Back when we were little, my sister Chrissy and I had a special relationship with vending machines in hotels, particularly cheese and cracker combos, the unnatural orange kind that came in a six pack of little sandwiches. Getting money to put in the vending machines was clarification that we were not in our house and chances are wherever we were had an indoor pool. The whole place smelled faintly of chlorine and if we played our cards right, one of us might be walking with a little bar of soap. Our older sisters were off in big girl land and the two of us were angling for tv in bed with a remote control and a can of Coca Cola, baby!
The United States back in the day had a plethera of Howard Johnson's and I think that if eating chicken in a basket and playing logic puzzles in a restaurant slash adjoining motel was a career,sign me up. There will always be the thrill of seeing the first signs of Spanish Moss on the trees and pecan bars being pimped in rest stops insinuating escape from the cold of the north and the nearness of the round accents of my relatives in my heart.
My grandfather's house was in Siesta Key which is part of Sarasota Florida. He was a blind retired southern colonel which I equated with being just like the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy only my grandpa was a quarter Spanish and the other colonel struck me as pretty anglo. My grandfather was like a sleeping lion. I knew he could be fierce and frightening because I had heard the stories but he was always in bed. His house smelled like bay leaves and the Gulf Of Mexico outside of the window. We would walk down to the beach wearing flip flops so the coral wouldn't cut us and spend the day playing with sea urchins and little shrimp, Even the air felt alien compared to our home in the Catskills by the woods. It was different and different was important.
In New Hampshire in the summertime, we would visit the House Of Colors and marvel at all of the different rocks and minerals they sold. Later we would go look for pretty rocks in the mountains and find some in the wild ourselves. We saw the movie "Cabaret" from the back of our station wagon before we drove back to our little cabin on what could be any number of picturesque lakes, hoping in my heart that another bat would get loose in it and give us a that extra thrill of ducking under furniture while Daddy chased it with a broom, forever tying Liza Minelli and bat infestation in the same memories.
Whether it was by monetary necessity or the joy with which my parents embraced natural America, our vacations were simple. We went to some amusement parks but it takes concentration to remember them unlike the roiling pots of quicksand in Homosasa Springs that impressed me permanently. Every time we drove away from our home it was with a wave of excitement that we were going on a somewhat thrifty conquest, embarking on a low budget adventure.
Years later while I was in high school, I had an audition in New York City so my mom and dad decided to make a big stink out of it. We stayed at the Plaza Hotel, ate at Trader Vics downstairs and had lunch in the Edwardian room just outside of the lobby. I remember that the bathtub being regal. Someone brought me a grand drink with the alcohol removed in a tub of a drinking vessel with a half peach skewered down the middle of it that was delicious. It was a truly wonderful experience but in the scheme of memory things, it still wasn't better than the orange crackers in the vending machine at Howard Johnsons.
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