“The Fine Print”, by M.H.
Schrader
The Seven-year Itch
By the time you read this, I will be
gone--out of town, that is. Yup; it’s
vacation time in the Schrader household.
Okay, okay--so we will only be gone for a
few days. Nonetheless, it still is a vacation. In fact, it’s our first vacation since our
honeymoon seven years ago.
That’s not to say that we haven’t gone
places. We have gone many, many
places. The farthest we’ve traveled was
to Detroit on fine wintry weekend several Januarys ago for a funeral. In fact, it was so wintry that after awhile
the heater in the van, well, overheated, and decided not to work anymore. We actually spent more time on the road than
we did in Detroit, and the temperature control center never had a chance to
just sit down a relax a spell. I guess
it was the heater’s equivalent of a nervous breakdown.
But, that was definitely not a
vacation. I don’t know about you, but
if I met someone who said they were going to Detroit just for the sake of going
to Detroit, I think I would call the guys with the straight-jackets. Then again, I wouldn’t. Because it’s one of those things that just
ain’t gonna happen. Now I’m not talking
Dearborn and Henry Ford’s museum, or Oakland County and the Palace; I’m talking
Detroit itself. Well...let me just put
it this way. Detroit is one of three
cities that I have absolutely no desire to ever step foot in again. When I went to Canada in 1988, I drove 100
miles out of my way to cross at Port Huron rather than drive through Detroit.
What is a vacation? A vacation is when you go someplace where
you’re not visiting family or on business.
The whole point of a vacation is to leave your cares and worries at home
for just a few days. If you’re on a
business trip, that is very hard to do.
If you’re visiting family, well, let’s just say that’s one of life’s
impossibilities.
I am one of those people who actually
becomes more stressed out and irritable when visiting family. Heck, I become a downright grump. It may be because I don’t ever feel like I
can loosen up around family. I don’t
know for sure. What I do know is that
when I am grumpy, I am not a pleasant person to be around. I’m sure there have been many times that
Mrs. Schrader has resisted a very strong urge to just leave me by the side of
the road or something. Or strap me up
like a deer to the roof.
Actually we had planned to be gone more
than just a few days for our vacation.
But, things being the way they are sometimes, we had to lop off a few
days. I was quite surprised to learn of
the price gouging of hotels nationwide on the Independence Day weekend. Now I know why they call it Independence
Day--because you’re in dependence to
the credit card companies after spending a night in a hotel on the July 4th
weekend. It is a truly magical day for
hoteliers; why room prices magically double!
You know that room that was $60 on the Second? Just wait a day, and see it become so special as to cost $120. Talk about a return on an investment! Double your money in one day! Where can I sign up?!
Of course, with any vacation, something
unexpected always happens. Every time I
have gone to Eureka Springs, for example, there has always been some kind of
automotive problem. One time, it was
the clutch on my brother-in-law’s car; another, it was the exhaust system on
mine.
This vacation has been no exception, and
it hasn’t even started yet. A few weeks
ago, Mrs. Schrader took the van in to get the air conditioner recharged. It turns out that there was a very good
reason for the lack of freon--the multiple holes in the compressor and
coils. In other words, the whole system
was shot. The cost to replace was more
than I had paid for my first two cars combined! But, when you live in Arkansas, you really don’t have a
choice--air conditioning in pretty much a necessity, especially when you have a
baby. Well, let’s just say that the
last days of our vacation were sacrificed in order that the others might be
saved.
At least a small vacation is better than
none at all. And at the rate that we
are going, it will it will be another seven years before we have another.