The Value of Travel

I have heard it said that if you don’t travel it’s like reading the first page of a book over and over again. I do believe that some people are born with wanderlust. My Dad used to call me “Linda Go”. If a trip was mentioned, I was the first one to pack a suitcase. My son Ben inherited the wanderlust gene. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get him back. My husband and son Jamie didn’t get the gene, but have developed a modified sense of wanderlust over time.

As a child, we didn’t go on many vacations. Like most families, money was a factor. I was fortunate that my grandparents moved to Florida when I was 11. A couple of times when we could save enough for a few tanks of gas, we would pile in the car, three in the front and three in the back, for the 24 hour straight-through drive. Bathroom stops were at Howard Johnson’s or Stuckey’s. If you had saved your own money you could get a Ho-Jo Cola. There were lots of threats to pull the car over if we didn’t stop fighting or complaining. Once we arrived we had free room and board and were treated to lots of sightseeing by our grandparents.

We learned that alligators run loose in Florida, that wet sand feels wonderful squished between your toes, that palm trees are tall and skinny and that if you’re lucky you might see a porpoise or manatee in the ocean. All the people were old and had moved there from other places. Kids came to visit, but not many lived there.

The only other relative who was “rich” by our standards was my Aunt in Greenwich, Connecticut, a stone’s throw from New York City. She had a boat and a refrigerator full of Coca Cola. And no kids! She was so thrilled when we came to visit that the possibilities were endless. She showed us how tall the Empire State Building was. Really tall to a little girl from West Virginia. We found out that the Statue of Liberty was amazing in real life. She took me to my first zoo, the Bronx Zoo. They never got any better than that. On one of those trips my brother Mike took along his pet reptile in a shoe box. It’s name was Ho-Jo, named after…well, you know. I was afraid of it. He would sneak it out of the box and stick it in my face. I would let out a blood curling scream causing my Dad to go off the side of the road. My Aunt told Mike that Ho-Jo could stay in the utility sink in the basement. Unfortunately for Ho-Jo, the hot water dripped all night and he was dead by morning. I had a much more pleasant ride home.

After I was married, money was tight again, with much of it going to pay off student loans for Jim and me. Vacations were still the drive to Florida. As we would start out the door, Jim would belatedly ask if we had any money. I would smile and hold up the dollars I had squirreled away in the credit union as a payroll deduction. I wasn’t missing out on a trip. I even had enough to spend the night in Atlanta on the way. We found out that it was hard to understand people from Georgia unless you listened very carefully. We discovered a place called Underground Atlanta with more restaurants and shops than I had ever seen in one place.

Once we had children who were old enough to appreciate it, we tried to make travel part of their education. They learned to buy knock off watches out of briefcases on the streets of Manhattan and saw their first Broadway play. They had their first encounter with homeless people living in cardboard boxes on the streets of DC and found out that in Boston “park” was pronounced “pahk” and my name was “Linder”. They sometimes asked me if we could stay in a place longer. I told them no, we had to go, but they could always come back. And they have. They have families of their own and are starting to introduce them to new places. They want them to know that it’s a big world with a lot to see. They probably won’t finish the book. But I know they will read a lot more than the first page.

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