in the wake of an observation made by a wonderful gentleman here in Syracuse
who said to me only yesterday:
“I just want you to know Ed, that your best essays were
those not written while you were experiencing that “heavy California vacation
schedule!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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