Having been fixated on financial news ever since my 401(k) mysteriously disappeared, I can't help but think back to some truly awful memories from the summer of 1977… a summer I should have stayed home and baled hay.
Being the youngest of three, I don't have a lot of memories of big summer vacations with the family. By the time I became a teenager, family vacations were a thing of the past. I think the general consensus was — we all had plenty of time together and we shouldn't press our luck. Not exactly how Ward Cleaver would have done it, but hey, it worked for us.
At the time I was a pimply-faced 15-year-old punk (much like the one I now have). My parents were going on a trip to Florida to visit my sister and meet her new fianc?. I knew better, but somehow my box of Stridex pads and I still crawled into the backseat of dad's sporty '72 Impala to begin the 24-hour drive to Florida, alone with my parents.
As horrific as the car ride itself was, those aren't the memories that haunt me most. The way it all started was certainly well intended. Wanting to impress his soon to be father-in-law and brother-in-law, the fianc? arranged for us men to go on a deep-sea fishing trip for the day. Having never seen an ocean, (like a fool) I thought that sounded like a great idea.
Much like Gilligan himself must have experienced, about an hour from land the weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. Rain, lightning, thunder and 40 people with poles and hooks swinging in the wind diminished the fun I had been expecting.
