The thing about holidays is, they are never long enough. Or way too long. Depending.
We’ve all had both of those kinds probably, although I suspect most of us would take any holiday, any time, if given the chance. I’m usually in the minority in this regard, since I’ve never really had a real job where you get real holidays. Apparently, that’s what freelancing is all about. As they say, if you are self-employed at something you like doing, every day is a holiday. Of course, whoever says that is stark raving mad and has never been self-employed.
The reason I bring this up now, though, in June, when it’s not even holiday season, is because I’m not here. This is different from saying I’m not all there, which is quite a common comment when it comes to Yours Truly, but what I mean is, when you are reading this (and yes I can tell if you are reading this or just skipping to Page A8), when this column appears in the Advocate, I am physically away on holidays.
Through the magic of “premature filing,” I have managed to, in old-fashioned newspaper lingo “bang out” a bunch of words in roughly the order I intended before my Better Half and I left for six days in the sun and surf. Too bad the Sun and Surf is a cheap hotel on a slough in Saskatchewan.
Just kidding about that last part, we did get a “package deal” to paradise for six, count ’em six big days.
You know how these “package deals” go. Your Six Day Deal consists of about three and a half of those days travelling on four different airlines with nothing but peanuts and warm bottled water (at $4.50 per).
This is such a “deal” that I kind of suspect that after flying for several days straight, they will bank the plane, announce that you should look out the window at your tropical destination, and they give you a funny hat, a commemorative T-shirt, a watered down Mai Tai and immediately head back home without stopping.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining — any holiday will do right about now. I’m just not really used to them, other than our yearly five-day excursion to the exotic lands of Kelowna, B.C.
Even while I was a rotten little kid in Parkvale, my family never went on holidays. We never even had a car until I was darn near a rotten teenager. And even then it was a rattle trap ’58 Ford with three on the tree and a 292 under the hood. Neither of which worked all that great. So when we did actually go on a driving holiday, it was with one of my uncles.
The uncles who lived the closest were farmers and for some reason only drove Dodges. But at least those Dodges, packed with uncles, aunts, parents, siblings and cousins, would make it all the way to Banff or, if you were really lucky, to the other really, really far away compulsory holiday destination (Jasper).
But against all odds, even though I was just a little rotten kidlet at the time, I remember one particular holiday, primarily because it was so exceedingly epic for our family.
For us, a trip to Calgary was a huge deal. Heck, even rattling out on the gravel roads to Pine Lake was considered a rare and special event.
But this time, we ventured so far above and beyond our regular driving excursions that it almost belonged in the category of intergalactic space exploration.
We actually drove something like 4000 miles (6,000 km) over several days in a dirt-covered Dodge that had previously only smoothed its tires on the homegrown gravel of local farm roads.
We drove to see my great aunt, who was apparently my Grandma’s sister (a fact that didn’t dawn on me for about two decades) but who was a real foreigner with an accent and everything.
I thought “great aunt” was just an expression meaning “related to you in a very distant fashion” because she was such a rare thing in my life. She was an American.
This meant she lived in an alien land several thousand light years from good old Central Alberta in some exotic place (or so I imagined) called “Montana.”
And for our biggest holiday ever, we drove there to see her and Great Uncle Leslie, who was even more extraterrestrial in that it was he who was born in the U.S. of A., which meant by marrying him my, Great Aunt Ollie suddenly talked with an American accent.
I can clearly remember that my uncle’s old Dodge had a round metal design on the dash, near the glove compartment, and I spent 110 per cent of the three-day trip to the States propped up on the front seat between my uncle and my aunt hanging onto that round thing and steering the car.
It was a great responsibility manoeuvring the Dodge on all those bumpy narrow roads of Montana, I can tell you, and one that I took very seriously.
When we finally pulled into a town called Helena, where everyone talked like an American, I was so exhausted from piloting that big old Coronet or possibly Monaco that I must have finally passed out from driving because I was sound asleep and missed the big moment when we pulled up to the house.
But it was my first real holiday and I can remember my relatives being wonderful warm people who had American flags everywhere and talked about how many of their sons and nephews were “in the army.”
I didn’t know quite what to think of all of the flags and the army and the United States, and sometimes I still don’t, but I was sure that my whole family and my aunt and uncle must have been so happy that I drove them safely all the way to Montana to see the relatives.
It was a wonderful trip — such are some holidays, snapshot memory moments exaggerated by time, embellished by imagination.
So while there you are at the table sipping your coffee, or perhaps in your car on your way to Montana, here we are, looking out the tiny airplane window waving at the islands below, turning around without actually landing.
All excited about three more days in airplanes on our way back home.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate. His books can be found at Chapters, Coles and Sunworks in Red Deer.