DAY TRIPPIN'by Eva Pasco 
My fondest
recollections growing up in the Sixties settle upon
those day trips taken during my
father's two-week summer vacation. Thinking back, it
was hardly a vacation for my parents. My mom would load
the picnic cooler with utensils and food staples
road-ready for my father to cook on the portable stove at a
campground enroute to our destination.
Leaving home at
sunrise, my father drove while my mother plotted the
daily excursion on a road map which never left her
lap. My sister and I sat in the back, two prim queens who
would inquire from time to time as children do, "Are we there
yet?" No need to get into the antics of two backseat
barbarians, a previous article unto itself...
Throughout most
of the decade, from our Rhode Island point of origin, we
traversed all over New England and beyond in our Plymouth Suburban
station wagon: Cape Cod, Storyland, Santa's Village, The Polar
Caves, White Mountains, and even Niagara Falls. We even
attended the 1964/65 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows Corona Park
in Queens--the largest world's fair to be held in the US, occupying
nearly a square mile of land. An old post card refreshes
my memory as to the fair's theme. A stainless steel model of the
earth called the "Unisphere" symbolized "Peace through
Understanding." I vaguely recall the fair's preoccupation
with space technology and its cultural and technological
implications--coming to your neighborhood soon, sort of
thing.
The day trip
I petitioned for which made a lasting impression on me
till this day, bored my younger sister to death, and
flabbergasted my father for its lack of thrills, was our
visit to Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts.
I had previously finished reading Little Women by
Louisa May Alcott, a fictionalized biography of the Marches, based
on the lives of the Alcotts. Well, I was in heaven...a visit
to Orchard House was like walking through the book, both
written and set inside the author's home. I saw the
shelf desk where Ms. Alcott wrote the novel in 1868. I had
the privilege of walking inside May's room (Amy March) to gaze
upon the sketches I'd freshly read about. Indeed, no
structural changes had been made and most of the furnishings were
authentic and intact as described in the book.
To each his own,
that's for sure. Growing up in the Sixties, an introverted
bookworm, and now years later, a writer of books, I will
always cherish my visit to Orchard House for making my visions
of such an endearing story come alive.
Eva Pasco's
"Underlying Notes" may be purchased
here:
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.jpg "The 60s - Carl - 1968 - Vietnam")
