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Show Wlf by Teri Gomes Bring out the popcorn For those of you who aren't crazy about seeing someone else's vacation slides, go directly to Mountain Seasons and begin reading. But if you honestly enjoy seeing how other folks spend their vacation time and the oh-so-wild adventures of the Gomes family, pop yourself a big bowl of corn and darken the room. The slide show is about to begin... Hard to make out the figures in this first slide, I know. But it's 5:30 a.m. and we are loading our Volkswagon van. It reminds me of a photo I once saw of a Dust Bowl family in the thirties. They had loaded all their possessions in their car and lived out of the car for weeks on end. It is safe to say, we do not travel light. CLICK. Here we are in Cedar City, Utah. It is nearly eleven in the morning and while not yet time for lunch, certainly time for a snack. We order cokes and french 'fries and the waitress asks if we want our fries well-done or regular. We opt for regular. The contorted faces are ours, laughing into our napkins. Who ever heard of well-done french fries? CLICK. Here we are groaning as we push our van into a service station in Las Vegas. It is 6 o'clock on a Friday afternoon and the car has died. These are not happy faces. CLICK. Forced to make an unscheduled stop in Vegas overnight with twp underage ' youngsters, we decide to take them to the only casino where children are allowed, CIRCUS, CIRCUS. We win NOTHING, NOTHING. The kids are smiling at the painted ladies and the helium balloons. CLICK. , Here we are walking 4,000 blocks to the nearest movie theatre. I am the one limping with the blisters. We will be spending the entire weekend in Vegas because the car mechanic does not work until Monday. We see War Games. In Las Vegas when the kid in the movie decides his first target for thermonuclear warfare is Vegas, the theatre goes wild. "No-no. Not here. Not fair." We laugh at the crowd and the movie. CLICK. Again, you will notice the large buttered popcorn, Raisinettes and Jumbo cokes. We are at our second movie of the weekend, Psycho II. At the very scary part, where Norman Bates stands over the sleeping girl with a butcher knife in his hand, a man in the front row talks back to the screen in the silent theatre. "Norman, don't do it," he pleads. We start giggling. CLICK. The sad faces are ours. We have just learned our van needs an entire new engine, and they can't get it here until Thursday. It looks like bye-bye vacation. CLICK. Here we are smiling in our Rent-A-Car. The kind man at Avis has listened to our sad story and has practically given us a car to continue our trip with. There are still nice people left in the world. Even in Vegas. i. CLICK. Finally in Southern California at a friend's fabulous beach home, we are on the shore picking up seashells. The kids throwing sand and chasing seagulls are mine. CLICK. That's us at Tia Juana Tilly's eating sinus-clearing salsa and drinking anything but the water. The waiter with the gold tooth has just sung us the cockroach song. We are wearing our new $4 pullover shirts we bartered to get. We look just like tourists. Oh well. CLICK. This is Randy, my son, feeding a huge land tortoise at the San Diego Zoo. In the background is a man who looks like a sea lion trying to communicate with the animal he resembles. "Barrrrk. Arrrrk. Arrrrk. ARRRRRRRRK." His polyester pants stretch over the edge of the railing and under the edge of his stomach. Why do people talk to animals at the zoo? CLICK. This shot is easy to recognize it is the often sung-about L.A. freeway. The powder blue Porches are all driven by . bare-chested blondes, male. All the cars, as you can see, have cutesy license plates. Look carefully and you can see, I YEN 4 U, RK A BILY, R DAD 2, CORP JAG and GO SUSIE. CLICK. This is one of those familiar road signs : GAS, FOOD, LODGING. We take a picture because my daughter, Jenny, has decided the first two words must by hyphenated and therefore they will be selling refried beans at the next exit. Believe me, you will never look at another gasfood sign the same again. CLICK. This crying infant belongs to no one I know. I took this shot because I have this million-dollar idea. You know those signs that non-verbally say no smoking etc., the red circle with the slash thru it? Well, I propose a crying infant sign with a slash thru it. I know it would sell a million. I don't smoke and I'm not crazy about smokers. But I would rather any day be placed in an airplane, restaurant or theatre next to a smoker pver a crying baby. Crying babies in restaurants are generally the worst. Parents have given them a metal spoon to clank on their metal highchair in the interest of "keeping junior quiet." This does not, as the rest of the patrons will tell you, keep junior quiet. Junior's noises more closely resemble a wailing Roy Orbison with a , gypsy tambourine. Please no crying infants allowed. CLICK. This is Randy and Jenny and me walking along the beach at night. They had bugged me to take a nighttime, "goodbye ocean" walk and so we did. It was nothing special, really. No walking over young couples at the moment of discovery or party-crazed teens throwing bottles against the breakers. Just a quiet walk where my now-tallo; than-I-am son put his arm around me and said, "You know, this has been a great vacation." My daughter dug her hand into my sweatshirt pocket and said, "Yeah, neat." In years to come, they probably won't even remember the walk, but I will. This is the summer my babies ages 10 and 12 betwixt and between (as Pat Boone used to say), neither infants nor adults. I am still their mother and they my childlren, but this summer we are also friends with; . shared interests. God alone knows what the teenage years will bring, but this summer, being friends and family seems the best. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. Lights up. Any slides strike a vein with you? I hope your . summer vacation is a memory-maker too... |