My family did not stray far from home for vacations. Part of the reason is that Uncle Bill and Aunt Ann were innately stay at home people, and my Dad had only one weeks’ vacation which meant that long trips were improbable. So most years we just visited nearby lakes and local attractions.

As I think back on it now it seems strange that we would go to lakes as part of our vacation week. No one in my family could swim or had any interest in boating, fishing, or other water activities. So why go there? Vacation time at two of the lakes (Harvey’s Lake and Lake Ariel) was just a one-day outing – leave the house in the morning and return in the afternoon. At least there were a few amusements at those lakes, such as a merry-go-round, sliding board, swings, and seesaw, really fun stuff for a kid in the 1950’s. They also had swans and ducks and there was a modicum of excitement in sitting lakeside and watching them.

During two summers we went to another nearby lake (Lake Winola) for a stay of several days. One of my Dad’s customers owned a cottage there and offered it to him for a brief vacation respite. It was a nice enough cottage, but Lake Winola had no attractions for kids so I spent my days there reading comic books just like I would be doing at home. One notable distraction of Lake Winola was the multitude of bees that hung out there. It was so bad one summer that Aunt Ann did not want us to spend the night there and she insisted that we return to Scranton each day before dark and then go back up to Lake Winola the next morning. It was a 30-mile one-way drive which in the ‘50’s took about 90 minutes. I remember feeling sorry for Uncle Bill who had to make that drive in his 1948 DeSoto for three consecutive days and nights so that Aunt Ann, Jackie and I would be safe from what I must assume were killer bees. My Dad and my sister elected to stay overnight at the cottage and so they did not participate in the daily escape commute.

What I most enjoyed during vacation week were excursions to Rocky Glen Park, the amusement park located about three miles from Scranton which had Bumper Cars, Caterpillar Ride, Whip Ride, Roller Coaster, and Penny Arcade among its various attractions. It remains in my memory as my most fun place as a child. The other local attraction to tour during vacation week was Nay Aug Park, just across town from my house, and its cool Zoo, the home of the beloved Tillie the elephant.

There were, however, two happy exceptions to the stay-local vacation routine, and they both involved trips with my father. One was when I was about 9 or 10 years old. My father and I took the bus to New York City (actually the Bronx, not Manhattan). It was a 3 or 4 day stay at the apartment of my Aunt Mary in the Bronx. I attended my first major league baseball game during that trip. Unfortunately it was not the Yankees and not at Yankee Stadium, but it was the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in Queens. Still, I got to see the great Willie Mays play and we sat not too many rows back from the Giants dugout. I experienced my first subway ride during that trip, which I thought was amazing. I just marveled at the fact that a train runs underground. My Dad and Aunt Mary also took me to what was then the famous Bronx Zoo. It knocked the socks off the Nay Aug Park Zoo. All in all, a fun vacation, quite different from all prior summers. The other exception was a vacation in Atlantic City with my father, my sister, and a couple of her girl friends. It is most memorable to me because it was the first time I saw an ocean, played on a beach, and explored the joys of a boardwalk.

It never bothered me as a kid that we didn’t take vacation trips of note. Perhaps that was because I didn’t know that any other families did. It was just a simpler era where leisure time and savings were scant. So I don’t look back on my childhood vacations with any regret, except I wish that at least once I spent a week or so at summer camp like other kids I knew, where I could sing campfire songs, roast marshmallows, and wear the cool camp t-shirt.