Childhood Memories

An excerpt from my travel memoir, Time Traveled (e-book or paperback) 

Growing up, my family only took one trip every couple of years, and it was the same trip every time. My parents weren’t the most creative travelers in the world, but they knew how to keep their kids happy because that unvarying vacation always took us to Florida. Granted, caravanning there in a station wagon took a dreadfully boring 18 long hours to accomplish, but the drive was always worth it once we arrived. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family permanently high-tailed it to the Sunshine State years before I was born, and I never understood why my dad opted to stay behind in Wisconsin. Life always looked better in Florida, especially in late February and early March when the sky was much bluer than the gray sky we perpetually drove away from. I had only one real low point during my childhood, and it revisited me like a recurring nightmare every time we pulled back into our driveway after having just spent two weeks in the one place I would’ve rather stayed. There were few things in life worse than returning to the dead of winter after tasting the sweet, sweet flavor of eternal spring. I think my disdain for the cold festered inside me like an ulcer after experiencing one too many trips to the happy place.

My mom was the picture taker in our family, and from the evidence that she left behind, she only pulled out the camera during Christmas and while on vacation in Florida. Most of my childhood photos show me standing beside a Christmas tree or playing on a beach. There was no in-between, so it’s safe to assume those two events summed up the entirety of my upbringing. No doubt, she was likely documenting birthdays, for I was born near Christmas, and my sister’s birthday coincided with our trip to Florida at the end of February. My parents would get away with cheating on gifts because they would call the trip to Disney my sister’s birthday gift and the entire Christmas holiday as mine. I remember my mom feeling bad one year when my sister only got an ice cream cone for her birthday, and she dropped it. It’s not that my parents were malicious or anything; they were just frugal to a fault.

I remember the year that EPCOT opened because my dad was excited there would be something other than Disney World to visit. I remember not understanding what EPCOT (aka Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was supposed to be about after my dad tried explaining it, but that’s probably because he had no idea what it was supposed to be about either. The place sounded strangely intriguing, yet my main concern was whether or not there would be any rides. My dad was vague on the answer, cryptically saying that “it was Disney, so there had to be rides.” That wasn’t a definitive yes, but the word “Disney” was enough of a sell that I wasn’t worried about being disappointed.

It was good that we didn’t know what to expect the day we were there on March 8, 1983, because officials told us not to expect to see at least half of the park until sometime after four o’clock due to a large swath of it being closed for a special event. I have no idea if my dad intentionally planned to take his family to EPCOT the same day President Reagan was there to give some park-related speech to a preselected audience or if it was simply a coincidence. It’s possible that my dad might’ve thought that we’d all get a chance to hear the president speak, but if that was the case, then his hopes were dashed when we were told that visitors needed to be corralled around the EPCOT Dome like human sheep until the pivotal hour when we’d be allowed to roam free. It was almost a year to the day when someone shot Reagan, so the park was taking extreme precautions to ensure that history wouldn’t repeat itself on their newly consecrated grounds.

Looking back on it now, I have two memories that prominently stand out when I think about that day. One was how my dad moped around the corral fuming because he was unimpressed that he got charged full price to see a limited version of the park, and two was how really, really, really familiar we got with the inside of EPCOT’s Dome. There was really only one ride in there to speak of, and we rode it three times, maybe even four. We never did see much of the rest of the park, but for whatever reason, I remember thinking the place was fun. However, my dad never suggested visiting there ever again, so we continued with our Disney World tradition the following years. Considering that my dad was never too keen on Reagan (even though he looked just like him—just look at the heading photo), I believe he forever held EPCOT against him.