I was very lucky that we took a family vacation every year when I was growing up. While one year we went away at spring break, usually my dad took off the first two weeks of August and that’s when we traveled (school was still starting after Labor Day until I hit high school). There were six of us so it was always a road trip in the family station wagon.
I didn’t know it at the time- and probably didn’t care– but these were really planned out trips. My mom would later say her regret is that we were always running off to a new place and rarely spent two nights in one Holiday Inn but starting early and getting all those miles in meant we saw more places. One vacation was centered around Civil War Battlefields. My dad was a project engineer and when possible we toured factories and saw things made like cigarettes (he smoked Belairs and I remember the tour guide handing him a stack at the end of the tour and Kellogg’s (there were got to pick a box of cereals and that was my introduction to Product 19).
There also were historical houses which is what led us to Campobello Island in June on our road trip. I had been there the summer after eighth grade with my parents and my younger sister Denise. Campobello is off the coast of Maine and actually in Canada although it is jointly run by the Canadian and US governments. Still, you have to go through a border crossing each way.
What’s significant is that it was the summer home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While it’s not where he contracted polio, it’s where he fell ill with it. Sadly, after leaving the island very ill, he never returned although his family did and the house is now open for tours. It’s known for its red paint and green trim.
I have wanted to go back for a long time and when I knew we were going to be in Boston for a wedding, I decided this was the time we’d trek north and make it happen. Sometimes places we visited in our childhoods no longer exist, but I’m grateful when a place exists and remains pretty much as it was then.
The following day, which happened to be our ninth wedding anniversary, we stopped at the American side of Niagara Falls. I had done the Canadian side with my family several times– and with Greg– but due to time and a customs restraint (we had a car full of Chelle summer inventory which caused a bit of a problem at the Canadian border of Campobello), we decided to stay on the American side.
While it wasn’t the same as the Canadian side, I’m still glad we stopped. There’s something special about Niagara and it’s yet another happy memory, especially given that both my parents and my younger sister have died. I can’t relieve these memories with them but by going back to these places I can relive the memories in new form and share them with Greg.